Canonical Morphology and Syntax - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199604320 ISBN 13: 9780199604326

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2013

Synopsis

This is the first book to present Canonical Typology, a framework for comparing constructions and categories across languages. The canonical method takes the criteria used to define particular categories or phenomena (eg negation, finiteness, possession) to create a multidimensional space in which language-specific instances can be placed. In this way, the issue of fit becomes a matter of greater or lesser proximity to a canonical ideal. Drawing on the expertise of world class scholars in the field, the book addresses the issue of cross-linguistic comparability, illustrates the range of areas - from morphosyntactic features to reported speech - to which linguists are currently applying this methodology, and explores to what degree the approach succeeds in discovering the elusive canon of linguistic phenomena.

About this title

About the Author:

Dunstan Brown is Professor of Linguistics at the University of York. His research interests include autonomous morphology, morphology-syntax interaction and typology. His recent work has focused on describing and understanding different aspects of morphological complexity, notably The Syntax-Morphology Interface: A Study of Syncretism (with Matthew Baerman and Greville G. Corbett, CUP 2005) and Network Morphology (with Andrew Hippisley, CUP 2012).
Marina Chumakina is a Research Fellow in the Surrey Morphology Group, University of Surrey. Her work focuses on Nakh-Daghestanian languages and typology. She has done extensive fieldwork on Archi language resulting in an electronic Archi Dictionary (together with Dunstan Brown, Greville G. Corbett and Harley Quilliam).
Greville G. Corbett is Distinguished Professor of Linguistics, University of Surrey, and leads the Surrey Morphology Group. He works on the typology of features, as in Gender (1991), Number (2000) and Agreement (2006) and Features (forthcoming), all with Cambridge UP. Recently he has been developing the canonical approach to typology. He is one of the originators of Network Morphology; see The Syntax-Morphology Interface: A Study of Syncretism (with Matthew Baerman and Dunstan Brown, CUP 2005).

Review:

important theoretical contribution to morphological and syntactic typology * Edward Vajda, Studies in Language * The volume is a valuable overview of the research in one of the influential contemporary linguistic theories at the intersection of linguistic typology and grammatical theory. It can also serve as a helpful introduction to the theory of grammatical categories, offering definitions and discussions of several key concepts of morphology, syntax and linguistics in general, and drawing attention to a number of important methodological issues. Both students and professional linguists will undoubtedly benefit from reading this book. * Leonid Kulikov, Journal of Linguistics * This volume successfully illustrates how Canonical Typology helps resolve a number of debates in typological description. In many cases, the canonical typologies presented expand the scope of investigation for a given topic to include phenomena previously thought irrelevant. In all cases, these typologies pave the way for a much more robust and detailed description of these phenomena, which future linguists should find invaluable. * LinguistList *

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0199604320
• ISBN 13: 9780199604326
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336
• Editor: Brown Dunstan, Chumakina Marina, Corbett Greville G.