Sign Language and Linguistic Universals more books like this

by Wendy Sandler, Diane Lillo-Martin

Sign languages are of great interest to linguists, because while they are the product of the same brain, their physical transmission differs greatly from that of spoken languages. In this pioneering and original study, Wendy Sandler and Diane Lillo-Martin compare sign languages with spoken languages, in order to seek the universal properties they ...

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Phonology and Language Use more books like this

by Joan Bybee, S R Anderson (Editor), J Bresnan (Editor)

A research perspective that takes language use into account opens up new views of old issues and provides an understanding of issues that linguists have rarely addressed. Referencing new developments in cognitive and functional linguistics, phonetics, and connectionist modeling, this book investigates various ways in which a speaker/hearer's ...

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Introduction to Typology: The Unity and Diversity of Language more books like this

by Dr. Lindsay J Whaley

Ideal in introductory courses dealing with grammatical structure and linguistics analysis, Introduction to Typology overviews the major grammatical categories and constructions in the world's languages. Framed in a typological perspective, the constant concern of this primary text is to underscore the similarities and differences which underlie ...

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A Guide to the World's Languages: Volume I, Classification more books like this

by Merritt Ruhlen

This is the first of three pathbreaking volumes that will constitute a wide-ranging analytical guide to the world's approximately 5,000 languages. The volumes are written for both linguists and general readers, and this first volume in particular assumes no background in linguistics. A postscript prepared for this paperback edition takes research ...

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Linguistic Universals more books like this

by Ricardo Mairal (Editor), Juana Gil (Editor)

The discovery of 'linguistic universals' - the properties that all languages have in common - is a fundamental goal of linguistic research. Linguists face the task of accounting for why languages, which apparently differ so greatly from one another on the surface, display striking similarities in their underlying structure. This volume brings ...

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Language Universals and Linguistic Typology: Syntax and Morphology more books like this

by Bernard Comrie

Adopting an approach to the subject pioneered by Greenberg and others, Professor Comrie is particularly concerned with syntactico-semantic universals. The book has chapters on word order, case marking, relative clauses and causative contruction and is informed throughout by the conviction that an explanatory account of universal properties of ...

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Function, Selection and Innateness - The Emergence of Language Universals more books like this

by Simon Kirby

This book explores issues at the core of modern linguistics and cognitive science. Why are all languages similar in some ways and in others utterly different? Why do languages change and change variably? How did the human capacity for language evolve, and how far did it do so as an innate ability? Simon Kirby looks at these questions from a broad ...

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Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation more books like this

by Zoltan Kovecses

To what extent and in what ways is metaphorical thought relevant to an understanding of culture and society? More specifically: can the cognitive linguistic view of metaphor simultaneously explain both universality and diversity in metaphorical thought? Cognitive linguists have done important work on universal aspects of metaphor, but they have ...

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Parameters and Universals more books like this

by Richard S Kayne

This is a collection of previously published essays on comparative syntax by the distinguished linguist Richard Kayne. The papers cover issues of comparative syntax as they are applied to French, Italian, and other Romance languages and dialects, together forming a strongly cohesive set that will be valuable to both scholars and students.

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Linguistic Universals and Language Change more books like this

by Jeff Good (Editor)

This book looks at the relationship between linguistic universals and language change. Reflecting the resurgence of work in both fields over the last two decades, it addresses two related issues of central importance in linguistics: the balance between synchronic and diachronic factors in accounting for universals of linguistic structure, and the ...

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Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic Theory in Typological Perspective more books like this

by William Croft

Radical Construction Grammar presents a profound critique of syntactic theory and argumentation, and offers a genuinely new approach to syntax based on the fact of grammatical diversity. Recent syntactic theories are essentially formal models for the representation of grammatical knowledge and posit complex syntactic structures in the analysis of ...

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The Acquisition of Second-Language Syntax more books like this

by Susan Braidi

The issue of syntactic development is one central to both linguistics and applied linguistics. This book introduces students to the acquisition of syntax in a second language - a topic which also has important implications for teaching languages. Without assuming a detailed background knowledge of linguistics, the author builds a coherent picture ...

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Experimental Approaches to Phonology more books like this

by Maria-Josep Sole (Editor), Patrice Speeter Beddor (Editor), Manjari Ohala (Editor)

This wide-ranging survey of experimental methods in phonetics and phonology shows the insights and results provided by different methods of investigation, including laboratory-based, statistical, psycholinguistic, computational-modeling, corpus, and field techniques. The five chapters in the first part of the book examine the recent history and ...

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Semantics, Culture, and Cognition: Universal Human Concepts in Culture-Specific Configurations more books like this

by Anna Wierzbicka

To what extent are languages 'essentially the same'? Is every word in our language translatable into every other language or are some of our words and concepts 'culture specific'? In this innovative study, Wierzbicka ranges across a wide variety of languages and cultures, attempting to identify concepts which are truly universal, while at the same ...

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Universals of Sound Change in Nasalization more books like this

by John Hajek (Editor)

This book is the first detailed study since the 1970s of the characteristics of distinctive nasalization in sound change. Relying on copious cross-linguistic and experimental phonetic data, it evaluates the accuracy of universalist claims about nasalization phenomena, as well as the ability or otherwise of phonological formalism since the 1980s to ...

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Semantics: Primes and Universals more books like this

by Anna Wierzbicka

Conceptual primitives and semantic universals are the cornerstones of a semantic theory which Anna Wierzbicka has been developing for many years. Semantics: Primes and Universals is a major synthesis of her work, presenting a full and systematic exposition of that theory in a non-technical and readable way. It delineates a full set of universal ...

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Universals in linguistic theory more books like this

by Emmon Bach, Robert Thomas Harms

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Cross-Linguistic Perspectives on Language Processing more books like this

by Marica De Vincenzi, Marica Da Vincenzi (Editor), Vincenzo Lombardo (Editor)

The cross-linguistic aspect of language processing is becoming a central question in psycholinguistic research: if the goal of psycholinguists is to give a model of the human sentence processor, and not 'a language' sentence processor, a test of its cross-linguistic validity is essential. The chapters address truly fundamental issues about the ...

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The Origins of Vowel Systems. Studies in Teh Evolution of Language more books like this

by Bart De Boer

This book addresses the question of how the properties of human vowel systems can be explained. Though it is found that vowel systems of human languages are optimal for communicative purposes, it is not clear who is doing the optimization. If children learn a language, they learn to produce sounds that are as close as possible to those used by ...

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Language Universals more books like this

by Morten H Christiansen, Christopher Collins, Shimon Edelman

Languages differ from one another in bewildering and seemingly arbitrary ways. For example, in English, the verb precedes the direct object ('understand the proof'), but in Japanese, the direct object comes first. In some languages, such as Mohawk, it is not even possible to establish a basic word order. Nonetheless, languages do share certain ...

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Vernacular Universals and Language Contacts: Evidence from Varieties of English and Beyond more books like this

by Filppula Markku, Markku Filppula (Editor), Juhani Klemola (Editor)

In this book, contributors have been brought together to discuss the role of two major factors shaping the grammars of different varieties of English (and of other languages) all over the world: so-called vernacular universals and contact-induced change. Rather than assuming a general typological perspective, the studies in this volume focus on ...

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Semantic and Lexical Universals more books like this

by Goddard (Editor), Wierzbicka (Editor)

Identification of universal human concepts found in all languages can provide us with a tool for interpreting and explaining culture-specific meanings encoded in the language-and-culture systems of the world. This text attempts to empirically test a hypothetical set of semantic and lexical universals across a number of genetically and ...

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The Origins of Vowel Systems more books like this

by Bart De Boer

This book addresses the question of how the properties of human vowel systems can be explained. Though it is found that vowel systems of human languages are optimal for communicative purposes, it is not clear who is doing the optimization. If children learn a language, they learn to produce sounds that are as close as possible to those used by ...

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Iconicity in Syntax more books like this

by Haiman (Editor)

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Universals of Second Language Acquisition more books like this

by Fred R Eckman

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