A Functional Grammar Of Gooniyandi

Download or read book A Functional Grammar of Gooniyandi written by William McGregor and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1990 with total page 639 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Phonetic, phonological, morphologic, semantic, and syntactic description of Gooniyandi, a language of the southern Kimberleys; relationship with nearby languages, especially Bunuba; kinship terms.

Download or read book Structure and Function – A Guide to Three Major Structural-Functional Theories written by Christopher S. Butler and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2003-06-30 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book and its companion volume present a detailed guide to three major structural-functional theories: Functional Grammar, Role and Reference Grammar and Systemic Functional Grammar. This first volume provides the necessary background through a discussion of the characteristics of functional theories, followed by a brief analysis of six approaches to language in the light of this discussion. These chapters lead to a characterization of a smaller set of ‘structural-functional grammars’, among which FG, RRG and SFG are central. An overview of each of these theories in relation to the simplex clause is then presented, followed by a more critical comparison. The remainder of the book deals with the structure and meaning of phrasal units, the representation of situations, and the treatment of tense, aspect, modality and polarity, across the three theories. A major feature of the book is the use of examples from corpora of English and other languages, which serve not only to exemplify theoretical and descriptive claims, but also at times to challenge them.

Download or read book A Grammar of Ngardi written by Thomas Ennever and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-11-08 with total page 795 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ngardi is a highly endangered language with fewer than 10 remaining speakers and is no longer being acquired by children. Despite the limited circulation of a draft dictionary (Cataldi, 2011), there has been no published reference grammar of this language. Upon publication, this work will constitute the most comprehensive grammar of any Ngumpin-Yapa language. The Ngardi language exhibits many of the same typologically interesting features first identified in the related language Warlpiri—namely phenomena of non-configurational syntax and null anaphora. This grammar also brings to light a number of unique properties which will be of interest to linguistic typologists and formal theorists. The registration of arguments both through case marking on free NPs as well as in pronominal enclitics is similar to Warlpiri but differs in its detail—particularly in the ability to register various non-core cases (e.g. locative and allative) as ‘arguments’ in the pronominal complex. Within the verbal system, Ngardi is notably for a large number of verbal inflections (~20) which mark various distinctions in tense, aspect and mood, as well as associated motion and speaker-centric directionality. Ngardi exhibits a highly articulated system of complex predication, covering both complex verb and serial verb constructions. Other typologically interesting aspects of the language include the presence of dedicated apprehensional constructions and interesting interactions between negation and clausal modality. The descriptive value of this grammar is enhanced by its sustained regional comparison of the linguistic features of Ngardi with those of neighbouring Ngumpin-Yapa and Western Desert languages. This grammar (and a forthcoming dictionary) of Ngardi will be of great significance to both those few remaining Ngardi speakers as well as the next generation of Ngardi people for whom accessible published materials will be an invaluable resource.

Download or read book A Grammar of Kuuk Thaayorre written by Alice R. Gaby and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This grammar offers a comprehensive description of Kuuk Thaayorre, a Paman language spoken on the west coast of Cape York Peninsula, Australia. The Paman languages of Cape York have long been recognized for their exhibition of considerable phonological, semantic and morphosyntactic change (e.g. Hale 1964, Dixon 1980). Yet there has until now been no published full reference grammar of a language from this area (some excellent dictionaries, theses and sketch grammars notwithstanding, e.g. Hall 1972, Alpher 1973, 1991, Crowley 1983, Kilham et al. 1986, Sutton 1995, Smith & Johnson 2000). On the basis of elicited data, narrative and semi-spontaneous conversation recorded between 2002 and 2008, as well as archival materials, this grammar details the phonetics and phonology, morphosyntax, lexical and constructional semantics and pragmatics of one of the few indigenous Australian languages still used as a primary means of communication. Kuuk Thaayorre possesses features of typological interest at each of these levels.

Download or read book Language Typology written by Alice Caffarel and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 726 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is intended as a systemic functional contribution to language typology both for those who would like to understand and describe particular languages against the background of generalizations about a wide range of languages and also for those who would like to develop typological accounts that are based on and embody descriptions of the systems of particular languages (rather than isolated constructions). The book is a unique contribution in at least two respects. On the one hand, it is the first book based on systemic functional theory that is specifically concerned with language typology. On the other hand, the book combines the particular with the general in the description of languages: it presents comparable sketches of particular languages while at the same time identifying generalizations based on the languages described here as well as on other languages. The volume explores eight languages, covering seven language families: French, German, Pitjantjatjara, Tagalog, Telugu, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Japanese.

Download or read book Meaning and Universal Grammar written by Cliff Goddard and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2002-05-31 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book develops a bold new approach to universal grammar, based on research findings of the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) program. The key idea is that universal grammar is constituted by the inherent grammatical properties of some 60 empirically established semantic primes, which appear to have concrete exponents in all languages. For six typologically divergent languages (Mangaaba-Mbula, Mandarin Chinese, Lao, Malay, Spanish and Polish), contributors identify exponents of the primes and work through a substantial set of hypotheses about their combinatorics, valency properties, complementation options, etc. Each study can also be read as a semantically-based typological profile. Four theoretical chapters by the editors describe the NSM approach and its application to grammatical typology. As a study of empirical universals in grammar, this book is unique for its rigorous semantic orientation, its methodological consistency, and its wealth of cross-linguistic detail.

Download or read book Yearbook of Morphology 2003 written by Geert Booij and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2003-08-31 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Yearbook of Morphology series, published since 1988, has proven to be an eminent support for the current upswing of morphological research and has set a standard for morphological research. The 2003 volume deals with the phenomenon of complex predicates consisting of a verb preceded by a preverb, presents historical evidence on the change of preverbal elements into prefixes, and discusses morphological parsing, and the role of paradigmatical relations in analogical change. It is relevant to theoretical, descriptive, and historical linguists, morphologists, phonologists, computational linguists, and psycholinguists.