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Lexical Polycategoriality
Cross-linguistic, cross-theoretical and language acquisition approaches
Editors
This book presents a collection of chapters on the nature, flexibility and acquisition of lexical categories. These long-debated issues are looked at anew by exploring the hypothesis of lexical polycategoriality –according to which lexical forms are not fully, or univocally, specified for lexical category– in a wide number of unrelated languages, and within different theoretical and methodological perspectives. Twenty languages are thoroughly analyzed. Apart from French, Arabic and Hebrew, the volume includes mostly understudied languages, spoken in New Guinea, Australia, New Caledonia, Amazonia, Meso- and North America. Resulting from a long-standing collaboration between leading international experts, this book brings under one cover new data analyses and results on word categories from the linguistic and acquisitional point of view. It will be of the utmost interest to researchers, teachers and graduate students in different fields of linguistics (morpho-syntax, semantics, typology), language acquisition, as well as psycholinguistics, cognition and anthropology.
[Studies in Language Companion Series, 182] 2017. xiii, 479 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 10 October 2017
Published online on 10 October 2017
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments | pp. ix–9
- List of contributors | pp. xi–xiii
- Lexical Polycategoriality: Cross-linguistic, cross-theoretical and language acquisition approaches: An introductionValentina Vapnarsky and Edy Veneziano | pp. 1–31
- Part I. Polycategoriality: The where and how of flexibility?
- The flexibility of the noun/verb distinction in the lexicon of MandinkaDenis Creissels | pp. 35–57
- Derivationally based homophony in FrenchFrançoise Kerleroux | pp. 59–78
- Categorial flexibility as an emergent phenomenon: A comparison of Arabic, Wolof, and FrenchAlain Kihm | pp. 79–97
- Part II. Polycategoriality across Amerindian languages: From words to roots
- Polycategoriality and hybridity across Mayan languages: Action nouns and ergative splitsXimena Lois, Valentina Vapnarsky, Cédric Becquey and Aurore Monod Becquelin | pp. 101–153
- Polycategoriality and zero derivation: Insights from Central Alaskan Yup’ik EskimoMarianne Mithun | pp. 155–174
- What determines constraints on the relationships between roots and lexical categories? Evidence from Choctaw and CherokeeMarcia Haag | pp. 175–203
- Part III. Polycategoriality across Austronesian and Australian languages: Function and typology
- Lexical and syntactic categories in Nêlêmwa (New Caledonia) and some other Austronesian languages: Fluid vs. rigid categorialityIsabelle Bril | pp. 207–242
- Two classes of verbs in Northern Australian languages: Implications for the typology of polycategorialityEva Schultze-Berndt | pp. 243–271
- Part IV. Linguistic analysis in the light of acquisition data
- The ontology of roots and the emergence of nouns and verbs in Kuikuro: Adult speech and children’s acquisitionBruna Franchetto and Mara Santos | pp. 275–306
- Flexibles and polyvalence in Ku Waru: A developmental perspectiveFrancesca Merlan and Alan Rumsey | pp. 307–341
- Word class distinctiveness versus polycategoriality in Modern Hebrew: Typological and psycholinguistic perspectivesRuth A. Berman | pp. 343–377
- Part V. Lexical categories and polycategoriality in acquisition
- Noun and Verb categories in acquisition: Evidence from fillers and inflectional morphology in French-acquiring childrenEdy Veneziano | pp. 381–411
- Semantic discrimination of Noun/Verb categories in French children aged 1;6 to 2;11Christophe Parisse and Caroline Rossi | pp. 413–442
- The acquisition of action nouns in Yucatec MayaBarbara Pfeiler | pp. 443–466
- Author index | pp. 467–471
- Language index | pp. 473–474
- Subject index | pp. 475–479
Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Dressler, Wolfgang U., Veronika Mattes & Laila Kjærbæk
2021. Introduction. In The Acquisition of Derivational Morphology [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, 66], ► pp. 1 ff.
van Lier, Eva
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