Bernard Comrie

"First edition published by Croom Helm 1987."

The World's Major Languages

Stephen Matthews

Bill Louw

Professor of Linguistics Maria Polinsky

Maria Polinsky

A collection of photos, maps, charts, and boxed features on virtually every page. Ten chapters discuss the language families of each region of the world.

The Origin and Development of Languages Throughout the World

The Atlas of Languages

Angela D. Friederici

Matthias Schlesewsky

Ina Bornkessel

The concept of semantic roles has been central to linguistic theory for many decades. More specifically, the assumption of such representations as mediators in the correspondence between a linguistic form and its associated meaning has helped to address a number of critical issues related to grammatical phenomena. Furthermore, in addition to featuring in all major theories of grammar, semantic (or 'thematic') roles have been referred to extensively within a wide range of other linguistic subdisciplines, including language typology and psycho-/neurolinguistics. This volume brings together insights from these different perspectives and thereby, for the first time, seeks to build upon the obvious potential for cross-fertilisation between hitherto autonomous approaches to a common theme. To this end, a view on semantic roles is adopted that goes beyond the mere assumption of generalised roles, but also focuses on their hierarchical organisation. The book is thus centred around the interdisciplinary examination of how these hierarchical dependencies subserve argument linking - both in terms of linguistic theory and with respect to real-time language processing - and how they interact with other information types in this process. Furthermore, the contributions examine the interaction between the role hierarchy and the conceptual content of (generalised) semantic roles and investigate their cross-linguistic applicability and psychological reality, as well as their explanatory potential in accounting for phenomena in the domain of language disorders. In bridging the gap between different disciplines, the book provides a valuable overview of current thought on semantic roles and argument linking, and may further serve as a point of departure for future interdisciplinary research in this area. As such, it will be of interest to scientists and advanced students in all domains of linguistics and cognitive science.

Theoretical, Typological, and Psycholinguistic Perspectives

Semantic Role Universals and Argument Linking

Based on Bernard Comrie's The World's Major Languages, this is a key guide to one of the major language families. The areas covered include Germanic languages, English, and Romance languages.

The Major Languages of Western Europe

Andrej Malchukov

Earlier empirical studies on valency have looked at the phenomenon either in individual languages or a small range of languages, or have concerned themselves with only small subparts of valency (e.g. transitivity, ditransitive constructions), leaving a lacuna that the present volume aims to fill by considering a wide range of valency phenomena across 30 languages from different parts of the world. The individual-language studies, each written by a specialist or group of specialists on that language and covering both valency patterns and valency alternations, are based on a questionnaire (reproduced in the volume) and an on-line freely accessible database, thus guaranteeing comparability of cross-linguistic results. In addition, introductory chapters provide the background to the project and discuss its main characteristics and selected results, while a series of featured articles by leading scholars who helped shape the field provide an outside perspective on the volume’s approach. The volume is essential reading for anyone interested in valency and argument structure, irrespective of theoretical persuasion, and will serve as a model for future descriptive studies of valency in individual languages.

Case Studies from Austronesia, the Pacific, the Americas, and Theoretical Outlook

This volume features over fifty of the world's languages and language families. The featured languages have been chosen based on the number of speakers, their role as official languages and their cultural and historical importance. Each language is looked at in depth, and the chapters provide information on both grammatical features and on salient features of the language's history and cultural role. This second edition has been updated and revised. Two new languages, Amharic and Javanese, have been included. This accessible volume will appeal to anyone with an interest in linguistics.Key features:Attention is paid to both grammatical and sociolinguistic featuresAttention is concentrated on the world's major languagesDesigned to be accessible to all readers with an interest in language.

Martin Haspelmath

The Library of Babel

Pirkko Suihkonen

Valery Solovyev

This book is a collection of articles dealing with various aspects of grammatical relations and argument structure in the languages of Europe and North and Central Asia (LENCA). Topics covered with respect to individual languages are: split-intransitivity (Basque), causativization (Agul), transitives and causatives (Korean and Japanese), aspectual domain and quantification (Finnish and Udmurt), head-marking principles (Athabaskan languages), and pragmatics (Eastern Khanty and Xibe). Typology of argument-structure properties of ‘give’ (LENCA), typology of agreement systems, asymmetry in argument structure, typology of the Amdo Sprachbund, spatial realtors (Northeastern Turkic), core argument patterns (languages of Northern California), and typology of grammatical relations (LENCA) are the topics of articles based on cross-linguistic data. The broad empirical sweep and the fine-tuned theoretical analysis highlight the central role of argument structure and grammatical relations with respect to a plethora of linguistic phenomena.

A crosslinguistic typology

Argument Structure and Grammatical Relations

David Gil

Matthew S. Dryer

The World Atlas of Language Structures is a book and CD combination displaying the structural properties of the world's languages. 142 world maps and numerous regional maps - all in colour - display the geographical distribution of features of pronunciation and grammar, such as number of vowels, tone systems, gender, plurals, tense, word order, and body part terminology. Each world map shows an average of 400 languages and is accompanied by a fully referenced description of the structural feature in question. The CD provides an interactive electronic version of the database which allows the reader to zoom in on or customize the maps, to display bibliographical sources, and to establish correlations between features. The book and the CD together provide an indispensable source of information for linguists and others seeking to understand human languages. The Atlas will be especially valuable for linguistic typologists, grammatical theorists, historical and comparative linguists, and for those studying a region such as Africa, Southeast Asia, North America, Australia, and Europe. It will also interest anthropologists and geographers. More than fifty authors from many different countries have collaborated to produce a work that sets new standards in comparative linguistics. No institution involved in language research can afford to be without it.

The World Atlas of Language Structures

Classification of Grammatical Categories

This volume brings together 18 typological studies of causative and related constructions (transitivity, voice, other expressions of cause) by 19 scholars from North America, Western Europe, and Russia. The inspirations for the volume is the pioneering work on causative constructions by the Leningrad Typology Group; several of the contributors have close connections to the charter members of that group, others have appreciated this work from a distance. The volume as a whole is based on the concept of causative constructions as embracing both morphology and syntax, with an important semantic component as well. In addition to general studies concerning the morpho syntactic and semantic typology and the history of causative constructions and relations to other phenomena, the following individual languages are treated in detail: Russian, English, Dutch, Svan, Even, Korean, Yukaghir, Alutor, Aleut, Haruai, Dogon, Athabaskan languages. The volume will be of interest to typologists, to other linguists interested in causative constructions and transitivity relations, and to all who are interested in the linguistic expression of causal relations.

Causatives and Transitivity

The two volumes deal with cross-linguistic variation in valency classes in terms of argument coding and argument alternations. The first systematic typological attempt to uncover the universal and the language-particular in this area, the work includes synoptic introductory articles, 30 in-depth questionnaire-based studies of valency classes in languages from across the world, and featured articles by leading scholars who helped shape the field.

Introducing the Framework, and Case Studies from Africa and Eurasia

Valency Classes in the World's Languages

Based on Comrie's much-praised The World's Major Languages , this is the first comprehensive guide in paperback to descibe in detail the language families of Eastern Europe, and includes an introduction which surveys the field.

The Major Languages of Eastern Europe

Presents an introduction to languages and linguistics, including the evolution of over 200 languages, explanations of writing systems, language trees, and maps illustrating various aspects of all the language families.

Raoul Zamponi

This volume is the first extensive and reliable grammatical description of any traditional language of the Great Andamanese family. Akabea died out in the 1920s, but was extensively documented in the late nineteenth century by two British administrators, Edward Horace Man and Maurice Vidal Portman. Although neither was a trained linguist, their material nonetheless provides a sufficient basis for a reliable analysis of Akabea grammar, especially its morphology and its phrasal and clausal syntax, although there are inevitable limitations on our understanding of Akabea phonology, clause combining, and discourse structure. The grammar is accompanied by an online appendix that provides a diplomatic edition with commentary and analysis of the single most valuable resource for Akabea grammatical analysis, Portman's Dialogues. Raoul Zamponi and Bernard Comrie's Grammar of Akabea offers a unique insight into the culture, history, and prehistory of the Andaman Islands, and also broadens our understanding of the human capacity for language. It highlights the typologically interesting and cross-linguistically rare traits of the language, such as a rich system of somatic (body-part) prefixes and the phenomenon of Verb Root Ellipsis, whereby under certain circumstances the root of a verb may be absent, leaving behind a grammatical word consisting solely of affixes. The project at last makes this valuable evidence accessible both to linguists and to interested scholars from other disciplines, such as anthropology, history, and genetics.

A Grammar of Akabea

This volume features over 50 of the world's languages and language families. The featured languages have been chosen based on the number of speakers, their role as official languages and their cultural and historical importance. Each language is looked at in depth, and the chapters provide information on both grammatical features and on salient features of the language's history and cultural role. This second edition has been updated and revised. Two new languages, Amharic and Javanese, have been included. This accessible volume will appeal to anyone with an interest in linguistics. Key features: Attention is paid to both grammatical and sociolinguistic features Attention is concentrated on the world's major languages Designed to be accessible to all readers with an interest in language.

N.J. Enfield

The studies in this book represent the rich, diverse and substantial research being conducted today in the linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia. The chapters cover a broad scope. Several studies address questions of language relatedness, often challenging conventional assumptions about the status of language contact as an explanatory factor in accounting for linguistic similarities. Several address the question of Mainland Southeast Asia as a linguistic area, exploring new ways to imagine and define the boundaries, and indeed the boundedness, of a Mainland Southeast Asia area. Two contributions rethink the received notion of the 'sesquisyllable' with new empirical and theoretical angles. And a set of chapters explores topics in the morphology and syntax of the region's languages, sometimes challenging orthodox assumptions and claims about what a typical language of Mainland Southeast Asia is like. Written by leading researchers in the field, and with a substantial overview of current knowledge and new directions by the volume editors N. J. Enfield and Bernard Comrie, this book will serve as an authoritative source on where the linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia is at, and where it is heading.

The State of the Art

Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia

Based on the much-praised The World's Major Languages, this is the first comprehensive guide in paperback to describe the development, grammar sound and writing system, and sociological factors of the major language families in these areas.

Bernard Comrie

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