Bøger i Cambridge Studies in Linguistics serien

Anthony Warner offers a detailed account of both the synchronic and diachronic properties of auxiliaries. This book meets the dual challenge of accounting for both the grammar and the history of the English auxiliary. It will be essential reading for all those interested in English syntax and its history.

The goal of John Haiman's study is to challenge the monopoly of arbitrariness, which he believes has affected in significant ways many models of linguistic description and analysis, notably those proposed by Saussure and more recently by Chomsky and his associates.

In 1972 when R. M. W. Dixon's classic grammar, The Dyirbal Language of North Queensland, was published, under thirty speakers of the 'traditional' language remained. Now only some of their children and grandchildren use the language; these younger people speak a simplified version.

Harry Bunt provides a thorough analysis of the problem of 'mass terms' and offers an original and detailed solution. This significant advance in our understanding of the formal syntactic and semantic properties of mass terms will be of interest not only to linguists and logicians, but also to all those concerned with the processing of natural language.

Questions about the development of the Romance future have engaged scholars since Thielmann's classic statement of 1885.

Dr Thrane makes an original contribution to one of the central topics in syntax and semantics: the nature and mechanisms of reference in natural language.

This study offers a comprehensive and illuminating account of one of the characteristics shared to some degree by the languages of the Balkan peninsula - Greek, Albanian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian and Romanian - namely the loss of the infinitive and its replacement by finite verb forms.

Dr Linell attacks the claim that the transformational models of language have some psychological validity and represent our mental organisation of linguistic knowledge.

This important study of the development of English aspectual systems provides an exceptionally clear and systematic account of syntax and semantics.

Noel Burton-Roberts has made an authoritative contribution to a debate which has involved philosophers and linguists for many years. His command of the issues, his clarity of exposition and his theoretical insight may well serve to change the boundaries of that debate.

Rochelle Lieber discusses the lexical semantics of word formation in a systematic way, allowing the reader to explore the nature of affixal polysemy, the reasons why there are multiple affixes with the same function and the issues of mismatch between form and meaning in word formation.

The subject of 'contrast' in phonology is one of the most central concepts in linguistics and is of key importance to linguists working across many languages. This book offers a fascinating account of both the logic and history of contrast in phonology.

This book presents an investigation of a number of areas of interest in the study of language change, dealing in particular with questions of how patterns of pronunciation vary across both time and space. It will thus be of interest to English language specialists as well as to historical linguists, sociolinguists and phonologists.

The book's clarity of exposition will enable readers not wholly familiar with metrical phonology to appreciate fully the elegance of this model in, arguably, its most basic form.

In this study Terence McKay demonstrates how the principles of the theory of Government and Binding apply to German syntax and in particular to an aspect that has exposed especially problematic and interesting issues: the properties of the infinitival constructions with lassen, scheinen and the verbs of perception.

One of the major arenas for debate within generative grammar is the nature of paradigmatic relations among words. Intervening in key debates at the interface between syntax and semantics, this book examines the relation between structure and meaning in words.

This book has two main goals: the re-establishment of a rule-based phonology as a viable alternative to current non-derivational models and the rehabilitation of historical evidence as a focus of phonological theory.

Professor Samuels presents a comprehensive explanation of the reasons for linguistic change, applying his theory in particular to the history of English. He assesses and mediates between the conflicting dogmas of different schools of linguistics, and offers an alternative theory of linguistic change which is basically simple but has the scope to cover any type of change.

The study of syntactic change has been much neglected in the past. Historical linguists have tended to concentrate on phonology, lexis and morphology whilst most theoretical studies of syntax have been deliberately synchronic in intention.

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. His book, the culmination of a ten-year research project, explores a range of important theoretical issues against a wealth of empirical data not previously accessible to linguists.

This pathbreaking study provides a comprehensive account of how children acquire complex sentences. Holger Diessel investigates spontaneous speech in English-speaking children aged between two and five, examining the acquisition of infinitival, participial and finite complement clauses, finite and non-finite relative clauses, and co-ordinate clauses.

The 'subject' of a sentence presents great challenges to linguists. This volume takes a fresh approach to subjects, examining them from both a formal and typological perspective. Drawing on data from a wide range of languages, it explains why, even across very different languages, certain core properties can be found.

This critical survey questions two fundamental assumptions in syntactic theory: firstly, that a sentence comprises a hierarchy of phrases, forming a 'tree' structure; and secondly, that phrases have 'heads', on which subordinate units depend. An essential and thought-provoking read for students, researchers in linguistic theory as well as non-specialists.

This study comprehensively describes and analyses the syntax and semantics of German reflexive constructions known as middles (e.g. Das Buch liest sich leicht 'The book reads easily'), including those formed with lassen 'let'. It provides an in-depth comparison of German middles and middle constructions in English and French, and the only detailed account written in English.

This second edition presents a completely revised overview of research on intonational phonology since the 1970s, including new material on research developments since the mid 1990s. In addition there is an associated website with sound files of the example sentences discussed in the book.

Discusses 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 language.

Parallel Structures in Syntax is a significant and thoughtful contribution to syntactic theory, and arguably provides the simplest and most elegant account available of many of the complex phenomena observed in coordination, causatives, and restructuring. It will interest not only theoretical linguists, but also computational linguists and cognitive scientists.

The aim of this study is to show that a self-contained linguistic theory cannot by itself be psychologically plausible, but depends on a compatible theory of learning which embraces developmental as well as formal issues.

This book offers a detailed description and analysis of West Flemish, a dialect of Dutch, within the framework of Government and Binding Theory.

Linguistic Realities is a major contribution to the philosophy and methodology of linguistics. Its application of Popperian philosophy of science to the philosophy of linguistics will arouse much debate among philosophers and linguists alike.