Elements in Generative Syntax

The satires explored in this volume are some of the trickiest poems of ancient Rome's trickiest poet. Horace was an ironist, sneaky smart, and prone to hiding things under the surface. His Latin is dense and difficult. The challenges posed by these satires are especially acute because their voices, messages, and stylistic habits are many, and their themes range from the poet's anxieties about the limits of satiric free speech in the first poem to the ridiculous excesses of an outrageously overdone dinner party in the last. For students working at intermediate and advanced levels of Latin, this book makes the satires of Horace's second book of Sermones readable by explaining difficult issues of grammar, syntax, word-choice, genre, period, and style. For scholars who already know these poems well, it offers fresh insights into what satire is, and how these poems communicate as uniquely 'Horatian' expressions of the genre.

This book gives an introduction to the programming language Structured Text (ST) which is used in Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC). The book can be used for all types of PLC brands including Siemens Structured Control Language (SCL) and Programmable Automation Controllers (PAC). This 3rd edition has been updated and expanded with many of the suggestions and questions that readers and students have come up with, including the desire for many more illustrations and program examples. CONTENTS: - Background, benefits and challenges of ST programming - Syntax, data types, best practice and basic ST programming - IF-THEN-ELSE, CASE, FOR, CTU, TON, STRUCT, ENUM, ARRAY, STRING - Guide for best practice naming, troubleshooting, test and program structure - Sequencer and code split-up into functions and function blocks - FIFO, RND, sorting, scaling, toggle, simulation signals and digital filter - Tank controls, conveyor belts, adaptive pump algorithm and robot control - PLC program structure

The phenomenon of case has long been a central topic of study in linguistics. While the majority of the literature so far has been on the syntax of case, semantics also has a crucial role to play in how case operates. This book investigates the relationship between semantics and case-marking in the languages of the world, exploring a range of phenomena in which case-assignment is affected by (or affects) meaning. By bringing together data from a wide range of languages, representing different language families, a cross-linguistic picture emerges of the correlation between case and meaning. Different approaches to the phenomena are considered, including both syntactic and semantic analyses, and the question is raised as to whether case can be treated as meaningful, ultimately helping us shed light on the broader connections between grammar and meaning and, moreover, grammar and the human cognition.

Grammatical categories (e.g. complementizer, negation, auxiliary, case) are some of the most important building blocks of syntax and morphology. Categorization therefore poses fundamental questions about grammatical structures and about the lexicon from which they are built. Adopting a 'lexicalist' stance, the authors argue that lexical items are not epiphenomena, but really represent the mapping of sound to meaning (and vice versa) that classical conceptions imply. Their rule-governed combination creates words, phrases and sentences - structured by the 'categories' that are the object of the present inquiry. They argue that the distinction between functional and non-functional categories, between content words and inflections, is not as deeply rooted in grammar as is often thought. In their argumentation they lay the emphasis on empirical evidence, drawn mainly from dialectal variation in the Romance languages, as well as from Albanian.

A new, thought-provoking book on the theory of grammar and language processing, based on the analysis of authentic speech produced in real time. Drawing on insights from cognitive psychology, neurology and conversation analysis, the author offers a fascinating, easy-to-follow account of why spoken English is structured the way it is. The traditional product-based approach to grammar is given up in favour of a speaker-based, dynamic perspective that integrates language-structural, neurocognitive and dialogic aspects of speech production. Based on fresh empirical research Haselow argues that grammatical knowledge rests upon two cognitive principles of linearization called 'microgrammar' and 'macrogrammar', which are shown to interact in various ways. The book discusses a broad range of speech phenomena under an integrated framework, such as the omnipresence of 'unintegrated' constituents (e.g. discourse markers), ellipses, or the allegedly 'fragmented' character of syntax, and explains t

What do we mean when we say things like 'If only we knew what he was up to!' Clearly this is more than just a message, or a question to our addressee. We are expressing simultaneously that we don't know, and also that we wish to know. Several modes of encoding contribute to such modalities of expression: word order, subordinating subjunctions, sentences that are subordinated but nevertheless occur autonomously, and attitudinal discourse adverbs which, far beyond lexical adverbials of modality, allow the speaker and the listener to presuppose full agreement, partial agreement under presupposed conditions, or negotiation of common ground. This state of the art survey proposes a new model of modality, drawing on data from a variety of Germanic and Slavic languages to find out what is cross-linguistically universal about modality, and to argue that it is a constitutive part of human cognition.

For the Love of Language: An Introduction to Linguistics is an engaging introduction to human language and the role of linguistics in understanding its fundamental design, acquisition and functions. Replete with case studies and examples from Australia, New Zealand and around the world, this text offers a thorough introduction to core topics, including the structure and meaning of words, the systems that organise language, strategies for learning about language, the evolution of language and the function of language as a complex social resource. The second edition includes extensive new content across the entire text, including the areas of orthography, syntax, corpus linguistics, language acquisition and multilingualism. Each topic is accompanied by a wide array of pedagogical resources designed to consolidate student understanding, including examples and exercises. Each chapter ends with a research project, providing readers with an opportunity to build on fundamental skills and enga

Exploring the phenomenon of 'mixed categories', this book is the first in-depth study of the way in which languages can use a noun, as opposed to an adjective, to modify another noun. It investigates noun-adjective hybrids - adjectives and adjective-like attributive forms which have been derived from nouns and systematically retain certain nominal properties. These rarely-discussed types of mixed category raise a number of important theoretical questions about the nature of lexemic identity, the inflection-derivation divide, and more generally, the relationship between the structure of words and their phrasal syntax. The book proposes a new formal framework that models cross-linguistic and cross-constructional variation in noun modification constructions. The framework it offers enables readers to explicitly map word structure to syntactic structure, providing new insights into, and impacting upon, all current theoretical models of grammar.

Drawing on extensive corpus-based research, this book explores the nature and behavior of coordinate constructions in three case studies, covering order in copulative compounds, binomials (bare phrases), and more complex phrases. Historically, research on order in coordination has concentrated on so-called irreversible binomials, but Lohmann's research places significant focus on reversible ad hoc coordination and also presents a detailed comparison between irreversible and reversible binomials. This book uses empirical analyses to explore a wide range of factors, ranging from pragmatic to phonetic influences on the ordering process. It also offers readers a processing perspective on the results obtained, and puts forth a processing explanation for the characteristics of irreversible binomials. The book is ideal for researchers and advanced students working in English linguistics, syntax and psycholinguistics, and due to the multifactorial methodology applied it will be of particular i

This book explores noun phrase (NP) complexity in English, showing that it is best accounted for both by a linear and a hierarchical parameter: its length and its type of postmodifier(s). The study is methodologically unique in that it combines univariate and multivariate analyses in an investigation of four different syntactic variables. Drawing on more than three billion words of British and American data, Eva Berlage shows that the length and the structure of the NPs, along with language-external factors such as the regional variety of English, work as powerful determinants of the variation. On a theoretical level, the book reveals that the structural complexity of NPs cannot be sufficiently captured by (phrasal) node counts but that we need to incorporate the degree to which NPs are sentential. The book is designed for researchers and students interested in syntax, language variation, sociolinguistics, structural complexity and the history of English.

Using an innovative approach, this book focuses on a widely debated area of phonetics and phonology: intonation, and specifically its relation to metrics, its interface with syntax, and whether it can be attributed more to phonetics or phonology, or equally to both. Drawing on data from six Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan and Romanian), whose rich intonation patterns have long been of interest to linguists, Philippe Martin challenges the assumptions of traditional phonological approaches, and re-evaluates the data in favour of a new usage-based model of intonation. He proposes a unified description of the sentence prosodic structure, focusing on the dynamic and cognitive aspects of both production and perception of intonation in speech, leading to a unified grammar of Romance languages' sentence intonation. This book will be welcomed by researchers and advanced students in phonetics and phonology.

Paradigmatic gaps ('missing' inflected forms) have traditionally been considered to be the random detritus of a language's history and marginal exceptions to the normal functioning of its inflectional system. Arguing that this is a misperception, Inflectional Defectiveness demonstrates that paradigmatic gaps are in fact normal and expected products of inflectional structure. Sims offers an accessible exploration of how and why inflectional defectiveness arises, why it persists, and how it is learned. The book presents a theory of morphology which is rooted in the implicative structure of the paradigm. This systematic exploration of the topic also addresses questions of inflection class organization, the morphology-syntax interface, the structure of the lexicon, and the nature of productivity. Presenting a novel synthesis of established research and new empirical data, this work is significant for researchers and graduate students in all fields of linguistics.

Responding to the need for a comprehensive treatment of Mexican American English and its varied influences across multiple generations, this volume provides true insight into how language contact triggers language change, and illustrates previously under-recognised links to ethnolects of other migrant groups in different parts of the world. It demonstrates how the variety begins with Spanish interference features but evolves into a stable variety over time by filtering out some of the interference features and responding to forces such as exploitation of its speakers, education, and the need to develop solidarity. A large number of linguistic variables from multiple realms of language are analysed that provide a truly balanced picture of the divisions within the community across a range of linguistic levels such as syntax, phonology, prosody, accent, dialect, and sociolinguistics.

A comprehensive introduction to how people learn second languages (L2s), this textbook approaches the topic through five problems the L2 learner has to solve: 'breaking into' the L2; associating forms with meanings; learning sentence structure; learning phrasal and sentential meaning; and learning the use of the L2 in context. These problems are linked throughout to the L2 acquisition of lexis, morphology, syntax, semantics, phonetics/phonology and language-use in a reader-friendly way, using key studies to build a comprehensive picture of how L2s are learned. 'In a nutshell' summaries of chapter sections provide helpful signposts to the developing argument, whilst end-of-chapter activities encourage the reader to reflect on the ideas presented, analyse data and think creatively about the problems encountered. The roles of innate knowledge, input, and the age at which learning starts are also considered. This essential textbook will enable students to think objectively about language,

A comprehensive introduction to how people learn second languages (L2s), this textbook approaches the topic through five problems the L2 learner has to solve: 'breaking into' the L2; associating forms with meanings; learning sentence structure; learning phrasal and sentential meaning; and learning the use of the L2 in context. These problems are linked throughout to the L2 acquisition of lexis, morphology, syntax, semantics, phonetics/phonology and language-use in a reader-friendly way, using key studies to build a comprehensive picture of how L2s are learned. 'In a nutshell' summaries of chapter sections provide helpful signposts to the developing argument, whilst end-of-chapter activities encourage the reader to reflect on the ideas presented, analyse data and think creatively about the problems encountered. The roles of innate knowledge, input, and the age at which learning starts are also considered. This essential textbook will enable students to think objectively about language,

What is the lexicon, what does it contain, and how is it structured? What principles determine the functioning of the lexicon as a component of natural language grammar? What role does lexical information play in linguistic theory? This accessible introduction aims to answer these questions, and explores the relation of the lexicon to grammar as a whole. It includes a critical overview of major theoretical frameworks, and puts forward a unified treatment of lexical structure and design. The text can be used for introductory and advanced courses, and for courses that touch upon different aspects of the lexicon, such as lexical semantics, lexicography, syntax, general linguistics, computational lexicology and ontology design. The book provides students with a set of tools which will enable them to work with lexical data for all kinds of purposes, including an abundance of exercises and in-class activities designed to ensure that students are actively engaged with the content and effectiv

What real role can poetry have in the world? How are its truths created by the words and sounds chosen by the poet and by the way readers respond to them? Acclaimed poet Peter Robinson brings his knowledge of poetic art to the understanding of the reader's contribution in enabling poetry to play its part in life. Emphasising the value of individual writers' and readers' interactions, together with such key matters as meter and rhythm, voicing and form, rhyme and syntax, Robinson shows how poems engage in speech performances such as promising, justifying, excusing, and explaining - including the telling of truths. Illustrated with detailed readings of poems by, among others, Jonson, Marvell, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Dickinson, Kipling, Basil Bunting, Frank O'Hara, Tony Harrison, and Denise Riley, this book shows how important poetry is as a means to do things with words and make things happen.

The direction in which the structure of sentences and filler-gap dependencies are built is a topic of fundamental importance to linguistic theory and its applications. This book develops an integrated understanding of structure building, movement and locality embedded in a syntactic theory that argues for a 'top down' approach, presenting an explicit counterweight to the bottom-up derivations pervading the Chomskian mainstream. It combines a compact and comprehensive historical perspective on structure building, the cycle, and movement, with detailed discussions of island effects, the typology of long-distance filler-gap dependencies, and the special problems posed by the subject in clausal syntax. Providing introductions to the main issues, reviewing extant arguments for bottom-up and top-down approaches, and presenting several case studies in its development of a new theory, this book should be of interest to all students and scholars of language interested in syntactic structures an

A new, thought-provoking book on the theory of grammar and language processing, based on the analysis of authentic speech produced in real time. Drawing on insights from cognitive psychology, neurology and conversation analysis, the author offers a fascinating, easy-to-follow account of why spoken English is structured the way it is. The traditional product-based approach to grammar is given up in favour of a speaker-based, dynamic perspective that integrates language-structural, neurocognitive and dialogic aspects of speech production. Based on fresh empirical research Haselow argues that grammatical knowledge rests upon two cognitive principles of linearization called 'microgrammar' and 'macrogrammar', which are shown to interact in various ways. The book discusses a broad range of speech phenomena under an integrated framework, such as the omnipresence of 'unintegrated' constituents (e.g. discourse markers), ellipses, or the allegedly 'fragmented' character of syntax, and explains t

The Late Modern period is the first in the history of English for which an unprecedented wealth of textual material exists. Using increasingly sophisticated databases, the contributions in this volume explore grammatical usage from the period, specifically morphological and syntactic change, in a broad context. Some chapters explore the socio-historical background of the period while others provide information on prescriptivism, newspaper language, language contact, and regional variation in British and American English. Internal processes of change are discussed against grammaticalisation theory and construction grammar and the rich body of textual evidence is used to draw inferences on the precise nature of historical change. Exposing readers to a wealth of data that informs the description of a broad range of syntactic phenomena, this book is ideal for graduate students and researchers interested in historical linguistics, corpus linguistics and language development.

Ian Roberts offers a stimulating introduction to our greatest gift as a species: our capacity for articulate language. We are mostly as blissfully unaware of the intricacies of the structure of language as fish are of the water they swim in. We live in a mental ocean of nouns, verbs, quantifiers, morphemes, vowels and other rich, strange and deeply fascinating linguistic objects. This book introduces the reader to this amazing world. Offering a thought-provoking and accessible introduction to the main discoveries and theories about language, the book is aimed at general readers and undergraduates who are curious about linguistics and language. Written in a lively and direct style, technical terms are carefully introduced and explained and the book includes a full glossary. The book covers all the central areas of linguistics, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics, as well as historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics.

Ian Roberts offers a stimulating introduction to our greatest gift as a species: our capacity for articulate language. We are mostly as blissfully unaware of the intricacies of the structure of language as fish are of the water they swim in. We live in a mental ocean of nouns, verbs, quantifiers, morphemes, vowels and other rich, strange and deeply fascinating linguistic objects. This book introduces the reader to this amazing world. Offering a thought-provoking and accessible introduction to the main discoveries and theories about language, the book is aimed at general readers and undergraduates who are curious about linguistics and language. Written in a lively and direct style, technical terms are carefully introduced and explained and the book includes a full glossary. The book covers all the central areas of linguistics, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics, as well as historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics.

Originally published in 1906, this textbook's principal aim is to give 'the facts of the language as they appear in the accepted models of Classical Latin'. Predominantly written for school students, this highly informative book sets out to educate the grammar of this classical language - the term 'classical' here meant as the 'artificial literacy dialect of which Cicero and Caesar are the recognised exponents in prose, Vergil, Ovid and Horace in poetry'. Chapters are detailed and broad in scope; chapter titles include, 'Phonology', 'Accidence' and 'Prosody'. Notably, 'Accidence and syntax are treated separately, yet, where it seemed convenient, e.g. with the impersonal verbs, the construction of certain words has been given at the same time as their forms and inflexions'. An index of verbs is included for reference. Intended as a reliable and clear introduction, this book will be of great value to anyone with an interest in Latin.

Exam Board: ISEBLevel: 13+Subject: LatinFirst Teaching: September 2014First Exam: Autumn 2015Latin for Common Entrance One is the first book in Nicholas Oulton's new Latin course, combining your favourite elements of So You Really Want to Learn Latin, Latin Prep and Ab Initio, but now it maps precisely to the new ISEB syllabus and contains passages and question types in line with the revised Common Entrance exam. This extensively revised book is ideal for Latin beginners, introducing pupils to regular verbs and sum in the present, imperfect and perfect tenses, nouns of the first two declensions, adjectives of the 1st/2nd declension, prepositions and numerals. All the grammar, vocabulary and syntax on the Level 1 syllabus is covered and passages for translation are geared towards the Greek Mythology and City of Rome topics for the non-linguistic studies element of the ISEB syllabus.Written specifically for prep schools, this book includes solid grammar explanations, intentionally challe

Why learn to write in a dead language? Because a really good understanding of a language can only be attained by using it actively. Unlike earlier textbooks aimed at schoolboys, this work addresses modern adults who want to understand concepts fully as they learn. Drawing on recent scholarship where appropriate and assuming no prior background except some reading knowledge of Greek, the course combines a structured review of paradigms and vocabulary with clear and comprehensive explanations of the rules of Greek syntax. Large numbers of exercises are provided, both with and without key: a complete set of cumulative exercises and another set of non-cumulative exercises for those who prefer to dip into specific sections. The exercises include, as well as English sentences and paragraphs for translation, Greek sentences and passages for translation, analysis, and manipulation. A full English-Greek vocabulary and list of principal parts are included.

Bryan Garner is the most trusted living usage expert of our day, and Garner's Modern English Usage is the preeminent guide to the effective use of the English language. With well over 6,000 entries on English grammar, syntax, word choice, punctuation, capitalization, spelling, and style, this book is adored by professional writers and general readers alike (David Foster Wallace famously wrote a 62-page review that appeared in his collectionConsider the Lobster, calling its author "a genius"). In this major update to a timeless classic, Bryan Garner has dramatically expanded coverage of international English usage, making it for the first time a guide not only to American English usage, but to English usage globally.This expansion is important because interest in the English language is greater than ever; English is the lingua franca not only of higher education and academia, but of science, business, computing, aviation, and, arguably, entertainment. It is the most common language worl

Written in a clear and lively tone, Statistics Using IBM SPSS provides a data-centric approach to statistics with integrated SPSS (version 22) commands, ensuring that students gain both a deep conceptual understanding of statistics and practical facility with the leading statistical software package. With one hundred worked examples, the textbook guides students through statistical practice using real data and avoids complicated mathematics. Numerous end-of-chapter exercises allow students to apply and test their understanding of chapter topics, with detailed answers available online. The third edition has been updated throughout and includes a new chapter on research design, new topics (including weighted mean, resampling with the bootstrap, the role of the syntax file in workflow management, and regression to the mean) and new examples and exercises. Student learning is supported by a rich suite of online resources, including answers to end-of-chapter exercises, real data sets, Power

Using an innovative approach, this book focuses on a widely debated area of phonetics and phonology: intonation, and specifically its relation to metrics, its interface with syntax, and whether it can be attributed more to phonetics or phonology, or equally to both. Drawing on data from six Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan and Romanian), whose rich intonation patterns have long been of interest to linguists, Philippe Martin challenges the assumptions of traditional phonological approaches, and re-evaluates the data in favour of a new usage-based model of intonation. He proposes a unified description of the sentence prosodic structure, focusing on the dynamic and cognitive aspects of both production and perception of intonation in speech, leading to a unified grammar of Romance languages' sentence intonation. This book will be welcomed by researchers and advanced students in phonetics and phonology.

Paradigmatic gaps ('missing' inflected forms) have traditionally been considered to be the random detritus of a language's history and marginal exceptions to the normal functioning of its inflectional system. Arguing that this is a misperception, Inflectional Defectiveness demonstrates that paradigmatic gaps are in fact normal and expected products of inflectional structure. Sims offers an accessible exploration of how and why inflectional defectiveness arises, why it persists, and how it is learned. The book presents a theory of morphology which is rooted in the implicative structure of the paradigm. This systematic exploration of the topic also addresses questions of inflection class organization, the morphology-syntax interface, the structure of the lexicon, and the nature of productivity. Presenting a novel synthesis of established research and new empirical data, this work is significant for researchers and graduate students in all fields of linguistics.

For college students in courses with the same topic in communication disorders, psychology, and education. A best-selling, comprehensive, easy-to-understand introduction to language development. This best-selling introduction to language development text offers a cohesive, easy-to-understand overview of all aspects of the subject, from syntax, morphology, and semantics, to phonology and pragmatics.Each idea and concept is explained in a way that is clear to even beginning students and then reinforced with outstanding pedagogical aids such as discussion questions, chapter objectives, reflections, and main point boxed features. The book looks at how children learn to communicate in general and in English specifically, while emphasising individual patterns of communication development. The 9th Edition continues the distribution of bilingual and dialectal development throughout the text; expands the discussion of children from lower-SES families, including those living in homeless shelters

The second edition of this popular book brings students fully up to date with the latest methods and techniques in choice analysis. Comprehensive yet accessible, it offers a unique introduction to anyone interested in understanding how to model and forecast the range of choices made by individuals and groups. In addition to a complete rewrite of several chapters, new topics covered include ordered choice, scaled MNL, generalized mixed logit, latent class models, group decision making, heuristics and attribute processing strategies, expected utility theory, and prospect theoretic applications. Many additional case studies are used to illustrate the applications of choice analysis with extensive command syntax provided for all Nlogit applications and datasets available online. With its unique blend of theory, estimation, and application, this book has broad appeal to all those interested in choice modeling methods and will be a valuable resource for students as well as researchers, profe

Signalling nouns (SNs) are abstract nouns like 'fact', 'idea', 'problem' and 'result', which are non-specific in their meaning when considered in isolation and specific in their meaning by reference to their linguistic context. SNs contribute to cohesion and evaluation in discourse. This work offers the first book-length study of the SN phenomenon to treat the functional and discourse features of the category as primary. Using a balanced corpus of authentic data, the book explores the lexicogrammatical and discourse features of SNs in academic journal articles, textbooks, and lectures across a range of disciplines in the natural and social sciences. The book will be essential reading for researchers and advanced students of semantics, syntax, corpus linguistics and discourse analysis, in addition to scholars and teachers in the field of English for academic purposes.

The Late Modern period is the first in the history of English for which an unprecedented wealth of textual material exists. Using increasingly sophisticated databases, the contributions in this volume explore grammatical usage from the period, specifically morphological and syntactic change, in a broad context. Some chapters explore the socio-historical background of the period while others provide information on prescriptivism, newspaper language, language contact, and regional variation in British and American English. Internal processes of change are discussed against grammaticalisation theory and construction grammar and the rich body of textual evidence is used to draw inferences on the precise nature of historical change. Exposing readers to a wealth of data that informs the description of a broad range of syntactic phenomena, this book is ideal for graduate students and researchers interested in historical linguistics, corpus linguistics and language development.

Drawing on extensive corpus-based research, this book explores the nature and behavior of coordinate constructions in three case studies, covering order in copulative compounds, binomials (bare phrases), and more complex phrases. Historically, research on order in coordination has concentrated on so-called irreversible binomials, but Lohmann's research places significant focus on reversible ad hoc coordination and also presents a detailed comparison between irreversible and reversible binomials. This book uses empirical analyses to explore a wide range of factors, ranging from pragmatic to phonetic influences on the ordering process. It also offers readers a processing perspective on the results obtained, and puts forth a processing explanation for the characteristics of irreversible binomials. The book is ideal for researchers and advanced students working in English linguistics, syntax and psycholinguistics, and due to the multifactorial methodology applied it will be of particular i

The respected phonetician and philologist Henry Sweet (1845–1912) has had a lasting influence on the study and teaching of linguistics, particularly phonetics and Old English. Sweet is also known for being, in part, the inspiration for Henry Higgins in Shaw's Pygmalion. This two-volume work, first published in 1892–8, marks the start of a new tradition in the study of English, although it received little attention in Britain upon its publication. Building on developments in European linguistics, this was the first grammar of English to adopt a scientific approach to the description of language, in particular of phonology. This work is a thorough description of English grammar in comparison with that of Old English, and covers the parts of speech, phonology, accidence and syntax. Sweet's work is notable for its focus on the spoken language as well as the written, and for its use of casual speech as examples.

This book explores noun phrase (NP) complexity in English, showing that it is best accounted for both by a linear and a hierarchical parameter: its length and its type of postmodifier(s). The study is methodologically unique in that it combines univariate and multivariate analyses in an investigation of four different syntactic variables. Drawing on more than three billion words of British and American data, Eva Berlage shows that the length and the structure of the NPs, along with language-external factors such as the regional variety of English, work as powerful determinants of the variation. On a theoretical level, the book reveals that the structural complexity of NPs cannot be sufficiently captured by (phrasal) node counts but that we need to incorporate the degree to which NPs are sentential. The book is designed for researchers and students interested in syntax, language variation, sociolinguistics, structural complexity and the history of English.

In many languages, the objects of transitive verbs are either marked by grammatical case or agreement on the verb, or they remain unmarked: this is differential object marking. This book is a cross-linguistic study of how differential object marking is affected by information structure, the structuring of the utterance in accordance with the informational value of its elements and contextual factors. Marked objects tend to be associated with old information or information that the sentence is about, while unmarked objects tend to express new information. The book also sheds light on grammatical patterning in languages with differential object marking: in some languages marked and unmarked objects have identical grammatical properties, whereas in other languages marked objects are more active in syntax. Finally, it provides a theory of the historical changes that lead to the emergence of various patterns of differential object marking.

American-born lawyer and author Lindley Murray (1745–1826) was hailed by his admirers as the 'father of English grammar'. First published in 1795 and reissued here in its 1830 forty-fourth edition, English Grammar became the definitive textbook on the subject in the early nineteenth century. Murray divides the work into four sections: orthography, etymology, syntax and prosody. Treating his subject methodically, he reasons that sound instruction in grammar should begin with the form and sound of letters, continue to the different types of words, include guidelines on the construction of sentences, and provide advice on correct pronunciation. Accordingly, the book commences with the alphabet before moving on to more complex subjects, from verb conjugation through to versification. An appendix gives advice on writing more effectively. The work's huge success, in Britain and the United States, as well as in translation, testifies to its rigorous and unpretentious approach.

Although there have been numerous investigations of biolinguistics within the Minimalist Program over the last ten years, many of which appeal to the importance of Turing's Thesis (that the structural design of systems must obey physical and mathematical laws), these studies have by and large ignored the question of the structural design of language. They have paid significant attention to identifying the components of language - settling on a lexicon, a computational system, a sensorimotor performance system and a conceptual-intentional performance system; however, they have not examined how these components must be inter-structured to meet thresholds of simplicity, generality, naturalness and beauty, as well as of biological and conceptual necessity. In this book, Stroik and Putnam take on Turing's challenge. They argue that the narrow syntax - the lexicon, the Numeration, and the computational system - must reside, for reasons of conceptual necessity, within the performance systems.

With the publication in 1892–7 of this two-volume work, Swiss philologist Robert von Planta (1864–1937) cemented his reputation as one of the leading authorities on Indo-European grammar. After studying in his home country and Germany, he made his living as an independent researcher. He was also active in the movement against Italian irredentism and defended in writing the rights of the Swiss-German population. This work is an exhaustive account of the history and development of Osco-Umbrian phonology and syntax, adding to Mommsen's earlier contributions in the field. Volume 1 is dedicated to an overview of Osco-Umbrian phonology and stands as testimony to the development of phonological studies in the decade prior to its publication. With great diligence the author guides the reader through the history of the ancient populations of Italy and the different types of dialect found in the Osco-Umbrian area.