This book investigates the nature and properties of roots, the core elements of word meaning. In particular, chapters examine the interaction of roots with syntactic structure, and the role of their semantic and morpho-phonological properties in that interaction. Issues addressed in the book include the semantics and phonology of roots in isolation and in context; the categorial specification of roots; and the role of phases in word formation.
This book brings together contributions which address a wide range of issues regarding resumption, gathering evidence from a great variety of languages including Welsh, Breton, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, French, Vata, Hebrew, Jordanian and Palestinian Arabic. The topics covered include the interpretive properties of resumptive pronouns and epithets, the featural make-up of resumptive pronouns, as well as the syntactic diversity of resumptive constructions and the nature of A-resumption.
The study of materials and their properties forms an important area of research. Christopher Hall introduces the field of material science using gold, sand, and string - familiar things that represent the big families of metals, ceramics, and polymers. By explaining their properties, how materials are created, and the processes involved in their fabrication into objects, he shows how materials science brings together engineering and technology with physics, chemistry, and biology. He also shows how materials influence communications, the media, architecture, building, and the fine arts.
This book looks at how the human brain got the capacity for language and how language then evolved. Its four parts are concerned with different views on the emergence of language, with what language is, how it evolved in the human brain, and finally how this process led to the properties of language.
The Austronesian language family is the largest language family in the world, yet its members are relatively little studied, particularly from a formal perspective. Interestingly, because these languages exhibit typologically unusual properties, they pose important challenges to linguistic theory.