The volume brings together important essays on syntax and semantics by Aikhenvald and Dixon, highlighting their expertise in various fields of linguistics. The first part focusses on linguistic typology, covering case markers used on verbs, argument-determined constructions, unusual meanings of causatives, the semantic basis for a typology, word-class-changing derivations, speech reports and semi-direct speech. The second part concentrates on documentation and analysis of previously undescribed languages, from South America and Indigenous Australia. The third part addresses a variety of...

In the Modern Mongolian language there are four verb forms which have traditionally been labelled as past tense markers, differing primarily in aspect. In the last two decades scholars have suspected that the past tenses endings may actually differ by marking evidentiality and inferentiality. The present study not only confirms this, but, using 350 glossed and analyzed examples drawn from a variety of sources, shows distinctions of degrees of remoteness as well, and details significant differences between the spoken and written languages.

This book provides a detailed study of nominalizing patterns in Malagasy (Austronesian) and discusses the broader theoretical issues that arise from these patterns. It explores new and original fieldwork data drawn from the largely unexplored domain of Malagasy deverbal nominals. Offering new insights to long-standing puzzles in the derivation of argument-structure, referential, and clausal nominals, the book promotes a single structure-building mechanism, which allows nominalizers to attach at different heights in the clausal spine to derive nominals with different morphosyntactic...

In Dynamics of Morphological Productivity, Francesco Gardani explores the evolution of the productivity of the noun inflectional classes of Latin and Old Italian, covering a span of almost 2,000 years - an absolute novelty for the theory of diachrony and for Latin and Italo-Romance linguistics. By providing an original set of criteria for measuring productivity, based on the investigation of loanword integration, conversions, and class shift, Gardani provides a substantial contribution to the theory of inflection, as well as to the study of the morphological integration of loanwords....

Vocatives proposes a formal syntactic approach to vocatives. The analysis focuses on the internal structure of vocatives phrases and on the mechanism through which a vocative phrase connects with the clause. Vocatives are nouns that encode conversational pragmatic features at their left periphery. Any vocative phrase with this structure becomes the indirect object of a Speech Act head mapped at the left periphery of clauses. This analysis has implications for the debate on whether pragmatic features are mapped into syntax, and, subsequently, on how a grammar of direct address may look...

The contributions in Moribund Germanic Heritage Languages in North America advance the ever-expanding research program in formal and theoretical treatments of heritage language grammars through in-depth empirical investigations. The core focus on moribund varieties of heritage Germanic languages extends beyond the exploration of the individual heritage language grammars and contributes to larger discussions in the field of Germanic linguistics.

In this book, Peter Juul Nielsen examines the foundations of morphological theory from a structural-functional perspective on language as a sign system. He offers a framework for the analysis of morpheme relations based on a thorough discussion of syntagmatic and paradigmatic structure, indexical relations, zero as meaningful absence and morphological relations across grammatical categories. It is argued that when paradigmatically related morphological structures have different syntactic functions, the semantics of the paradigmatic opposition consists in the specification of functional...

In Theoretical and Experimental Aspects of Syntax-Discourse Interface in Heritage Grammars, Tanya Ivanova-Sullivan investigates comprehension and production of anaphoric dependencies with null and overt subject pronouns. She discusses the divergent behaviour of the heritage speakers of Russian by providing a closer look at their proficiency level, quantity of input and order of language acquisition. She explains the results with various degrees of successful application of pragmatic principles and efficiency in allocating cognitive resources. The contribution of the monograph lies in...

King John of England's defeat by the French in 1204 led to the territorial fragmentation of the Duchy of Normandy. Henceforth, the Norman mainland, allied to France, and the Channel Islands, allied to England, would find themselves on different sides of an ever-widening linguistic gulf. In Variation and Change in Mainland and Insular Norman, Mari C. Jones examines the way in which contact between the Norman dialect and its two typologically different superstrates (French and English) provides optimal conditions to study the linguistic mechanisms of 'dialect contact' and 'language...

This volume contains a selection of recent theoretical studies, deriving from presentations at the 16th International Morphology Meeting (Budapest, 2014), on the organization of morphological paradigms, paradigm complexity, and the inflectional marking of morphosyntactic relations, as well as on the application of information theory to the analysis of morphological systems aiming to achieve a clearer understanding of the close relation between notions of ‘morphological information’ based on ‘uncertainty’ and ‘uncertainty reduction’ and the error-driven structure of discriminative...