Possible and Probable Languages

Possible and Probable Languages PDF Author: Frederick J. Newmeyer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
"In this pioneering book Frederick Newmeyer takes on the question of language variety. He considers why some language types are impossible and why some grammatical features are more common than others. The task of trying to explain typological variation among languages has been mainly undertaken by functionally-oriented linguists. Generative grammarians entering the field of typology in the 1980s put forward the idea that cross-linguistic differences could be explained by linguistic parameters within Universal Grammar, whose operation might vary from language to language. Unfortunately, this way of looking at variation turned out to be much less successful than had been hoped for. Professor Newmeyer's alternative to parameters combines leading ideas from functionalist and formalist approaches which in the past have been considered incompatible. He throws fresh light on language typology and variation, and provides new insights into the principles of Universal Grammar." "The book will be readily understood by anyone with a couple of years' study of linguistics. It will interest a wide range of scholars and students of language, including typologists, historical linguists, and theorists of every shade."--Résumé de l'éditeur

Possible and Probable Languages

Possible and Probable Languages PDF Author: Frederick J. Newmeyer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Get Book

Book Description
"In this pioneering book Frederick Newmeyer takes on the question of language variety. He considers why some language types are impossible and why some grammatical features are more common than others. The task of trying to explain typological variation among languages has been mainly undertaken by functionally-oriented linguists. Generative grammarians entering the field of typology in the 1980s put forward the idea that cross-linguistic differences could be explained by linguistic parameters within Universal Grammar, whose operation might vary from language to language. Unfortunately, this way of looking at variation turned out to be much less successful than had been hoped for. Professor Newmeyer's alternative to parameters combines leading ideas from functionalist and formalist approaches which in the past have been considered incompatible. He throws fresh light on language typology and variation, and provides new insights into the principles of Universal Grammar." "The book will be readily understood by anyone with a couple of years' study of linguistics. It will interest a wide range of scholars and students of language, including typologists, historical linguists, and theorists of every shade."--Résumé de l'éditeur

Possible and Probable Languages

Possible and Probable Languages PDF Author: Frederick J. Newmeyer
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0199274339
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
In this important and pioneering text, Frederick Newmeyer takes on the question of language variety. He considers why some language types are impossible and why some grammatical features are more common than others.

The Routledge Handbook of Phonetics

The Routledge Handbook of Phonetics PDF Author: William F. Katz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429508565
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 648

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Book Description
The Routledge Handbook of Phonetics provides a comprehensive and up-to-date compilation of research, history and techniques in phonetics. With contributions from 41 prominent authors from North America, Europe, Australia and Japan, and including over 130 figures to illustrate key points, this handbook covers all the most important areas in the field, including: • the history and scope of techniques used, including speech synthesis, vocal tract imaging techniques, and obtaining information on under-researched languages from language archives; • the physiological bases of speech and hearing, including auditory, articulatory, and neural explanations of hearing, speech, and language processes; • theories and models of speech perception and production related to the processing of consonants, vowels, prosody, tone, and intonation; • linguistic phonetics, with discussions of the phonetics-phonology interface, sound change, second language acquisition, sociophonetics, and second language teaching research; • applications and extensions, including phonetics and gender, clinical phonetics, and forensic phonetics. The Routledge Handbook of Phonetics will be indispensable reading for students and practitioners in the fields of speech, language, linguistics and hearing sciences.

Variation in Language: System- and Usage-based Approaches

Variation in Language: System- and Usage-based Approaches PDF Author: Aria Adli
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110346850
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Where is the locus of language variation? In the grammar, outside the grammar or somewhere in between? Taking up the debate between system- and usage-based approaches, this volume provides new discussions of fundamental issues of language variation. It includes several highly insightful theoretical contributions as well as innovative empirical studies considering different types of data, the role of priming in language change and rare phenomena.

American Linguistics in Transition

American Linguistics in Transition PDF Author: Frederick J. Newmeyer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192843761
Category : Generative grammar
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
This volume is devoted to a major chapter in the history of linguistics in the United States, the period from the 1930s to the 1980s, and focuses primarily on the transition from (post-Bloomfieldian) structural linguistics to early generative grammar. The first three chapters in the book discuss the rise of structuralism in the 1930s; the interplay between American and European structuralism; and the publication of Joos's Readings in Linguistics in 1957. Later chapters explore the beginnings of generative grammar and the reaction to it from structural linguists; how generativists made their ideas more widely known; the response to generativism in Europe; and the resistance to the new theory by leading structuralists, which continued into the 1980s. The final chapter demonstrates that contrary to what has often been claimed, generative grammarians were not in fact organizationally dominant in the field in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s.

Null Subjects in Englishes

Null Subjects in Englishes PDF Author: Verena Schröter
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110649268
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
This book presents the first systematic quantitative study of null subjects not only in British English, but also in the contact varieties Indian, Hong Kong and Singapore English. Analysing informal spoken language, it addresses issues relevant for language contact and World Englishes, corpus linguistics and variationist sociolinguistics, linguistic typology and syntax.

An Introduction to Language and Linguistics

An Introduction to Language and Linguistics PDF Author: Ralph Fasold
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107717663
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
This accessible textbook is the only introduction to linguistics in which each chapter is written by an expert who teaches courses on that topic, ensuring balanced and uniformly excellent coverage of the full range of modern linguistics. Assuming no prior knowledge the text offers a clear introduction to the traditional topics of structural linguistics (theories of sound, form, meaning, and language change), and in addition provides full coverage of contextual linguistics, including separate chapters on discourse, dialect variation, language and culture, and the politics of language. There are also up-to-date separate chapters on language and the brain, computational linguistics, writing, child language acquisition, and second-language learning. The breadth of the textbook makes it ideal for introductory courses on language and linguistics offered by departments of English, sociology, anthropology, and communications, as well as by linguistics departments.

Syntactic Structures

Syntactic Structures PDF Author: Noam Chomsky
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3112316002
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
No detailed description available for "Syntactic Structures".

Radical Construction Grammar

Radical Construction Grammar PDF Author: William Croft
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191544795
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
This book is based on the results of research in language typology, and motivated by the need for a theory to explain them. The essence of the approach is (a) that almost all aspects of grammatical structure are language specific, and (b) that language universals are to be found in conceptual structure and in the mapping of conceptual structure on to linguistic form. It proposes intimate links between syntactic and semantic structures, and argues that the basic elements of any language are not syntactic but syntactic-semantic 'Gestalts'. Professor Croft puts forward a new approach to syntactic representation and a new model of how language and languages work. He covers a wide range of syntactic phenomena, illustrating these with examples that show the varied grammatical structures of the world's languages. The book will be accessible all linguists at graduate level and beyond.

Roots of language

Roots of language PDF Author: Derek Bickerton
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3946234089
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description