Language Universals and Linguistic Typology: Syntax and Morphology
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Book Overview
Since its first publication, Language Universals and Linguistic Typology has become established as the leading introductory account of one of the most productive areas of linguistics-the analysis, comparison, and classification of the common features and forms of the organization of languages. Adopting an approach to the subject pioneered by Greenberg and others, Bernard Comrie is particularly concerned with syntactico-semantic universals, devoting chapters to word order, case making, relative clauses, and causative constructions. His book is informed throughout by the conviction that an exemplary account of universal properties of human language cannot restrict itself to purely formal aspects, nor focus on analysis of a single language. Rather, it must also consider language use, relate formal properties to testable claims about cognition and cognitive development, and treat data from a wide range of languages. This second edition has been revised and updated to take full account of new research in universals and typology in the past decade, and more generally to consider how the approach advocated here relates to recent advances in generative grammatical theory.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0226114333
ISBN13:9780226114330
Release Date:July 1989
Publisher:University of Chicago Press
Length:275 Pages
Weight:0.86 lbs.
Dimensions:0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
A magnificent introduction and reference.
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 23 years ago
Along with Paynes "Describing Morphosyntax" (ISBN: 0521588057), this book will help any student -- or entertain any enthusiast --of languages or linguistics. It treats various types of syntactic theory in a manner that (rarely among such useful works) is clear, engaging and (in places) enthralling. While drawing on the familiar "old standards" for grammatic comparison (Russian, Dyirbal, Yakut, Hikxaryana, Japanese, etc), the way comparisons are drawn between systems reveals isomorphisms and patterns that are certainly elegant and perhaps beautiful. Comrie has, as ever, produced a thing of wonder.
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