Number - Constructions and Semantics
Case studies from Africa, Amazonia, India and Oceania
Published on 19. March 2014
Book
Hardback
366 pages
978-90-272-5916-5 (ISBN)
Description
This book is the outcome of several decades of research experience, with contributions by leading scholars based on long-term field research. It combines approaches from descriptive linguistics, anthropological linguistics, socio-historical studies, areal linguistics, and social anthropology. The key concern of this ground-breaking volume is to investigate the linguistic means of expressing number and countable amounts, which differ greatly in the world's languages. It provides insights into common number-marking devices and their not-so-common usages, but also into phenomena such as the absence of plurals, or transnumeral forms. The different contributions to the volume show that number is of considerable semantic complexity in many languages worldwide, expressing all kinds of extendedness, multiplicity, salience, size, and so on. This raises a number of challenging questions regarding what exactly is described under the slightly monolithic label of 'number' in most descriptive approaches to the languages of the world.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
+ index
Weight
830 gr
ISBN-13
978-90-272-5916-5 (9789027259165)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Anne Storch | Gerrit J. Dimmendaal
Number - Constructions and Semantics
Case studies from Africa, Amazonia, India and Oceania
E-Book
03/2014
1st Edition
John Benjamins Publishing Company
€130.99
Available for download
Persons
Content
1. List of tables, maps and figures; 2. Abbreviations; 3. Preface; 4. Chapter 1. One size fits all?: On the grammar and semantics of singularity and plurality (by Storch, Anne); 5. Chapter 2. Number and noun categorisation: A view from north-west Amazonia (by Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y.); 6. Chapter 3. Pluractionality and the distribution of number marking across categories (by Dimmendaal, Gerrit J.); 7. Chapter 4. Figuratively speaking - number in Kharia (by Peterson, John); 8. Chapter 5. Number in Kambaata (by Treis, Yvonne); 9. Chapter 6. The history of numeral classifiers in Teiwa (Papuan) (by Klamer, Marian A.F.); 10. Chapter 7. Number and numeration in Nelemwa and Zuanga (New Caledonia): Ontologies, definiteness and pragmatics (by Bril, Isabelle); 11. Chapter 8. When number meets classification: The linguistic expression of number in Bainounk languages (by Cobbinah, Alexander); 12. Chapter 9. Number in Dinka (by Andersen, Torben); 13. Chapter 10. Counting chickens in Luwo (by Storch, Anne); 14. Chapter 11. Number in South-Bauchi West languages (Chadic, Nigeria) (by Caron, Bernard); 15. Chapter 12. Number and numerals in Zande (by Pasch, Helma); 16. Chapter 13. Numerals in Papuan languages of the Greater Awyu family (by Vries, Lourens de); 17. Author index; 18. Language index; 19. Subject index