Deconstructing Ergativity - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Deconstructing Ergativity write by Maria Polinsky. This book was released on 2016. Deconstructing Ergativity available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Nominative-accusative and ergative are two common alignment types found across languages. In the former type, the subject of an intransitive verb and the subject of a transitive verb are expressed the same way, and differently from the object of a transitive. In ergative languages, the subject of an intransitive and the object of a transitive appear in the same form, the absolutive, and the transitive subject has a special, ergative, form. Ergative languages often follow very different patterns, thus evading a uniform description and analysis. A simple explanation for that has to do with the idea that ergative languages, much as their nominative-accusative counterparts, do not form a uniform class. In this book, Maria Polinsky argues that ergative languages instantiate two main types, the one where the ergative subject is a prepositional phrase (PP-ergatives) and the one with a noun-phrase ergative. Each type is internally consistent and is characterized by a set of well-defined properties. The book begins with an analysis of syntactic ergativity, which as Polinsky argues, is a manifestation of the PP-ergative type. Polinsky discusses diagnostic properties that define PPs in general and then goes to show that a subset of ergative expressions fit the profile of PPs. Several alternative analyses have been proposed to account for syntactic ergativity; the book presents and outlines these analyses and offers further considerations in support of the PP-ergativity approach. The book then discusses the second type, DP-ergative languages, and traces the diachronic connection between the two types. The book includes two chapters illustrating paradigm PP-ergative and DP-ergative languages: Tongan and Tsez. The data used in these descriptions come from Polinsky's original fieldwork hence presenting new empirical facts from both languages.
The Oxford Handbook of Ergativity
The Oxford Handbook of Ergativity - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Oxford Handbook of Ergativity write by Jessica Coon. This book was released on 2017. The Oxford Handbook of Ergativity available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This volume examines the phenomenon of ergativity, a grammatical patterning whereby direct objects are in some way treated like intransitive subjects, to the exclusion of transitive subjects. It includes theoretical approaches from generative, typological, and functional paradigms, as well as 16 language-specific case studies.
The Oxford Handbook of Languages of the Caucasus
The Oxford Handbook of Languages of the Caucasus - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Oxford Handbook of Languages of the Caucasus write by Maria Polinsky. This book was released on 2020-11-21. The Oxford Handbook of Languages of the Caucasus available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The Oxford Handbook of Languages of the Caucasus is an introduction to and overview of the linguistically diverse languages of southern Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. Though the languages of the Caucasus have often been mischaracterized or exoticized, many of them have cross-linguistically rare features found in few or no other languages. This handbook presents facts and descriptions of the languages written by experts. The first half of the book is an introduction to the languages, with the linguistic profiles enriched by demographic research about their speakers. It features overviews of the main language families as well as detailed grammatical descriptions of several individual languages. The second half of the book delves more deeply into theoretical analyses of features, such as agreement, ellipsis, and discourse properties, which are found in some languages of the Caucasus. Promising areas for future research are highlighted throughout the handbook, which will be of interest to linguists of all subfields.
The Acquisition of Ergativity
The Acquisition of Ergativity - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Acquisition of Ergativity write by Edith L. Bavin. This book was released on 2013-11-15. The Acquisition of Ergativity available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Ergativity is one of the main challenges both for linguistic and acquisition theories. This book is unique, taking a cross-linguistic approach to the acquisition of ergativity in a large variety of typologically distinct languages. The chapters cover languages from different families and from different geographic areas with different expressions of ergativity. Each chapter includes a description of ergativity in the language(s), the nature of the input, the social context of acquisition and developmental patterns. Comparisons of the acquisition process across closely related languages are made, change in progress of the ergative systems is discussed and, for one language, acquisition by bilingual and monolingual children is compared. The volume will be of particular interest to language acquisition researchers, linguists, psycholinguists and cognitive scientists.
Finiteness
Finiteness - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Finiteness write by Irina Nikolaeva. This book was released on 2007. Finiteness available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This book explores the nature of finiteness, one of most commonly used notions in descriptive and theoretical linguistics but possibly one of the least understood. Scholars representing a variety of theoretical positions seek to clarify what it is and to establish its usefulness and limitations. In doing so they reveal cross-linguistically valid correlations between subject licensing, subject agreement, tense, syntactic opacity, and independent clausehood; show how these propertiesare associated with finiteness; and discuss what this means for the content of the category. The issues explored include how different grammatical theories represent finiteness; whether the finite/nonfinite distinction is universal; whether there are degrees of finiteness; whether the syntacticnotion of finiteness has a semantic corollary; whether and how finiteness is subject to change; and how finiteness features in language acquisition.Irina Nikolaeva opens the book by describing the history of finiteness and its place in current thinking and research. She then introduces the chapters of the book, comparing the authors' perspectives and showing what they have in common. The book is then divided into four parts. Part I considers the role finiteness plays in formal syntactic theories and Part II its deployment in functional theories and as the subject of research in typology. Parts III and IV look respectively at thefinite/nonfinite opposition in individual languages and at the role finiteness plays in linguistic change and linguistic development. The book is written and structured to appeal to scholars and students of syntax and general linguistics at graduate level and above.
