The Diachronic Typology Of Non Canonical Subjects

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The Diachronic Typology of Non-Canonical Subjects

Author : Ilja A. Serzant,Leonid Kulikov
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 392 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2013-11-15
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027271303

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The Diachronic Typology of Non-Canonical Subjects by Ilja A. Serzant,Leonid Kulikov Pdf

This volume is an important contribution to the diachrony of non-canonical subjects in a typological perspective. The questions addressed concern the internal mechanisms and triggers for various changes that non-canonical subjects undergo, ranging from semantic motivations to purely structural explanations. The discussion encompasses the whole life-cycle of non-canonical subjects: from their emergence out of non-subject arguments to their expansion, demise or canonicization, focusing primarily on syntactic changes and changes in case-marking. The volume offers a number of different case studies comprising such languages as Italian, Spanish, Old Norse and Russian as well as languages less studied in this context, such as Latin, Classical Armenian, Baltic languages and some East Caucasian languages. Typological generalizations in the form of recurrent developmental paths are offered on the basis of data presented in this volume and in the literature.

Grammatical Relations and their Non-Canonical Encoding in Baltic

Author : Axel Holvoet,Nicole Nau
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
Page : 370 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2014-05-15
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027270399

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Grammatical Relations and their Non-Canonical Encoding in Baltic by Axel Holvoet,Nicole Nau Pdf

This is the first of three volumes dealing with clausal architecture, grammatical relations, case-marking and the syntax–semantics interface in Baltic. It focuses on the grammatical relations of subject and object and the viability of these notions in languages like Lithuanian and Latvian, which have a rich case morphology and show many deviations from the canonical nominative-accusative pattern of case-marking. The issues examined include differential object marking, subjecthood in specificational copular constructions, ‘swarm’-type alternations and what they tell us about grammatical relations, special types of subject and object marking in non-finite clauses, and non-canonical grammatical relations induced by modal predicates. One study provides a comparative outlook towards Icelandic, another language noted for its complex marking of grammatical relations. The articles in the volume represent various theoretical frameworks.

The MIHI EST construction

Author : Mihaela Ilioaia
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 413 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2023-12-18
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 9783111055626

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The MIHI EST construction by Mihaela Ilioaia Pdf

This book examines the Romanian mihi est construction (Mi-e foame/frică, me.dat = is hunger/fear ‘I am hungry/ afraid’). While it disappeared from all other Romance languages to be replaced with a habeo structure, the mihi est pattern is in Romanian the most common way of expressing psychological or physiological states. By means of synchronic and diachronic corpus studies, the book investigates the status of the core arguments of the mihi est structure, i.e. the dative experiencer and the nominative state noun, as well as its evolution throughout the centuries. The data analysis reveals that the dative experiencer syntactically behaves like nominative subjects, whereas the state noun shows predicate behavior. As for the evolution of the mihi est structure, the analysis shows a certain tendency toward innovation, since in present-day Romanian it can coerce nouns coming from other semantic fields into the construction’s psychological or physiological interpretation. Could this be another unique trait of Romanian, which causes it to seemingly go against the tendency of most Romance languages toward canonical marking of core arguments?

A Typological Perspective on Latvian Grammar

Author : Andra Kalnaca
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 198 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2014-01-01
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783110426984

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A Typological Perspective on Latvian Grammar by Andra Kalnaca Pdf

Theoretical studies of Latvian grammar have a great deal to offer to contemporary linguistics. Although traditionally Lithuanian has been the most widely studied Baltic language in diachronic and synchronic linguistics alike, Latvian has a number of distinctive features that can prove valuable both for historical, and perhaps even more so, for synchronic language research. Therefore, at the very least, contemporary typological, areal, and language contact studies involving Baltic languages should account for data from Latvian. Typologically, Latvian grammar is a classic Indo-European (Baltic) system with well-developed inflection and derivation. However, it also bears certain similarities to the Finno-Ugric languages, which can be reasonably explained by its areal and historical background. This applies, for example, to the mood system and its connections with modality and evidentiality in Latvian, also to the correlation between aspect and quantity as manifested in verbal and nominal (case) forms. The relations between debitive mood, certain constructions with reflexive verbs, and voice in Latvian are intriguing examples of unusual morphosyntactic features. Accordingly, the book focuses on the following topics: case system and declension (with emphasis on the polyfunctionality of case forms), gender, conjugation, tense and personal forms, aspect, mood, modality and evidentiality, reflexive verbs, and voice. The examples included in this book have been taken from the Balanced Corpus of Modern Latvian (Lidzsvarots musdienu latviešu valodas tekstu korpuss, available at www.korpuss.lv), www.google.lv, mass media, and fiction texts (see the List of language sources) without regard to relative frequency ratios.

Subjects in Constructions – Canonical and Non-Canonical

Author : Marja-Liisa Helasvuo,Tuomas Huumo
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2015-01-14
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027269188

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Subjects in Constructions – Canonical and Non-Canonical by Marja-Liisa Helasvuo,Tuomas Huumo Pdf

This volume analyzes constructions with non-canonical subjects in individual languages and cross-linguistically, drawing on insights from cognitive and discourse-functional linguistics. Prototypical subjects have often been characterized in terms of their semantic, syntactic and discourse features, such as animacy, agentivity, topicality, referentiality, definiteness and autonomy of existence of the subject referent. A non-canonical subject is one that lacks some of these features. This may be reflected in its meaning, grammatical coding, and/or discourse function. In discussing non-canonical subjects in individual languages and cross-linguistically, the chapters in the volume address the following more general topics: What kinds of grammatical, semantic and discourse criteria can be used to distinguish subjects from non-subjects? To what extent are subject criteria construction-specific? What kinds of constructions have non-canonical subjects? What are the semantic and discourse functions of constructions with non-canonical subjects? Are subjects which are grammatically non-canonical also atypical in terms of their discourse features?

Argument Realization in Baltic

Author : Axel Holvoet,Nicole Nau
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
Page : 570 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2016-01-21
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027267535

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Argument Realization in Baltic by Axel Holvoet,Nicole Nau Pdf

The third volume in the VARGReB series explores different aspects of varying argument realization in Baltic. It presents original studies on differential marking of both core and non-core verbal arguments, on argument structures of nouns and the encoding of nominal arguments, as well as on constructions reflecting the expansion of argument structure through the addition of causative, resultative or applicative predications. The discussion of phenomena of argument realization and marking often touches on fundamental problems of syntax and the syntax-semantics interface, such as the putative locality of case assignment, event-structural factors determining case marking, the inheritance of argument structure across phrase types, or the status of arguments and adjuncts. The contributions to this volume use different approaches and frameworks to analyze a wealth of authentic data from contemporary Latvian and Lithuanian.

Non-Canonically Case-Marked Subjects

Author : Jóhanna Barðdal,Na'ama Pat-El,Stephen Mark Carey
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2018-10-15
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027263513

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Non-Canonically Case-Marked Subjects by Jóhanna Barðdal,Na'ama Pat-El,Stephen Mark Carey Pdf

Interest in non-canonically case-marked subjects has been unceasing since the groundbreaking work of Andrews and Masica in the late 70’s who were the first to document the existence of syntactic subjects in another morphological case than the nominative. Their research was focused on Icelandic and South-Asian languages, respectively, and since then, oblique subjects have been reported for language after language throughout the world. This newfangled recognition of the concept of oblique subjects at the time was followed by discussions of the role and validity of subject tests, discussions of the verbal semantics involved, as well as discussions of the theoretical implications of this case marking strategy of syntactic subjects. This volume contributes to all these debates, making available research articles on different languages and language families, additionally highlighting issues like language contact, differential subject marking and the origin of oblique subjects.

The Diachrony of Ditransitives

Author : Chiara Fedriani,Maria Napoli
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 287 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2020-10-26
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783110701470

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The Diachrony of Ditransitives by Chiara Fedriani,Maria Napoli Pdf

While ample studies exist on ditransitives in various languages, notably from a typological perspective, more work needs to be done on identifying the main processes and factors that trigger and constrain the changes they undergo over time. The goal of this volume is to help fill this gap by bringing together data and information on individual languages that have thus far been left out of the discussion and by expanding our knowledge of already studied linguistic traditions so as to achieve a broader diachronic description. Since one of the distinctive features of ditransitives is their synchronic variability in terms of structural alternation and alignment split, diachronic research can throw up new insights into developmental dynamics that are eminently complementary; namely, on the one hand, the emergence, development and loss of construction alternation and, on the other, the acquisition of new functions over time. The analyses offered in the book yield different and interconnected answers to the general question of how ditransitives change by drawing on different functional principles that play a role in the diachronic reorganization of this dynamic domain and by providing a number of original theoretical suggestions.

Oblique Subjects in Germanic

Author : Jóhanna Barðdal
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 499 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2023-09-18
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783111078076

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Oblique Subjects in Germanic by Jóhanna Barðdal Pdf

Pulling together the threads of forty years of research on oblique subjects in the Germanic languages, this book introduces a novel approach to grammatical relations, based on a definition of subject as the first argument of the argument structure. New data are presented from Gothic, Old Saxon, Old Norse-Icelandic, Old Swedish and Old Danish, as well as from Icelandic, Faroese and German. This includes alternating Dat-Nom/Nom-Dat predicates, where either argument, the dative or the nominative, takes on subject behavior. The subject concept is modeled with the formalism of Construction Grammar, both synchronically and for the purpose of reconstructing grammatical relations for Proto-Germanic.

Language Change, Variation, and Universals

Author : Peter W. Culicover
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 335 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2021
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780198865391

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Language Change, Variation, and Universals by Peter W. Culicover Pdf

This volume explores how human languages become what they are, why they differ from one another in certain ways but not in others, and why they change in the ways that they do. Given that language is a universal creation of the human mind, the puzzle is why there are different languages at all: why do we not all speak the same language? Moreover, while there is considerable variation, in some ways grammars do show consistent patterns: why are languages similar in those respects, and why are those particular patterns preferred? Peter Culicover proposes that the solution to these puzzles is a constructional one. Grammars consist of constructions that carry out the function of expressing universal conceptual structure. While there are in principle many different ways of accomplishing this task, languages are under press to reduce constructional complexity. The result is that there is constructional change in the direction of less complexity, and grammatical patterns emerge that more efficiently reflect conceptual universals. The volume is divided into three parts: the first establishes the theoretical foundations; the second explores variation in argument structure, grammatical functions, and A-bar constructions, drawing on data from a variety of languages including English and Plains Cree; and the third examines constructional change, focusing primarily on Germanic. The study ends with observations and speculations on parameter theory, analogy, the origins of typological patterns, and Greenbergian 'universals'.

Partitive Determiners, Partitive Pronouns and Partitive Case

Author : Petra Sleeman,Giuliana Giusti
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 426 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2021-12-06
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 9783110732290

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Partitive Determiners, Partitive Pronouns and Partitive Case by Petra Sleeman,Giuliana Giusti Pdf

Although the interest in the concept of partitivity has continuously increased in the last decades and has given rise to considerable advances in research, the fine-grained morpho-syntactic and semantic variation displayed by partitive elements across European languages is far from being well-described, let alone well-understood. There are two main obstacles to this: on the one hand, theoretical linguistics and typological linguistics are fragmented in different methodological approaches that hinder the full sharing of cross-theoretic advances; on the other hand, partitive elements have been analyzed in restricted linguistic environments, which would benefit from a broader perspective. The aim of the PARTE project, from which this volume stems, is precisely to bring together linguists of different theoretical approaches using different methodologies to address this notion in its many facets. This volume focuses on Partitive Determiners, Partitive Pronouns and Partitive Case in European languages, their emergence and spread in diachrony, their acquisition by L2 speakers, and their syntax and interpretation. The volume is the first to provide such an encompassing insight into the notion of partitivity.

Argument Selectors

Author : Alena Witzlack-Makarevich,Balthasar Bickel
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
Page : 544 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2019-03-15
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027263025

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Argument Selectors by Alena Witzlack-Makarevich,Balthasar Bickel Pdf

Capitalizing on the by now widely accepted idea of the construction-specific and language-specific nature of grammatical relations, the editors of the volume developed a modern framework for systematically capturing all sorts of variations in grammatical relations. The central concepts of this framework are the notions of argument role and its referential properties, argument selector, as well as various conditions on argument selections. The contributors of the volume applied this framework in their descriptions of grammatical relations in individual languages and discussed its limitations and advantages. This resulted in a coherent description of grammatical relations in thirteen genealogically and geographically diverse languages based on original and extensive fieldwork on under-described languages. The volume presents a far more detailed picture of the diversity of argument selectors and effects of predicates, referential properties of arguments, as well as of various clausal conditions on grammatical relations than previously published grammatical descriptions.

The Rise and Fall of Ergativity in Aramaic

Author : Eleanor Coghill
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2016-09-05
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780191035746

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The Rise and Fall of Ergativity in Aramaic by Eleanor Coghill Pdf

This book traces the changes in argument alignment that have taken place in Aramaic during its 3000-year documented history. Eastern Aramaic dialects first developed tense-conditioned ergative alignment in the perfect, which later developed into a past perfective. However, while some modern dialects preserve a degree of ergative alignment, it has been eroded by movement towards semantic/Split-S alignment and by the use of separate marking for the patient, and some dialects have lost ergative alignment altogether. Thus an entire cycle of alignment change can be traced, something which had previously been considered unlikely. Eleanor Coghill examines evidence from ancient Aramaic texts, recent dialectal documentation, and cross-linguistic parallels to provide an account of the pathways through which these alignment changes took place. She argues that what became the ergative construction was originally limited mostly to verbs with an experiencer role, such as 'see' and 'hear', which could encode the experiencer with a dative. While this dative-experiencer scenario shows some formal similarities with other proposed explanations for alignment change, the data analysed in this book show that it is clearly distinct. The book draws important theoretical conclusions on the development of tense-conditioned alignment cross-linguistically, and provides a valuable basis for further research.

Diachrony of differential argument marking

Author : Ilja A. Seržant,Alena Witzlack-Makarevich
Publisher : Language Science Press
Page : 563 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2018
Category : Electronic books
ISBN : 9783961100859

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Diachrony of differential argument marking by Ilja A. Seržant,Alena Witzlack-Makarevich Pdf

While there are languages that code a particular grammatical role (e.g. subject or direct object) in one and the same way across the board, many more languages code the same grammatical roles differentially. The variables which condition the differential argument marking (or DAM) pertain to various properties of the NP (such as animacy or definiteness) or to event semantics or various properties of the clause. While the main line of current research on DAM is mainly synchronic the volume tackles the diachronic perspective. The tenet is that the emergence and the development of differential marking systems provide a different kind of evidence for the understanding of the phenomenon. The present volume consists of 18 chapters and primarily brings together diachronic case studies on particular languages or language groups including e.g. Finno-Ugric, Sino-Tibetan and Japonic languages. The volume also includes a position paper, which provides an overview of the typology of different subtypes of DAM systems, a chapter on computer simulation of the emergence of DAM and a chapter devoted to the cross-linguistic effects of referential hierarchies on DAM.

Experiential Constructions in Latin

Author : Chiara Fedriani
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2014-06-12
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789004257832

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Experiential Constructions in Latin by Chiara Fedriani Pdf

This book offers a corpus-based synchronic and diachronic investigation of Experiential constructions in Latin, focusing on patterns of variation and change in argument realization and non-canonical case-marking and providing insights in the domain of diachronic verbal syntax and semantics.