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"Comparative linguistics Semantics."
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Substrate and Adstrate
This volume provides a large-scale, in-depth analysis of locative structures in Nigerian Pidgin and Ghanaian Pidgin English and compares those structures to locatives in their lexifier, substrate, and adstrate languages. The work draws on new research methods for investigating substrate and adstrate influence in semantics and creole genesis.
eBook
Course in general linguistics
\"An influence on a wide-range of thinkers from Derrida and Lacan to Chomsky, Saussure's major work is now available in the Bloomsbury Revelations series\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Verbal predication negation in Dawurotsuwa
This paper presents an analysis of the verbal negation of declarative main clauses in Dawurotsuwa. This study aims to describe verbal negation in Dawurotsuwa, a language that is scarcely described. Having prepared phrases and sentences for elicitation, which are appropriate and purposefully fitting to the verbal predication negation in English and Amharic, the data were collected from native speakers of Dawurotsuwa. The finding shows that the language suffixes negative markers to the root. Verbal negation in main clauses is formed by suffixing the morphemes -kk-/-nn- to the verb along with other inflectional suffixes, such as person, number, and aspect. The negative morpheme -kk- is used for all persons except 3SG.M. The morpheme -nn- is used for 3SG.M and infinite verb forms. Negation in Dawurotsuwa is asymmetric, in which the structural difference between affirmative and corresponding negative goes beyond the mere existence of the negative marker. The negative and perfective aspect marker co-occur together though the perfective aspect marker is substituted by another marker in the negative. The imperfective aspect is not marked in the language. The language emphasizes negation by attaching -ttenne to the verb following the person and number marker. In ellipsis, the morpheme -kka is suffixed to the pronouns or nominal elements for representing all other elements of the antecedent clause omitted in both affirmatives and negatives.
Journal Article
Comparative concepts and descriptive categories in crosslinguistic studies
In this discussion note, I argue that we need to distinguish carefully between descriptive categories, that is, categories of particular languages, and comparative concepts, which are used for crosslinguistic comparison and are specifically created by typologists for the purposes of comparison. Descriptive formal categories cannot be equated across languages because the criteria for category assignment are different from language to language. This old structuralist insight (called CATEGORIAL PARTICULARISM) has recently been emphasized again by several linguists, but the idea that linguists need to identify 'crosslinguistic categories' before they can compare languages is still widespread, especially (but not only) in generative linguistics. Instead, what we have to do (and normally do in practice) is to create comparative concepts that allow us to identify comparable phenomena across languages and to formulate crosslinguistic generalizations. Comparative concepts have to be universally applicable, so they can only be based on other universally applicable concepts: conceptual-semantic concepts, general formal concepts, and other comparative concepts. Comparative concepts are not always purely semantically based concepts, but outside of phonology they usually contain a semantic component. The fact that typologists compare languages in terms of a separate set of concepts that is not taxonomically superordinate to descriptive linguistic categories means that typology and language-particular analysis are more independent of each other than is often thought.
Journal Article
Theory and Typology of Proper Names
The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. The series considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language.
eBook
POLARITY PARTICLE RESPONSES AS A WINDOW ONTO THE INTERPRETATION OF QUESTIONS AND ASSERTIONS
This article provides an account of the distribution and interpretation of POLARITY PARTICLES in responses, starting with yes and no in English, and then extending the coverage to their crosslinguistic kin. Polarity particles are used in responses to both declarative and interrogative sentences, and thus provide a window onto the semantics and discourse effects of such sentences. We argue that understanding the distribution and interpretation of polarity particles requires a characterization of declaratives and interrogatives that captures a series of challenging similarities and differences across these two sentence types. To meet this challenge we combine and extend insights from inquisitive semantics, dynamic semantics, and commitment-based models of discourse. We then provide a full account of the English data that leads to a typology of polarity particles and a series of crosslinguistic predictions. These predictions are checked against data from Romanian, Hungarian, French, and German, languages that contrast with English in that they have ternary polarity particle systems, and contrast with one another in further subtle ways.
Journal Article