This is the most comprehensive survey ever published of auxiliary verb constructions, as in 'he could have been going to drink it' and 'she does eat cheese'. Drawing on a database of over 800 languages Dr Anderson examines their morphosyntactic forms and semantic roles. He investigates and explains the historical changes leading to the cross-linguistic diversity of inflectional patterns, and he presents his results within a new typological framework. The book's impressive range includes data on variation within and across languages and language families. In addition to examining languages in Africa, Europe, and Asia the author presents analyses of languages in Australasia and the Pacific and in North, South, and Meso-America. In doing so he reveals much that is new about the language families of the world and makes an important contribution to the understanding of their nature and evolution. His book will interest scholars and researchers in language typology, historical and comparative linguistics, syntax, and morphology.

About the Author
Gregory Anderson is a researcher at the Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon, and at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. He is engaged in primary descriptive, typological, and comparative research on endangered languages of south-central Siberia, Turkic languages, the isolate Burushaski language of northern Pakistan, the Eleme language of Nigeria, and the Munda languages of India. He has written fieldwork-based descriptive grammars, bilingual dictionaries, and books on comparative/historical and historical/sociolinguistic topics in Turkic linguistics as well as numerous articles on a range of typological, areal, and historical linguistic topics.

Reviews
...an insightul and through study of many auxiliary verb constuctions...an impressive book...I very much like this study, since it provides a different way of looking at auxiliaries. * Elly van Gelderen Studies in Language *
Anderson handsomely accomplishes what he set out to do, and provides a solid basis for continued cross-linguistic study of AVCs. No one interested in auxiliary phenomena can afford to ignore its contents and its analyses. * Sanford B. Steever, Linguistlist *
An insightful and thorough study...an impressive book with lots of examples, very well-produced...I very much like this study, since it provides a different way of looking at auxiliaries. * Elly van Gelderen, Studies in Language *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199280315
Author Gregory D.S. Anderson
Format Hardback
Page Count 492
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 897g
Dimensions(mm) 242mm * 165mm * 32mm