Synopses & Reviews
This handbook provides a critical state-of-the-art overview of work in linguistic typology. It examines the directions and challenges of current research and shows how these reflect and inform work on the development of linguistic theory. It describes what typologists have revealed about language in general and discovered (and continue to discover) about the richly various ways in which meaning and expression are achieved in the world's languages.
Typological research extends across all branches of linguistics. The degree to which the characteristics of language are universal or particular is crucial to the understanding of language and its relation to human nature and culture. This book is an essential source of reference for linguists of all theoretical persuasions. It is a vital companion for all those working in linguistic typology or undertaking linguistic fieldwork on one or more languages.
About the Author
Jae Jung Song is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Otago. His books include Causatives and Causation: A Universal-Typological Perspective (Addison Wesley Longman 1996); Case, Typology and Grammar, co-edited with Anna Siewierska (Benjamins 1998); Linguistic Typology: Morphology and Syntax (Pearson 2001); The Korean
Table of Contents
Part I: Foundations: History, Theory, and Method 1. The (Early) History of Linguistic Typology, Paolo Ramat
2. The Pioneers of Linguistic Typology: From Gabelentz to Greenberg, Giorgi Graffi
3. Linguistic Typology and the Study of Language, Michael Daniel
4. Explaining Language Universals, Edith A. Moravcsik
5. The Problem of Cross-linguistic Identification, Leon Stassen
6. Language Sampling, Dik Bakker
Part II: Theoretical Dimensions of Linguistic Typology
7. Markedness: Iconicity, Economy, and Frequency, Joan Bybee
8. Competing Motivations, John Haiman
9. Categories and Prototypes, Johan van der Auwera and Volker Gast
10. Implicational Hierarchies, Greville G. Corbett
11. Processing Efficiency and Complexity in Typological Patterns, John A. Hawkins
12. Language Universals and Linguistic Knowledge, Sonia Cristofaro
Part III: Empirical Dimensions of Linguistic Typology
13. Word Order Typology, Jae Jung Song
14. Word Classes, Walter Bisang
15. Case-Marking Typology, Beatrice Primus
16. Person Marking, Anna Siewierska
17. Transitivity Typology, Seppo Kittila
18. Voice Typology, Leonid Kulikov
19. Grammatical Relations Typology, Balthasar Bickel
20. Typology of Tense, Aspect, and Modality Systems, Ferdinand de Haan
21. Syntactic Typology, Lindsay Whaley
22. Morphological Typology, Dunstan Brown
23. Semantic Typology, Nicholas Evans
24. Typology of Phonological Systems, Ian Maddieson
Part IV: Linguistic Typology in a Wider Context
25. Linguistic Typology and Historical Linguistics, Kenneth Shields
26. Linguistic Typology and Language Contact, Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm
27. Linguistic Typology and First Language Acquisition, Melissa Bowerman
28. Linguistic Typology and Second language Acquisition, Fred R. Eckman
29. Linguistic Typology and Language Documentation, Patience Epps
30. Linguistic Typology and Formal Grammar, Maria Polinsky
References
Author Index
Language Index
Subject Index