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Author: Carol Lord Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing ISBN: 9027229139 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 284
Book Description
This work examines both historical and comparative evidence in documenting the sweep of diachronic change in the context of serial verb constructions. Using a wide range of data from languages of West Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, it demonstrates how shifts in meaning and usage result in syntactic, morphological and lexical change.The process by which verbs lose lexical semantic content and develop case-marking functions is described; it is argued that the change is directional, from verb to preposition (or postposition) to affix, along a grammaticalization continuum. This same grammaticalization process is shown to result in the development of complementizers, adverbial subordinators, conjunctions, adverbs and auxiliaries from verbs. Strong parallels across languages are found in the meanings of the verbs that become defective and in the functions they come to mark. The changes are documented in detail, with examples from a number of languages illustrating the effect of the changes on typology and word order, implications for the encoding of definiteness and aspect, and the relevance of notions such as discourse topic, foreground and transitivity.With respect to theoretical assumptions and terminology, the author has taken a relatively nonpartisan approach, and the discussion is accessible to students of language as well as of interest to theoreticians.
Author: Carol Lord Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing ISBN: 9027229139 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 284
Book Description
This work examines both historical and comparative evidence in documenting the sweep of diachronic change in the context of serial verb constructions. Using a wide range of data from languages of West Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, it demonstrates how shifts in meaning and usage result in syntactic, morphological and lexical change.The process by which verbs lose lexical semantic content and develop case-marking functions is described; it is argued that the change is directional, from verb to preposition (or postposition) to affix, along a grammaticalization continuum. This same grammaticalization process is shown to result in the development of complementizers, adverbial subordinators, conjunctions, adverbs and auxiliaries from verbs. Strong parallels across languages are found in the meanings of the verbs that become defective and in the functions they come to mark. The changes are documented in detail, with examples from a number of languages illustrating the effect of the changes on typology and word order, implications for the encoding of definiteness and aspect, and the relevance of notions such as discourse topic, foreground and transitivity.With respect to theoretical assumptions and terminology, the author has taken a relatively nonpartisan approach, and the discussion is accessible to students of language as well as of interest to theoreticians.
Author: Aleksandra I︠U︡rʹevna Aĭkhenvalʹd Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand ISBN: 0199279152 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 394
Book Description
This volume of new work explores the forms and functions of serial verbs. The introduction sets out the cross-linguistic parameters of variation, and the final chapter draws out a set of conclusions. These frame fourteen explorations of serial verb constructions and similar structures in languages from Asia, Africa, North, Central and South America, and the Pacific. Chapters on well-known languages such as Cantonese and Thai are set alongside the languages of small hunter-gathererand slash-and-burn agriculturalist groups.A serial verb construction (sometimes just called serial verb) is a sequence of verbs which acts together as one. Each describes what can be conceptualized as a single event. They are monoclausal; their intonational properties are those of a monoverbal clause; they generally have just one tense, aspect, mood, and polarity value; and they are an important tool in cognitive packaging of events. Serial verb constructions are a pervasive feature of isolating languages of Asia and West Africa, andare also found in the languages of the Pacific, South, Central and North America, most of them endangered.Serial verbs have been a subject of interest among linguists for some time. This outstanding book is the first to study the phenomenon across languages of different typological and genetic profiles. The authors, all experienced linguistic fieldworkers, follow a unified typological approach and avoid formalisms. The book will interest students, at graduate level and above, of syntax, typology, language universals, information structure, and language contact. in departments of linguistics andanthroplogy.
Author: Nerida Jarkey Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 900429239X Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 322
Book Description
In this book, Nerida Jarkey investigates the highly productive strategy of verb serialisation and reveals that its key function in this dynamic Southeast Asian language is to depict a single event in an elaborate and vivid way.
Author: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004194525 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 334
Book Description
This book surveys multi-verb constructions in multiple languages from the Americas, showing a very rich tapestry of typologically unusual constructions, including serial verbs, auxiliaries, co-verbs, phasal verbs. Where possible, a diachronic perspectrive is offered.
Author: Aleksandra I︠U︡rʹevna Aĭkhenvalʹd Publisher: ISBN: 9781383042412 Category : Grammar, Comparative and general Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
A serial verb construction is a sequence of verbs which acts together as one. The authors examine form and function of serial verbs and also explore the phenomenon across languages of different typological and genetic profiles.
Author: Terry Crowley Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 9780198241355 Category : Foreign Language Study Languages : en Pages : 308
Book Description
Terry Crowley introduces the idea of serial verbs which are clauses that include multiple verbs or verb-like items that are used to convey a single meaning like wash the plates clean. The author argues that their formation is a consequence of contact between different languages.
Author: Aleksandra I︠U︡rʹevna Aĭkhenvalʹd Publisher: Oxford Studies in Typology and ISBN: 0198791267 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 321
Book Description
This book provides an in-depth typological account of the forms, functions, and histories of serial verb constructions, in which several verbs combine to form a single predicate. It uses an inductively-based framework for the analysis and draws on data from languages with different typological profiles and genetic affiliations.
Author: Mark Sebba Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing ISBN: 902725222X Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 242
Book Description
This monograph is about the chains of verbs commonly found in Creole Languages, West African languages, in particular the Kwa sub-group of Niger-Congo, Chinese and certain other languages and have acquired the name of 'serial verbs' in the literature. As a case study, the serial constructions of Sranan, a creole language of Surinam with an English lexical base, are examined in detail.
Author: Brian Nolan Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company ISBN: 9027266123 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 464
Book Description
This book offers a comprehensive investigative study of argument realisation in complex predicates and complex events at the syntax-semantic interface across a wide variety of the world’s languages, ranging over languages such as German, Irish, Sicilian and Italian, Lithuanian, Estonian and other Finno-Ugric languages, Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra from Australia’s Western Desert region, Japanese, Tepehua (Totonacan, Mexico), Cheyenne, Mexican Spanish, Boharic Coptic, and Persian. This volume examines the syntactic variation of complex events, complex predicates and multi-verb constructions within a single clause where the clause is view as representing a single event, studying their semantics and syntax within functional, cognitive and constructional frameworks, to arrive at a better understanding of their cross linguistic behaviour and how they resonate in syntax. These constructions manifest considerable variability in cross-linguistic comparisons of complex predicate formation. In European languages, for example, typically one of the verbs in a verb-verb construction highlights a phase of an underspecified event while the matrix verb specifies the actual event. In contrast, serial verbs require each verb to provide a sub-event dimension within a complex event that is viewed holistically as unitary in syntax. This book contributes to an understanding of complex events, complex predicates and multi-verb constructions across languages, their syntactic constructional patterns and argument realisation.
Author: Carol Lord
Author: Carol Lord
Author: Aleksandra I︠U︡rʹevna Aĭkhenvalʹd
Author: Dany Adone
Author: Nerida Jarkey
Author: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Author: Aleksandra I︠U︡rʹevna Aĭkhenvalʹd
Author: Terry Crowley
Author: Aleksandra I︠U︡rʹevna Aĭkhenvalʹd
Author: Mark Sebba
Author: Brian Nolan