LINGUIST List 7.944

Fri Jun 28 1996

Books: Linguistic Theory

Editor for this issue: Ljuba Veselinova <lveselinemunix.emich.edu>

Directory

1. Paul Peranteau, New Books: Linguistic Theory

New Books from John Benjamins Publishing

LINGUISTIC THEORY


Grammaticalization of the Complex Sentence
A case study in Chadic
ZYGMUNT FRAJZYNGIER (University of Colorado)

The general objective of the study is a systematic examination of the
processes involved in the formation and evolution of complex sentence
constructions in a group of genetically related languages.The Chadic
language group, at about 140 languages, constitutes the largest and
most diversified branch of the Afroasiatic family. One of the findings
of the present work is that languages starting from the same base may
develop quite different morphological and syntactic structures. With
respect to issues of general linguistic interest, the book deals with
motivations for grammaticalization: It is proposed that one of the
most important motivations is satisfaction of the principle of well
formedness, that is, that every element in an utterance must have its
role transparent to the hearer either by inherent lexical properties
or by grammatical means.

The book also shows that unidirectionality is not a governing
principle with respect to the development of grammatical morphemes
into other grammatical morphemes; rather, there is considerable
evidence and theoretical justification for the bidirectionality
principle.

Studies in Language Companion Series, 32
US & Canada:Hb: 1 55619 843 3 US$128.00
Rest of World: 90 272 3035 8 Hfl.225,00


Linguistics in the Netherlands 1995.
MARCEL DEN DIKKEN and KEES HENGEVELD (eds)

This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the
twenty-sixth annual meeting of the Linguistic society of the
Netherlands, held in Utrecht on January, 21, 1995. The aim of the
annual meeting is to provide members of the society with an
opportunity to report on their work in progress.The 19 papers in this
volume present an overview of research in different fields of
linguistics in the Netherlands. It contains articles on phonetics,
phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and language acquisition.

AVT Publications, No. 12 x, 238 pp.
US & Canada: Pb: 1-55619-219-3 US$48.00
Rest of World: 90 272 3155 9 Hfl.80,00


Alternative Linguistics.
Descriptive and theoretical Modes.
PHILIP W. DAVIS (ed.) (Rice University)

The papers in this volume were presented at the Fifth Biennial
Symposium of the Department of Linguistics, Rice University, March
1993. The participants were asked to concentrate in depth and in a
self-reflective way upon some range of data. The intent was
multifold. The first purpose was descriptive. It was expected that the
participants would carry out their task in a retrospective way,
exemplifying and building upon their previous work, but it was also
expected that they would begin to demonstrate the configuration of
some area in a more comprehensive picture of language. The point was
to take (at least) one substantive step in the depiction of what we
think language will ultimately be like. The contributions were both
specific and generalizing, with focus as much upon methodology as upon
hypotheses about language. In examining descriptive practice, we
continued to concentrate upon issues which concerned us all, and at
the same time we tried to advance the discourse by the results of such
description. We hoped that problematic and recalcitrant data would
make our own practice clearer to us and that it might also instruct us
in the refinement of our conceptions of language.

Contributions by: Michael Bamberg, D. L. Ammirati & Sheila Shea;
Philip W Davis; Barbara A. Fox & Robert Jasperson; John Haiman; Ronald
W. Langacker; Tsuyoshi Ono & Sandra A. Thompson; Stephen A. Tyler;
Anna Wierzbicka.

Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, No. 102 vii, 325 pp.
US & Canada:HB: 1 55619 586 9 US$69.00
Rest of World: 90 272 3635 6 Hfl.125,00


Cognition and Representation in Linguistic Theory
ANTOINE CULIOLI
Texts selected, edited and introduced by Michael Liddle (University of Ottawa)
Translated with the assistance of John T. Stonham

The objective of this book is to better acquaint English-speaking
linguistics with a corpus of texts hitherto untranslated, containing
the cognitive-based research in formal linguistics of one of the most
important theoreticians in the field: Antoine Culioli
(b. 1924). Culioli's viewpoint is grounded in Emile Benveniste's
(1902-1976) revolutionary answer to Saussure's opposition between
competence (langue) and performance (parole) captured in the idea of
=E9nonciation, in which the relationship between an individual and a
language is one of appropriation.

The translation has been prepared to provide the reader with as
obstacle-free a path as one can clear to a theory that requires, and
indeed commands, a very close, attentive reading. As an additional aid
to understand Culioli's argument, footnotes throughout the work show
similarities and differences with the work of a somewhat like-minded
English-speaking cognitive linguist: Ronald W. Langacker.

Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, No. 112
US & Canada: Hb: 1 55619 566 4 US$45.00
Rest of World: 90 272 3615 1 Hfl.75,00

The Dative.
Volume 1: Descriptive studies,
VAN BELLE, William and Willy VAN LANGENDONCK (eds)

Since antiquity, scholars have been fascinated by the phenomena of
case. The explanation for this fascination is, as Hjelmslev already
pointed out over fifty years ago, the fact that he who can unravel the
meaning of case-relations, has the key to language structure as a
whole.For over three years, a team of twenty scholars affiliated with
the Linguistics Department of Leuven University in Belgium has
concentrated on case phenomena in different languages, both Indo- and
non-Indo-European. It is the first time that such a large scale
investigation into case has been undertaken. Noteworthy is also its
reliance on computer-stored corpora of authentic material.The results
are published as a series (Case and Grammatical Relations across
Languages) of which the first volume, a bibliography, appeared in
1994.The first volume on the dative case contains 13 articles, each of
which gives a detailed syntactic-semantic description of the dative or
its counterparts in a particular language. In addition to the
lexico-syntactic frames in which they occur, a number of textual and
extra-linguistic factors are taken into account. Languages
investigated are English (K. Davidse), German (L. Draye), Dutch
(W. Van Belle & W. Van Langendonck), Afrikaans (L.G. de Stadler),
Latin (W. Van Hoecke), French (L. Melis), Spanish (N. Delbecque &
B. Lamiroy), Portuguese (R. de Andrade), Polish (B. Rudzka-Ostyn),
Hungarian (G. Toth), Pashto (W. Skalmowski), Hebrew (P. Swiggers) and
Orizaba Nahuatl (D. Tuggy).

Case and Grammatical Relations Across Languages, No. 2 ca. 400 pp.
US & Canada:Hb: 1-55619-676-8 US$125.00
Rest of World: 90 272 2812 4 225,00

The Biology of Language
STANISLAW PUPPEL (ed.) (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland)

This volume brings together 15 papers on the evolution and origin of
language. The authors approach the subject from various angles,
exploring biological, cultural, psychological and linguistic
factors. A wide variety of topics is discussed such as animal
communication, language acquisition, the essentialist-evolutionist
debate, and genetic classification.Contributions by: Jean Aitchison;
David Barton; Bernard Bichakjian; Robert Payson Creed; Angela Della
Volpe; G=E1bor Gy=F6ri; Martin Hildebrand-Nilshon; Mary Ritchie Key;
Jo Liska; David J. Messer; Richard G. Milo & Duane Quiatt; Harvey
B. Sarles; Wlodzimierz Sedlak; David Smillie.x, 276 pp. + index

US & Canada:Hb: 1 55619 480 3 US$84.00
Rest of World: 90 272 2143 Hfl.145,00


Paul Peranteau (paulbenjamins.com)
John Benjamins searchable ONLINE catalogue:
*via WWW -- gopher://Benjamins.titlenet.com:6400
*via gopher -- gopher Benjamins.titlenet.com 6400