In this collection a cast of distinguished contributors responds to and elaborates Charles Fillmore's and Paul Kay's "Construction Grammar." In contrast to the modular Chomskyan approach which treats grammatical constructions as epiphenomena, Construction Grammar works on the premise that constructions function as units of grammar in a way similar to words, and that their properties derive from complex interplays between lexicon, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

What do all languages have in common, and what gives each language its individuality? These typological questions are fundamental to linguistic theory. This collection comprises original contributions from leading scholars of the major schools of contemporary typological research, from the Prague School to the Generative Grammar tradition. Each contributor presents the theoretical foundations and practical achievements of his or her approach to language typology; the whole provides a unique overview of a field characterized by its diversity.

This book surveys the two main indigenous languages of Japan, Japanese and Ainu. No genetic relationship has been established between them, and structurally they differ significantly. Shibatani has therefore divided his study into two independent parts. The first is the most comprehensive study of the polysynthetic Ainu language yet to appear in English. The second part deals extensively with Japanese. It discusses topics from the evolution of the writing system and the differences between men's and women's speech, to issues of greater theoretical complexity, such as phonology, the lexicon...

This book is a detailed survey of the two main indigenous languages of Japan, Japanese and Ainu.