Subject: new books : comparative and general grammar

comparative and general grammar * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * van geenhoven , veerle ( max planck institute for psycholinguistics , nijmegen ) ; semantic incorporation and indefinite descriptions : semantic and syntactic aspects of noun incorporation in west greenlandic ; isbn : 1-57586 - 132 - 1 ( paper ) , 1-57586 - 133 - x ( cloth ) ; 248 pp . csli publications 1998 : http : / / csli-www . stanford . edu / publications / email : pubs @ roslin . stanford . edu . distributed by cambridge university press . this volume presents " semantic incorporation " as an analysis accounting for many strking similarities between the semantic properties of incorporated nouns in west greenlandic and bare plurals and split noun phrases in west germanic language . this analysis uniformly treats these nominal expressions as predicative indefinites . at the outset , van geenhoven explores the empirical basis for why semantic incorporation is needed . the inability of existing semantic theories of indefinites as well as current structural approaches to noun incorporation to account for the data observed is then explored , and finally , the work presents semantic incorporation as a subtheory of indefinites . this volume will be of interest to semanticists , lexicalists , syntacticians and linguists . * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * zoll , cheryl ( massachusetts institute of technology ) ; parsing below the segment in a constraint-based framework ; isbn : 1-57586 - 130 - 5 ( paper ) , 1-57586 - 131 - 3 ( cloth ) ; 172 pp . csli publications 1998 : http : / / csli-www . stanford . edu / publications / email : pubs @ roslin . stanford . edu . distributed by cambridge university press . this book proposes a new way of understanding the behavior of consonants and vowels in a broad cross-section of the world 's languages . also introduced is a new model of subsegmental phonology within optimality theory that differs from standard autosegmental phonology both in its limited use of representational distinctions and in the form of the grammar to which the representations submit . the research focuses particularly on oating features and ghost segments , and demonstrates that the current understanding of segmental representation fails to characterize the full range of subsegmental phenomena found cross-linguistically . zoll proposes instead an analysis in which the grammar derives the variety of surface phenomena from a single underlying representation . the typology that results from this analysis correctly classies the entire range of behavior associated with subminimal phonological units . this work thus both enlarges the empirical foundation on which an adequate theory of segment structure must be based , and in developing such an account sheds new light on classic problems of subsegmental parsing . the problems dealt with here include classics such as the pattern of liaison consonants in french , as well as more obscure phenomena such as the assignment of tone marking in the african languages mende and kukuya . it is the rst book to apply the results of current phonological theory to this area . this book will be of great interest to linguists and to other people who are interested in knowing more about sound patterns in language . * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * csli publications ventura hall stanford university stanford , ca 94305-4115 telephone ( 650 ) 723-1839 fax ( 650 ) 725-2166 http : / / csli-www . stanford . edu / publications
