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The Cambridge Studies in Linguistics series aims to publish works of scholarship that make a substantive contribution to general, theoretical, and descriptive linguistics. Many volumes are of interest across a broad range of the disciplines, while others address a specialized particular topic, language or language area.

  • General Editors: Umberto Ansaldo, Peter Austin, Bernard Comrie, Tania Kuteva, Roger Lass, David Lightfoot, Keren Rice, Ian Roberts, Suzanne Romaine, Michelle Sheehan, Ianthi Tsimpli

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130 results in Cambridge Studies in Linguistics

Page 5 of 7

Negative and Positive Polarity
  • A Binding Approach
  • Ljiliana Progovac
  • Published online:
    26 January 2010
    Print publication:
    17 February 1994
  • In this book, Ljiljana Progovac presents cross-linguistic data on negative polarity, reflexive binding and the subjunctive mood, and proposes a unified analysis for various languages, including English and Serbian/Croatian. She argues that Negative Polarity Items (NPIs), such as 'anyone' and 'ever', are anaphoric in nature and must be bound in their governing category, while Positive Polarity Items (PPIs), such as 'someone' and 'already', are subject to Principle B of the Binding Theory. She also suggests that possible binders (and SUBJECTS) for polarity items are negation or else a polarity operator in the complementiser of questions, conditionals, and other clauses with an unfixed truth-value. Her analysis not only captures many similarities between polarity and anaphora, but also accounts for a number of hitherto unexplained facts about polarity items.

The Syntax of Agreement and Concord
  • Mark C. Baker
  • Published online:
    12 January 2010
    Print publication:
    07 February 2008
  • 'Agreement' is the grammatical phenomenon in which the form of one item, such as the noun 'horses', forces a second item in the sentence, such as the verb 'gallop', to appear in a particular form, i.e. 'gallop' must agree with 'horses' in number. Even though agreement phenomena are some of the most familiar and well-studied aspects of grammar, there are certain basic questions that have rarely been asked, let alone answered. This book develops a theory of the agreement processes found in language, and considers why verbs agree with subjects in person, adjectives agree in number and gender but not person, and nouns do not agree at all. Explaining these differences leads to a theory that can be applied to all parts of speech and to all languages.

The Lexical Field of Taste
  • A Semantic Study of Japanese Taste Terms
  • A. E. Backhouse
  • Published online:
    06 January 2010
    Print publication:
    01 September 1994
  • Dr Backhouse undertakes a semantic study of taste terms in modern spoken Japanese. Through an investigation of the range of vocabulary available for the description of taste qualities, and their interrelationship in terms of meaning, Dr Backhouse presents a sensitive elucidation of the structure of Japanese taste terms, which has significant implications for anthropological linguistics. He explores important semantic issues, such as the relationship between evaluative and descriptive meaning, the intralinguistic mechanisms at work in metaphor, and draws illuminating connections between the lexical field of colour and that of taste.

Lexical Categories
  • Verbs, Nouns and Adjectives
  • Mark C. Baker
  • Published online:
    06 January 2010
    Print publication:
    13 March 2003
  • For decades, generative linguistics has said little about the differences between verbs, nouns, and adjectives. This book seeks to fill this theoretical gap by presenting simple and substantive syntactic definitions of these three lexical categories. Mark C. Baker claims that the various superficial differences found in particular languages have a single underlying source which can be used to give better characterizations of these 'parts of speech'. These definitions are supported by data from languages from every continent, including English, Italian, Japanese, Edo, Mohawk, Chichewa, Quechua, Choctaw, Nahuatl, Mapuche, and several Austronesian and Australian languages. Baker argues for a formal, syntax-oriented, and universal approach to the parts of speech, as opposed to the functionalist, semantic, and relativist approaches that have dominated the few previous works on this subject. This book will be welcomed by researchers and students of linguistics and by related cognitive scientists of language.

Relevance and Linguistic Meaning
  • The Semantics and Pragmatics of Discourse Markers
  • Diane Blakemore
  • Published online:
    18 December 2009
    Print publication:
    26 September 2002
  • The importance of discourse markers (words like 'so', 'however', and 'well') lies in the theoretical questions they raise about the nature of discourse and the relationship between linguistic meaning and context. They are regarded as being central to semantics because they raise problems for standard theories of meaning, and to pragmatics because they seem to play a role in the way discourse is understood. In this new and important study, Diane Blakemore argues that attempts to analyse these expressions within standard semantic frameworks raise even more problems, while their analysis as expressions that link segments of discourse has led to an unproductive and confusing exercise in classification. She concludes that the exercise in classification that has dominated discourse marker research should be replaced by the investigation of the way in which linguistic expressions contribute to the inferential processes involved in utterance understanding.

Conditions on Phonological Government
  • Monik Charette
  • Published online:
    10 December 2009
    Print publication:
    11 July 1991
  • This 1991 book was the first extended study written within the framework of Government Phonology. Following the presentation of the main aspects of this theory, the process of vowel-zero alternations is addressed and analysed together with the idea that phonological processes are determined by principles of Universal Grammar along with parameters that distinguish languages. By using predominantly the alternation between schwa and zero in French, Monik Charette demonstrates that vowel-zero alternations are neither cases of insertion nor of deletion. Rather, they involve the interpretation of 'empty nuclei', i.e. nuclei with no segmental content, which must be licensed by proper government. It is when proper government fails to apply that a vowel is realized. Dr Charette also gives consideration to the constraints to which proper government is subject. She argues that these constraints result from phonological principles in conflict. This book represents a major development in the analysis of phonological processes. The extension of grammatical principles and parameters to phonological phenomena is well argued, and will interest theoretical phonologists and specialists of French alike.

Grammatical Theory in the United States
  • From Bloomfield to Chomsky
  • P. H. Matthews
  • Published online:
    10 December 2009
    Print publication:
    30 September 1993
  • This is a history of modern linguistics which focuses on the spread and dominance of linguistic theory originating in North America. It concentrates on the theories and influence of Bloomfield and Chomsky, and offers systematic coverage of their enormous contributions to grammatical theory over their lifespan. As well as tracing the intellectual histories of these great figures, and of others in the field, Professor Matthews follows the development and continuity of three dominant grammatical ideas in linguistics. First, the idea that the study of formal relations can and should be separated from that of meaning. Second, that sentences are composed of linear configurations of morphemes. Third, that many aspects of grammar are defined generically. His biographical and theoretical survey will be invaluable to all linguists wishing to trace the origins of their discipline.

Switch-Reference and Discourse Representation
  • Lesley Stirling
  • Published online:
    07 December 2009
    Print publication:
    11 March 1993
  • In central cases of switch-reference, a marker on the verb of one clause is used to indicate whether its subject has the same or different reference from the subject of an adjacent, syntactically related clause. In central cases of logophoricity, a special pronoun form is used within a reported speech context, to indicate coherence with the source of reported speech. Lesley Stirling argues that these types of anaphoric linkage across clause boundaries cannot be adequately accounted for by Binding Theory. Her detailed examination of the two phenomena, including a case study of the Papuan language Amele, proposes an account for them which is formalized in Discourse Representation Theory, and explores how far it is possible for such an account to be compositional morpho-syntactic/semantic, while at the same time taking seriously the range of linguistic and cross-linguistic data to be explained. Switch-reference's indication of agreement or disagreement between clauses (or larger discourse units) is shown to function along various parameters contributing to discourse continuity: their major protagonists, spatial and temporal location, and their status as describing actual or non-actual situations. The arguments bear also on general debates around the nature of linguistically marked referential relations and the analysis of logophoric phenomena.

Phonology and Language Use
  • Joan Bybee
  • Published online:
    03 December 2009
    Print publication:
    23 July 2001
  • A research perspective that takes language use into account opens up new views of old issues and provides an understanding of issues that linguists have rarely addressed. Referencing new developments in cognitive and functional linguistics, phonetics, and connectionist modeling, this book investigates various ways in which a speaker/hearer's experience with language affects the representation of phonology. Rather than assuming phonological representations in terms of phonemes, Joan Bybee adopts an exemplar model, in which specific tokens of use are stored and categorized phonetically with reference to variables in the context. This model allows an account of phonetically gradual sound change which produces lexical variation, and provides an explanatory account of the fact that many reductive sound changes affect high frequency items first. The well-known effects of type and token frequency on morphologically-conditioned phonological alterations are shown also to apply to larger sequences, such as fixed phrases and constructions, solving some of the problems formulated previously as dealing with the phonology-syntax interface.

Relevance Relations in Discourse
  • A Study with Special Reference to Sissala
  • Regina Blass
  • Published online:
    02 December 2009
    Print publication:
    22 November 1990
  • This book uses Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory to show that connectivity in discourse is a pragmatic rather than a semantic matter: it results from relevance relations between text and context rather than from relations linguistically encoded in the text. In two introductory chapters, Regina Blass argues that relevance theory offers a more explanatory account of discourse connectivity than do alternative approaches based on notions of cohesion, coherence and topic. In subsequent chapters, she introduces data from the language Sissala and shows how relevance theory can play an important role in guiding and constraining semantic and pragmatic analyses of these data. This approach reveals unexpected results - for example the detection of an interpretive use marker in Sissala, with implications for the analysis of so-called 'hearsay phenomena' in other languages - and leads to an alternative basis for particle typology.

Quantity Adjustment
  • Vowel Lengthening and Shortening in Early Middle English
  • Nikolaus Ritt
  • Published online:
    23 November 2009
    Print publication:
    08 December 1994
  • This is a unified account of all quantity changes affecting English stressed vowels during the early Middle English period. Dr Ritt discusses homorganic lengthening, open syllable lengthening, trisyllabic shortening, and shortening before consonant clusters. The study is based on a statistical analysis of Modern English reflexes of the changes. The complete corpus of analysed data is made available to the reader in the appendices. All of the changes discussed are shown to derive from basically the same set of quasi-universal tendencies, while apparent idiosyncrasies are shown to follow from factors that are independent of the underlying tendencies themselves. The role of tendencies, i.e. probabilistic laws in the description of language change, is given thorough theoretical treatment. In his aim to account for the changes as well as trace their chronology, Dr Ritt applies principles of natural phonology, and examines the conflict between phonological and morphological 'necessities'.

Creole Genesis and the Acquisition of Grammar
  • The Case of Haitian Creole
  • Claire Lefebvre
  • Published online:
    23 November 2009
    Print publication:
    21 January 1999
  • This study focuses on the cognitive processes involved in creole genesis - relexification, reanalysis and direct levelling - processes which the author demonstrates play a significant role in language genesis and change in general. Dr Lefebvre argues that the creators of pidgins/creoles use the parametric values of their native languages in establishing those of the language that they are creating and the semantic principles of their own grammar in concatenating morphemes and words in the new language. This theory is documented on the basis of a uniquely detailed comparison of Haitian creole with its contributing French and West African languages. Summarizing more than twenty years of funded research, the author examines the input of adult, as opposed to child, speakers and resolves the problems in the three main approaches, universalist, superstratist and substratist, which have been central to the recent debate on creole development.

Restrictiveness in Case Theory
  • Henry Smith
  • Published online:
    04 November 2009
    Print publication:
    17 October 1996
  • Henry Smith develops a theory of syntactic case and examines its synchronic and diachronic consequences. Within a unification-based framework, the book draws out pervasive patterns in the relationship between morphosyntax ('linking') and grammatical function. The theory proposed consists of three ordered constraints on the association of NPs and arguments, based on the central notion of 'restrictiveness'. Beginning with a detailed study of dative substitution in Icelandic, the author moves on to examine a wide array of synchronic and diachronic data and to construct a typology of case. Theoretically innovative and sophisticated, and descriptively wide-ranging, this book will appeal to all those interested in the cross-linguistic marking of case and the ways in which case systems may change over time.

Possession
  • Cognitive Sources, Forces, and Grammaticalization
  • Bernd Heine
  • Published online:
    27 October 2009
    Print publication:
    23 October 1997
  • In this new work, Bernd Heine claims that the structure of grammatical categories is predictable to a large extent once we know the range of possible cognitive structures from which they are derived. The author uses as his example the structure of predicative possession, and shows how most of the possessive constructions to be found in the world's languages can be traced back to a small set of basic conceptual patterns. Heine identifies these patterns, and using grammaticalization theory he describes how each affects the word order and morphosyntax of the resulting possessive construction. He argues that grammaticalization theory explains much of the observable typological diversity which characterizes 'have'-constructions in the world's languages. Illustrated by a wealth of examples, this is an original and important statement from a leading linguist.

Tone Sandhi
  • Patterns across Chinese Dialects
  • Matthew Y. Chen
  • Published online:
    24 October 2009
    Print publication:
    03 August 2000
  • Matthew Chen's study, first published in 2000, offers a most comprehensive analysis of the rich and complex patterns of tone used in Chinese languages. Chinese has a wide repertoire of tones which undergo often surprising changes when they are connected in speech flow. The term tone sandhi refers to this tonal alternation. Chen examines tone sandhi phenomena in detail across a variety of Chinese dialects. He explores a range of important theoretical issues such as the nature of tonal representation, the relation of tone to accent, the prosodic domain of sandhi rules, and the interface between syntax and phonology. His book is the culmination of a ten-year research project and offers a wealth of empirical data not previously accessible to linguists. Extensive references and a bibliography on tone sandhi complete this invaluable resource which will be welcomed as a standard reference on Chinese tone.

The Syntax and Pragmatics of Anaphora
  • A Study with Special Reference to Chinese
  • Yan Huang
  • Published online:
    23 October 2009
    Print publication:
    17 March 1994
  • This book develops a pragmatic theory of anaphora within the neo-Gricean framework of conversational implicature. Chomsky claims that anaphora reflects underlying principles of innate Universal Grammar, and the view is widely held that only syntactic and semantic factors are crucial to intrasentential anaphora. Yan Huang questions the basis of the Government and Binding approach and argues that syntax and pragmatics are interconnected in determining many anaphoric processes. Furthermore, he proposes that the extent to which syntax and pragmatics interact varies typologically. There exists a class of language (such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean) in which pragmatics play a central role that in familiar European languages is alleged to be played by grammar. Yan Huang's pragmatic theory has far reaching implications for this important issue in theoretical linguistics.

Inflectional Morphology
  • A Theory of Paradigm Structure
  • Gregory T. Stump
  • Published online:
    14 October 2009
    Print publication:
    22 February 2001
  • A new contribution to linguistic theory, this book presents a formal framework for the analysis of word structure in human language. It sets forth the network of hypotheses constituting Paradigm Function Morphology, a theory of inflectional form whose central insight is that paradigms play an essential role in the definition of a language's system of word structure. The theory comprises several unprecedented claims, chief among which is the claim that a language's realization rules serve as clauses in the definition of a paradigm function, an overarching construct which is indispensable for capturing certain kinds of generalizations about inflectional form. This book differs from other recent works on the same subject in that it treats inflectional morphology as an autonomous system of principles rather than as a subsystem of syntax or phonology and it draws upon evidence from a diverse range of languages in motivating the proposed conception of word structure.

The Syntax of Adjuncts
  • Thomas Ernst
  • Published online:
    12 October 2009
    Print publication:
    20 December 2001
  • This book proposes a theory of the distribution of adverbial adjuncts in a Principles and Parameters framework, claiming that there are few syntactic principles specific to adverbials; rather, for the most part, adverbials adjoin freely to any projection. Adjuncts' possible hierarchical positions are determined by whether they can receive a proper interpretation, according to their selectional (including scope) requirements and general compositional rules, while linear order is determined by hierarchical position along with a system of directionality principles and morphological weight, both of which apply generally to adjuncts and all other syntactic elements. A wide range of adverbial types is analysed; predicational adverbs (such as manner, and modal adverbs), domain expressions like financially, temporal, frequency, duration and focusing adverbials; participant PPs (e.g. locatives and benefactives); resultative and conditional clauses, and others, taken primarily from English, Chinese, French and Italian, with occasional reference to others (such as German and Japanese).

Verb Meaning and the Lexicon
  • A First Phase Syntax
  • Gillian Catriona Ramchand
  • Published online:
    10 October 2009
    Print publication:
    06 March 2008
  • The relationship between the meaning of words and the structure of sentences is an important area of research in linguistics. Studying the connections between lexical conceptual meaning and event structural relations, this book arrives at a modular classification of verb types within English and across languages. Ramchand argues that lexical encyclopedic content and event structural aspects of meaning need to be systematically distinguished, and that thematic and aspectual relations belong to the latter domain of meaning. The book proposes a syntactic decompositional view of core verbal meaning, and sets out to account for the variability and systematicity of argument structure realisation across verb types. It also proposes an interesting view of lexical insertion.

Derivations in Minimalism
  • Samuel David Epstein, T. Daniel Seely
  • Published online:
    09 October 2009
    Print publication:
    20 January 2006
  • This pathbreaking study presents a new perspective on the role of derivation, the series of operations by which sentences are formed. Working within the Minimalist Program and focusing on English, the authors develop an original theory of generative syntax, providing illuminating new analyses of some central syntactic constructions. Two key questions are explored: first, can the Extended Projection Principle (EPP) be eliminated from Minimalist analysis without loss, and perhaps with a gain in empirical coverage; and second, is the construct 'A-Chain' similarly eliminable? The authors argue that neither EPP nor the A-chain is in fact a property of Universal Grammar, but rather their descriptive content can be deduced from independently motivated properties of lexical items, in accordance with overarching principles governing derivation. In investigating these questions, a range of new data is introduced, and existing data re-analyzed, presenting a pioneering challenge to fundamental assumptions in syntactic theory.

Page 5 of 7