Oxford University Press Co-Compounds And Natural Coordination (Oxford Studies In Typology And Linguistic Theory)

This book presents a typological survey and analysis of the co-compound construction. This understudied phenomenon is essentially a compound whose meaning is the result of coordinating the meanings of its components, as when in some varieties of English 'father-mother' denotes 'parents'. During the course of the book Dr. Wälchli examines and discusses topics of great theoretical and linguistic interest. These include the notion of word, markedness, the syntax and semantics of coordination, grammaticalization, lexical semantics, the distinction between compounding and phrase formation, and the constructional meanings languages can deploy. The book makes many observations and points about typology and areal features and includes a wealth of unfamiliar data. It will be invaluable for typologists and of considerable interest to a variety of specialists including lexicologists, morphologists, construction grammarians, cognitive linguists, semanticists, field linguists, and syntacticians. Review "An original work of high interest to many specialists. ... well-structured and presents a fresh view upon a phenomenon important to many languages of the world, containing a considerable amount of language data. ...the book should be studied carefully by linguists interested in a number of subjects such as compounding, coordination, comitative, associative plural, and lexical semantics within domains specific to co-compounding."--Linguist List 17.798 "An original work of high interest to many specialists. ... well-structured and presents a fresh view upon a phenomenon important to many languages of the world, containing a considerable amount of language data. ...the book should be studied carefully by linguists interested in a number of subjects such as compounding, coordination, comitative, associative plural, and lexical semantics within domains specific to co-compounding."--Linguist List 17.798 "An original work of high interest to many specialists. ... well-structured and presents a fresh view upon a phenomenon important to many languages of the world, containing a considerable amount of language data. ...the book should be studied carefully by linguists interested in a number of subjects such as compounding, coordination, comitative, associative plural, and lexical semantics within domains specific to co-compounding."--Linguist List 17.798 "An original work of high interest to many specialists. ... well-structured and presents a fresh view upon a phenomenon important to many languages of the world, containing a considerable amount of language data. ...the book should be studied carefully by linguists interested in a number of subjects such as compounding, coordination, comitative, associative plural, and lexical semantics within domains specific to co-compounding."--Linguist List 17.798 Review Review from previous edition an impressive work ... If Walchli's study has the influence it deserves, it may lead to a fashionable and enlightening way of merging morphological and discourse studies. ― Laurie Bauer, Journal of Linguistics About the Author Bernhard Wälchli received his master's degree in Slavic and Baltic studies at the University of Bern in 1997 and his Ph.D. in General Linguistics at Stockholm University in 2003. After completing research at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the University of Konstanz, he returned to the University of Bern, where he is now a Swiss National Science Foundation Professor. His publications include papers on the typology of motion events, the repetitive, modality, and areal phenomena in the Circum-Baltic languages. He is co-editor of New Challenges in Typology (Mouton de Gruyter, 2007) and has taught at the universities of Bern, Konstanz, Stockholm, and Zürich. His current research includes work on primary-data typology (especially lexical typology and areal typology of motion events), the structure of the lexicon, and B