Word Prominence In Languages With Complex Morphologies

This volume focuses on the theoretical and analytical challenges that languages with complex morphologies pose for the theory and typology of word-level prosodic phenomena. The morphological complexity and phonological length that are characteristic of words in these languages make them a particularly fruitful ground for investigating the effects of both phonological and morphological factors in the assignment of prominence. The first three chapters in the volume explore general theoretical issues pertaining to word prominence in synthetic languages, including the issue of 'wordhood' and the empirical, theoretical, and methodological issues with delineating word-level prominence and the higher-level prosodic phenomena in these languages. These are followed by a series of case studies on stress, accent, and tone in a geographically and genetically diverse set of languages with highly synthetic morphologies including languages of the Americas, Europe and Asia, and Australia. The volume adopts an interdisciplinary perspective, combining phonetic, phonological, and morphosyntactic insights. It will be of interest not only to phonologists and morphologists, but to all those interested in the typological and theoretical issues relating to polysynthetic languages.

Representing Phonological Detail Part I: Segmental Structure and Representations Part II: Syllable, Stress and Sign Part II of Representing Phonological Detail focuses on the latest phonological research on suprasegmental structure and sign language. The first main theme in this volume is syllable structure, touching on phonotactics, syllabification, gemination, syllable weight, diphthongization, and other rules. The other main theme is tone and stress, including issues in data collection, the assignment of primary and secondary stress, resolution of stress clashes, lexical accent, and syntax-tone interaction. The final section is on sign language, with special attention paid to iconicity, phonological processes, and the relation between phonetic and phonological representation.

Illustrated with real-life examples throughout, this book provides a complete introduction to one of the most fundamental question about what it means to be human: how does human language arise in the mind? Theory is explained in an easy-to-understand way, making it accessible for students without a background in linguistics.

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

This book collects the contributions presented at the international congress held at the University of Bologna in January 2007, where leading scholars of different persuasions and interests offered an up-to-date overview of the current status of the research on linguistic universals. The papers that make up the volume deal with both theoretical and empirical issues, and range over various domains, covering not only morphology and syntax, which were the major focus of Greenberg’s seminal work, but also phonology and semantics, as well as diachrony and second language acquisition. Diverse perspectives illustrate and discuss a huge number of phenomena from a wide variety of languages, not only exploring the way research on universals - tersects with different subareas of linguistics, but also contributing to the ongoing debate between functional and formal approaches to explaining the universals of language. This stimulating reading for scientists, researchers and postgraduate students in linguistics shows how different, but not irreconcilable, modes of explanation can complement each other, both offering fresh insights into the investigation of unity and diversity in languages, and pointing to exciting areas for future research. • A fresh and up-to-date survey of the present state of research on Universals of Language in an international context, with original contributions from leading specialists in the eld. • First-hand accounts of substantive ndings and theoretical observations in diff- ent subareas of linguistics. • Huge number of linguistic phenomena and data from diffferent languages a- lyzed and discussed in detail.

Both compounds and multi-word expressions are complex lexical units, made up of at least two constituents. The most basic difference is that the former are morphological objects and the latter result from syntactic processes. However, the exact demarcation between compounds and multi-word expressions differs greatly from language to language and is often a matter of debate in and across languages. Similarly debated is whether and how these two different kinds of units complement or compete with each other. The volume presents an overview of compounds and multi-word expressions in a variety of European languages. Central questions that are discussed for each language concern the formal distinction between compounds and multi-word expressions, their formation and their status in lexicon and grammar. The volume contains chapters on German, English, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Russian, Polish, Finnish, and Hungarian as well as a contrastive overview with a focus on German. It brings together insights from word-formation theory, phraseology and theory of grammar and aims to contribute to the understanding of the lexicon, both from a language-specific and cross-linguistic perspective.

This is the most comprehensive book to date on word formation in terms of scope of topics, schools and theoretical positions. All contributions were written by the leading scholars in their respective areas.

This volume examines the concept of 'word' in its many guises and across many languages. 'Word' is a cornerstone for the understanding of any language: it is a pronounceable phonological unit; it has a meaning and a morphological structure and syntactic function; and it exists as a dictionary entry and an orthographic item. Speakers also understand 'word' as a psychological reality: they can talk about the meaning of a word and its suitability in certain social contexts. However, the relationship between the phonological word and grammatical word can be more complex, in that a phonological word can consist of more than one grammatical word, or vice versa. Following an introduction outlining the parameters of variation for phonological word and grammatical word, the chapters in this volume explore how the concept of 'word' can be applied to languages of diverse typological make-up, from the highly synthetic to highly analytic. The data are drawn from languages of Australia and the Pacific (Fijian, Yalaku, Yidiñ), the Americas (Chamacoco, Murui, Jarawara), Asia (Hmong, Japanese, Lao), and Africa (Makary Kotoko), with a final chapter that investigates the properties of 'word' from a cross-linguistic perspective. The volume advances our understanding of what constitutes a word, and will be a valuable resource for scholars and students of typology, linguistic anthropology, phonology, and grammar.