Recently Published

[Frans Plank]

Recently Published and of Typological Interest / ix 2011



New publications of potential typological interest are periodically  
advertised on the lingtyp list.  Apart from directly commissioning  
reviews, LT solicits offers from lingtypists to review books – those  
listed here or whichever others you’d like to add on your own  
understanding of the attribute “typologically relevant”.  (And do  
construe its scope liberally!)  For purposes of book reviewing in LT,  
what matters is that REVIEWS are done from a distinctively typological  
angle, from whatever angles the books reviewed are done.  Prospective  
reviewers so intentioned please get in touch.



Drop me a line with bibliographical particulars if you want to make  
sure your own relevant publications will be included in the next  
listing.  The most effective indication of the existence of a new  
relevant book is the receipt of a review copy;  do remind your  
publisher to send one to:



LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY,

Sprachwissenschaft,

Universität Konstanz,

78457 Konstanz, Germany.



Regrettably, many previously listed titles have remained unreviewed in  
LT.  However, typological publications can have long shelf-lives, and  
you’re welcome to make your pick and review now what has been listed  
before and is not past the sell-by date.



Do feel free to also offer to review grammars for LT (again, from a  
distinctively typological angle).  Some are included in our listings  
here, but eventually THE GRAMMAR WATCH on the ALT website should pick  
up again where we left off a while ago.



Frans Plank

frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de





Bazzanella, Carla, with Rosa Pugliese & Erling Strudsholm. 2011.  
Numeri per parlare: Da 'quattro chiacchiere' a 'grazie mille'. Roma:  
Laterza.





Bowern, Claire. 2011. Sivisa Titan: Sketch grammar, texts, vocabulary  
based on material collected by P. Josef Meier and Po Minis (Oceanic  
Linguistics Special Publication No. 38). Honolulu: University of  
Hawai'i Press.





Dalrymple, Mary & Irina Nikolaeva. 2011. Objects and information  
structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[In many languages, the objects of transitive verbs are either marked  
by grammatical case or agreement on the verb, or they remain unmarked:  
this is differential object marking. This book is a cross-linguistic  
study of how differential object marking is affected by information  
structure, the structuring of the utterance in accordance with the  
informational value of its elements and contextual factors. Marked  
objects tend to be associated with old information or information that  
the sentence is about, while unmarked objects tend to express new  
information. The book also sheds light on grammatical patterning in  
languages with differential object marking: in some languages marked  
and unmarked objects have identical grammatical properties, whereas in  
other languages marked objects are more active in syntax. Finally, it  
provides a theory of the historical changes that lead to the emergence  
of various patterns of differential object marking.]





Diewald, Gabriele & Elena Smirnova (eds.). 2011. Linguistic  
realization of evidentiality in European languages. Berlin: De Gruyter  
Mouton.





Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. 2011. Historical linguistics and the comparative  
study of African languages. Amsterdam: Benjamins.





Dindelegan, Gabriela Pană (ed.). 2011. Gramatica de bază a limbii  
române. Bucureşti: Academia Română.





Dixon, R. M. W. 2011. I am a linguist. Leiden: Brill.

[I am a Linguist provides a fascinating account of the academic  
adventures of multi-faceted linguist, R.M.W. (Bob) Dixon. There is  
fieldwork (and lengthy grammars) on Dyirbal, Yidiñ and other  
Aboriginal languages of Australia, the Boumaa dialect of Fijian, and  
Jarawara from the dense jungles of Amazonia. Theoretical studies  
include adjective classes, ergativity and complement clauses. There  
are also detective novels, science fiction stories, and pioneering  
work on blues and gospel discography. Interspersed with the  
autobiographical narrative are explanations of how linguistics is a  
scientific discipline, of the development of universities, of  
diminishing academic standards, and of the treatment of Aboriginal  
people in Australia. The book is written in an easy, accessible style  
with numerous illustrative anecdotes. It will be an inspiration to  
young linguists and of interest to the general reader curious about  
what a scientific linguist does. [Publishers]]





Do, Tu-Anh. 2011. Typologie der tonalen Systeme in den Sprachen des  
südostasiatischen Festlandes. Berlin: LIT.





Evans, Nicholas, Alice Gaby, Stephen C. Levinson, & Asifa Majid  
(eds.). 2011. Reciprocals and semantic typology. Amsterdam: Benjamins.





Gijn, Rik van, Katharina Haude, & Pieter Muysken (eds.). 2011.  
Subordination in native South American languages. Amsterdam: Benjamins.





Givón, T. 2011. Ute reference grammar. Amsterdam: Benjamins.





Güldemann, Tom. 2008. Quotative indexes in African languages: A  
synchronic and diachronic survey (EALT 34). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.





Haselow, Alexander. 2011. Typological changes in the lexicon: Analytic  
tendencies in English noun formation. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

[This is the first study of the typological change of English from a  
synthetic towards an analytic language that focuses exclusively on the  
lexical domain of the language. It presents an innovative approach to  
linguistic typology by focusing on the different encoding techniques  
used in the lexicon, providing a theoretical framework for the  
description of structural types (synthetic, analytic) and encoding  
techniques (fusional, isolating, agglutinative, incorporating) found  
in the lexicon of a language.

It is argued that, in the case of English, the change from  
syntheticity to analyticity did not only affect its inflectional  
system and the encoding of grammatical information, but also the  
derivational component. Based on a cognitive approach to derivation,  
the book provides empirical evidence for a considerable decline in the  
use of synthetic structures and a trend towards higher degrees of  
analyticity in a specific lexical domain of English, the formation of  
nouns by means of derivation. The full extent of this change surfaced  
during the transition from Old English to early Middle English, but it  
was later partly reversed though influence from French. The  
typological shift was thus the result of a global structural  
reorganization of the language that resulted in a fundamental change  
of the structure of words.

The book also presents a comprehensive account of the historical  
development of nominal derivation from the beginnings of Old English  
until the end of the early Middle English period. Based on empirical  
data from written sources the study documents the frequency of use of  
all Germanic-based derivational morphemes for nominalizations over  
different subperiods and discusses their origin as well as important  
changes of their semantic and morphological properties. [Publishers]]





Ikegami, Yoshihiko. 2007. Sprachwissenschaft des Tuns und Werdens:  
Typologie der japanischen Sprache und Kultur. Berlin: LIT.





Jung, Hakyung. 2011. The syntax of the be-possessive: Parametric  
variation and surface diversities. Amsterdam: Benjamins.





Khabirov, Valerij P. 2010. Sintagmatičeskaja morfologija kontaktnogo  
jazyka sango. Ekaterinburg: Uralskij gospeduniversitet.

[The book is devoted to the description of the grammatical system of  
one of the most dynamic languages (lingua franca) of Africa. The  
structure of Contact Sango with its reduced morphology can adequately  
be described on the basis of syntactic data. The description of Sango  
grammar starts from the description of the verbal paradigm in a  
minimal utterance on the basis of the syntactic information it gives.  
The book consists of 4 parts: I. Introduction; 2. Phonology of Sango;  
3. Syntagmatic morphology (with types of minimal utterances); 4.  
Derivation and Compounding. At the end of the book there are texts in  
Sango and Ngbandi which is considered to be the base language of  
Contact Sango.  [Author]]





Kibort, Anna & Greville G. Corbett (eds.). 2011. Features:  
Perspectives on a key notion in linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University  
Press.





Lemaréchal, Alain. 2010. Comparative grammar and typology: Essays on  
the historical grammar of the Austronesian languages. Leuven: Peeters.





Lomashvili, Leila. 2011. Complex predicates: The syntax-morphology  
interface. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

[Focus on causatives and applicatives in South Caucasian.]





McWhorter, John H. 2011. Linguistic simplicity and complexity: Why  
do languages undress? Belin: De Gruyter Mouton.

[In John McWhorter’s Defining Creole anthology of 2005, his collected  
articles conveyed the following theme: His hypothesis that creole  
languages are definable not just in the sociohistorical sense, but in  
the grammatical sense. His publications since the 1990s have argued  
that all languages of the world that lack a certain three traits  
together are creoles (i.e. born as pidgins a few hundred years ago and  
fleshed out into real languages). He also argued that in light of  
their pidgin birth, such languages are less grammatically complex than  
others, as the result of their recent birth as pidgins. These two  
claims have been highly controversial among creolists as well as other  
linguists.  In this volume, Linguistic Simplicity and  
Complexity,McWhorter gathers articles he has written since then, in  
the wake of responses from a wide range of creolists and linguists.  
These articles represent a considerable divergence in direction from  
his earlier work.]





Malchukov, Andrej, Martin Haspelmath, & Bernard Comrie (eds.). 2010.  
Studies in ditransitive constructions: A comparative handbook. Berlin:  
De Gruyter Mouton.





Malchukov, Andrej & Anna Siewierska (eds.). 2011. Impersonal  
constructions: A cross-linguistic perspective. Amsterdam: Benjamins.





Miola, Emanuele & Paolo Ramat (eds.). 2011. Language contact and  
language decay: Socio-political and linguistic perspectives. Pavia:  
IUSS Press.





Morey, Stephen. 2010. Turung: A variety of Singpho language spoken in  
Assam (Pacific Linguistics 614). Canberra: Australian National  
University.





Peterson, John. 2011. A grammar of Kharia. Leiden: Brill.

Kharia, spoken in central-eastern India, is a member of the southern  
branch of the Munda family, which forms the western branch of the  
Austro-Asiatic phylum, stretching from central India to Vietnam. The  
present study provides the most extensive description of Kharia to  
date and covers all major areas of the grammar. Of particular interest  
in the variety of Kharia described here, is that there is no evidence  
for assuming the existence of parts-of-speech, such as noun, adjective  
and verb. Rather functions such as reference, modification and  
predication are expressed by one of two syntactic structures, referred  
to here as “syntagmas”.  [Publishers]]





Puglielli, Annarita & Mara Frascarelli. 2011. Linguistic analysis:  
 From data to theory. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

[This book reconsiders the classic topics of linguistic analysis and  
reflects on universal aspects of language from a typological and  
comparative perspective. The aim is to show the crucial interactions  
which occur at the different levels of grammar (phonology, morphology,  
lexicon, syntax and pragmatics), illustrating their various roles in  
the structural organization of the sentence and exploring how  
interface relations contribute to yield interpretation in  
typologically different languages. The structural analysis is set  
within the Generative framework of grammar, though theoretical tenets  
are the outcome, rather than the starting point, of a study based on  
the observation of data.

As the basic intent is to show different phenomena across a wide range  
of languages, a 'semi-guided' method has been adopted in order to  
facilitate comprehension and assist the reader in the identification  
of language universals. For every topic, the discussion of previous  
literature is followed by cross-linguistic evidence so that theory can  
be checked against data and the relevant generalizations drawn.  
Ultimately, this approach reveals that grammar is based on a very  
limited number of universal principles, which operate yielding  
different effects at the different levels of the grammar. It implies  
that a real understanding of the language-system can only be derived  
from a comparative analysis in which the notion of interface plays a  
crucial role.

The seven chapters in the volume deal with categories and functions,  
argument structure, syntactic functions, the structure of noun  
phrases, adverbial modification, information structure and illocutive  
force. Throughout, the observation of data from 74 languages is a  
crucial element in the formulation and understanding of theoretical  
tenets. [Publishers]]





Rose, Françoise. 2011. Grammaire de l'émérillon teko, une langue  
tupi-guarani de Guyane Française. Leuven: Peeters.

[Cet ouvrage constitue la première description de l’émérillon  
teko, langue d’une petite communauté amérindienne vivant dans la  
forêt amazonienne de Guyane française. Il s’agit d’une langue à  
tradition orale en danger d’extinction.
De nombreux domaines sont traités, de la phonologie à l’analyse du  
discours en passant par la morphosyntaxe. L’analyse est illustrée  
par un grand nombre d’exemples tirés d’un corpus constitué de  
textes spontanés recueillis auprès de locuteurs sur le terrain.
La grammaire offre, le long de ses 17 chapitres, un excellent panorama  
des structures d’une langue de la famille tupi-guarani, une des plus  
importantes d’Amérique du Sud. L'émérillon forme par ailleurs un  
spécimen représentatif des langues d’Amazonie.
Cet ouvrage se veut donc une grammaire de référence de  
l’émérillon qui, par son orientation à la fois comparative et  
typologique, intéressera tout autant les typologues que les  
amérindianistes, ainsi que toute personne curieuse de découvrir une  
langue jusque-là inconnue. [Publishers]]





Siemund, Peter (ed.). 2011. Linguistic universals and language  
variation. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.





Stolz, Thomas, Cornelia Stroh, & Aina Urdze. 2011. Total  
reduplication: The areal linguistics of a potential universal (Studia  
typologica 8). Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.





Yap, Foong Ha, Karen Grunow-Hårsta, & Janick Wrona (eds.). 2011.  
Nominalization in Asian languages: Diachronc and typological  
perspectives. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

  
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