Studies in Role and Reference Grammar
-
Herausgegeben von:
Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) originated in the early 1970s as a theory of the grammar of natural languages which aims to describe and explain typological diversity through general principles of the mapping of discourse, semantics, and syntax. In RRG, these levels of analysis are understood as parallel dimensions of the language architecture and represented separately from each other. Work in RRG aims to be computationally implementable and compatible with the results of psycholinguistic research. Adopted and developed by theoretical and field linguists alike, the tenets of RRG are also often applied to diachrony, neurolinguistics, cognitive science, and Natural Language Processing. The STRRG series addresses theoretical problems and offers in-depth language descriptions or cross-linguistic studies adopting the RRG framework.
Scientific Board:
Robert D. Van Valin, jr; University at Buffalo/ Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf
Laura Kallmeyer; Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf
Ranko Matasovic; University of Zagreb
Brian Nolan; Technological University Dublin
Luis Alberto Paris; Universidad Nacional de Cuyo
Kiyoko Toratani; York University
This book provides an in-depth comparative study of relative and cleft constructions in Kréol Rényoné, a French Creole spoken on Reunion Island. Comparing Kréol Rényoné to varieties of French and other French Creoles, it sheds light on the parameters of grammatical variation in the domains of relativisation and clefting in this group of cognate languages. Current Kréol Rényoné data from corpora and fieldwork are used to describe the language’s headed relatives, free relatives, it-clefts and there-constructions, comparing them with those of French and several other French Creoles, including Haitian, Mauritian and Louisiana Creole.
The book presents the first detailed and cohesive treatment of relative and cleft constructions within the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) framework. Considering data from a family of languages that are lesser studied in this domain of syntax, the book both improves our understanding of those individual languages and expands and refines existing analyses of the relevant constructions, highlighting the advantage of a framework that places equal weight on the semantic and discourse-pragmatic components of grammar as it does the syntax for understanding such constructions.
Gĩkũyũ is a Bantu language (< Niger-Congo) spoken by approx. 8 million people in central Kenya. Like other Bantu languages, Gĩkũyũ is head-marking at the sentence level but dependent-marking at the level of the phrase (e.g. reference phrase, modifier phrase). Concerning the head-marking vs. dependent-marking division, the volume addresses major topics. First, it explores the exact conditions of head-marking in Gĩkũyũ, addressing issues like argument linking as well as voice operations affecting argument realization. Second, it investigates the so-called associative construction. This is a dependent-marking strategy used for the expression of possessive relations, spatial locations, as well as adnominal modification. Although the use of the same morphosyntactic strategy for the expression of possession and adnominal modification is frequently attested among the world’s languages, this issue has not been addressed from an RRG perspective yet.
Although Gĩkũyũ already received some attention within the RRG framework, the above-mentioned topics have not been in their main focus. Thus, the volume extends the previous analysis of Gĩkũyũ and presents a coherent account on the language’s morphosyntax along the lines of head- and dependent-marking. The analysis builds on the latest theoretical developments within RRG and combines a detailed analysis of a single language within a broader cross-Bantu perspective.
This inaugural edited volume of the series, "Studies in Role and Reference Grammar", brings together papers that showcase recent advancements in various aspects of Role and Reference Grammar. The individual chapters explore phenomena such as Aktionsart, operators, discourse and information structure, argument coding, alignment, voice, and clause linkage and cover a wide range of typologically diverse languages.
