LINGUIST List 5.1499

Wed 21 Dec 1994

Books: Finnish, Greek, Historical Ling

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FINNISH
Helena Halmari. A GOVERNMENT APPROACH TO FINNISH-ENGLISH
 INTRASENTENTIAL CODE-SWITCHING. 1994
Naturally occurring Finnish-English bilingual conversations are examined to
discover the principle constraining the distribution of intra-sentential code-
switching. It is argued that the syntactic notion of government is the relevant
one, in particular Di Sciullo, Muysken, and Singh's (1986) Government
Constraint (GC) on code-switching, according to which code-switching within a
governed element is possible if and only if the governed element includes a
"language-carrier" whose language index is identical with the language index of
the governor. In governed positions the rich Finnish inflectional morphology
functions as language-carrier. Evidence for the GC is provided not only by the
data that conform to the constraint, but also by those data which are near-
violations of this constraint and consistently accompanied by severe repair
phenomena (pausing, hesitation, false starts, and backtracking. It is claimed
that these repair phenomena 'break' the government relation when it is about
to be violated. In a few instances an explanation for code-switching needs to
be looked for in sociolinguistic factors, such as interspeaker variation.
Available from GSIL Publications, USC. E-mail: gsilusc.edu
GREEK
Themes in Greek Linguistics
Papers from the First International Conference on Greek Linguistics, Reading,
September 1993
I. PHILIPPAKI-WARBURTON, K. NICOLAIDIS and M. SIFIANOU (eds.) (University of
Readingl (University of Athens)
This volume brings together 65 conference papers, whose aim is to provide a
comprehensive state-of-the-art in Greek Linguistics.
Papers concern all the standard topics: syntax, semantics and pragmatics within
current models such as Principles & Parameters, HPSG, and Relevance Theory;
phonology and phonetics; discourse, style and spoken and written discourse
including miscommunication, metaphor and politeness issues; Ancient and Modern
Greek dialects such as Macedonian, Cypriot, and Pontic, as well as issues like
social and geographical varieties, diglossia and language acquisition and the
use of computers for the analysis, translation and teaching of Greek.
Also includes an index of authors, languages and main key words.
Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 117
xviii 520 pp. + index Hb 1-55619-571-0 $79.00
HISTORICAL LING
Studies in Language Origins, Volume 3
JAN WIND, ABRAHAM JONKER, ROBIN ALLOTT and LEONARD ROLFE (eds.)
This collection brings together the best papers presented at recent meetings of
the Language Origins Society. The volume reflects the diversity of approaches
from many disciplines that are used to unravel the mystery of the origin of
language: linguistics, anatomy, physiology, paleoanthropology, neuropsychology,
physical anthropology, etc.
xviii, 344 pp. Hb 1-55619-497-8 $79.00