Evaluative Morphology From A Cross Linguistic Perspective

This book presents the results of the first interdisciplinary approach to evaluative morphology based on the intersection of evaluative morphology and areal typology, and provides the first large-scale typological research based on a sample of 200 languages. Furthermore, it also represents the first work dealing with evaluative morphology as a feature of Standard Average European by comparing the SAE and world samples. Methodologically, it introduces the parameter of Evaluative Morphology Saturation, which identifies the richness of evaluative morphology in individual languages by reflecting the semantic, word-class and word-formation aspects of evaluative morphology. As such, this book provides a new and innovative approach to studying the semantics of evaluative morphology and evaluative-formation, represented by two cognitively founded models, a radial model of EM semantics and a model of evaluative formation. It is also the first contrastive psycholinguistic work that studies phonetic iconicity in evaluative morphology by way of experimental research into five different age groups of informants speaking three different languages.

Reviews and debates the latest theoretical approaches to evaluative morphology

Drawing on innovative research, the book reveals the wealth and breadth of the study of word-formation, both theoretically and empirically.

This book offers the first systematic study of the early phases in the acquisition of derivational morphology from a cross-linguistic and typological perspective. It presents ten empirical longitudinal studies in genealogically and typologically diverse languages (Indo-European, Finno-Ugric, Altaic) with different degrees of derivational complexity. Data collection, analysis and systematic comparison between child speech and parental child-directed speech are strictly parallel across the chapters. In order to identify the productivity of a derivational pattern, signalling the crucial developmental stage in its acquisition, the concept of the mini-paradigm criterion was applied. Similar developmental processes can be observed in all children, independent of the language they acquire, but the children’s courses of development also show obvious typological differences. This points towards an important impact of the structural properties of the specific language on emergence, use and the early course of development of derivational patterns.

In recent decades, research on clear and approximate categorizations and their manifestations in language has been generating a number of studies on syntax, semantics, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, philosophy, and logic. This is particularly interesting because these two operations have formally similar realizations even in languages belonging to different groups. The existence of a large number of type nouns testifies to their productivity. If these nouns serve to both categorize and approximate, the fundamental question is that of identifying the processes of interpretation concerned, since there is not always a consensus on interpretation. This book makes it clear that there are different ways to reach the category associated with a word by putting into perspective the issues surrounding the categorization and approximation and by comparing the ways of expression in languages belonging to different language groups. All in all, by investigating syntactic, morphological, and semantic correlations between type noun binominals and other constructions in various languages, this volume will provide an overview of the current state of research on the subject in order to help scholars and students to grasp the meaning and the cognitive foundations of approximation and categorization. The functioning of each language might clarify the links between categorization and approximation, two often opposed, yet essentially indissociable, operations.

This volume presents articles by formal linguists on quantification in (relatively) understudied languages. The ten contributions provide analysis of quantificational phenomena in languages from nine different families: Eskimo-Aleut, Algonquian, Na-Dene, Austronesian, Basque, Quechua, Otomanguean, Bantu, and Chadic. Approximately half of the papers present systematic overviews of quantificational phenomena in the respective languages; the remainder of the papers present theoretical analyses of specific quantificational constructions. The cross-linguistic focus of this volume enables standard theories of quantification to be challenged by languages other than those for which they were originally designed. The volume as a whole also uncovers a number of cross-linguistically common properties in the realm of quantification. The research presented here forms part of a growing trend towards formal study of understudied languages. This is a process which will ultimately lead us to a greatly enriched understanding of the universal human language faculty. The authors are all experts on their respective languages, most with many years field experience. All the authors have theoretical expertise in the area of quantification. This book will be of interest to semanticists and syntacticians working on quantification, to specialists in the languages discussed, and to semantic and syntactic fieldworkers. * This volume presents articles on quantification in (relatively) understudied languages * The authors are all experts on their respective languages

This book deals with the emergence of nominal morphology from a cross-linguistic perspective and is closely related to Development of Verb Inflection in First Language Acquisition (ed. by D. Bittner, W. U. Dressler, M. Kilani-Schoch) both methodologically and theoretically. Each of the fourteen contributions studies the early development of the fundamental inflectionally expressed categories of the noun (number, case, gender) in one of the languages belonging to different morphological types (isolating, fusional-inflecting, agglutinating, root inflecting) and families (Germanic, Romance, Slavic/Baltic, Greek, Finnic, Turc, Semitic, Indian American). The analyses are based on parallel longitudinal observations of children in their second and early third year of life as well as their input. The focus lies on the transition from a pre-morphological to a proto-morphological stage in which grammatical oppositions and so-called "mini-paradigms" begin to develop. The point at which children start to discover the morphological structure of their language and the speed with which they develop inflectional distinctions of lexical items has been found to be dependent on the morphological richness of the input language on the paradigmatic as well as the syntagmatic axis of linguistic structure. The findings are interpreted within non-nativist theoretical frameworks (Natural Morphology, Usage-based theories).