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Description:
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Note: This is the paperback edition of a previously announced book.
Number is a major research domain in semantics, syntax and morphology.
However, no current theory of number is applicable to all three fields. In
this work, Harbour argues that a unified theory is not only possible, but
necessary for the study of Universal Grammar. Through insightful analysis
of unfamiliar data, he shows that one and the same feature set is
implicated in semantic and morphological number phenomena alike, with
syntax acting as the conduit between the two. At the heart of the study is
an original treatment of Kiowa, a North American language with a remarkable
constellation of characteristics, including semantically based noun
classification and complex agreement morphology.
This volume presents:
- the foundations of a unified morphosemantic theory of number;
- insight into the flow of information from the lexicon, via syntax, into
the morphology;
- wide-ranging topics: nominal semantics, noun classes, DP syntax,
agreement, suppletion, complex morphology.
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