Crosslinguistic Facets Of The Subjunctive
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Crosslinguistic Facets of the Subjunctive
Author: Liane Ströbel
language: en
Publisher: Akademische Verlagsgemeinschaft München
Release Date: 2023-11-20
No other grammatical phenomenon causes as many problems in teaching and learning as the subjunctive. Most grammars devote as many pages to the presentation of the rules as to the exceptions. This becomes even more frustrating when dealing with the differences, not only between different language families, but even within the Romance language family alone, since it seems that each language shapes the functional area of the subjunctive individually. The aim of this volume is therefore to reconsider the representation of the subjunctive in Romance languages in a crosslinguistic and contrastive way. First, an overview of research in this area from the beginnings to the latest neurolinguistic findings will explore the complexity of the issue. Next, specific phenomena of the subjunctive at the interface of its functional domain with the indicative will be illustrated by means of appropriate case studies. On this basis, an attempt is made to trace the polyfunctionality and the differing uses in the Romance languages and beyond to a common pattern with language-specific margins. This allows us to explain, not only contrastive differences, but also the decline of the subjunctive in some domains and languages, as well as demonstrate the range of substitution possibilities. Finally, the view is extended to other language families and new impulses for foreign language teaching are presented. With contributions from: Tobias Gretenkort, Sebastian Buchczyk, Ingo Feldhausen, Michel Favre, Helene Rader, Liane Ströbel, Aurélie Scheffe
A Cross-linguistic Approach to the Syntax of Subjunctive Mood
This monograph gives a unified account of the syntactic distribution of subjunctive mood across languages, including Romance, Balkan (South Slavic and Modern Greek), and Hungarian, among others. Starting from a close scrutiny of the environments in which subjunctive mood occurs and of its semantic contribution, we present a feature-based approach which reveals the common properties of the class of verbs which embed subjunctive, and which takes into account the variation in subjunctive-related complementizers. Two main proposals can be highlighted: (i) the lexical semantics of the main clause predicate plays a crucial role in mood selection. More specifically subjunctive mood is regulated by a specific property of the main predicate, the emotive property, which is associated with the external argument of the embedding verb (usually the Subject). The book proposes a nanosyntactic analysis of the internal structure of embedding verbs. (ii) Cross- and intra-linguistic variations are dealt with according to different patterns of lexicalization, i.e., variations depend on what portions of the verb’s and complementizer’s functional sequence is lexicalized and on how it is packaged by languages. In doing so, this approach provides a uniform account of the phenomenon of embedded subjunctives. The monograph takes a novel, feature-based approach to the question of subjunctive licensing, providing a detailed analysis of the features of the matrix verb, of the complementizer and of the embedded subjunctive clause. It is also based on a wide empirical coverage, ranging from the relatively well-studied groups of Romance and Balkan languages to less explored languages from non-Indo-European families (Hungarian).
The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition
Continuing the tradition of this series, which has become a standard reference work in language acquisition, Volume 4 contains chapters on three additional languages/language groups--Finnish, Greek, and Korean. The chapters are selective, critical reviews rather than exhaustive summaries of the course of development of each language. Authors approach the language in question as a case study in a potential crosslinguistic typology of acquisitional problems, considering those data which contribute to issues of general theoretical concern in developmental psycholinguistics and linguistic theory. Each chapter, therefore, provides the following: * Grammatical Sketch of Language. Brief grammatical sketch of the language or language group, presenting those linguistic facts which are relevant to the developmental analysis. * Sources of Evidence. Summary of basic sources of evidence, characterizing methods of gathering data, and listing key references. * Overall Course of Development. Brief summary of the overall course of development in the language or language group, giving an idea of the general problems posed to the child in acquiring a language of this type, summarizing typical errors, domains of relatively error-free acquisition, and the timing of acquisition--areas of the grammar that show relatively precocious or delayed development in crosslinguistic perspective. * Data. Specific developmental aspects of the language examined in depth, depending on each individual language and available acquisition data. * Conclusions. An interpretive summary of theoretical points raised above, attending to general principles of language development and linguistic organization suggested by the study of a language of this type, plus comparisons with development of other languages.