The studies in this volume suggest that every language has an adjective class, but these vary in character and in size. In its grammatical properties, an adjective class may beas similar to nouns, or to verbs, or to both, or to neither.ze. Whereas in some languages the adjective class is large and can be freely added to, in others it is small and closed. with just a dozen or so members. The book will interest scholars and advanced students of language typology and of the syntax and semantics of adjectives.

The present volume examines the ways in which linguistic traits may change in a contact situation. It contains an encyclopaedic introduction, which sets out a general theory of contact-induced change, and twelve subsequent chapters, which analyze the effects of language contact on grammatical systems in a variety of languages belonging to different geographical areas and diverse types.

The studies in this volume suggest that every language has an adjective class, but these vary in character and in size. In its grammatical properties, an adjective class may beas similar to nouns, or to verbs, or to both, or to neither.ze. Whereas in some languages the adjective class is large and can be freely added to, in others it is small and closed. with just a dozen or so members. The book will interest scholars and advanced students of language typology and of the syntax and semantics of adjectives.

This volume of new work explores the forms and functions of serial verbs. The introduction sets out the cross-linguistic parameters of variation, and the final chapter draws out a set of conclusions. These frame fourteen explorations of serial verb constructions and similar structures in languages from Asia, Africa, North, Central and South America, and the Pacific. Chapters on well-known languages such as Cantonese and Thai are set alongside the languages of small hunter-gatherer and slash-and-burn agriculturalist groups.

A serial verb construction (sometimes just called serial verb) is...

This book considers how and why forms and meanings of different languages at different times may resemble one another. Its editors and authors aim to explain and identify the relationship between areal diffusion and the genetic development of languages, and to discover the means of distinguishing what may cause one language to share the characteristics of another.

A complement clause is used instead of a noun phrase; for example one can say either I heard the result] or I heard that England beat France]. Languages lacking complement clauses employ complementation strategies to achieve similar semantic results. Detailed studies of particular languages, including Akkadian, Israeli, Jarawara, and Pennsylvania German, are framed by R.M. W. Dixon's introduction, which sets out the range of issues, and his conclusion, which draws together the evidence and the arguments.

This book is a cross-linguistic examination of the different grammatical means languages employ to represent a general set of semantic relations between clauses. The investigations focus on ways of combining clauses other than through relative and complement clause constructions. These span a number of types of semantic linking. Three, for example, describe varieties of consequence -- cause, result, and purpose -- which may be illustrated in English by, respectively: Because John has been studying German for years, he speaks it well; John has been studying German for years, thus he speaks it...

The Grammar of Knowledge offers both a linguistic and anthropological perspective on the expression of information sources, as well as inferences, assumptions, probability and possibility, and gradations of doubt and beliefs in a range of languages. The book investigates twelve different languages, from families including Tibeto-Burman, Nakh-Dagestani, and Austronesian, all of which share the property of requiring the source of information to be specified in every sentence. In these languages, it may not be possible to say merely that 'the man went fishing'. Instead, the source of evidence...