William Foley
List of John Benjamins publications in which William Foley is involved.
2024 Review of Bowern (2023): The Oxford Guide to Australian Languages Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 39:2, pp. 463–467 | Review
2010 Clause linkage and Nexus in Papuan languages Clause Linking and Clause Hierarchy: Syntax and pragmatics, Bril, Isabelle (ed.), pp. 27–50 | Article
Interclausal relations in Papuan languages and in particular their prototypical clause chaining structures have long presented serious descriptive problems. These have been analyzed variously as instances of subordination, coordination, and even a third unique type of relationship, cosubordination.… read more
2006 Universal constraints and local conditions in Pidginization: Case studies from New Guinea Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 21:1, pp. 1–44 | Article
This paper looks at the processes involved in the genesis of three pidgins of New Guinea. I will argue that the main principle at work in the formation of the morphosyntax of pidgins is a general human capacity for language simplification, but that these processes of simplification are subject both… read more
2005 Semantic parameters and the unaccusative split in the Austronesian language family Studies in Language 29:2, pp. 385–430 | Article
A fundamental issue facing all models of grammar is the mapping problem: how to link the semantic arguments defined by the lexical verb in a clause to their formal realizations in morphosyntax. This paper investigates this problem across a range of intransitive verb types, often grouped into… read more
1980 Toward a Universal Typology of the Noun Phrase Studies in Language 4:2, pp. 171–199 | Article