Publisher's Synopsis
This handbook provides a comprehensive account of current research on case and the morphological and syntactic phenomena associated with it. The semantic roles and grammatical relations indicated by case are fundamental to the whole system of language and have long been a central concern of descriptive and theoretical linguistics. The book opens with the editors' synoptic overview of the main lines of research in the field, which sets out the main issues, challenges, and debates. Some sixty scholars from all over the world then report on the state of play in theoretical, typological, diachronic, and psycholinguistic research. They assess cross-linguistic work on case and case-systems and evaluate a variety of theoretical approaches. They examine current issues and debates from historical, areal, socio-linguistic and psycholinguistic perspectives. The final part of the book consists of a set of overviews of case systems representative of some of the world's major language families. The book is fully cross-referenced, referenced, and indexed. It will be of central interest to all scholars and advanced students of syntax and morphology as well as to those working in associated subjects in semantics, typology, and psycholinguistics.
