A new volume on Word Order Variation has been published in the series Studia Typologica [STTYP] (De Gruyter Mouton) by Hiwa Asadpour in collaboration with Thomas Jügel. The focus region is the Iranic-Semitic-Turkic contact area, where many languages are described as verb-final, ‘Targets’ (Goals, Recipients, etc.) tend to appear in the immediate postverbal position, a pattern violating the alleged ‘basic word order’. The volume will be available from August 1 on.

Investigating empirical material, the present volume examines the idea of its contact-induced origin by combining various languages Continue reading Asadpour co-edits volume on language contact →

Assif Am-David published a monograph based on his dissertation “A semantic typology of definiteness”. This book explores the crosslinguistic distributional patterns of definiteness markers. A distinction is drawn between semantic definiteness and morpho-syntactic definiteness marking. The semantic components of definiteness are arranged, similar to semantic maps, and language-specifically assigned to definiteness markers. This model is based on the results of an empirical study of Q’ekchi’, Otomi, Maori and Basque. The choice of a suitable sample for a typological study is also discussed.

Bibliographic information:

Am-David, Assif (2014): A Semantic Typology of Definiteness. Lampert Academic Publishing.

The book can be purchased at:
www.lap-publishing.com/catalog/details//store/gb/book/978-3-659-56612-7/a-semantic-typology-of-definiteness