Grammatical Change And Linguistic Theory

Author : Thórhallur Eythórsson
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027291578
Total Pages : 454 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Grammatical Change and Linguistic Theory written by Thórhallur Eythórsson and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008-03-06 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains 15 revised papers originally presented at a symposium at Rosendal, Norway, under the aegis of The Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. The overall theme of the volume is ‘internal factors in grammatical change.’ The papers focus on fundamental questions in theoretically-based historical linguistics from a broad perspective. Several of the papers relate to grammaticalization in different ways, but are generally critical of ‘Grammaticalization Theory’. Further papers focus on the causes of syntactic change, pinpointing both extra-syntactic (exogenous) causes and – more controversially – internally driven (endogenous) causes. The volume is rounded up by contributions on morphological change ‘by itself.’ A wide range of languages is covered, including Tsova-Tush (Nakh-Dagestan), Zoque, and Athapaskan languages, in addition to Indo-European languages, both the more familiar ones and some less well-studied varieties.

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 441 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Grammatical Change and Linguistic Theory written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Ulrich Detges
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027291632
Total Pages : 266 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Paradox of Grammatical Change written by Ulrich Detges and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008-02-06 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent years have seen intense debates between formal (generative) and functional linguists, particularly with respect to the relation between grammar and usage. This debate is directly relevant to diachronic linguistics, where one and the same phenomenon of language change can be explained from various theoretical perspectives. In this, a close look at the divergent and/or convergent evolution of a richly documented language family such as Romance promises to be useful. The basic problem for any approach to language change is what Eugenio Coseriu has termed the paradox of change: if synchronically, languages can be viewed as perfectly running systems, then there is no reason why they should change in the first place. And yet, as everyone knows, languages are changing constantly. In nine case studies, a number of renowned scholars of Romance linguistics address the explanation of grammatical change either within a broadly generative or a functional framework.

Author : Þórhallur Eyþórsson
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9789027233776
Total Pages : 456 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Grammatical Change and Linguistic Theory written by Þórhallur Eyþórsson and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains 15 revised papers originally presented at a symposium at Rosendal, Norway, under the aegis of The Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. The overall theme of the volume is 'internal factors in grammatical change.' The papers focus on fundamental questions in theoretically-based historical linguistics from a broad perspective. Several of the papers relate to grammaticalization in different ways, but are generally critical of 'Grammaticalization Theory'. Further papers focus on the causes of syntactic change, pinpointing both extra-syntactic (exogenous) causes and – more controversially – internally driven (endogenous) causes. The volume is rounded up by contributions on morphological change 'by itself.' A wide range of languages is covered, including Tsova-Tush (Nakh-Dagestan), Zoque, and Athapaskan languages, in addition to Indo-European languages, both the more familiar ones and some less well-studied varieties.

Author : Vit Bubenik
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027289298
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Grammatical Change in Indo-European Languages written by Vit Bubenik and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2009-07-16 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The product of a group of scholars who have been working on new directions in Historical Linguistics, this book is focused on questions of grammatical change, and the central issue of grammaticalization in Indo-European languages. Several studies examine particular problems in specific languages, but often with implications for the IE phylum as a whole. Given the historical scope of the data (over a period of four millennia) long range grammatical changes such as the development of gender differences, strategies of definiteness, the prepositional phrase, or of the syntax of the verbal diathesis and aspect, are also treated. The shifting relevance of morphology to syntax, and syntax to morphology, a central motif of this research, has provoked lively debate in the discipline of Historical Linguistics.

Author : Dianne Jonas
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199582629
Total Pages : 397 pages
Book Rating : 4.24/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Grammatical Change written by Dianne Jonas and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book advances research on grammatical change and shows the breadth and liveliness of the field. International scholars report on the nature and outcomes of all aspects of syntactic change, including grammaticalization, variation, syntactic movement, determiner-phrase syntax, pronominal systems, case systems, negation, and alignment.

Author : Henning Andersen
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027237263
Total Pages : 259 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Actualization written by Henning Andersen and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2001 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of papers consolidates the observation that linguistic change typically is actualized step by step: any structural innovation being introduced, accepted, and generalized, over time, in one grammatical environment after another, in a progression that can be understood by reference to the markedness values and the ranking of the conditioning features. The Introduction to the volume and a chapter by Henning Andersen clarify the theoretical bases for this observation, which is exemplified and discussed in separate chapters by Kristin Bakken, Alexander Bergs and Dieter Stein, Vit Bubenik, Ulrich Busse, Marianne Mithun, Lene Schosler, and John Charles Smith in the light of data from the histories of Norwegian, English, Hindi, Northern Iroquoian, and Romance. A final chapter by Michael Shapiro adds a philosophical perspective. The papers were first presented in a workshop on "Actualization Patterns in Linguistic Change" at the XIV International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Vancouver, B.C. in 1999.

Author : Charlotte Galves
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191634093
Total Pages : 405 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Parameter Theory and Linguistic Change written by Charlotte Galves and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-11-01 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on some of the most important issues in historical syntax. In a series of close examinations of languages from old Egyptian to modern Afrikaans, leading scholars present new work on Afro-Asiatic, Latin and Romance, Germanic, Albanian, Celtic, Indo-Iranian, and Japanese. The book revolves around the linked themes of parametric theory and the dynamics of language change. The former is a key element in the search for explanatory adequacy in historical syntax: if the notion of imperfect learning, for example, explains a large element of grammatical change, it is vital to understand how parameters are set in language acquisition and how they might have been set differently in previous generations. The authors test particular hypotheses against data from different times and places with the aim of understanding the relationship between language variation and the dynamics of change. Is it possible, for example, to reconcile the unidirectionality of change predominantly expressed in the phenomenon of "grammaticalization", with the multidirectionality predicted by generativist approaches? In terms of the richness of the data it examines, the broad range of languages it discusses, and the use it makes of linguistic theory this is an outstanding book, not least in the contribution it makes to the understanding of language change.

Author : D. Gary Miller
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 0199590214
Total Pages : 412 pages
Book Rating : 4.16/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Language Change and Linguistic Theory written by D. Gary Miller and published by . This book was released on 2010-10-15 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This two volume work examines every aspect of language change and two centuries of linguistic approaches towards understanding it. The enterprise opens with a consideration of the nature of language and what constitutes language change. Gary Miller argues that a single overarching theory is insufficient to encompass the protean mix of linguistic, social, political, and cognitive factors involved in linguistic diachrony. He analyzes general processes of phonetic, phonological, morphological, and syntactic change, and explores their origins, causes, and effects. To support his analyses, he provides detailed case studies of such phenomena as the Middle English vowels, the history of English do, and development of the feminine gender in Indo-European. He offers a balanced approach to the effects of first language acquisition, describes general and specific processes including grammaticalization and creolization, and examines the role of differential rates of change in regional and dialectal variation. He reveals that several fundamental concepts in historical linguistics are much older than conventionally assumed. In its comprehensive approach and great linguistic and historical range, this is a contribution of enduring use and value to historical linguistics and linguistic theory. Volume I examines topics involving change in different components of the grammar from the perspectives of theory, acquisition, variation, and motivation. Gary Miller investigates traditional concerns, such as variation and lexical diffusion, and considers their impact on contemporary issues. He discusses the interaction of articulatory and perceptual factors, the implications of naturalness for expected changes, and the consequences of alterations of syllable timing for contemporary theory. The volume closes with a description of and motivations for vowel shifts. In Volume II, the focus turns to morphological and syntactic language changes. By most theoretical accounts, morphology is not autonomous, but interacts with at least three other domains: (i) phonology and perception, (ii) the lexicon / culture, and (iii) syntax. Having addressed the first of these extensively in Volume I, Gary Miller illustrates the second with the rise of the feminine gender in Indo-European, and the third by documentation of the changes from Latin to Romance in the coding of reflexive, anticausative, middle, and passive. He shows how syntactic change is (micro)parametric and is typically motivated by changes in lexical features, including the numerous shifts from lexical to functional content as well as changes within functional categories. Finally, he considers the genesis of creole inflectional, derivational, and syntactic categories, involving the interaction of contact phenomena with morphological and syntactic change.

Author : Flip G. Droste
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027277923
Total Pages : 363 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Linguistic Theory and Grammatical Description written by Flip G. Droste and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1991-12-13 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents nine of today's grammatical theories with a view to comparing their starting points and their methods. The particular features and properties of each theory are discussed in this book, as well as the major conceptual differences and methodological obstacles each has overcome and has yet to overcome. The parallel structure of the papers makes for easy comparison and cross-reference. This systematic and thorough introduction to the recent history of the discipline provides a state-of-the-art report on current leading tendencies as well as a wealth of directions for future research.