A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles


Book Description

This book was first published in 1954, A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles is a valuable contribution to the field of English Language and Linguistics.




Roots of English


Book Description

A groundbreaking account of the linguistic features of four English dialects and their wider implications for English's development.




Papers from the Fifth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Galway, April 6–10 1981


Book Description

This volume presents a selection of the best papers from the Fifth International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL), which was held in Galway, April 6–10 1981. These papers provide an overview of work in the field of historical linguistics, covering a wide variety of topics and languages.




Modality in English


Book Description

This volume presents two kinds of studies on English modality. On the one hand, there are strongly empirical, corpus-based studies of individual uses of English modal auxiliaries and modal constructions, such as may in interrogatives, might in concessive clauses, shall and may vs must in legal English, the use of surprised if and surprising if constructions, the use and history of adhortative constructions, or the modal-aspectual use of come to in I came to realize that X. The book also contains work that presents new views on some of the classical issues, like the relations between modality and time, modality and commitment, modals and (inter)subjectivity. A special place is given to work that approaches the English modals from the perspective of the 'Theory of Enunciative Operations' developed by the French linguist Antoine Culioli and his colleagues. Thus the book provides new perspectives and answers on basic questions about modality, in general, and its expression in English, in particular.




Caribbean Language Issues, Old & New


Book Description

CaribbeanLanguage Issues Old and New was conceived as a tribute to ProfessorMervyn Alleyne-who is widely acknowledged as a pioneer in thefield of Caribbean language-on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. A wide variety of issues are dealt with: phonology, syntax, discourse, creole genesis, language problems in education, among others. Some authors re-visit topics on which Alleyne himself has written, building his insights in many cases, while others explore areas which had not been investigated previously. This work provides access to recent research by Caribbean scholars, and goes some way towards filling a gap, particularly in its usefulness to students of linguistics and teachers of English. At the same time, the uninitiated reader who decides to explore its pages will not be unrewarded, since the the style is simple and direct and the content, for the most part, not highly technical.




Language Contact in Europe


Book Description

This comprehensive new work provides extensive evidence for the essential role of language contact as a primary trigger for change. Unique in breadth, it traces the spread of the periphrastic perfect across Europe over the last 2,500 years, illustrating at each stage the micro-responses of speakers and communities to macro-historical pressures. Among the key forces claimed to be responsible for normative innovations in both eastern and western Europe is 'roofing' - the superstratal influence of Greek and Latin on languages under the influence of Greek Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism respectively. The author provides a new interpretation of the notion of 'sprachbund', presenting the model of a three-dimensional stratified convergence zone, and applies this model to her analysis of the have and be perfects within the Charlemagne sprachbund. The book also tackles broader theoretical issues, for example, demonstrating that the perfect tense should not be viewed as a universal category.




Continuity and Variation in Germanic and Romance


Book Description

This volume offers a range of synchronic and diachronic case studies in comparative Germanic and Romance morphosyntax. These two language families, spoken by over a billion people today, have played a central role in linguistic research, but many significant questions remain about the relationship between them. Following an introduction that sets out the methodological, empirical, and theoretical background to the book, the volume is divided into three parts that deal with the morphosyntax of subjects and the inflectional layer; inversion, discourse pragmatics, and the left periphery; and continuity and variation beyond the clause. The contributors adopt a diverse range of approaches, making use of the latest digitized corpora and presenting a mixture of well-known and under-studied data from standard and non-standard Germanic and Romance languages. Many of the chapters challenge received wisdom about the relationship between these two important language families. The volume will be an indispensable resource for researchers and students in the fields of Germanic and Romance linguistics, historical and comparative linguistics, and morphosyntax.




Pronouns in Embedded Contexts at the Syntax-Semantics Interface


Book Description

This volume presents studies on pronouns in embedded contexts, and offers fundamental insights into this central area of research. Much of the recent research on pronouns has shown that embedded environments, such as clausal complements of attitude predicates, provide a window into the nature of pronouns. Pronouns in such environments not only exhibit familiar distinctions such as that between bound and referential pronouns; if they refer to the attitude holder, they also participate in a broader range of phenomena, e.g., distinguishing between a de se reading (involving a conscious self-directed belief) and a de re reading (involving an accidental belief about oneself). Topics covered include: the semantics of attitude reports that contain pronominal elements, the semantics of pronominal features and their connection to indexicality, new insights in the connection of pronominal typology and logophoricity or anti-logophoricity, and finally, the localization of embedded pronouns within a bigger picture involving the nature of perspective and the analysis of quasi-pronominal phenomena such as sequence of tense.




Studies in Linguistic Motivation


Book Description

How much of language is motivated? Recently, cognitive and functional linguists have proposed new solutions to this intriguing question. The thirteen articles collected in this volume cover various aspects of motivation in grammar and in the lexicon. The phenomena discussed in the contributions can be grouped into four types of motivation, which, along with other types, are explicated in the introductory chapter: ecological motivation, i.e. motivation of a linguistic unit due to its place, or "ecological niche," within a system; genetic motivation, i.e. motivation of present-day linguistic behavior or structure due to historical factors; experiential motivation, i.e. motivation that is based on embodied experience; and cognitive motivation, i.e. motivation that is based on human knowledge and cognitive operations such as metonymy and metaphor. The languages studied in some detail include Afrikaans, Croatian, Dutch, English, French, German, Hausa, and Hungarian. This volume makes a strong case for the pervasiveness of motivation in natural language. It will be of interest to teachers, researchers and students of linguistics, especially of functional and cognitive linguistics.




Analyzing meaning: An introduction to semantics and pragmatics. Third edition


Book Description

This book provides an introduction to the study of meaning in human language, from a linguistic perspective. It covers a fairly broad range of topics, including lexical semantics, compositional semantics, and pragmatics. The chapters are organized into six units: (1) Foundational concepts; (2) Word meanings; (3) Implicature (including indirect speech acts); (4) Compositional semantics; (5) Modals, conditionals, and causation; (6) Tense & aspect. Most of the chapters include exercises which can be used for class discussion and/or homework assignments, and each chapter contains references for additional reading on the topics covered. As the title indicates, this book is truly an introduction: it provides a solid foundation which will prepare students to take more advanced and specialized courses in semantics and/or pragmatics. It is also intended as a reference for fieldworkers doing primary research on under-documented languages, to help them write grammatical descriptions that deal carefully and clearly with semantic issues. The approach adopted here is largely descriptive and non-formal (or, in some places, semi-formal), although some basic logical notation is introduced. The book is written at level which should be appropriate for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students. It presupposes some previous coursework in linguistics, but does not presuppose any background in formal logic or set theory.