The twelve articles in this volume describe Yeniseic, Samoyedic and Siberian Turkic languages as a linguistic complex of great interest to typologists, grammarians, diachronic and synchronic linguists, as well as cultural anthropologists.
Most natural languages display an inventory of pronominal elements that obligatorily or optionally remain phonologically null in a few, in many or even in all syntactic surroundings. The authors of the papers compiled in this book analyse such null pronouns in a synchronic and diachronic way and recover the specific morphological and syntactic prerequisites for their origin and insertion.
English Adjective Comparison - A historical perspective
The book contributes to a better understanding of the English system of degree by means of a study of a number of aspects in the evolution of adjective comparison that have so far either been considered controversial or not been accounted for at all. As will be shown, the diachronic aspects analysed will also have synchronic implications. Furthermore, unlike previous synchronic as well as diachronic accounts of adjective comparison, this monograph does not concentrate only on the ‘standard’ comparative strategies, but also deals with double periphrastic comparatives, thus providing an analysis of the whole range of comparative structures in English.
Henry Smith develops a theory of syntactic case and examines its synchronic and diachronic consequences. Within a unification-based framework, he draws out pervasive patterns in the relationship between morphosyntax "linking" and grammatical function. Beginning with a detailed study of dative substitution in Icelandic, the author moves on to examine a wide array of synchronic and diachronic data and to construct a typology of case.
