Aspects of the Theory of Morphology / / Igor Mel'cuk; ed. by David Beck.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DGBA Backlist Complete English Language 2000-2014 PART1
• VerfasserIn: Mel'cuk, Igor,
• HerausgeberIn: Beck, David,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter Mouton, , [2008]; ©2006
• Year of Publication: 2008
• Language: English
• Series: Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TiLSM] , 146
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (615 p.)

The book is dedicated to linguistic morphology and it contains a sketch of a complete morphological theory, centered around a discussion of fundamental concepts such as morph vs. morpheme, inflectional category, voice, grammatical case, agreement vs. government, suppletion, relationships between linguistic signs, etc.: the hottest issues in modern linguistics! The book introduces rigorous and clear concepts necessary to describe morphological phenomena of natural languages. Among other things, it offers logical calculi of possible grammemes in a given category. The presentation is developed in a typological perspective, so that linguistic data from a large variety of languages are described and analyzed (about 100 typologically very different languages). The main method is deductive: the concepts proposed in Aspects of the Theory of Morphology are based on a small set of indefinibilia and each concept is defined in terms of these indefinibilia and/or other concepts defined previously; as a result, logical calculi can be constructed (similar to Mendeleev's Periodical Table of Elements in chemistry). Then the concept is applied to the actual linguistic data to demonstrate its validity and advantages. Thus, Aspects of the Theory of Morphology combines metalinguistic endeavor (a system of concepts for morphology) with typological and descriptive orientation. It reaches out to all students of language, including the border fields and applications.

Table of Contents

i-iv -- Contents -- Introduction -- PART I. The Syntax-Morphology interface -- Chapter 1. Agreement, government, -- congruence -- PART II. Morphology proper -- Chapter 2. Case -- Chapter 3. Voice -- Chapter 4. Case, the basic verbal construction, and -- voice in Maasai -- Chapter 5. Morphological processes -- Chapter 6. Gender and noun class -- Chapter 7. Morph and morpheme -- Chapter 8. Suppletion -- Chapter 9. Zero sign in morphology -- Chapter 10. The structure of linguistic signs and -- the semantic-formal relations between them -- PART III. The Morphology-Phonology -- Interface -- Chapter 11. The phonemic status of -- Spanishsemivowels -- Conclusion Results and perspectives -- 569-616