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Focusing mainly on classifiers, Numeral Classifiers and Classifier Languages offers a deep investigation of three major classifier languages: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. This book provides detailed discussions well supported by empirical evidence and corpus analyses. Theoretical hypotheses regarding differences and commonalities between numeral classifier languages and other mainly article languages are tested to seek universals or typological characteristics. The essays collected here from l...

An introduction to the study of children's language development that provides a uniquely accessible perspective on generative/universal grammar–based approaches.How children acquire language so quickly, easily, and uniformly is one of the great mysteries of the human experience. The theory of Universal Grammar suggests that one reason for the relative ease of early language acquisition is that children are born with a predisposition to create a grammar. This textbook offers an introduction to th...

An investigation of how children balance rules and exceptions when they learn languages.All languages have exceptions alongside overarching rules and regularities. How does a young child tease them apart within just a few years of language acquisition? In this book, drawing an economic analogy, Charles Yang argues that just as the price of goods is determined by the balance between supply and demand, the price of linguistic productivity arises from the quantitative considerations of rules and ex...

Corpus Linguistics for World Englishes offers a detailed account of how to analyse the many fascinating varieties of English around the world using corpus-linguistic methods. Employing case studies for illustration of relevant concepts and methods throughout, this book: introduces the theory and practice of analysing World Englishesillustrates the basics of corpus-linguistic methods and presents the vast World Englishes corporalinks World Englishes to Learner Englishes and English as a Lingua Fr...

A proposal that person features do not have inherent content but are used to navigate a “person space” at the heart of every pronominal expression.This book offers a significant reconceptualization of the person system in natural language. The authors, leading scholars in syntax and its interfaces, propose that person features do not have inherent content but are used to navigate a “person space” at the heart of every pronominal expression. They map the journey of person features in grammar, fro...

An argument that children are born to assign structures to their ambient language, yielding a view of language variation not based on parameters defined at UG.In this book, David Lightfoot argues that just as some birds are born to chirp, humans are born to parse—predisposed to assign linguistic structures to their ambient external language. This approach to language acquisition makes two contributions to the development of Minimalist thinking. First, it minimizes grammatical theory, dispensing...

Language - in its communicative and playful functions, its literary formations and its shifting meanings - is a perennially fascinating topic. C. S. Lewis's Studies in Words explores this fascination by taking a series of words and teasing out their connotations using examples from a vast range of English literature, recovering lost meanings and analysing their functions. It doubles as an absorbing and entertaining study of verbal communication, its pleasures and problems. The issues revealed ar...

Teaching grammar can be overwhelming and is often an overlooked part of effective instruction. The Middle School Grammar Toolkit to the rescue! Now in its second edition, this comprehensive guide makes grammar instruction fun and meaningful. You will learn how to:Teach grammar in a practical and applicable way by presenting each grammar rule as a useful writing tool for students.Use mentor texts-excerpts from great literature-to help students understand grammar in action.Promote metacognition a...

From the bestselling author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves, a hilarious new book from Lynne Truss about her strange journey through the world of sport and sports journalism. Get Her Off the Pitch! is the story of one woman's foray into the very masculine and rather baffling world of sport. Lynne Truss, author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves, spent four years as an unlikely sports writer for The Times. It was a job that took her around the world (via the most difficult journeys and least glamorous hotels...

Although tribal traditions survive among the Tonkawa people, now located in northern Oklahoma, the Tonkawa language has been extinct for more than 75 years. Much of what is known about Tonkawa - an ""isolate"" language, related to no others - comes to us through the stories collected and translated by twentieth-century anthropologist Harry Hoijer. These texts, constituting the entire remaining oral literature of the Tonkawa people, are edited and presented here in the original Tonkawa and newly...

The study of morphology is central to linguistics, and morphotactics – the general principles by which the parts of a word form are arranged – is essential to the study of morphology. Drawing on evidence from a range of languages, this is a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the principles of morphotactic analysis. Stump proposes that the arrangement of word forms' grammatically significant parts is an expression of the ways in which a language's morphological rules combine with one another...

An argument for, and account of linguistic universals in the morphology of comparison, combining empirical breadth and theoretical rigor.This groundbreaking study of the morphology of comparison yields a surprising result: that even in suppletion (the wholesale replacement of one stem by a phonologically unrelated stem, as in good-better-best) there emerge strikingly robust patterns, virtually exceptionless generalizations across languages. Jonathan David Bobaljik describes the systematicity in...

Jeju Island, located about 30 miles southwest of the Korean mainland, is famous for its natural beauty, dolhaleubang (""stone grandfather"") statues, haenyeo (""sea women"") divers - and its language, which has only recently been recognized as distinct from Korean. This finding - still considered controversial - undermines the centuries-old belief that Korea has a single language within its borders and opens the door to an entirely new perspective on linguistic diversity in East Asia. Jejueo:...

Volume 180 in the North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures series.