The Genesis Of Grammar

Author : Bernd Heine,Tania Kuteva
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 440 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2007-10-05
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780191527838

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The Genesis of Grammar by Bernd Heine,Tania Kuteva Pdf

"This book reconstructs what the earliest grammars might have been and shows how they could have led to the languages of modern humankind. "Like other biological phenomena, language cannot be fully understood without reference to its evolution, whether proven or hypothesized," wrote Talmy Givón in 2002. As the languages spoken 8,000 years ago were typologically much the same as they are today and as no direct evidence exists for languages before then, evolutionary linguists are at a disadvantage compared to their counterparts in biology. Bernd Heine and Tania Kuteva seek to overcome this obstacle by combining grammaticalization theory, one of the main methods of historical linguistics, with work in animal communication and human evolution. The questions they address include: do the modern languages derive from one ancestral language or from more than one? What was the structure of language like when it first evolved? And how did the properties associated with modern human languages arise, in particular syntax and the recursive use of language structures? The authors proceed on the assumption that if language evolution is the result of language change then the reconstruction of the former can be explored by deploying the processes involved in the latter. Their measured arguments and crystal-clear exposition will appeal to all those interested in the evolution of language, from advanced undergraduates to linguists, cognitive scientists, human biologists, and archaeologists.

Author : Claire Lefebvre
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 480 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 1999-01-21
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0521593824

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Creole Genesis and the Acquisition of Grammar by Claire Lefebvre Pdf

This study focuses on the cognitive processes involved in creole genesis: relexification, reanalysis, and direct leveling. The role of these processes is documented by a detailed comparison of Haitian creole with its two major contributing languages, French and Fongbe, to illustrate how mechanisms from source languages show themselves in creole. The author examines the input of adult, as opposed to child, speakers and resolves the problems in the three main approaches, universalist, superstratist and substratist, which have been central to the recent debate on creole development.

Author : Talmy Givón
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027232533

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The Genesis of Syntactic Complexity by Talmy Givón Pdf

Complex hierarchic syntax is a hallmark of human language. The highest level of syntactic complexity, recursive-embedded clauses, has been singled out by some for a special status as the evolutionary apex of the uniquely - human language faculty - evolutionary yet mysteriously immune to Darwinian adaptive selection. Prof. Givón's book treats syntactic complexity as an integral part of the evolutionary rise of human communication. The book first describes grammar as an adaptive instrument of communication, assembled upon the pre-existing platform of pre-linguistic object- and-event cognition and mental representation. It then surveys the two grand developmental trends of human language: diachrony, the communal enterprise directly responsible for fashioning synchronic morpho-syntax and cross-language diversity; and ontogeny, the individual endeavor directly responsible for acquiring the competent use of grammar. The genesis of syntactic complexity along these two developmental trends is compared with second language acquisition, pre-grammatical pidgin and pre-human communication. The evolutionary relevance of language diachrony, language ontogeny and pidginization is argued for on general bio-evolutionary grounds: It is the organism's adaptive on-line behavior- invention, learning and skill acquisition - that is the common thread running through all three developmental trends. The neuro-cognitive circuits that underlie language, and their evolutionary underpinnings, are described and assessed. Recursive embedding turns out to be not an adaptive target on its own, but the by-product of two distinct adaptive moves: (i) the recruitment of conjoined clauses as modal operators on, or referential specifiers of, other clauses; and (ii) the subsequent condensation of paratactic into syntactic structures.

Author : Robert C. Berwick,Noam Chomsky
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 229 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2017-05-12
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780262533492

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Why Only Us by Robert C. Berwick,Noam Chomsky Pdf

Berwick and Chomsky draw on recent developments in linguistic theory to offer an evolutionary account of language and humans' remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire it. “A loosely connected collection of four essays that will fascinate anyone interested in the extraordinary phenomenon of language.” —New York Review of Books We are born crying, but those cries signal the first stirring of language. Within a year or so, infants master the sound system of their language; a few years after that, they are engaging in conversations. This remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire any human language—“the language faculty”—raises important biological questions about language, including how it has evolved. This book by two distinguished scholars—a computer scientist and a linguist—addresses the enduring question of the evolution of language. Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky explain that until recently the evolutionary question could not be properly posed, because we did not have a clear idea of how to define “language” and therefore what it was that had evolved. But since the Minimalist Program, developed by Chomsky and others, we know the key ingredients of language and can put together an account of the evolution of human language and what distinguishes us from all other animals. Berwick and Chomsky discuss the biolinguistic perspective on language, which views language as a particular object of the biological world; the computational efficiency of language as a system of thought and understanding; the tension between Darwin's idea of gradual change and our contemporary understanding about evolutionary change and language; and evidence from nonhuman animals, in particular vocal learning in songbirds.

Author : Louis G. Kelly
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2002-01-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9027245908

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The Mirror of Grammar by Louis G. Kelly Pdf

Much is known about the grammar of the modistae and about its eclipse; this book sets out to trace its rise. In the late eleventh century grammar became an analytical rather than an exegetical discipline under the impetus of the new theology. Under the impetus of Arab learning the ancient sciences were reshaped according to the norms of Aristotle's Analytics, and developed within a structure of speculative sciences beginning with grammar and culminating in theology. Though the modistae acknowledge Aristotle, Donatus, Priscian and the Arab commentators, their roots also lie in Augustine and Boethius, and they took as much from their scholastic contemporaries as they gave them. This book traces the genesis of a grammar which communicated freely with other speculative sciences, shared their structures and methods, and affirmed its own individuality by defining its object as the causes of language.

Author : Peter Bakker
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 1997-06-05
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780195357080

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A Language of Our Own by Peter Bakker Pdf

The Michif language -- spoken by descendants of French Canadian fur traders and Cree Indians in western Canada -- is considered an "impossible language" since it uses French for nouns and Cree for verbs, and comprises two different sets of grammatical rules. Bakker uses historical research and fieldwork data to present the first detailed analysis of this language and how it came into being.

Author : Alexander Haselow,Sylvie Hancil
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
Page : 362 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2021-06-15
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027259899

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Studies at the Grammar-Discourse Interface by Alexander Haselow,Sylvie Hancil Pdf

This book investigates phenomena at the grammar–discourse interface with a strong focus on discourse markers, whose development and concrete uses in a given language tend to be based on a close interplay of grammatical and discourse-related forces. The topics range from the transition of linguistic signs “out of” sentence grammar and “into” the domain of discourse to differences between more grammatical vs. more discourse-pragmatic expressions in terms of structural behavior and cognitive processing, and the different, intricate ways in which the usage conditions and meanings of grammatical constituents or structural units are affected by the discourse context in which they are used. The twelve studies in this book are based on fresh empirical data from languages such as English, Basque, Korean, Japanese and French and involve the study of linguistic expressions and structures such as pragmatic markers and particles, comment clauses, expletives, adverbial connectors, and expressives.

Author : Peter Bakker Researcher University of Aarhus
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 341 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 1997-05-08
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780198025757

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A Language of Our Own : The Genesis of Michif, the Mixed Cree-French Language of the Canadian Metis by Peter Bakker Researcher University of Aarhus Pdf

The Michif language -- spoken by descendants of French Canadian fur traders and Cree Indians in western Canada -- is considered an "impossible language" since it uses French for nouns and Cree for verbs, and comprises two different sets of grammatical rules. Bakker uses historical research and fieldwork data to present the first detailed analysis of this language and how it came into being.

Author : Claire Lefebvre
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 323 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2015
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780199945290

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Relabeling in Language Genesis by Claire Lefebvre Pdf

"This book presents a coherent picture of the progress that has been made in research on relabeling over the last 15 years"--

Author : Bent Jacobsen
Publisher : North-Holland
Page : 552 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 1978
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : UOM:39015004707306

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Transformational-generative Grammar by Bent Jacobsen Pdf

Author : S. Sebag
Publisher : Рипол Классик
Page : 222 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 1861
Category : History
ISBN : 9785877966598

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The Hebrew primer and reading book by S. Sebag Pdf

The Hebrew primer and reading book containing rules in Hebrew grammar, together with a vocabulary of the book of Genesis

Author : Nathalie Gontier,Andy Lock,Chris Sinha
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 1185 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2024-02-01
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780192543516

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Oxford Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution by Nathalie Gontier,Andy Lock,Chris Sinha Pdf

The biological and neurological capacity to symbolize, and the products of behavioral, cognitive, sociocultural, linguistic, and technological uses of symbols (symbolism), are fundamental to every aspect of human life. The Oxford Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution explores the origins of our characteristically human abilities - our ability to speak, create images, play music, and read and write. The book investigates how symbolization evolved in human evolution and how symbolism is expressed across the various areas of human life. The field is intrinsically interdisciplinary - considering findings from fossil studies, scientific research from primatology, developmental psychology, and of course linguistics. Written by world leading experts, thirty-eight topical chapters are grouped into six thematic parts that respectively focus on epistemological, psychological, anthropological, ethological, linguistic, and social-technological aspects of human symbolic evolution. The handbook presents an in-depth but comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the of the state of the art in the science of human symbolic evolution. This work will be of interest to academics and students active in all fields contributing to the study of human evolution.

Author : Enoch O. Aboh,Cécile B. Vigouroux
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
Page : 346 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2021-10-15
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027259042

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Variation Rolls the Dice by Enoch O. Aboh,Cécile B. Vigouroux Pdf

Variation Rolls the Dice: A worldwide collage in honour of Salikoko S. Mufwene aims to celebrate Mufwene’s ground-breaking contribution to linguistics in the past four decades. The title also encapsulates his approach to language as both systemic and socio-cultural practices, and the role of variation in determining particular evolutionary trajectories in specific linguistic ecologies. The book therefore focuses on variation within and across languages, within and across speakers, and how this fundamental aspect of human behavior can affect language structure in time and space. Mufwene has been instrumental in putting creole languages on the map of General Linguistics and connecting their analysis to issues of language acquisition, multilingualism, language contact, language evolution, and language typology. Thanks to the diversity of topics and the wide-ranging theoretical persuasions of the contributors, this volume aims at a large readership including both scholars and advanced students interested in cutting-edge research in the aforementioned domains.

Author : Aviya Kushner
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2015
Category : Bibles
ISBN : 9780385520829

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The Grammar of God by Aviya Kushner Pdf

"The author recalls how, after becoming very familiar with the Biblical Old Testament in its original Hebrew growing up, an encounter with an English language version led her on a ten-year project of examining various translations of the Old Testament and their histories, "--Novelist.

Author : T. Givón
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
Page : 219 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2021-07-15
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027259844

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The Life Cycle of Adpositions by T. Givón Pdf

Adpositions are used, universally, to mark the roles of nominal participants in the verbal clause, most commonly indirect object roles. Practically all languages seem to have such markers, which begin their diachronic life as lexical words -- in this case either serial verbs or positional nouns. In many languages, however, adpositions also seem to have extended their diachronic life one step further, becoming verbal affixes. The main focus of this book is the tail-end of the diachronic life cycle of adpositions. That is, the process by which, having arisen first as nominal-attached prepositions or post-positions, they wind up attaching themselves to verbs. Our core puzzle is thus fairly transparent: How and why should morphemes that pertain functionally to nominals, and begin their diachronic life-cycle as nominal grammatical operators, wind up as verbal morphology? While the core five chapters of this book focus on the rise of verb-attached prepositions in Homeric Greek, its theoretical perspective is broader, perched at the intersection of three closely intertwined core components of the study of human language: (a) the communicative function of grammar; (b) the balance between universality and cross-language diversity of grammars; and (c) the diachrony of grammatical constructions, how they mutate over time. While paying well-deserved homage to the traditional Classical scholarship, this study is firmly wedded to the assumption, indeed presupposition, that Homeric Greek is just another natural language, spoken before written, designed as an instrument of communication, and subject to the same universal constraints as all human languages. And further, that those constraints--so-called language universals--express themselves most conspicuously in diachronic change. Lastly, in analyzing the synchronic variation and text distribution of prepositional constructions in Homeric Greek, this study relies primarily on the theory-laden method of Internal Reconstruction.