Synopsis:

Yongning Na, also known as Mosuo, is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Southwest China. This book provides a description and analysis of its tone system, progressing from lexical tones towards morphotonology. Tonal changes permeate numerous aspects of the morphosyntax of Yongning Na. They are not the product of a small set of phonological rules, but of a host of rules that are restricted to specific morphosyntactic contexts. Rich morphotonological systems have been reported in this area of Sino-Tibetan, but book-length descriptions remain few. This study of an endangered language contributes to a better understanding of the diversity of prosodic systems in East Asia.

The analysis is based on original fieldwork data (made available online), collected over the course of ten years, commencing in 2006.

This book is a new edition of https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/109

The analysis is based on original fieldwork data (made available online), collected over the course of ten years, commencing in 2006.

Synopsis:

The volume Discourse structure and narration: A diachronic view from Germanic deals with questions of information structuring at discourse level, focusing on narrative discourses. More precisely, it is about the contribution of grammatical devices to the organization of texts as well as their diagnostic potential for the narrative text type. Although it is well-known that information packaging had a much greater impact on the distribution of grammatical patterns in historical stages of a language than it does today, so far many studies on the relationship between information structure and grammatical patterns do not go beyond the sentence level, in other words, they do not take into account the possible influence of the text type on the manifestation of certain grammatical patterns. How and to which degree changes in grammatical patterns correlate or are affected by changes in either discourse and/or narrative structure, how the two layers interact with each other and affect each other, and how such issues can be operationalized are still understudied. This volume aims to shed more light on these issues by presenting eight papers, which address these questions more or less explicitly. As the research questions imply, the papers all take a historical or diachronic perspective. Another commonality between the studies is that they all focus on data from Germanic languages, as we assume that by comparing closely related languages, the relationships in question become more pronounced. Specifically, the languages in question are German, Dutch, English and Icelandic. Understandably, the contributions in this volume can only highlight some aspects of the complex relationship between grammar and narration(s). Addressing among others questions of narrative progression, temporal structure, reference tracking and discourse functions, the contributions discuss phenomena such as temporal adverbials at the left periphery as well as later in the clause, left dislocation structures, fronting of the finite verb in dependent and independent clauses, linguistic means to express aspectual and tense information, and the distribution of nominalization patterns across text types.

Synopsis:

Fillers are non-silent linguistic devices used in disfluencies to gain time while searching for words. In addition, they are frequently used intentionally to avoid words for reasons of politeness, ‘conspirational’ motivations, or rhetorical purposes. Two syntactically distinct types of conventionalized fillers can be distinguished: placeholders and hesitatives (also called hesitators). Placeholders are referential and morphosyntactically integrated, while hesitatives are neither. Strikingly, even though fillers are cross-linguistically widespread, dedicated studies of such items in particular languages are still largely lacking.

This collective volume comprises in-depth descriptions of conventionalized fillers in a substantial variety of languages from Eurasia, Papunesia, Australia, and the Americas, hoping to stimulate typological research on fillers, both hesitatives and placeholders. The book aims to contribute to a better visibility of the topic among general linguists, to make data and analyses accessible that will be useful for further typological studies on the topic, and to provide models for descriptive linguists.

The introductory chapter discusses issues emerging from the previous literature and offers a new typology of fillers. It also highlights the major findings of the eleven remaining chapters. Each of these contains a detailed and typologically informed analysis of fillers in one or several underdescribed languages, based on corpora of natural speech and focusing on lexical fillers rather than on phenomena below the word-level (phonetic lengthening, truncation) or above the word-level (such as idioms and discourse markers like ‘you know’, or rhetorical questions like ‘what’s the word for that?’). The chapters cover a large amount of diversity, both in terms of languages and with respect to the type of filler. They focus on (i) the criteria for identification of the various types of fillers and the terminology used, keeping in mind that the domain is still largely under construction, (ii) a detailed analysis in terms of morphosyntactic distribution and, if possible, (iii) frequency in speech, and (iv) some reflection on the diachronic development of these disfluency markers.

The smearing effect of kernel estimates of the local density, local proportions and local means is used as a means for the construction of anonymized maps. The standard anonymization criteria were derived for the display of case numbers of a predefined area system. However, for kernel estimates there does not exist such a defined area system. We discuss the resulting difficulties of the application of these criteria for kernel estimates. Besides, there are some de-anonymization risks which are specific for kernel estimates. We discuss these topics for data from 1.9 million Berlin taxpayers with known exact address and taxable income. In the conclusions we vote for a much stronger emphasis on the output format of a map and the labelling of the displayed values in the map.

We study a principal who allocates a good to agents with private, independently distributed values through an optimal mechanism. The principal can strategically shape these value distributions by modifying the good’s features, which affect agents’ valuations. Our analysis reveals that optimal designs are frequently divisive—creating goods that appeal strongly to specific agents or agent types while being less valued by others. These divisive designs reduce information rents and increase total surplus, at the expense of competition. Even when total surplus is constrained, some divisiveness in designs remains optimal.

Synopsis:

This book is composed of four studies that all investigate different aspects of word stress in Papuan Malay, an Austronesian language spoken in eastern Indonesia. These aspects, in order of presentation, include acoustic realisation, auditory perception, lexical analyses and word disambiguation. The introduction provides the theoretical background against which the studies are undertaken. All studies are empirical in nature; they either report acoustic analyses, production or perception experiments, or corpus-based analyses. Taken together, the results of all studies pose a challenge to maintaining a stressless analysis of Papuan Malay. At the same time, the type of word stress that emerges from the reported results is unlike its common theoretical conception and therefore requires more work to be integrated in prosodic theory. Given the controversy on word stress in Indonesian languages, the results are always discussed and carefully interpreted in a cross-linguistic context. In this way, the current thesis extends and deepens our knowledge and understanding of word stress in prosodic theory.

Synopsis:

The present volume in the series Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics collects a curated selection of papers from the 2023 Colloque de Syntax et Sémantique à Paris (CSSP 2023), held on December 7-8, 2023, at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. The result aims to be a snapshot of contemporary linguistic research in the areas of syntax and semantics.

The eight contributions investigate phenomena spanning focus, meaning, modification, and discourse, offering new insights into how grammatical structures encode and convey information, and illustrating how detailed empirical work informs our understanding of grammatical phenomena. Drawing on data from multiple languages and employing diverse analytical frameworks, these studies advance current debates while maintaining the methodological rigor characteristic of contemporary formal linguistics.

The collection provides a valuable resource for researchers and graduate students working in syntax, semantics, and related areas.

Synopsis:

Lexicography, in its many forms, is a very old, practical discipline solving practical problems concerning word usage. The term “word” seems more appropriate than “language” in this context, as lexicography addresses more questions relating to what we now call lexicology. As with all areas of human endeavour, what developed gradually through trial and error has eventually been subjected to a theoretical framework. The role of historical lexicography is to look back on the development of these highly varied word lists to understand how we arrived at the tremendous variety that characterises practice throughout the world.

This volume is both a selection of expanded papers from one conference on historical lexicography and lexicology, held under the aegis of the International Society for Historical Lexicography and Lexicology (ISHLL) in Lorient, France, in May 2022, and also the first in a new book series dedicated to the field. The new series represents a collaboration between two sister associations, ISHLL and the Helsinki Society for Historical Lexicography (HSHL). The volume contains texts in both English and French that provide insights into dictionaries, their compilers and users using evidence from numerous languages across the globe. It is also diachronic, moving from topics on medieval usage to contemporary issues concerning open access and digital publishing in historical lexicography. The title reflects the global scope of its authors and content, encompassing Japan to the United States, Eastern Europe to the United Kingdom, and Portugal.

Synopsis:

North American Norwegian (NAmNo) is a diasporic heritage variety of Norwegian spoken primarily in the Upper Midwest of the United States. NAmNo has been in use since the mid-19th century, but it is now moribund. This volume serves as a synopsis of previous research focusing on the syntax of this language while also expanding upon these findings in key domains. Beyond the rich empirical description of facets of North American Norwegian syntax, the chapters in this volume also contribute to theory-building efforts from a Minimalist perspective. Kari Kinn and Michael T. Putnam begin the volume introducing the language and the theoretical preliminaries of aspects of the Minimalist Program found throughout the volume. The introductory chapter is followed by a detailed history of the emigration and language during the settlement period by Arnstein Hjelde. Brita Ramsevik Riksem and Mari Nygård explore the intricacies of agreement in determiner phrases, while Yvonne van Baal investigates its properties of definiteness. Kari Kinn rounds out the contributions on aspects of determiner phrases by taking a closer look at how possession is licensed in these structures. Shifting focus to the verbal and clausal domains, Kristin Eide’s chapter addresses the syntactic reflexes of tense, modality, and aspect in NAmNo. The structure of non-finite clauses is the theme of Michael T. Putnam and Åshild Søfteland’s contribution, which is followed up by Merete Anderssen, Helene R. Jensberg, Terje Lohndal, Björn Lundquist, and Marit Westergaard’s treatment of verb second (V2) word and finite verb placement. Ida Larsson and Kari Kinn analyze argument placement in NAmNo, focusing particularly on subject shift, object shift, and verb particles. Michael T. Putnam and Kari Kinn conclude the volume with an epilogue, highlighting the key empirical and theoretical findings of these contributions as well as charting a course for future research on the syntax of NAmNo. In summary, this volume is the first of its kind whose mission is not only to simultaneously summarize previous and ongoing research on the syntax of NAmNo, but to also demonstrate the important role heritage language syntax contributes to our understanding of the acquisition, attrition, change, and maintenance of heritage language syntax.

Synopsis:

This book is dedicated to Ilse Zimmermann, who was a pioneer of Generative Grammar in Germany and made important contributions to the analysis of German and Slavic languages. It contains original articles by Zimmermann as well as newly written papers inspired by her work. Zimmermann's original articles cover a wide range of topics over a long period of research – the earliest dating from 1983 – and they make it clear that issues that are highly topical today have long been the subject of linguistic research. The newly written papers are closely related to Zimmermann's topics ranging from DP structure, verbal inflection and reciprocity to the modification of causative verbs, all from a Slavic perspective. They are rounded off by a contribution highlighting the leading role played by the Strukturelle Grammatik research group, of which Zimmermann was a member, in the development of linguistics in Germany.

Dieses Buch ist Ilse Zimmermann gewidmet, die eine Pionierin der Generativen Grammatik in Deutschland war und wichtige Beiträge zur Analyse des Deutschen und der slawischen Sprachen geleistet hat. Es enthält sowohl Originalartikel von Zimmermann als auch neu verfasste Beiträge, die durch ihre Arbeit inspiriert wurden. Zimmermanns Originalartikel decken ein breites Spektrum von Themen in einem langen Forschungszeitraum ab – der früheste datiert aus dem Jahr 1983 – und sie machen deutlich, dass Fragen, die heute hochaktuell sind, schon lange Gegenstand der linguistischen Forschung sind. Die neu verfassten Kapitel stehen in engem Zusammenhang mit Zimmermanns Themen. Sie reichen von der DP-Struktur über verbale Flexion und Reziprozität bis hin zur Modifikation kausativer Verben, alles aus slawischer Perspektive. Abgerundet werden sie durch einen Beitrag, der die führende Rolle der Forschungsgruppe Strukturelle Grammatik, deren Mitglied Zimmermann war, für die Entwicklung der Linguistik in Deutschland hervorhebt.

Synopsis:

Tsova-Tush is an East Caucasian language spoken in one single village in Eastern Georgia by approximately 300 speakers. Since its early description, scholars have been intrigued by the high degree of linguistic influence from the Georgian language. This book has a threefold goal: (1) To contribute to the overall description of the Tsova-Tush language, by filling gaps in the previous literature in absence of a reference grammar. (2) To contrast Tsova-Tush constructions with functionally equivalent constructions in Chechen and Ingush, its closest relatives, and with Georgian, the language of wider communication which all Tsova-Tush speakers speak as a second language, in order to form hypotheses concerning which Tsova-Tush construction is inherited, and which has arisen under influence of Georgian. (3) To provide the most probable diachronic scenario of language contact, by looking at historical Tsova-Tush language data, as well as at its historical sociolinguistics.

This book provides a basic description of Tsova-Tush, in particular in the domain of spatial cases (which exhibit a two-slot system similar to Daghestanian languages), TAME categories (indentifying a Iamitive and a Past Subjunctive developing indirect evidential semantics), complex verbs, and subordination and clause-chaining (which in Tsova-Tush is finite).

In terms of language contact, this book concludes that (1) Tsova-Tush conforms to most established borrowing hierarchies and theories surrounding intensity of contact, except for the borrowing of a verbal inflection marker in a remarkably early stage of contact; (2) The Georgian influence that Tsova-Tush shows in sources from the 1850 suggest that a notable increase in bilingualism occured already at a point where there was little institutional or numeral dominance of surrounding the Georgian-language population. A change in ethnic self-identification can be the underlying factor for the early instances of contact-induced change.

Synopsis:

Advances in Formal Slavic Linguistics 2022 brings together a collection of 22 articles originating as talks presented at the 15th Formal Description of Slavic Languages conference (FDSL 15) held in Berlin on 5–7 October, 2022. The contributions cover a broad spectrum of topics, including clitics, nominalizations, l-participles, the dual, verbal prefixes, assibilation, verbal and adjectival morphology, lexical stress, vowel reduction, focus particles, aspect, multiple wh-fronting, definiteness, polar questions, negation words, and argument structure in such languages as BCMS, Bulgarian, Czech, Macedonian, Polish, Russian, Slovenian, Ukrainian, and Upper Sorbian.

The wide range of topics explored in this volume underscores the diversity and complexity of Slavic languages. The contributions not only advance our understanding of languages belonging to the Slavic group but also offer fresh perspectives for linguistics more broadly