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Evidentiality is one of the most fascinating categories of human languages. In a number of languages, scattered across the world, every statement must contain a specification of the type of evidence on which it is based - whether the speaker saw it, or heard it, or inferred it from indirect evidence, or learnt it from somebody else. This is a very powerful device for human communication. Many people think that it would be a good thing if our politicians had to talk in this way. The book investigates a variety of other grammatical categories related to evidentiality, such as aspect and person.
Evidentials (Linguistics) --- Evidentiality (Linguistics) --- Grammar, Comparative and general --- Modality (Linguistics) --- Semantics
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This is the first cross-linguistic study of imperatives, and commands of other kinds, across the world's languages. It makes a significant and original contribution to the understanding of their morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic characteristics. The author discusses the role imperatives and commands play in human cognition and how they are deployed in different cultures, and in doing so offers fresh insights on patterns of human interaction and communcation.Alexandra Aikhenvald examines the ways of framing commands, or command strategies, in languages that do not have special i
Grammar, Comparative and general --- Language and languages --- Grammar --- Grammar, Polyglot --- Polyglot grammar --- Imperative (Grammar) --- Jussive (Grammar) --- Imperative. --- Grammars. --- Mood --- Verb --- Linguistics --- Philology
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This is a comprehensive reference grammar of Tariana, an endangered Arawak language from a remote region in the northwest Amazonian jungle. Its speakers traditionally marry someone speaking a different language, and as a result most people are fluent in five or six languages. Because of this rampant multilingualism, Tariana combines a number of features inherited from the protolanguage with properties diffused from neighbouring but unrelated Tucanoan languages. Typologically unusual features of the language include: an array of classifiers independent of genders, complex serial verbs, case marking depending on the topicality of a noun, and double marking of case and of number. Tariana has obligatory evidentiality: every sentence contains a special element indicating whether the information was seen, heard, or inferred by the speaker, or whether the speaker acquired it from somebody else. This grammar will be a valuable source-book for linguists and others interested in natural languages.
Tariana language --- Yavi language --- Arawakan languages --- Grammar. --- Arts and Humanities --- Language & Linguistics
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This work explores the expression of information source, inferences, assumptions, probability and possibility, and gradations of doubt and beliefs across a wide range of languages in different cultural settings. Like others in the series it will interest both linguists and linguistically-minded anthropologists.
Grammar, Comparative and general --- Typology (Linguistics) --- Language and languages --- Linguistic typology --- Linguistics --- Linguistic universals --- Syntax --- Syntax. --- Typology --- Classification --- Philology --- Grammar, Comparative and general Syntax
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A cross-linguistic examination of the grammatical means languages employ to represent a set of semantic relations between clauses, this text features 14 real-world studies of languages ranging from Korean and Kham to Iquito and Ojibwe.
Grammar, Comparative and general --- Language and languages --- Grammar --- Grammar, Polyglot --- Polyglot grammar --- Comparative grammar --- Grammar, Philosophical --- Grammar, Universal --- Philosophical grammar --- Linguistics --- Philology --- Clauses --- Grammars. --- Grammar, Comparative --- Semantics --- Formal semantics --- Semasiology --- Semiology (Semantics) --- Comparative linguistics --- Information theory --- Lexicology --- Meaning (Psychology) --- Sentences --- Syntax --- Semantics. --- Clauses.
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One of the most complex topics in the study of the indigenous languages of the Americas, and indeed in the study of any language set, is the complex behaviour of multi-verb constructions. In many languages, several verbs can co-occur in a sentence, forming a single predicate. This book contains a first survey of such constructions in languages of North, Middle, and South America. Though it is not a systematic typological survey, the combined insights from the various chapters give a very rich perspective on this phenomenon, involving a host of typologically diverse constructions, including serial verb constructions, auxiliaries, co-verbs, phasal verbs, incorporated verbs, et cetera Aikhenvald's long introduction puts the chapters into a single perspective.
Grammar, Comparative and general --- Indians of North America --- Indians of South America --- American aborigines --- American Indians --- First Nations (North America) --- Indians of the United States --- Indigenous peoples --- Native Americans --- North American Indians --- Coordination (Linguistics) --- Parallelism (Linguistics) --- Verb --- Coordinate constructions. --- Verb. --- Languages --- Grammar. --- Languages. --- Culture --- Ethnology --- Syntax --- Verb phrase --- Verbals --- Reflexives --- Verbe (Linguistique) --- Langues indiennes d'Amérique --- Coordonnées (Linguistique) --- Grammaire --- Linguistics --- Philology
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This book provides a general perspective on valency-changing mechanisms - passives, antipassives, causatives, applicatives - in the languages of the world. It contains a comprehensive typology of causatives by R. M. W. Dixon, and detailed descriptions of valency-changing mechanisms in ten individual languages by leading scholars, based on original fieldwork. The sample languages span five continents and every kind of structural profile. Each contributor draws out the theoretical status and implications of valency-changing derivations in their language of study, and the relevant parameters are drawn together, and typological possibilities delineated, in the editors' introduction. The volume, originally published in 2000, will interest typologists, those working in the fields of morphosyntactic variation and lexical semantics, and exponents of formal theories engaging with the range of linguistic diversity found in natural language
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