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The linker introduces ("links") a variety of expressions into the verb phrase, including locatives; the second object of a double object construction; the second object of a causative; instruments; subject matter arguments; and adverbs. This volume collects together Chris Collins's published work on the linker in the Khoisan languages.
About the author
Chris Collins is Professor of Linguistics at New York University. He is a syntactician with an interest in African languages and has done fieldwork in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Togo.
Summary
The linker introduces ("links") a variety of expressions into the verb phrase, including locatives, the second object of a double object construction, the second object of a causative, instruments, subject matter arguments, and adverbs. This volume collects together Chris Collins's published work on the linker in the Khoisan languages. Here, Collins offers a systematic description of the linker in ǂHoã, Ju|'hoan, N|uu, and to a lesser extent !Xoõ and |Xam. For each language, Collins illustrates various uses of the linker, drawing attention to cross-linguistic generalizations as well as to variation between the languages. The work presented in this volume should be of interest to researchers working in a wide variety of syntactic frameworks on different languages of the world.
Additional text
Looking in detail at a variety of often critically endangered African (mostly Khoisan, but also some Bantu) languages, and exploring the repercussions of the analysis for the family relations among these languages, this volume brings together a descriptively and analytically rich and intellectually stimulating collection of case studies in the fine structure of the Larsonian layered verb phrase, written from the vantage point of the distribution of the 'linker', the key player in Collins' Case-theoretic syntax of constructions featuring beneficiaries, instruments, locatives, and adverbials. A milestone in its contribution to the facts and facets of VP-architecture, the book also offers incentives for fieldwork and sets the research agenda with the aid of precisely formulated research questions.
