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The 'Discriminative Lexicon Model' is a new theory of how we process words, which moves radically away from most standard theories of morphology. This book introduces the Discriminative Lexicon from both a practical and a theoretical perspective. The first half explains the basic theory and the main parts of 'JudiLing', the Julia package implementing the theory. This is complimented by theory boxes introducing the core concepts underlying the model, such as Matrix Multiplication and the Rescorla-Wagner learning rule. The second half provides a series of case studies spanning languages as diverse as Maltese, Biblical Hebrew, Dutch, Navajo, Estonian and French, as well as multilingual settings. It also shows how behavioural data like lexical decision reaction times, acoustic durations or tongue movements can be modelled. These are accompanied by practice exercises. It is essential reading for researchers and students in a wide range of linguistic fields, including phonetics and computational linguistics.
We are all familiar with coming across a new word, whether it has just been invented or whether we have just not met it before. How do we invent new words? How do we understand words that we have never heard before? What are the limits on the kinds of words we produce? How have linguists and grammarians dealt with the phenomenon of creating new words, and how justified are their ways of viewing such words? In this concise and compelling book, Professor Bauer, one of the world's best-known morphologists, looks back over fifty years of his work, seeking out overlooked patterns in word-formation, and offering new solutions to recurrent problems. Each section deals with a different morphological problem, meaning that the book can either be read from start to finish, or alternatively used as a concise reference work on the key issues and problems in the field.
The study of orthography (spelling and writing systems), and its development over the history of language, is central to many areas of linguistic enquiry, offering insight into syntactic and morphological structures, phonology, typology, historical linguistics, literacy and reading, and the social and cultural context of language use. With contributions from a global team of scholars, this Handbook provides the first comprehensive overview of this rapidly developing field, tracing the development of historical orthography, with special emphasis on the last and present centuries. Chapters are split into five key thematic areas, with a focus throughout on the interplay between theory and practice. It also explores the methods used in studying historical orthography, and the principles involved in the development of a spelling system. Providing a critical assessment of the state of the art in the field, it is essential reading for anyone with an interest in writing systems and historical linguistics.
Supported by data from linguistic fieldwork conducted in the Faroe Islands and Iceland, this book presents a pioneering approach to syntactic analysis, 'Optimal Linking Grammar' (OLG), which brings together two existing models, Linking Theory and Optimality Theory (OT). OT, which assumes spoken language to be based on the highest-ranking outcome from a number of competing underlying constraints, has been central mainly to phonology; however its application to syntax has also gained ground in recent years. OLG not only provides a robust account of case-marking phenomena in Faroese and Icelandic; it also explains a wide range of sentence types, including passives, ditransitives, object shift, and word order variation. The book demonstrates how OLG can resolve numerous issues in competing theories of formal syntax, and how it might be successfully applied to other languages in future research. It is essential reading for researchers and students in syntax, morphology, sociolinguistics, and European languages.
Combining Forms (CFs) are a major morphological phenomenon in Modern English, yet while they have been discussed in some morphological literature, no full-length study has been devoted to this topic so far. This pioneering book addresses that gap by providing a framework in which CFs are marked as distinct from their neighbouring categories such as abbreviations and blending. It splits CFs into four distinct categories – neoclassical (e.g. bio-therapy, zoo-logy), abbreviated (e.g. e-reader, econo-politics), secreted (e.g. oil-gate, computer-holic) and splinters (e.g. docu- from documentary in docudrama). It shows that the notion of CF spans a wide spectrum of processes, from regular composition to abbreviation, from blending to analogy, and schema. Modern and emerging English CFs are analysed by adopting a corpus-based approach, and measuring their realised, expanding, and potential productivity. Comprehensive yet accessible, it is essential reading for researchers and advanced students of morphology, English historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, and lexicography.
The study of morphology is central to linguistics, and morphotactics – the general principles by which the parts of a word form are arranged – is essential to the study of morphology. Drawing on evidence from a range of languages, this is a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the principles of morphotactic analysis. Stump proposes that the arrangement of word forms' grammatically significant parts is an expression of the ways in which a language's morphological rules combine with one another to form more specific rules. This rule-combining approach to morphotactics has important implications for the synchronic analysis of both inflectional and derivational morphology, and it provides a solid conceptual platform for understanding both the processing of morphologically complex words and the paths of morphological change. Laying the groundwork for future research on morphotactic analysis, this is essential reading for researchers and graduate students in linguistics, and anyone interested in understanding language structure.
Bringing together the results of sixty years of research in typology and universals, this textbook presents a comprehensive survey of Morphosyntax - the combined study of syntax and morphology. Languages employ extremely diverse morphosyntactic strategies for expressing functions, and Croft provides a comprehensive functional framework to account for the full range of these constructions in the world's languages. The book explains analytical concepts that serve as a basis for cross-linguistic comparison, and provides a rich source of descriptive data that can be analysed within a range of theories. The functional framework is useful to linguists documenting endangered languages, and those writing reference grammars and other descriptive materials. Each technical term is comprehensively explained, and cross-referenced to related terms, at the end of each chapter and in an online glossary. This is an essential resource on Morphosyntax for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, and linguistic fieldworkers.
Morphological structures interact dynamically with lexical processing and storage, with the parameters of morphological typology being partly dependent on cognitive pathways for processing, storage and generalization of word structure, and vice versa. Bringing together a team of well-known scholars, this book examines the relationship between linguistic cognition and the morphological diversity found in the world's languages. It includes research from across linguistic and cognitive science sub-disciplines that looks at the nature of typological diversity and its relationship to cognition, touching on concepts such as complexity, interconnectedness within systems, and emergent organization. Chapters employ experimental, computational, corpus-based and theoretical methods to examine specific morphological phenomena, and an overview chapter provides a synthesis of major research trends, contextualizing work from different methodological and philosophical perspectives. Offering a novel perspective on how cognition contributes to our understanding of word structure, it is essential reading for psycholinguists, theoreticians, typologists, computational modelers and cognitive scientists.
There are many ways in which we, as speakers, are creative in how we form and interpret new words. Working across the interfaces of psychology, linguistics, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics, this book presents cutting-edge interdisciplinary research, showing how we manipulate the range of linguistic tools at our disposal to create an infinite range of words and meanings. It provides both a theoretical account of creativity in word-formation and word-interpretation, and an experimental framework with the corresponding results obtained from more than seven hundred participants. Data drawn from this vast range of speakers shows how creativity varies across gender and age, and demonstrates the complexity of relationships between the examined variables. Pioneering in its scope, this volume will pave the way for a brand new area of research in the formation and interpretation of complex words.
A lively introduction to morphology, this textbook is intended for undergraduates with relatively little background in linguistics. It shows students how to find and analyze morphological data and presents them with basic concepts and terminology concerning the mental lexicon, inflection, derivation, morphological typology, productivity, and the interfaces between morphology and syntax on the one hand and phonology on the other. By the end of the text students are ready to understand morphological theory and how to support or refute theoretical proposals. Providing data from a wide variety of languages, the text includes hands-on activities designed to encourage students to gather and analyse their own data. The third edition has been thoroughly updated with new examples and exercises. Chapter 2 now includes an updated detailed introduction to using linguistic corpora, and there is a new final chapter covering several current theoretical frameworks.
A state-of-the-art survey of complex words, this volume brings together a team of leading international morphologists to demonstrate the wealth and breadth of the study of word-formation. Encompassing methodological, empirical and theoretical approaches, each chapter presents the results of cutting-edge research into linguistic complexity, including lexico-semantic aspects of complex words, the structure of complex words, and corpus-based case studies. Drawing on examples from a wide range of languages, it covers both general aspects of word-formation, and aspects specific to particular languages, such as English, French, Greek, Basque, Spanish, German and Slovak. Theoretical considerations are supported by a number of in-depth case studies focusing on the role of affixes, as well as word-formation processes such as compounding, affixation and conversion. Attention is also devoted to typological issues in word-formation. The book will be an invaluable resource for academic researchers and graduate students interested in morphology, linguistic typology and corpus linguistics.
This book is the second edition of a highly successful introduction to the study of word-formation, that is, the ways in which new words are built on the bases of other words (e.g. happy - happy-ness), focusing on English. The book's didactic aim is to enable students with little or no prior linguistic knowledge to do their own practical analyses of complex words. Readers are familiarized with the necessary methodological tools to obtain and analyze relevant data and are shown how to relate their findings to theoretical problems and debates. The second edition incorporates new developments in morphology at both the methodological and the theoretical level. It introduces the use of new corpora and data bases, acquaints the reader with state-of-the-art computational algorithms modeling morphology, and brings in current debates and theories.
Morphology is the study of how words are put together. A lively introduction to the subject, this textbook is intended for undergraduates with relatively little background in linguistics. Providing data from a wide variety of languages, it includes hands-on activities such as 'challenge' boxes, designed to encourage students to gather their own data and analyze it, work with data on websites, perform simple experiments, and discuss topics with each other. There is also an extensive introduction to the terms and concepts necessary for analyzing words. Unlike other textbooks it anticipates the question 'is it a real word?' and tackles it head on by looking at the distinction between dictionaries and the mental lexicon. This second edition has been thoroughly updated, including new examples and exercises as well as a detailed introduction to using linguistic corpora to find and analyze morphological data.
Surveying over 300 languages, this typological study presents new theoretical insights into the nature of agreement, as well as empirical findings about the distribution of agreement patterns in the world's languages. Focussing primarily on agreement in gender, number and person, but with reference to agreement in other smaller categories, Ranko Matasović aims to discover which patterns of agreement are widespread and common in languages, and which are rather limited in their distribution. He sheds new light on a range of important theoretical questions such as what agreement actually is, what areal, typological and genetic patterns exist across agreement systems, and what problems in the analysis of agreement remain unresolved.
In both Romance and English literature, relational adjectives have received special attention due to their apparently idiosyncratic behaviour, as both nouns and adjectives at the same time. Stepping away from the usual analyses that concentrates generally on their noun-like properties, this pioneer work explains their peculiar behaviour that has so far represented a challenge for current morphological theories. Mihaela Marchis Moreno takes an empirical approach to their distribution, and the syntactic and semantic conditions that govern their use. Drawing upon key findings from previous literature she proposes a new model of how relational adjectives work both cross-linguistically, and across the various interfaces of language.
Are compounds words or phrases - or are they neither or both? How should we classify compounds? How can we deal with the fact that the relationship between the elements of sugar pill ('pill made of sugar') is different from that in sea-sickness pill ('pill to prevent sea-sickness')? Are compounds a linguistic universal? How much do languages vary in the way their compounds work? Why do we need compounds, when there are other ways of creating the same meanings? Are so-called neoclassical compounds like photograph really compounds? Based on more than forty years' research, this controversial new book sets out to answer these and many other questions.
Inflectional morphology plays a paradoxical role in language. On the one hand it tells us useful things, for example that a noun is plural or a verb is in the past tense. On the other hand many languages get along perfectly well without it, so the baroquely ornamented forms we sometimes find come across as a gratuitous over-elaboration. This is especially apparent where the morphological structures operate at cross purposes to the general systems of meaning and function that govern a language, yielding inflection classes and arbitrarily configured paradigms. This is what we call morphological complexity. Manipulating the forms of words requires learning a whole new system of structures and relationships. This book confronts the typological challenge of characterising the wildly diverse sorts of morphological complexity we find in the languages of the world, offering both a unified descriptive framework and quantitative measures that can be applied to such heterogeneous systems.
The Cambridge Handbook of Morphology describes the diversity of morphological phenomena in the world's languages, surveying the methodologies by which these phenomena are investigated and the theoretical interpretations that have been proposed to explain them. The Handbook provides morphologists with a comprehensive account of the interlocking issues and hypotheses that drive research in morphology; for linguists generally, it presents current thought on the interface of morphology with other grammatical components and on the significance of morphology for understanding language change and the psychology of language; for students of linguistics, it is a guide to the present-day landscape of morphological science and to the advances that have brought it to its current state; and for readers in other fields (psychology, philosophy, computer science, and others), it reveals just how much we know about systematic relations of form to content in a language's words - and how much we have yet to learn.
Using extensive data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (Davies, 2008), this groundbreaking book shows that the syntactic patterns in which English nominalizations can be found and the range of possible readings they can express are very different from what has been claimed in past theoretical treatments, and therefore that previous treatments cannot be correct. Lieber argues that the relationship between form and meaning in the nominalization processes of English is virtually never one-to-one, but rather forms a complex web that can be likened to a derivational ecosystem. Using the Lexical Semantic Framework (LSF), she develops an analysis that captures the interrelatedness and context dependence of nominal readings, and suggests that the key to the behavior of nominalizations is that their underlying semantic representations are underspecified in specific ways and that their ultimate interpretation must be fixed in context using processes available within the LSF.
A Slovenian citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Franz Miklosich (1813–91) studied at the University of Graz before moving to Vienna in 1838. Indo-European philology was a growing area of research, and in 1844 Miklosich reviewed Bopp's Comparative Grammar (also reissued in this series) and embarked upon extending the comparative method across the whole Slavonic language family. Miklosich's work marked a watershed in Slavonic studies; in 1849 he became Austria's first professor of Slavonic philology. His publications included editions of historical sources; work on loan words, place names, and Romany dialects; a dictionary of Old Church Slavonic; and a four-volume comparative grammar of the Slavonic languages (1852–74, also available). This etymological dictionary of the Slavonic languages was published in 1886, the year of Miklosich's retirement. It encompasses Old Slavonic forms (where attested), the whole range of modern Slavonic languages, and loan words, and includes an index for 'difficult to find' words.