Linguistics

Analogy is a central component of language structure, language processing, and language change. This book addresses central questions about the form and acquisition of analogy in grammar. What patterns of structural similarity do speakers select as the basis for analogical extension? What types of items are particularly susceptible or resistant to analogical pressures? At what levels do analogical processes operate and how do processes interact? What formal mechanisms are appropriate for modeling analogy? What analogical processes are evident in language acquisition? Answers to these questions emerge from this book which is a synthesis of typological, experimental, computational, and developmental paradigms.

This volume in the Explorations in Language and Space series contains a unique collection of chapters on the way in which motion is encoded in language. Although the way in which people encode motion in language has been an object of study for some time, the chapters in this volume show that many aspects of linguistic motion encoding are still unexplored, that current theories in this area do not capture all main aspects of linguistic motion encoding, and that the research area of linguistic motion encoding is very much alive and evolving. The chapters in this volume take different theoretical and methodological approaches in exploring possible new parameters in linguistic motion encoding, in describing new empirical research on how direction of motion is represented in language, and in presenting original insights into how motion is encoded at different levels of spatial resolution or granularity in language. This collection of chapters presents both advanced students and researchers in linguistics, computer science, psychology, and cognitive science with a set of new explorations and challenges in the area of spatial language.