The Paradigmatic Structure of Person Marking
Published on 3. July 2003
Book
Hardback
390 pages
978-0-19-925412-5 (ISBN)
Description
This book explores person markers, the linguistic elements that provide points of reference to speech-act participants. Michael Cysouw develops a new framework for the typology of person marking based on the rejection of the notion of plurality for its analysis.
When a mother says "Mummy is going to say goodnight now", Mummy is the person marker in a way that in English is confined to motherese but which is used more commonly in some other languages and may also be characteristic of much earlier forms.
Dr Cysouw divides the person markers of 400 languages into paradigms. He considers how the structure of these person paradigms relates to their function. His investigation provides a clear account of how person markers work syntactically, pragmatically, and semantically as well as giving fresh insights into aspects of linguistic change, language-relatedness, and the interfaces between discourse, syntax, and semantics. The combination of a typological and a comparative approach results in the first outline of a cognitive map of the paradigmatic structure of person marking.
When a mother says "Mummy is going to say goodnight now", Mummy is the person marker in a way that in English is confined to motherese but which is used more commonly in some other languages and may also be characteristic of much earlier forms.
Dr Cysouw divides the person markers of 400 languages into paradigms. He considers how the structure of these person paradigms relates to their function. His investigation provides a clear account of how person markers work syntactically, pragmatically, and semantically as well as giving fresh insights into aspects of linguistic change, language-relatedness, and the interfaces between discourse, syntax, and semantics. The combination of a typological and a comparative approach results in the first outline of a cognitive map of the paradigmatic structure of person marking.
Reviews / Votes
courageous and highly innovative approach to the paradigmatic architecture of personhood from a cross-linguistic perspective . . . The author has developed a highly stimulating way of handling and presenting cross-linguistic data, which helps the reader to safely navigate through the world of linguistic variation . . . * Wolfgang Schulze, The Linguist List *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
numerous figures
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
749 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-925412-5 (9780199254125)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Michael Cysouw
The Paradigmatic Structure of Person Marking
Book
01/2009
Oxford University Press
€64.38
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Michael Cysouw is Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at the Zentrum fuer Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS) in Berlin and affiliated to the Department of English at the Free University of Berlin. This book is a revised version of his doctoral dissertation, which was written at the Department of General Linguistics of the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. The Association for Linguistic Typology prized this dissertation with its 2001 junior award.
Content
PART ONE: PERSON MARKING; PART TWO: PARADIGMATIC STRUCTURE; PART THREE: NUMBER INCORPORATED; PART FOUR: COGNATE PARADIGMS