Browse

An important design feature of language is the use of productive patterns in inflection. In English, we have pairs such as ‘enjoy’ — ‘enjoyed’, ‘agree’ — ‘agreed’, and many others. On the basis of this productive pattern, if we meet a new verb ‘transduce’ we know that there will be the form ‘transduced’. Even if the pattern is not fully regular, there will be a form available, as in ‘understand’ — ‘understood’. Surprisingly, this principle is sometimes violated, a phenomenon known as defectiveness, which means there is a gap in a word's set of forms: for example, given the verb ‘forego’, many if not most people are unwilling to produce a past tense. Although such gaps have been known to us since the days of Classical grammarians, they remain poorly understood. Defectiveness contradicts basic assumptions about the way inflectional rules operate, because it seems to require that speakers know that for certain words, not only should one not employ the expected rule, one should not employ any rule at all. This is a serious problem, since it is probably safe to say that all reigning models of grammar were designed as if defectiveness did not exist, and would lose a considerable amount of their elegance if it were properly factored in. This volume addresses these issues from a number of analytical approaches — historical, statistical and theoretical — and by using studies from a range of languages.

Deponency is a mismatch between form and function in language that was first described for Latin, where there is a group of verbs (the deponents) that are morphologically passive but syntactically active. This is evidence of a larger problem involving the interface between syntax and morphology: inflectional morphology is supposed to specify syntactic function, but sometimes it sends out the wrong signal. Although the problem is as old as the Western linguistic tradition, no generally accepted account of it has yet been given, and it is safe to say that all current theories of language have been constructed as if deponency did not exist. In recent years, however, linguists have begun to confront its theoretical implications, albeit largely in isolation from each other. There is as yet no definitive statement of the problem, nor any generally accepted definition of its nature and scope. This volume brings together the findings of scholars working in the area of morphological mismatches, and represents a typological and theoretical treatment of the topic.

Over the few past centuries, and the last 65 years in particular, there has been a remarkable reduction in global linguistic diversity, as people abandon minority language varieties and switch to larger, and what they perceive to be more economically, socially and politically powerful, regional or national languages. In addition, governments have been promoting standardised official languages for use in schooling, media, and bureaucracy, often under a rubric of linguistic unity supporting national unity. The last two decades have seen a significant increase in interest in minority languages and language shift, endangerment, and loss, in academia and among language speakers and the wider public. There has also been growing interest from anthropological linguists and sociolinguists in the study of language ideologies and beliefs about languages. This volume brings together chapters on theoretical and practical issues in these two areas, especially the views of linguists and communities about support for and revitalization of endangered languages. The chapters thus go straight to the heart of ideological bases of reactions to language endangerment among those most closely involved, drawing their discussions from case studies of how language ideologies and beliefs affect language practices (and vice versa). Most of the authors conduct collaborative community-based research and take a reflective engagement stance to investigate (potential) clashes in ideological perspectives. This is one of the key theoretical and practical issues in research on endangered languages, and so has important implications for language documentation, support and revitalization, as well as language policy at local, national and international levels.

Periphrasis is the phenomenon, well attested in the languages of the world, where a grammatical meaning which we expect to be expressed within a word actually has a syntactic expression. This means that periphrasis straddles the border between two major linguistic components, morphology (word structure) and syntax (sentence structure). This dual nature of periphrasis creates analytical and theoretical problems; to solve these, we need to broaden the range of the evidence examined and to adopt new theoretical approaches. The present volume answers both of these challenges. First, it presents new data on periphrasis, providing a wider typological perspective on the phenomenon than was previously available. The detailed analysis of periphrasis in individual languages from diverse linguistic families — Nakh-Daghestanian, Gunwinyguan (Australian), Uralic and Indo-European — expands our knowledge of the scope of periphrasis, and of its functions, both synchronically and diachronically. Second, the volume presents novel accounts of periphrasis from a number of theoretical approaches, including Canonical Typology, which together give a new perspective on the interaction of periphrasis with other linguistic phenomena. Periphrasis is demonstrated to behave as part of a morphological system in obeying the existing patterns, while formal accounts worked out within an HPSG approach reveal the systematic nature of its syntactic structure. This allows a clearer understanding of the relation between major components (morphology and syntax) in the overall architecture of the grammar.

It has been said that the study of names is a ‘paradigm case of the convergence of disciplines, where the history of language meets social history’. This volume illustrates that truth in relation to a privileged area of investigation, ancient Anatolia: the evidence from ancient Anatolia has exceptional chronological depth, reaching back to the second millennium BC; under the Roman empire it acquires exceptional density; and it has a complexity which reflects the arrival of many waves of immigrants (Persians, Greeks, Thracians, Galatians, Jews, Romans) in a region that was already culturally diverse. Names are often the only clue to the origins and history of a particular community. At a collective level, striking shifts in time within one community from one naming tradition to another most commonly attest cultural influence, occasionally actual population movement. But the interaction between different groups is such that it is often unsafe to infer an individual’s ethnic origin from name alone. Anatolian evidence also richly illustrates the psychology of naming, whether the Ionian taste for seemingly derogatory names deriving from the nursery, the fascination with luxury reflected in names such as Sardonyx and Nard, or the growing adoption by Greek civic elites of ‘second names’. Published exactly fifty years after Louis Robert’s Noms indigènes dans l’Asie Mineure gréco-romaine, this volume builds on and goes beyond that classic work, while remaining true to its guiding principle that ‘tout dépend des régions et des époques’.

This book examines the relationship between women, language, and grammar with particular reference to the Italian context between the sixteenth and the end of the nineteenth century, from the codification of Italian as a literary language to the formation of a unified state. It investigates the role played by women in the Italian linguistic tradition as addressees, readers, or authors of grammatical texts. In spite of the ever-growing interest in different aspects of women's life in the Western world through the centuries, little attention has been given up to now to women's linguistic education, their relationship with grammar, and the ideas about their use of language. In the context of Italy, these questions were virtually unexplored. This study is the result of extensive first-hand research and detailed analysis of primary sources (well-known texts, as well as minor and rare ones), brought together and made available to a wider public. Sources range from more specifically linguistic writings, to texts on women's education and conduct books, from literary works (e.g., novels, short stories, poetry, plays, satirical writings, children's literature), to official government documents, newspaper articles, women's magazines, school texts, letters, and memoirs). The book's interdisciplinary approach and the richness of its sources make it an engaging journey across four centuries in the history of the Italian language, the history of grammar, the history of linguistic thought, and the history of women and their education. Relevant illustrations accompany the book, offering readers a visual appreciation and understanding of its subjects and themes.