This volume provides detailed studies of the crosslinguistically unusual mermaid construction in seventeen languages of Asia, including Modern Standard Japanese, and one language of Africa. This construction appears to be absent in languages of Europe, Oceania and the Americas. The name - mermaid construction - alludes to its paradoxical make-up, where the structure closely resembling a verb-predicate clause ends with what may look like a noun-predicate clause. Superficially it looks biclausal; however, syntactically it is monoclausal. It has a compound predicate which contains an independent noun, a clitic or an affix derived from a noun, or a nominalizer. Its compound predicate has a modal, evidential, aspectual, temporal, stylistic or discourse-related meaning. The paradox is resolved from a diachronic perspective insofar as a biclausal structure is reanalyzed as a monoclausal one. This volume shows how a noun may be reanalyzed to become a constituent of a predicate. It constitutes an important contribution to research on grammaticalization and in particular, the grammaticalization of nouns and more generally, to the typology of syntactic reanalysis.

This volume presents a cross-linguistic investigation of clausal noun-modifying constructions in genetically varied languages of Eurasia. Contrary to a common premise that, in any language, adnominal clauses that share some features of relative clauses constitute a structurally distinct construction, some languages of Eurasia exhibit a General Noun-Modifying Clause Construction (GNMCC) -- a single construction covering a wide range of semantic relations between the head noun and the clause. Through in-depth examination of naturally-occurring and elicited data from Ainu, languages of the Caucasus (e.g. Ingush, Georgian, Bezhta, Hinuq), Japanese, Korean, Marathi, Nenets, Sino-Tibetan languages (e.g. Cantonese, Mandarin, Rawang), and Turkic languages (e.g. Turkish, Sakha), the chapters discuss whether or not the language in question exhibits a GNMCC and the range of noun modification covered by such a construction. The findings afford us new facts, new theoretical perspectives and the first step toward a more global assessment of the possibilities for GNMCCs.

This is a cross-linguistic exploration of the use of clause linkage markers in causal, conditional, and concessive sentences. Employing a five-level classification of clause linkage based on semantic and pragmatic grounds, it shows that, within individual languages different markers exhibit different distributions on the five levels. Also, the rich evidence presented from seventeen languages from many parts of the world documents that these distributions present commonalities as well as differences across the languages of the sample.

This volume explores the way in which grammaticalization processes converge and differ across languages and language areas. Chapters systemically explore these processes languages of Africa, Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and the Americas, and in creole languages, revealing a number of unique pathways as well as shared features.

The volume is aimed at preserving invaluable knowledge about Ainu, a language-isolate previously spoken in Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and Kurils, which is now on the verge of extinction. Ainu was not a written language, but it possesses a huge documented stock of oral literature, yet is significantly under-described in terms of grammar. It is the only non-Japonic language of Japan and is typologically different not only from Japanese but also from other Northeast Asian languages. Revolving around but not confined to its head-marking and polysynthetic character, Ainu manifests many typologically interesting phenomena, related in particular to the combinability of various voice markers and noun incorporation. Other interesting features of Ainu include vowel co-occurrence restrictions, a mixed system of expressing grammatical relations, which includes the elements of a rare tripartite alignment, nominal classification distinguishing common and locative nouns, elaborate possessive classes, verbal number, a rich four-term evidential system, and undergrammaticalized aspect, which are all explained in the volume. This handbook, the result of unprecedented cooperation of the leading experts of Ainu, will definitely help to increase the clarity of our understanding of Ainu and in a long-term perspective may provide answers to problems of human prehistory as well as open the field of Ainu studies to the world and attract many new students. Table of Contents Masayoshi Shibatani and Taro Kageyama Preface Masayoshi Shibatani and Taro Kageyama Introduction to the Handbook of Japanese Language and Linguistics Contributors Anna Bugaeva Introduction I Overview of Ainu studies Anna Bugaeva 1. Ainu: A head-marking language of the Pacific Rim Juha Janhunen 2. Ainu ethnic origins Tomomi Satō 3. Major old documents of Ainu and some problems in the historical study of Ainu Alfred F. Majewicz 4. Ainu language Western records José Andrés Alonso de la Fuente 5. The Ainu language through time Alexander Vovin 6. Ainu elements in early Japonic Hidetoshi Shiraishi and Itsuji Tangiku 7. Language contact in the north Hiroshi Nakagawa and Mika Fukazawa 8. Hokkaido Ainu dialects: Towards a classification of Ainu dialects Itsuji Tangiku 9. Differences between Karafuto and Hokkaido Ainu dialects Shiho Endō 10. Ainu oral literature Osami Okuda 11. Meter in Ainu oral literature Tetsuhito Ōno 12. The history and current status of the Ainu language revival movement II Typologically interesting characteristics of the Ainu language Hidetoshi Shiraishi 13. Phonetics and phonology Hiroshi Nakagawa 14. Parts of Speech – with a focus on the classification of nouns Anna Bugaeva and Miki Kobayashi 15. Verbal valency Tomomi Satō 16. Noun incorporation Hiroshi Nakagawa 17. Verbal number Yasushige Takahashi 18. Aspect and evidentiality Yoshimi Yoshikawa 19. Existential aspectual forms in the Saru and Chitose dialects of Ainu III Appendices: Sample texts Anna Bugaeva 20. An uwepeker “Retar Katak, Kunne Katak” and kamuy yukar “Amamecikappo” narrated in the Chitose Hokkaido Ainu dialect by Ito Oda Elia dal Corso 21. “Meko Oyasi”, a Sakhalin Ainu ucaskuma narrated by Haru Fujiyama Subject index

The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages provides a comprehensive account of the Transeurasian languages, and is the first major reference work in the field since 1965. The term 'Transeurasian' refers to a large group of geographically adjacent languages that includes five uncontroversial linguistic families: Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic. The historical connection between these languages, however, constitutes one of the most debated issues in historical comparative linguistics. In the present book, a team of leading international scholars in the field take a balanced approach to this controversy, integrating different theoretical frameworks, combining both functional and formal linguistics, and showing that genealogical and areal approaches are in fact compatible with one another. The volume is divided into five parts. Part I deals with the historical sources and periodization of the Transeurasian languages and their classification and typology. In Part II, chapters provide individual structural overviews of the Transeurasian languages and the linguistic subgroups that they belong to, while Part III explores Transeurasian phonology, morphology, syntax, lexis, and semantics from a comparative perspective. Part IV offers a range of areal and genealogical explanations for the correlations observed in the preceding parts. Finally, Part V combines archaeological, genetic, and anthropological perspectives on the identity of speakers of Transeurasian languages. The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages will be an indispensable resource for specialists in Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic languages and for anyone with an interest in Transeurasian and comparative linguistics more broadly.

This volume intends to fill the gap in the grammaticalization studies setting as its goal the systematic description of grammaticalization processes in genealogically and structurally diverse languages. To address the problem of the limitations of the secondary sources for grammaticalization studies, the editors rely on sketches of grammaticalization phenomena from experts in individual languages guided by a typological questionnaire.

The Languages of Japan and Korea provides detailed descriptions of the major varieties of languages in the region, both modern and pre-modern, within a common format, producing a long-needed introductory reference source. Korean, Japanese, Ainu, and representative members of the three main groupings of the Ryukyuan chain are discussed for the first time in a single work. The volume is divided into language sketches, the majority of which are broken down into sections on phonology, orthography, morphology, syntax and lexicon. Specific emphasis is placed on those aspects of syntactic interest, such as speech levels, honorifics and classifiers, which are commonly underplayed in other descriptions of Modern Japanese and Korean. Each language is represented in Roman-based transcription, although its own script (where there is such an orthography) and IPA transcriptions are used sparingly where appropriate. The dialects of both the modern and oldest forms of the languages are given extensive treatment, with a primary focus on the differences from the standard language. These synchronic snapshots are complemented by a discussion of both the genetic and areal relationships between languages in the region.

This book brings together a series of contributions to the study of grammaticalization of tense, aspect, and modality from a functional perspective. All contributions share the aim to uncover the functional motivations behind the processes of grammaticalization under discussion, but they do so from different points of view.