This volume brings together a collection of twenty contributions which offer a diversity of methodological tools and analytical issues concerning the study of different aspects of the role of verbs, clauses and constructions in a rich variety of languages such as Present-Day English, Old English, Old Saxon, French, Spanish, Arabic, German, Upper Sorbian, Latvian, Sino-Tibetan, and the Australian dialects Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra. The use of empirical data and the wide range of languages are the two main challenges addressed here. The book will serve to contribute to current literature on functional-oriented linguistics, incorporating linguistic typology, and corpus-based and contrastive perspectives. The volume is divided into three main parts. The first brings together eight contributions centrally related to the category of the verb both from a synchronic and diachronic perspective. The second part consists of five chapters which revolve around the syntax and semantics of clauses. Finally, the seven essays in the third section explore different formal and functional aspects of the study of constructions in an assortment of languages.

The first study into how children acquire Creoles as their first language in the absence of a conventional language model.

This work examines both historical and comparative evidence in documenting the sweep of diachronic change in the context of serial verb constructions. Using a wide range of data from languages of West Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, it demonstrates how shifts in meaning and usage result in syntactic, morphological and lexical change. The process by which verbs lose lexical semantic content and develop case-marking functions is described; it is argued that the change is directional, from verb to preposition (or postposition) to affix, along a grammaticalization continuum. This same grammaticalization process is shown to result in the development of complementizers, adverbial subordinators, conjunctions, adverbs and auxiliaries from verbs. Strong parallels across languages are found in the meanings of the verbs that become “defective” and in the functions they come to mark. The changes are documented in detail, with examples from a number of languages illustrating the effect of the changes on typology and word order, implications for the encoding of definiteness and aspect, and the relevance of notions such as discourse topic, foreground and transitivity. With respect to theoretical assumptions and terminology, the author has taken a relatively nonpartisan approach, and the discussion is accessible to students of language as well as of interest to theoreticians.

Construction Grammar explains how knowledge of language is organized in speakers' minds. The central and radical claim of Construction Grammar is that linguistic knowledge can be fully described as knowledge of constructions, which are defined as symbolic units that connect a linguistic form with meaning.

The future of English linguistics as envisaged by the editors of Topics in English Linguistics lies in empirical studies which integrate work in English linguistics into general and theoretical linguistics on the one hand, and comparative linguistics on the other. The TiEL series features volumes that present interesting new data and analyses, and above all fresh approaches that contribute to the overall aim of the series, which is to further outstanding research in English linguistics.

Parenthesis has recently seen a considerable surge in interest. This volume presents the – often contrasting – theoretical positions on parenthetical verbs and examines them from different analytical perspectives. It covers parenthetical verbs in English as well as in several other languages. Methodologically, the volume is marked by its empirical orientation: Most contributions are based on data from experiments or corpora.

This book is a grammar of Mangghuer, a Mongolic language. Its primary importance is as a systematic grammatical description of a little-known language. It also makes a significant contribution to comparative Mongolic studies.