Bücher veröffentlicht von De Gruyter Mouton

This book addresses a general phenomenon in the European languages: verb second. The articles provide a comprehensive survey of synchronic vs. diachronic developments in the Germanic and Romance languages.New theoretical insights into the interaction of the properties of verbal mood and syntactic structure building lead to hypotheses about the mutual influence of these systems. The diachronic change in the syntax together with changes in the inflectional system show the interdependence between the syntactic and the inflectional component.The fact that the subjunctive can license verb second in dependent clauses reveals further dependencies between these subsystems of grammar. "Fronting finiteness" furthermore constitutes an instance of a main clause phenomenon. Whether "assertion" or "at-issueness" are encoded through this grammatical process will be a matter in the debates discussed in the book. Moreover, information structure appears to be directly related to the fronting of other constituents in front of the finite verb. Questions concerning the interrelations between these various subcomponents of the grammatical system are investigated.

This book brings together a collection of studies on Brazilian Sign Language (Libras). Research on Libras began in earnest 20 years ago, around the time that Libras was recognised as a national language of Brazil in 2002. Over the years, more and more deaf researchers have become sign language linguists, and the community of Libras scholars have documented this language and built robust resources for linguistic research. This book provides a selection of studies by these scholars, representing work in a variety of areas from phonology to creative literature.

Textbooks inform readers that the precursor of Standard English was supposedly an East or Central Midlands variety which became adopted in London; that monolingual fifteenth century English manuscripts fall into internally-cohesive Types; and that the fourth Type, dating after 1435 and labelled ¿Chancery Standard¿, provided the mechanism by which this supposedly Midlands variety spread out from London. This set of explanations is challenged by taking a multilingual perspective, examining Anglo-Norman French, Medieval Latin and mixed-language contexts as well as monolingual English ones. By analysing local and legal documents, mercantile accounts, personal letters and journals, medical and religious prose, multiply-copied works, and the output of individual scribes, standardisation is shown to have been preceded by supralocalisation rather than imposed top-down as a single entity by governmental authority. Linguistic features examined include syntax, morphology, vocabulary, spelling, letter-graphs, abbreviations and suspensions, social context and discourse norms, pragmatics, registers, text-types, communities of practice social networks, and the multilingual backdrop, which was influenced by shifting socioeconomic trends.

The series builds an extensive collection of high quality descriptions of languages around the world. Each volume offers a comprehensive grammatical description of a single language together with fully analyzed sample texts and, if appropriate, a word list and other relevant information which is available on the language in question. There are no restrictions as to language family or area, and although special attention is paid to hitherto undescribed languages, new and valuable treatments of better known languages are also included. No theoretical model is imposed on the authors; the only criterion is a high standard of scientific quality. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert.

This is a comprehensive grammar of the Hills Karbi variety spoken predominantly in the Karbi Anglong districts. Karbi belongs to the Trans-Himalayan (Tibeto-Burman) family but its exact phylogenetic status has remained unclear. By providing a diachronically-oriented functional analysis of all structural levels of Karbi, this grammar offers a reference work that provides a thorough account of this language. The data in this grammar come from fieldwork that was primarily carried out in the district capital of Diphu although the corpus includes recordings of speakers from all over the two Karbi Anglong districts. This corpus is freely available both as fully glossed text in Himalayan Linguistics (Konnerth and Tisso 2018) and as original media files in ELAR (SOAS University of London). Now also including a glossary, this grammar is a thoroughly revised version of the 2014 dissertation of the author, which won the 2015 P¿¿ini Award of the Association for Linguistic Typology (ALT). In this revised version, a few new sections have been added and numerous other sections have been thoroughly updated.

Wang Wei has traditionally been considered one of the greatest of Tang dynasty poets, together with Li Bo and Du Fu. This is the first complete translation into English of all of his poems, and also the first substantial translation of a selection of his prose writings. For the first time, readers encountering his work in English translation will get a comprehensive understanding of Wang Wei's range as a poet and prose writer. In spite of the importance of Wang Wei's poetry in the history of Chinese literature, no one has attempted a complete translation of all of his surviving poems; moreover, even though he was known for his skill in composing prose pieces in the recognized genres of his day (especially as a writer of commissioned compositions), very little of his prose has been translated. This translation will enable students with limited or no knowledge of Chinese to get a full sense of Wang Wei's compositional range. Moreover, since Wang Wei was known for being a devout Buddhist, having the complete poetry available in reliable translation as well as all of the prose that is connected to the Buddhist faith will be useful to students of Chinese religion.

Generative phonology aims to formalise two distinct aspects of phonological processes: the functional and the representational. Since functions operate on representations, it is clear that the functional aspect is influenced by the form of representations, i.e. different types of representation require different types of rules, principles or constraints. This volume examines the representational issue in phonology and considers what kind of representation is most appropriate for recent models of generative phonology. In particular, it provides the first platform for debate on the place of morpheme-internal structure and on the formal status of phonology in the language faculty, and attempts to identify phonological recursive structure as a means of capturing frequently observed processes.

While most of the more recent influential work on swearing has concentrated on English and other languages from the Global North, looking at forms and functions of swear words, this contribution redirects the necessary focus onto a sociolinguistics of swearing that puts transgressive practices in non-Western languages into the focus. The transdisciplinary volume contains innovative case studies that address swearing and cursing in parts of the world characterized by consequences of colonialism and increasingly debated inequalities. Turning away from more conventional and established methodologies and theoretical approaches, the book envisages to address transgressive linguistic practices, performances and contexts in Africa, Asia, America and Europe -including individuals' creativity, subversive power and agency. Due to its interdisciplinary and non-mainstream focus, this volume is an essential addition to the field of studies.