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This introductory descriptive grammar of Tumpisa (Panamint) Shoshone, a central Numic language in the Uto-Aztecan family, presents the most important grammatical elements and processes in the language, with regard to verb, noun, adjective and adverbial phrases, simple sentence constructions, coordination and sub- ordination, and phonology. Several texts and a basic vocabulary list are provided.
The so-called Sumerian conjugation prefixes are the most poorly understood and perplexing elements of Sumerian verbal morphology. Approaching the problem from a functional-typological perspective and basing the analysis upon semantics, Professor Woods argues that these elements, in their primary function, constitute a system of grammatical voice, in which the active voice is set against the middle voice. The latter is represented by heavy and light markers that differ with respect to focus and emphasis. As a system of grammatical voice, the conjugation prefixes provided Sumerian speakers with a linguistic means of altering the perspective from which events may be viewed, giving speakers a series of options for better approximating in language the infinitely graded spectrum of human conceptualization and experience.
This is a collection of discussions of grammatical relations and related concepts using current syntactic theory.
This book reconstructs what the earliest grammars might have been and shows how they could have led to the languages of modern humankind. It considers whether these languages derive from a single ancestral language; what the structure of language was when it first evolved; and how the properties associated with modern human languages first arose.
This pioneering work draws on on data from over 400 languages from a wide range of language families to establish a typology of four basic types of predicative possession. It examines their interdependence with other typologies, and explores varieties of related grammaticalization processes.
This monograph sets out (i) to establish criteria for differentiating adjectives from other word-classes for languages in which they form a distinct category, and (ii) to establish criteria for determining their (non-)identity with words from other categories for languages in which they do not. As languages show various gradations in the extent to which adjectives can be distinguished from other word-classes, the author discusses idealized language types, thereby providing a model for the analysis of natural languages. The book argues that adjectives do not uniformly show all differentiating characteristics and that these characteristics are semantically relevant and functionally motivated: for instance, when word-classes are used in functions not their own, they manifest characteristics of the categories to which the relevant functions belong. The second part of the book discusses three distinct idealized languages types without a distinct adjectival category in which “property words” remain undifferentiated from (i) nouns, (ii) verbs, and (iii) nouns as well as verbs. These three types are shwon to represent gradations of distinctions between word-classes as they occur in natural languages and to manifest various degrees of the corresponding functional neutralizations. In the final chapter the wider theoretical implications of this work for the study of categories are discussed.
This book presents the first systematic typological analysis of applicatives across African, American Indian, and East Asian languages. It is also the first to address their functions in discourse, the derivation of their semantic and syntactic properties, and how and why they have changed over time. Applicative constructions are typically described as transitivizing because they allow an intransitive base verb to have a direct object. The term originates from the seventeenth-century missionary grammars of Uto-Aztecan languages. Constructions designated as prepositional, benefactive, and instrumental may refer to the same or similar phenomena. Applicative constructions have been deployed in the development of a range of syntactic theories which have then often been used to explain their functions, usually within the context of Bantu languages. Dr Peterson provides a wealth of cross-linguistic information on discourse-functional, diachronic, and typological aspects of applicative constructions. He documents their unexpected synchronic variety and the diversity of diachronic sources about them. He argues that many standard assumptions about applicatives are unfounded, and provides a clear guide for future language-specific and cross-linguistic research and analysis.
The Mayan Languages presents a comprehensive survey of the language family associated with the Classic Mayan civilization (AD 200–900), a family whose individual languages are still spoken today by at least six million indigenous Maya in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. This unique resource is an ideal reference for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of Mayan languages and linguistics. Written by a team of experts in the field, The Mayan Languages presents in-depth accounts of the linguistic features that characterize the thirty-one languages of the family, their historical evolution, and the social context in which they are spoken. The Mayan Languages: provides detailed grammatical sketches of approximately a third of the Mayan languages, representing most of the branches of the family; includes a section on the historical development of the family, as well as an entirely new sketch of the grammar of "Classic Maya" as represented in the hieroglyphic script; provides detailed state-of-the-art discussions of the principal advances in grammatical analysis of Mayan languages; includes ample discussion of the use of the languages in social, conversational, and poetic contexts. Consisting of topical chapters on the history, sociolinguistics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, discourse structure, and acquisition of the Mayan languages, this book will be a resource for researchers and other readers with an interest in historical linguistics, linguistic anthropology, language acquisition, and linguistic typology.