Artemis Alexiadou

Florian Schäfer

Hagit Borer

This book investigates the nature and properties of roots, the core elements of word meaning. Chapters adopt different theoretical approaches to examine the interaction of roots with syntactic structure, and the role of their semantic and morpho-phonological properties in that interaction.

The Syntax of Roots and the Roots of Syntax

Janin Pisarek

Hannah Gritsch

Der Glaube an Hausgeister prägte das Leben und den Alltag der Menschen über viele Jahrhunderte. Hausdrachen und Wilde Frauen, Kobolde und Wichtel lebten weiter in Sagen und Erzählungen, die im 19. Jahrhundert durch die Brüder Grimm und viele andere Sammler schriftlich fixiert und zusammengetragen wurden. Lange Zeit waren diese mythologischen Kreaturen jedoch in Vergessenheit geraten. Doch die Faszination für das Sonderbare und das Interesse an mythologischen Figuren und Fabelwesen leben in Romanen, Filmen und Serien, der Popkultur, seit geraumer Zeit wieder auf. Die Autoren des vorliegenden Bandes machen nun die Wesen der "niederen Mythologie" auf innovative Weise in der heutigen Zeit erlebbar. Sie haben das Wissen um die Natur der geheimnisvollen Hausgeister im deutschsprachigen Raum zusammengetragen, sortiert und aufbereitet und lebensnahe Miniaturmodelle geschaffen und detailgetreu in faszinierenden Fotografien in Szene gesetzt. Originalzitate aus regionalen Sagen und Gastbeiträge verschiedener Fachwissenschaftler ergänzen diese außergewöhnliche Darstellung, die die Liebhaber von Märchen und Sagen und alle an Mythologie und Kulturgeschichte Interessierten begeistern wird.

Fast vergessene Gestalten der deutschsprachigen Märchen- und Sagenwelt

Hausgeister

This book develops an approach to the causative alternation that assumes syntactic event decomposition and a configurational theta theory. It is couched within the framework of the Minimalist Program and, especially, within Distributed Morphology. Central to the work is the syntax and semantics of canonical external arguments of causative verbs as well as of oblique causers and causative PPs in the context of anticausative verbs in different languages such as Germanic, Romance, Balkan, and Caucasian languages. The book also develops a new account of the origin and nature of the morphological marking which is often found on anticausatives across languages. The main claim is that this morphology is a reflex of a syntactic way to prohibit the assignment of the external theta role. Moreover, the book develops an account about the origin of the implicit agent in generic middles which often bear the same morphology as marked anticausatives.

External Arguments in Change-of-state Contexts

The Syntax of (anti-)causatives

This volume contains a selection of papers dealing with constructions that have a passive-like interpretation but do not seem to share all the properties with canonical passives. The fifteen chapters of this volume raise important questions concerning the proper characterization of the universal properties of passivization and reflect the current discussion in this area, covering syntactic, semantic, psycho-linguistic and typological aspects of the phenomenon, from different theoretical perspectives and in different language families and backed up in most cases by extensive corpora and experimental studies.

Non-Canonical Passives

Non-canonical Passives

Elena Anagnostopoulou

This book is an exploration of the syntax of external arguments in transitivity alternations from a cross-linguistic perspective. It focuses particularly on the causative/anticausative alternation, which the authors take to be a Voice alternation, and the formation of adjectival participles. The authors use data principally from English, German, and Greek to demonstrate that the presence of anticausative morphology does not have any truth-conditional effects, but that marked anticausatives involve more structure than their unmarked counterparts. This morphology is therefore argued to be associated with a semantically inert Voice head that the authors call 'expletive Voice'. The authors also propose that passive formation is not identical across languages, and that the distinction between target vs. result state participles is crucial in understanding the contribution of Voice in adjectival passives. The book provides the tools required to investigate the morphosyntactic structure of verbs and participles, and to identify the properties of verbal alternations across languages. It will be of interest to theoretical linguists from graduate level upwards, particularly those specializing in morphosyntax and typology.

Florian Schäfer

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