This book demonstrates that the grammatical systems of individual languages encode unique semantic structures. Zygmunt Frajzyngier examines these semantic structures with particular reference to how languages convey information about the location of an entity or an event and the movements of an entity in space, drawing on data from eight typologically distinct languages that belong to three branches of the Chadic family. These languages were chosen because some display locative expressions with semantic and syntactic characteristics that have not been observed or described in other languages, most importantly in the coding of what Frajzyngier calls 'the locative domain' in the grammatical system. The volume shows that utterances in a given language are determined by the functions encoded in the grammatical system and by where those functions are encoded; it further shows that syntactic properties and the existence of some lexical items in the language are also determined by those same functions.

Zygmunt Frajzyngier is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Colorado. His main research interests include foundations of syntax and semantics in cross-linguistic perspective, typological explanations in grammar, grammaticalization, and Chadic and Afroasiatic linguistics. His recent books include The Emergence of Functions in Language (with Marielle Butters; OUP 2020), Language Formation by Adults: The Case of Sino-Russian Idiolects (with Natalia Gurian and Sergei Karpenko; Brill 2021), and A Typology of Reference Systems (OUP 2023).