Inflectional morphology plays a paradoxical role in language. On the one hand it tells us useful things, for example that a noun is plural or a verb is in the past tense. On the other hand many languages get along perfectly well without it, so the baroquely ornamented forms we sometimes find come across as a gratuitous over-elaboration. This is especially apparent where the morphological structures operate at cross purposes to the general systems of meaning and function that govern a language, yielding inflection classes and arbitrarily configured paradigms. This is what we call morphological complexity. Manipulating the forms of words requires learning a whole new system of structures and relationships. This book confronts the typological challenge of characterising the wildly diverse sorts of morphological complexity we find in the languages of the world, offering both a unified descriptive framework and quantitative measures that can be applied to such heterogeneous systems.
This book investigates the linguistic status of predication, especially within the generative paradigm. The topics discussed include minimalist accounts of predication, types of predication, copular c
This book explores a key issue in linguistic theory, the systematic variation in form between semantic equivalents across languages. Two contrasting views of the role of lexical meaning in the analysi
This book explores a key issue in linguistic theory, the systematic variation in form between semantic equivalents across languages. Two contrasting views of the role of lexical meaning in the analysi
The architecture of the human language faculty has been one of the main foci of the linguistic research of the last half century. This branch of linguistics, broadly known as Generative Grammar, is co
This book reconsiders the linguistic notion of emphasis. For many, the concept of emphasis is confined to information structure. However, our understanding of the grammatical reflexes of emphasis is o
Current developments of the Minimalist Program in generative linguistics put the procedure of labeling syntactic objects at the center of the syntax–semantics transition. This book provides a discussi
This innovative volume provides a comprehensive integrated account of the study of conceptual figures, demonstrating the ways in which figures and in particular, conflictual figures, encapsulate lingu
This book tries to relate the work done in Chomskyan Theory to the areas of language teaching and learning. The book is divided into two main parts. Using the historical approach, the first part trace
This book presents empirical research of grammatical collocations of the type: verb and the prepositions «of» and «to». It is based on comparisons of English and Czech sentences containing verbs and p
The papers collected in this volume explore the major mechanisms, that is derivations and constraints, claimed to be responsible for various aspects of the linguistic systems, their syntax, phonology
Linguistics, like any discipline, is full of boundaries. However, in nature, as Ruqaiya Hasan points out, there are no clear cut boundaries. The participants of the 42nd International Systemic Functio
The Cambridge Handbook of Morphology describes the diversity of morphological phenomena in the world's languages, surveying the methodologies by which these phenomena are investigated and the theoretical interpretations that have been proposed to explain them. The Handbook provides morphologists with a comprehensive account of the interlocking issues and hypotheses that drive research in morphology; for linguists generally, it presents current thought on the interface of morphology with other grammatical components and on the significance of morphology for understanding language change and the psychology of language; for students of linguistics, it is a guide to the present-day landscape of morphological science and to the advances that have brought it to its current state; and for readers in other fields (psychology, philosophy, computer science, and others), it reveals just how much we know about systematic relations of form to content in a language's words - and how much we have yet
Change is an inherent feature of all aspects of language, and syntax is no exception. While the synchronic study of syntax allows us to make discoveries about the nature of syntactic structure, the study of historical syntax offers even greater possibilities. Over recent decades, the study of historical syntax has proven to be a powerful scientific tool of enquiry with which to challenge and reassess hypotheses and ideas about the nature of syntactic structure which go beyond the observed limits of the study of the synchronic syntax of individual languages or language families. In this timely Handbook, the editors bring together the best of recent international scholarship on historical syntax. Each chapter is focused on a theme rather than an individual language, allowing readers to discover how systematic descriptions of historical data can profitably inform and challenge highly diverse sets of theoretical assumptions.
The essays in this volume address a core question regarding the structure of linguistic systems: how much access do the grammatical components - syntax, morphology and phonology - have to each other?
