Research on nominalization, a process that gives rise to referring expressions, has always played a central role in linguistic investigations. Over the years there has also been growing evidence that nominalization constructions often extend to non-referential domains. They participate in noun-modifying expressions (e.g. genitive and relative clauses), subordinate clauses and topic constructions, finite structures with the nominalizers reanalyzed as TAM markers, and stance constructions with evaluative, attitudinal, evidential and epistemic overtones. This volume brings together historical and crosslinguistic evidence from more than 20 different languages representing six different language families spanning the Asian continent and the Pacific and Indian oceans to elucidate the strategies and grammaticalization pathways that give rise to both referential and non-referential uses of nominalization constructions. This collection highlights the diversity of strategies and at the same time the robust cyclical nature of change within and across languages. The combined diachronic and typological analyses in this volume are particularly valuable for linguistic research on diachronic morphosyntax and linguistic ‘universals’, and are also an important supplementary cross-referencing tool for linguistic investigations of versatile and ubiquitous morphemes in under-documented languages.

Research on nominalization, a process that gives rise to referring expressions, has always played a central role in linguistic investigations. Over the years there has also been growing evidence that nominalization constructions often extend to non-referential domains. They participate in noun-modifying expressions (e.g. genitive and relative clauses), subordinate clauses and topic constructions, finite structures with the nominalizers reanalyzed as TAM markers, and stance constructions with evaluative, attitudinal, evidential and epistemic overtones. This volume brings together historical and crosslinguistic evidence from more than 20 different languages representing six different language families spanning the Asian continent and the Pacific and Indian oceans to elucidate the strategies and grammaticalization pathways that give rise to both referential and non-referential uses of nominalization constructions. This collection highlights the diversity of strategies and at the same time the robust cyclical nature of change within and across languages. The combined diachronic and typological analyses in this volume are particularly valuable for linguistic research on diachronic morphosyntax and linguistic ‘universals’, and are also an important supplementary cross-referencing tool for linguistic investigations of versatile and ubiquitous morphemes in under-documented languages.

Recent scholarship has confirmed earlier observations that nominalization plays a crucial role in the formation of complex constructions in the world’s languages. Grammatical nominalizations are one of the most salient and widespread features of languages of the Americas, yet they have not been approached as foundational grammatical structures for constructions such as relative clauses and complement clauses. This is due to an imbalance in past scholarship, which has tended to focus on these constructions at the expense of the nominalization structures underlying them. The papers in this collection treat grammatical nominalizations in their own right, and as a starting point for the investigation of their uses in complex grammatical structures. A representative sample of Amerindian languages, with focus on South America, examines properties of grammatical nominalizations such as their multiple functions, their internal and external syntax, and their diachronic development. Among the far-reaching theoretical conclusions reached by the studies in this volume is that the various types of relative clauses recognized in the typological literature are actually no more than epiphenomena arising from the different uses of grammatical nominalizations.

The main objective of this book is to present a systematic account of the constructional mechanisms that underlie deverbal nominalization. Such an account strongly calls for a functional rather than purely structural approach because nominalizations are basically functional re-classifications of verbal predicates into nominal constructions. The argument is fortified by a detailed discussion of a number of nominalization systems. The book should be of interest to researchers in cognitive and functional linguistics - it combines original descriptive contributions with general theoretical insights.

Gain a deeper understanding of essential research on the semantics of noun phrases and verb phrases. Clear explanations of significant recent research bring complex issues to life, with expert guidance on topics of debate within the field. The book gives readers valuable insights into topics such as definiteness, specificity, genericity aspect, aktionsart and mood. It also discusses directions for future research. Written by a world-class team of authors, these highly cited articles are here in paperback for the first time since their original publication. An essential reference for researchers in the area.

This collection offers fresh perspectives on the syntax and semantics of South Asian languages, drawing on novel data from Meiteilon, Haryanavi, Punjabi, Kannada, Malayalam, and Bangla. It covers three major grammatical aspects: namely, the status of primitive categories, clausal and nominal structure, and case/phi-agreement. All the contributions here provide comprehensive descriptive discussions followed by analyses couched within the generative paradigm, thereby offering detailed and clearly presented linguistic treatments of important issues in South Asian languages.

The linguistic study of Japanese, with its rich syntactic and phonological structure, complex writing system, and diverse sociohistorical context, is a rapidly growing research area. This book, designed to serve as a concise reference for researchers interested in the Japanese language and in typological studies of language in general, explores diverse characteristics of Japanese that are particularly intriguing when compared with English and other European languages. It pays equal attention to the theoretical aspects and empirical phenomena from theory-neutral perspectives, and presents necessary theoretical terms in clear and easy language. It consists of five thematic parts including sound system and lexicon, grammatical foundation and constructions, and pragmatics/sociolinguistics topics, with chapters that survey critical discussions arising in Japanese linguistics. The Cambridge Handbook of Japanese Linguistics will be welcomed by general linguists, and students and scholars working in linguistic typology, Japanese language, Japanese linguistics and Asian Studies.

Complex hierarchic syntax is considered one of the hallmarks of human language. The highest level of syntactic complexity, recursive-embedded clauses, has been singled out by some for a special status as the apex of the uniquely-human language faculty – evolutionary but somehow immune to adaptive selection. This volume, coming out of a symposium held at Rice University in March 2008, tackles syntactic complexity from multiple developmental perspectives. We take it for granted that grammar is an adaptive instrument of communication, assembled upon the pre-existing platform of pre-linguistic cognition. Most of the papers in the volume deal with the two grand developmental trends of human language: diachrony, the communal enterprise directly responsible for fashioning synchronic morpho-syntax; and ontogeny, the individual endeavor directly responsible for the acquisition of competent grammatical performance. The genesis of syntactic complexity along these two developmental trends is considered alongside with the cognition and neurology of grammar and of syntactic complexity, and the evolutionary relevance of diachrony, ontogeny and pidginization is argued on general bio-evolutionary grounds. Lastly, several of the contributions to the volume suggest that recursive embedding is not in itself an adaptive target, but rather the by-product of two distinct adaptive gambits: the recruitment of conjoined clauses as modal operators on other clauses and the subsequent condensation of paratactic into syntactic structures.

This grammar provides the first comprehensive grammatical description of Yakkha, a Sino-Tibetan language of the Kiranti branch. Yakkha is spoken by about 14,000 speakers in eastern Nepal, in the Sankhuwa Sabha and Dhankuta districts. The grammar is based on original fieldwork in the Yakkha community. Its primary source of data is a corpus of 13,000 clauses from narratives and naturally-occurring social interaction which the author recorded and transcribed between 2009 and 2012. Corpus analyses were complemented by targeted elicitation. The grammar is written in a functional-typological framework. It focusses on morphosyntactic and semantic issues, as these present highly complex and comparatively under-researched fields in Kiranti languages. The sequence of the chapters follows the well-established order of phonological, morphological, syntactic and discourse-structural descriptions. These are supplemented by a historical and sociolinguistic introduction as well as an analysis of the complex kinship terminology. Topics such as verbal person marking, argument structure, transitivity, complex predication, grammatical relations, clause linkage, nominalization, and the topography-based orientation system have received in-depth treatment. Wherever possible, the structures found were explained in a historical-comparative perspective in order to shed more light on how their particular properties have emerged.

This volume is the first to present a detailed survey of the systems of verb-verb complexes - compounds consisting of a main verb and a quasi-auxiliary - in Asian languages. Leading specialists offer an in-depth analysis of the diachrony and geographical distribution of these constructions in a wide range of Asian languages.