A Grammar Of Kunbarlang

This is a comprehensive linguistic description of Kunbarlang (Gunbalang), a highly endangered polysynthetic language of northern Australia. Kunbarlang belongs to the non-Pama-Nyungan Gunwinyguan language family and is currently spoken by nearly 40 people. This work draws on elicitations and analysis of narratives from the author's original field work (2015--2018), as well as those from previous recordings. The main areas covered are the sound system, morphology, syntax, and aspects of lexical and constructional semantics. Dictated by the polysynthetic structure of the language and the patterns of its use, the principal focus of the work is the analysis of the verbal complex and the interaction between the verb and other constituents of the clause. The analysis strike a balance between taking into consideration the areal and genetic context, being informed by linguistic typology and theory, yet at the same time remaining data-driven and theory-neutral in the way generalisations are stated. Against the Australian and a broader cross-linguistic background, Kunbarlang possesses remarkable features at all levels of its organisation.

This is a comprehensive linguistic description of Kunbarlang (Gunbalang), a highly endangered polysynthetic language of northern Australia. Kunbarlang belongs to the non-Pama-Nyungan Gunwinyguan language family and is currently spoken by nearly 40 people. This work draws on elicitations and analysis of narratives from the author's original field work (2015--2018), as well as those from previous recordings. The main areas covered are the sound system, morphology, syntax, and aspects of lexical and constructional semantics. Dictated by the polysynthetic structure of the language and the patterns of its use, the principal focus of the work is the analysis of the verbal complex and the interaction between the verb and other constituents of the clause. The analysis strike a balance between taking into consideration the areal and genetic context, being informed by linguistic typology and theory, yet at the same time remaining data-driven and theory-neutral in the way generalisations are stated. Against the Australian and a broader cross-linguistic background, Kunbarlang possesses remarkable features at all levels of its organisation.

Adpositions are used, universally, to mark the roles of nominal participants in the verbal clause, most commonly indirect object roles. Practically all languages seem to have such markers, which begin their diachronic life as lexical words -- in this case either serial verbs or positional nouns. In many languages, however, adpositions also seem to have extended their diachronic life one step further, becoming verbal affixes. The main focus of this book is the tail-end of the diachronic life cycle of adpositions. That is, the process by which, having arisen first as nominal-attached prepositions or post-positions, they wind up attaching themselves to verbs. Our core puzzle is thus fairly transparent: How and why should morphemes that pertain functionally to nominals, and begin their diachronic life-cycle as nominal grammatical operators, wind up as verbal morphology? While the core five chapters of this book focus on the rise of verb-attached prepositions in Homeric Greek, its theoretical perspective is broader, perched at the intersection of three closely intertwined core components of the study of human language: (a) the communicative function of grammar; (b) the balance between universality and cross-language diversity of grammars; and (c) the diachrony of grammatical constructions, how they mutate over time. While paying well-deserved homage to the traditional Classical scholarship, this study is firmly wedded to the assumption, indeed presupposition, that Homeric Greek is just another natural language, spoken before written, designed as an instrument of communication, and subject to the same universal constraints as all human languages. And further, that those constraints--so-called language universals--express themselves most conspicuously in diachronic change. Lastly, in analyzing the synchronic variation and text distribution of prepositional constructions in Homeric Greek, this study relies primarily on the theory-laden method of Internal Reconstruction.

The Oxford Guide to Australian Languages is a wide-ranging reference work that explores the more than 550 traditional and new Indigenous languages of Australia. Australian languages have long played an important role in diachronic and synchronic linguistics and are a vital testing ground for linguistic theory. Until now, however, there has been no comprehensive and accessible guide to the their vast linguistic diversity. This volume fills that gap, bringing together leading scholars and junior researchers to provide an up-to-date guide to all aspects of the languages of Australia. The chapters in the book explore typology, documentation, and classification; linguistic structures from phonology to pragmatics and discourse; sociolinguistics and language variation; and language in the community. The final part offers grammatical sketches of a selection of languages, sub-groups, and families. At a time when the number of living Australian languages is significantly reduced even compared to twenty year ago, this volume establishes priorities for future linguistic research and contributes to the language expansion and revitalization efforts that are underway.

This is the very first publication mapping onomatopoeia in the languages of the world. The publication provides a comprehensive, multi-level description of onomatopoeia in the world’s languages. The sample covers six macro-areas defined in the WALS: Euroasia, Africa, South America, North America, Australia, Papunesia. Each language-descriptive chapter specifies phonological, morphological, word-formation, semantic, and syntactic properties of onomatopoeia in the particular language. Furthermore, it provides information about the approach to onomatopoeia in individual linguistic traditions, the sources of data on onomatopoeia, the place and the function of onomatopoeia in the system of each language.

The series builds an extensive collection of high quality descriptions of languages around the world. Each volume offers a comprehensive grammatical description of a single language together with fully analyzed sample texts and, if appropriate, a word list and other relevant information which is available on the language in question. There are no restrictions as to language family or area, and although special attention is paid to hitherto undescribed languages, new and valuable treatments of better known languages are also included. No theoretical model is imposed on the authors; the only criterion is a high standard of scientific quality. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert.

This book explores the time that we (think we) experience and the concept of time in our beliefs, our knowledge, and our fears. We believe that time passes, we know that death is inevitable, we fear that we are going to be late. How do these human feelings and sensations of time relate to metaphysical time of tenseless reality? What do different languages tell us about the nature of human time? And what exactly is the flow of time? The chapters in this volume bring together insights from linguists and philosophers to examine questions about time on the micro-level of physical reality, as well as time in language and discourse on the macro-level of social reality. The unifying theme is that in order to understand human time we have to discover not only how we think and speak about time, but also what it is that makes us think and speak about it in a certain way.

This is a comprehensive descriptive grammar of Trio, a Cariban language, spoken in the remote rainforest of Suriname and along the border in Brazil. Typologically interesting features of Trio include a basic word order Object-Verb-Subject and a system of evidentiality that expresses whether or not the speaker was eye-witness to an event. Trio has several grammatical morphemes that mirror the group's conceptualization of the world of the visible and the invisible in which they live; one is a facsimile marker that expresses that the denotee of a noun is manifestly but not intrinsically that denotee; the role of the individual in contributing to a harmonious collective, recognized by anthropologists as a salient aspect of Amazonian life, is expressed by two responsibility clitics. This grammar will be a valuable source-book for linguists, anthropologists, and everyone interested in the finer points of Guianan-Amazonian languages.