Pragmatics

Pragmatics
Author: Peter Cole
Publisher: Syntax and Semantics
Total Pages: 340
Release: 1978
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789004368514

The Mehweb language

The Mehweb language
Author: Michael Daniel
Publisher: Language Science Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2019-10-23
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3961102082

This book is an investigation into the grammar of Mehweb (Dargwa, East Caucasian also known as Nakh-Daghestanian) based on several years of team fieldwork. Mehweb is spoken in one village community in Daghestan, Russia, with a population of some 800 people, In many ways, Mehweb is a typical East Caucasian language: it has a rich inventory of consonants; an extensive system of spatial forms in nouns and converbs and volitional forms in verbs; pervasive gender-number agreement; and ergative alignment in case marking and in gender agreement. It is also a typical language of the Dargwa branch, with symmetrical verb inflection in the imperfective and perfective paradigm and extensive use of spatial encoding for experiencers. Although Mehweb is clearly close to the northern varieties of Dargwa, it has been long isolated from the main body of Dargwa varieties by speakers of Avar and Lak. As a result of both independent internal evolution and contact with its neighbours, Mehweb developed some deviant properties, including accusatively aligned egophoric agreement, a split in the feminine class, and the typologically rare grammatical categories of verificative and apprehensive. But most importantly, Mehweb is where our friends live.

Changing Valency

Changing Valency
Author: Robert M. W. Dixon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2000-02-10
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0521660394

Distinguished scholars examine the phenomena of passives and causatives in languages from around the world.

Particles

Particles
Author: Marcel den Dikken
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 1995-03-16
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0195358007

Particles are words that do not change their form through inflection and do not fit easily into the established system of parts of speech. Examples include the negative particle "not," the infinitival particle "to" (as in "to go"), and do and let in "do tell me" and "let's go." Particles investigates the constraints on the distribution and placement of verbal particles. A proper understanding of these constraints yields insight into the structure of various secondary predicative constructions. Starting out from a detailed analysis of complex particle constructions, den Dikken brings forth accounts of triadic constructions and Dative Shift, and the relationship between dative and transitive causative constructions--all of them built on the basic structural template proposed from complex particle constructions. Drawing on data from Norwegian, English, Dutch, German, West Flemish, and other languages, this book will interest a wide audience of students and specialists.

Corpus, Cognition and Causative Constructions

Corpus, Cognition and Causative Constructions
Author: Gaëtanelle Gilquin
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2010-03-24
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9027288496

English causative constructions with cause, get, have and make are often mistakenly presented as (quasi-)synonymous and more or less interchangeable. This book demonstrates the value of corpus linguistics in identifying the syntactic, semantic, lexical and stylistic features that are distinctive for each of these constructions. It also underlines the usefulness of providing corpus studies with a solid theoretical foundation by showing how corpus linguistics can be fruitfully combined with cognitive linguistics, which is used both as a starting point for the analysis (top-down approach) and as a framework within which to interpret the corpus results (bottom-up approach). From a methodological point of view, the study illustrates the complementarity of corpus and elicitation data, and offers tools and methods that could be used to investigate other syntactic structures. Finally, the book also has a pedagogical dimension in that it examines how the research findings can be applied to foreign language teaching.

Causatives and Transitivity

Causatives and Transitivity
Author: Bernard Comrie
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 413
Release: 1993-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027230269

This volume brings together 18 typological studies of causative and related constructions (transitivity, voice, other expressions of cause) by 19 scholars from North America, Western Europe, and Russia. The inspirations for the volume is the pioneering work on causative constructions by the Leningrad Typology Group; several of the contributors have close connections to the charter members of that group, others have appreciated this work from a distance. The volume as a whole is based on the concept of causative constructions as embracing both morphology and syntax, with an important semantic component as well. In addition to general studies concerning the morpho syntactic and semantic typology and the history of causative constructions and relations to other phenomena, the following individual languages are treated in detail: Russian, English, Dutch, Svan, Even, Korean, Yukaghir, Alutor, Aleut, Haruai, Dogon, Athabaskan languages. The volume will be of interest to typologists, to other linguists interested in causative constructions and transitivity relations, and to all who are interested in the linguistic expression of causal relations.

The Grammar of Causation and Interpersonal Manipulation

The Grammar of Causation and Interpersonal Manipulation
Author: Masayoshi Shibatani
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 572
Release: 2002
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027229533

This volume presents fifteen original papers dealing with various aspects of causative constructions ranging from morphology to semantics with emphasis on language data from Central and South America. Informed by a better understanding of how different constructions are positioned both synchronically (e.g., on a semantic map) and diachronically (e.g., through grammaticalization processes), the volume affords a comprehensive up-to-date perspective on the perennial issues in the grammar of causation such as the distribution of competing causative morphemes, the meaning distinctions among them, and the overall form-meaning correlation. Morphosyntactic interactions of causatives with other phenomena such as incorporation and applicativization receive focused attention as such basic issues as the semantic distinction between direct and indirect causation and the typology of causative constructions.

The Syntax of Igbo Causatives

The Syntax of Igbo Causatives
Author: Ndubuisi Anyanwu
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2016-12-14
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 978543110X

The Landmarks Series is a research and publications outfit funded by the Landmarks Research Foundation to publish recent outstanding doctoral dissertations on any aspect of Nigerian linguistics, languages, literatures and cultures. This study examines causatives in Igbo within the minimalist program. It identifies three types of causative: analytical, morphological and lexical. The book is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 is the general introduction, while Chapter 2 examines in some details the theory of causativity. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 focus on the analytical, morphological and lexical causative respectively.

The Syntax of (anti-)causatives

The Syntax of (anti-)causatives
Author: Florian Schäfer
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2008
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027255091

This book develops an approach to the causative alternation that assumes syntactic event decomposition and a configurational theta theory. It is couched within the framework of the Minimalist Program and, especially, within Distributed Morphology. Central to the work is the syntax and semantics of canonical external arguments of causative verbs as well as of oblique causers and causative PPs in the context of anticausative verbs in different languages such as Germanic, Romance, Balkan, and Caucasian languages. The book also develops a new account of the origin and nature of the morphological marking which is often found on anticausatives across languages. The main claim is that this morphology is a reflex of a syntactic way to prohibit the assignment of the external theta role. Moreover, the book develops an account about the origin of the implicit agent in generic middles which often bear the same morphology as marked anticausatives.