This book introduces lexical functions, a formal tool which ensures a systematic homogeneous description of two complementary families of relations between lexical units: derivations – paradigmatic lexical functions; collocations, which are constrained lexical combinations – syntagmatic lexical functions. Each lexical function is associated with a specific meaning and once it is applied to a given lexical unit, which is seen as its argument, the function returns, as its value, the

The collection is of interest to a broad readership – Slavic as well as general linguistic scholars, experienced researchers as well as advanced undergraduate or postgraduate students. Individual contributions can serve as background reading to topical seminars. The volume covers areas of semantics in which Slavic languages have traditionally or more recently played an important role in the general formal semantic discourse (e.g. aspect, event structure, genericity, tense, information structure,

This monograph examines sources of variation in the grammars of heritage speakers, focusing on word order in Turkish and Kurmanji Kurdish as heritage languages in the contexts of majority German and majority Turkish. By bringing together the relatively well-studied case of heritage Turkish and the less extensively researched case of heritage Kurdish, the study develops a comparative framework for identifying mechanisms that shape heritage grammars. It evaluates several explanatory factors, inclu

This book investigates inter-individual variability in the encoding and decoding of prosodic prominence relations. Formally, prosodic prominence relations are redundantly expressed by several acoustic parameters, such as changes in fundamental frequency, duration, and intensity. Functionally, prominence relations encode meaning, e.g., the information status of a word or referent. Both the formal and the functional side of prominence facilitate inter-individual variability. On the one hand, redun

The present volume addresses the way in which multiword expression resources are used in real-life downstream Natural Language Processing applications, how they interact with neural architectures and generative pre-trained language models and, more broadly, how linguistic theory and computational modeling can inform each other. It critically examines the properties of multiword expression resources and their integration into – or exclusion from – contemporary Natural Language Processing systems

The lexicalization of property concepts (PCs) — basic adjectival states such as big, small, hard, soft, black, white, fast, quick — has long been a central concern of both typology and linguistic theory. In historical Indo-European linguistics, PCs are most often examined through the lens of the “Caland System”, a complex derivational network of suffixes that structure the expression of such concepts. Yet while the nominal and adjectival exponents of this system have been intensively studied, th

Many people use several languages and dialects in their daily lives. What are the current scholarly models for and insights into this stunning capacity of the human mind? The book discusses research into multilingual practices and multiple language learning, from both cognitive and sociolinguistic angles. Discussion focuses on the repertoires of multilinguals and the processes of cross-linguistic influence, transfer and convergence that are typically observed on the levels of linguistic patterns

This book offers an analysis of the Japanese DP in line with the cartographic research program. It addresses theoretical linguists interested in nominal modification as well as scholars in the field of Japanese studies. The main results concern the identification of three domains, a DP-external domain, a domain for indirect modifiers and a domain for direct modifiers, with specific discussion on the latter two, and an account for the internal structure of nominal modifiers. On the one hand, this

Language landscapes is a practical map of English for TESL educators, built around form–meaning pairings and the needs of real classrooms. Adopting a CGEL-informed framework, it stabilizes the category – function distinction (e.g., determinatives vs determiner function), pares back overloaded labels (especially in the adverb/preposition space), and introduces syntax trees as a teacher’s analytic lens rather than a student exercise. Early chapters address standards and normativity alongside a usa

Much of human communication occurs while people are moving, exerting themselves, or otherwise not at rest, yet speech production in such contexts has received little systematic attention. Previous studies have typically addressed respiration, phonation, or articulation separately, making it difficult to characterize changes in speech production as a whole. This book presents a multi-level investigation of speech during controlled physical activity. Combining respiratory data, acoustic analysis,

Éí bik'ehgo kééhwiit'į́. 'In accord with that, we live.' So speaks a medicine man after recounting how the four sacred mountains were set in place to anchor the world of the Diné. To live in accord with something is to know where you stand, even when the ground shifts. And the ground shifted constantly across the late 19th and early 20th centuries: at Round Rock where armed men faced down U.S. cavalry; in the canyons where boys fled from bears; in the corrals from which sheep were driven away by

Os jarawaras são um povo indígena das terras baixas da Amazônia, no estado do Amazonas, Brasil. A língua deles é uma de meia dúzia de línguas da família linguística Arawá. Siko e Yowao, ambos falecidos agora, eram anciãos contadores de histórias jarawaras. As histórias têm valor sob vários pontos de vista. Em primeiro lugar, há o valor literário – algumas das histórias são muito cômicas, por exemplo. Em segundo lugar, as histórias constituem uma janela para a vida dos jarawaras: as suas relações

Das Buch ist eine abgeschlossene Einführung in das Framework der Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. In einem einführenden Kapitel wird der Übergang von einfachen Phrasenstrukturgrammatiken zu den komplexeren Repräsentationen mit Merkmalbeschreibungen motiviert. Das zweite Kapitel führt allgemein verständlich in den Formalismus der Merkmalstrukturen ein. In den verbleibenden Kapiteln werden phänomenbezogen verschiedene Grammatikbereiche diskutiert, wobei die Analysen jeweils für das Deutsche a

A key challenge of studying the historical phonology of any language is how to reconstruct the pronunciation of periods before the availability of sound recording. Many studies of pre-twentieth-century pronunciation rely on sources that comment on how people spoke, or infer pronunciation from spelling variation or rhymes. This book is the first to investigate the phonology of nineteenth-century English based on a new kind of written source material: it examines pronunciation evidence provided by

Thinking of and talking about future events is a crucial part of our everyday lives. Thus, it is not surprising that in the languages of the world, a variety of markers for future time reference has developed. The goal of this volume is to take a contrastive perspective on the evolution of future constructions by bringing together scholars working on different languages and language families. In doing so, the edited volume opens up new perspectives on long-standing questions regarding the diachr

The papers in this volume were selected from those presented at the 54th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, which was held at the University of Connecticut in June, 2024. The volume contains 22 papers with diverse topics within phonology, morphology, syntax, language acquisition, and historical linguistics. The African languages that are investigated in this volume include Kom, Igbo, Dagaare, Igala, Kalenjin, Rɨ̀kpá, Ekhwa Adara, Hausa, Nduga, Maa, Lugwere, Emai, Seenku, Kirundi, Chichew

This collection of ten texts in Uruangnirin offers insights into the language and culture of the inhabitants of the Karas Islands in eastern Indonesia. All stories relate to life and death. They range from narratives about important life events such as circumcision, engagement and burial to accounts of natural and supernatural threats to the environment of the Uruangnirin speakers. The presentation of the texts are as follows: first, the complete text in Uruangnirin with a free translation in

This monograph provides the first large-scale comparative study of how verbal morphology encodes directionality across Chadic languages. Drawing on a database of 91 languages spoken in Nigeria, Cameroon, and Chad, the book analyzes ventive, itive, vertical, and boundary-crossing extensions. The quantitative study examines where directional extensions occur and what meanings they can co-express, highlighting issues of multifunctionality and efficiency in grammar, as well as providing initial insi

Despite decades of scholarship on lexical borrowing in post-Conquest England, the vocabulary of the medieval countryside has remained largely outside the lens of contact linguistics — an oversight shaped by the long-standing assumption that French influence was confined to elite domains. At the same time, the multilingual reality of medieval England has made monolingual lexicography an increasingly inadequate tool: the Anglo-French, Medieval Latin, and Middle English lexicons of the period canno

The functional domain of apprehensionality encompasses grammatical markers or constructions which conventionally encode or pragmatically implicate that the situation described by the clause is an undesirable possibility. Its main manifestations discussed in this volume are (i) apprehensives, which are modal markers which can occur in main clauses, and thus could serve to translate English might in Don't go near this dog, it might bite (but also add a component of undesirability), and (ii) precau

What do people mean when they talk about the sound pattern of a language—what linguists call phonology? This book explores that question in a hands-on way, with a focus on applying the knowledge in language revitalization and community language work. The book introduces basic ideas and analytic strategies using examples from Indigenous languages across North and South America. Short comprehension checks invite you to test your understanding, and language explorations encourage you to apply what