The Roots of Verbal Meaning

The Roots of Verbal Meaning
Title The Roots of Verbal Meaning PDF eBook
Author John Beavers
Publisher Oxford University Press
Pages 277
Release 2020
Genre Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN 0198855788

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This book explores possible and impossible word meanings, with a specific focus on the meanings of verbs. It presents a new theory of possible root meanings and their interaction with event templates that produces a new typology of possible verbs, with semantic and grammatical properties determined not just by templates, but also by roots.

Roots and Patterns

Roots and Patterns
Title Roots and Patterns PDF eBook
Author Maya Arad
Publisher Springer Science & Business Media
Pages 294
Release 2005-11-27
Genre Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN 1402032447

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In-depth investigation of Hebrew verb morphology in light of cutting edge theories of morphology and lexical semantics An original theory about the semantic content of roots An account of how roots function in word-formation A wide empirical basis containing a complete corpus of verb-creating roots in Hebrew

The Navajo Verb System

The Navajo Verb System
Title The Navajo Verb System PDF eBook
Author Robert W. Young
Publisher UNM Press
Pages 354
Release 2000
Genre Foreign Language Study
ISBN 9780826321725

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Provides a summary description of the Navajo language and a detailed treatment of the inflectional morphology of its verb system.

Grammatical Constructions

Grammatical Constructions
Title Grammatical Constructions PDF eBook
Author Mirjam Fried
Publisher John Benjamins Publishing
Pages 257
Release 2005-12-14
Genre Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN 9027294070

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This volume brings into focus the conceptual roots of the notion ‘grammatical construction’ as the theoretical entity that constitutes the backbone of Construction Grammar, a unique grammatical model in which grammatical constructions have the status of elementary building blocks of human language. By exploring the analytic potential and applicability of this notion, the contributions illustrate some of the fundamental concerns of constructional research. These include issues of sentence structure in a model that rejects the autonomy of syntax; the contribution of Frame Semantics in establishing the relationship between syntactic patterning and the lexical meaning of verbs; and the challenge of capturing the dynamic and variable nature of grammatical structure in a systematic way. All the authors share a commitment to studying grammar in its use, which gives the book a rich empirical dimension that draws on authentic data from typologically diverse languages.

Frame-Constructional Verb Classes

Frame-Constructional Verb Classes
Title Frame-Constructional Verb Classes PDF eBook
Author Ryan Dux
Publisher John Benjamins Publishing Company
Pages 332
Release 2020-11-15
Genre Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN 9027261016

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While verb classes are a mainstay of linguistic research, the field lacks consensus on precisely what constitutes a verb class. This book presents a novel approach to verb classes, employing a bottom-up, corpus-based methodology and combining key insights from Frame Semantics, Construction Grammar, and Valency Grammar. On this approach, verb classes are formulated at varying granularity levels to adequately capture both the shared semantic and syntactic properties unifying verbs of a class and the idiosyncratic properties unique to individual verbs. In-depth analyses based on this approach shed light on the interrelations between verbs, frame-semantics, and constructions, and on the semantic richness and network organization of grammatical constructions. This approach is extended to a comparison of Change and Theft verbs, revealing unexpected lexical and syntactic differences across semantically distinct classes. Finally, a range of contrastive (German–English) analyses demonstrate how verb classes can inform the cross-linguistic comparison of verbs and constructions.

External Arguments in Transitivity Alternations

External Arguments in Transitivity Alternations
Title External Arguments in Transitivity Alternations PDF eBook
Author Artemis Alexiadou
Publisher OUP Oxford
Pages 247
Release 2015-01-08
Genre Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN 0191664979

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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.

A Grammar of Darma

A Grammar of Darma
Title A Grammar of Darma PDF eBook
Author Christina Willis Oko
Publisher BRILL
Pages 592
Release 2019-08-26
Genre Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN 9004409491

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A Grammar of Darma provides the first comprehensive description of this Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Uttarakhand, India. The analysis is informed by a functional-typological framework and draws on a corpus of data gathered through elicitation, observation and recordings of natural discourse. Every effort has been made to describe day-to-day language, so whenever possible, illustrative examples are taken from extemporaneous speech and contextualized. Sections of the grammar should appeal widely to scholars interested in South Asia’s languages and cultures, including discussions of the socio-cultural setting, the sound system, morphosyntactic, clause and discourse structure. The grammar’s interlinearized texts and glossary provide a trove of useful information for comparative linguists working on Tibeto-Burman languages and anyone interested in the world’s less-commonly spoken languages.