The Linker in the Khoisan Languages

Khoisan languages are primarily known in the linguistic literature for their elaborate use of click consonants but they also have a typologically rare particle--the linker. Using data obtained through rigorous fieldwork on endangered languages, Chris Collins has provided a definitive analysis of an aspect of Universal Grammar that had largely gone unnoticed. The linker promises to provide unique insight into patterns of linguistic contact and relatedness in the Kalahari Basin and beyond. * Bonny Sands, Adjunct Professor in the Department of English, Northern Arizona University *
Verbal "linker" elements and the related phenomenon of nominal "attributive markers" is a new domain of linguistic exploration promising important insights into the syntax-semantics interface. Prof. Christopher Collins is not only responsible for the most important theoretical proposals in this exciting new area, he is also the source of some its most fascinating new data, through his original fieldwork on Khoisan-Sandwe languages that have largely escaped attention in theoretical linguistics. Professionals and students interested in verbal structure will want to be familiar with Prof. Collins' pioneering research in this area. * Richard Larson, Professor, Department of Linguistics, Stony Brook University *
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. * Marcel den Dikken, Research Professor of Linguistics, Eötvös Loránd University & Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest *