Competition and Variation in Natural Languages: The Case for Case (Perspectives on Cognitive Science)

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 374 pages
• Published by: Elsevier Science
• Edition: 1st Edition September 30, 2005
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0080446515
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0080446516
• Book Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Weighs: 1.7 pounds

Product Description
This volume combines different perspectives on case-marking: (1) typological and descriptive approaches of various types and instances of case-marking in the languages of the world as well as comparison with languages that express similar types of relations without morphological case-marking; (2) formal analyses in different theoretical frameworks of the syntactic, semantic, and morphological properties of case-marking; (3) a historical approach of case-marking; (4) a psycholinguistic approach of case-marking.



Although there are a number of publications on case related issues, there is no volume such as the present one, which exclusively looks at case marking, competition and variation from a cross-linguistic perspective and within the context of different contemporary theoretical approaches to the study of language.



In addition to chapters with broad conceptual orientation, the volume offers detailed empirical studies of case in a number of diverse languages including: Amharic, Basque, Dutch, Hindi, Japanese, Kuuk Thaayorre, Malagasy and Yurakaré.



The volume will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in the cognitive sciences, general linguistics, typology, historical linguistics, formal linguistics, and psycholinguistics. The book will interest scholars working within the context of formal syntactic and semantic theories as it provides insight into the properties of case from a cross-linguistic perspective. The book also will be of interest to cognitive scientists interested in the relationship between meaning and grammar, in particular, and the human mind's capacity in the mapping of meaning onto grammar, in general.

Reader Reviews
Perhaps unintentionally, this collection of papers is an eloquent argument for the preservation of minor languages, some of which might face extinction. The authors compare various languages, to demonstrate how different societies have implemented case. One such choice is Kuuk Thaayorre. Spoken by only around 300 Aborigines in Queensland. As explained, many of the youngsters of this group are fluent in English, and only partially in the Kuuk Thaayorre. The long term prognosis for the latter is dubious. Yet from this very obscure language is derived an insightful analysis, that is quite possibly unique to the language.