Download or read book Up and Down the Cline the Nature of Grammaticalization written by Olga Fischer and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The basic idea behind this volume is to probe the nature of grammaticalization. Its contributions focus on the following questions: (i) In how far can grammaticalization be considered a universal diachronic process or mechanism of change and in how far is it conditioned by synchronic factors? (ii) What is the role of the speaker in grammaticalization? (iii) Does grammaticalization itself provide a cause for change or is it an epiphenomenon, i.e. a conglomeration of causal factors/mechanisms which elsewhere occur independently? (iv) If it is epiphenominal, how do we explain that similar pathways so often occur in known cases of grammaticalization? (v) Is grammaticalization unidirectional? (vi) What is the nature of the parameters guiding grammaticalization? The overall aim of the book is to enrich our understanding of what grammaticalization does or does not entail via detailed case studies in combination with theoretical and methodological discussions.

Download or read book Pathways of Change written by Olga Fischer and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a continual growth of interest among linguists of all-theoretical denominations in grammaticalization, a concept central to many linguistic (change) theories. However, the discussion of grammaticalization processes has often suffered from a shortage of concrete empirical studies from one of the best-documented languages in the world, English. Pathways of Change contains discussion of new data and provides theoretical lead articles based on these data that will help sharpen the theoretical aspects involved, such as the definition and the logical connection of the component processes of grammaticalization. The volume is concentrated around a number of themes that are important or controversial in grammaticalization studies, such as the principle of unidirectionality, the relation between lexicalization and grammaticalization — and connected with these two factors the possibility of degrammaticalization — the way iconicity interweaves with grammaticalization processes, and with the phenomenon of grammaticalization on a synchronic or discourse level, also often termed subjectifization.

Download or read book Degrammaticalization written by Muriel Norde and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-17 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Muriel Norde shows that linguistic change via the well-attested process of grammaticalization is reversible and that degrammaticalization can occur on all levels: semantic, morphological, syntactic, and phonological. Her careful analysis of the process makes a significant contribution to methods of linguistic reconstruction and language change.

Download or read book A Functional Discourse Grammar Theory of Grammaticalization written by Riccardo Giomi and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-01-30 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume surveys over a hundred diachronic changes from typologically diverse languages and concludes that the definitional property of meaning change in grammaticalization is that it never results in a decrease in the semantic or pragmatic scope of the construction.

Download or read book Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective written by Heiko Narrog and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the way in which grammaticalization processes converge and differ across languages and language areas. Chapters systemically explore these processes languages of Africa, Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and the Americas, and in creole languages, revealing a number of unique pathways as well as shared features.

Download or read book The Handbook of Historical Linguistics Volume II written by Richard D. Janda and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 717 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An entirely new follow-up volume providing a detailed account of numerous additional issues, methods, and results that characterize current work in historical linguistics. This brand-new, second volume of The Handbook of Historical Linguistics is a complement to the well-established first volume first published in 2003. It includes extended content allowing uniquely comprehensive coverage of the study of language(s) over time. Though it adds fresh perspectives on several topics previously treated in the first volume, this Handbook focuses on extensions of diachronic linguistics beyond those key issues. This Handbook provides readers with studies of language change whose perspectives range from comparisons of large open vs. small closed corpora, via creolistics and linguistic contact in general, to obsolescence and endangerment of languages. Written by leading scholars in their respective fields, new chapters are offered on matters such as the origin of language, evidence from language for reconstructing human prehistory, invocations of language present in studies of language past, benefits of linguistic fieldwork for historical investigation, ways in which not only biological evolution but also field biology can serve as heuristics for research into the rise and spread of linguistic innovations, and more. Moreover, it: offers novel and broadened content complementing the earlier volume so as to provide the fullest available overview of a wholly engrossing field includes 23 all-new contributed chapters, treating some familiar themes from fresh perspectives but mostly covering entirely new topics features expanded discussion of material from language families other than Indo-European provides a multiplicity of views from numerous specialists in linguistic diachrony. The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Volume II is an ideal book for undergraduate and graduate students in linguistics, researchers and professional linguists, as well as all those interested in the history of particular languages and the history of language more generally.

Download or read book Exaptation and Language Change written by Muriel Norde and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2016-02-24 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the first collection of papers that is exclusively dedicated to the concept of exaptation, a notion from evolutionary biology that was famously introduced into linguistics by Roger Lass in 1990. The past quarter-century has seen a heated debate on the properties of linguistic exaptation, its demarcation from other processes of linguistic change, and indeed the question of whether it is a useful concept in historical linguistics at all. The contributions in the present volume reflect these diverging points of view. Along with a comprehensive introduction, covering the history of the notion of exaptation from its conception in the field of biology to its adoption in linguistics, the book offers extensive discussion of the concept from various theoretical perspectives, detailed case studies as well as critical reviews of some stock examples. The book will be of interest to scholars working in the fields of evolutionary linguistics, historical linguistics, and the history of linguistics.

Download or read book Binominal Quantifiers in Spanish written by Katrien Dora Verveckken and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-07-24 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quantification is central to human experience (cf. Aristotle’s Organon): the most basic aspects of human life and reasoning involve quantity assessment. This study sheds lights on a highly frequent way to express quantification in Spanish, viz. the binominal quantifier (e.g. un aluviónN1 de llamadasN2 ‘a flood of calls’) which assesses the quantity of N2 in terms of N1. This volume offers a corpus-based, cognitive-functional analysis of binominal quantifiers (BQ) in Spanish. The first part is dedicated to the development of BQs and starts from the assumption that BQs are cross-linguistically involved in grammaticalization. This monograph frames the history of BQs in Spanish in terms of constructional levels of change and highlights the complex interplay between analogical thinking and conceptual persistence. The second part motivates both the ample variation in the paradigm of quantifying nouns and their combinatorial pattern by the very same mechanism of conceptually-driven analogy. The study thus yields an innovative functional model of BQs in Spanish, in synchrony and in diachrony, with major implications for reference grammars and theory building.

Download or read book New Directions for Historical Linguistics written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-01-29 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume consists of revised versions of presentations given at a roundtable on “New Directions for Historical Linguistics: Impact and Synthesis, 50 Years Later” held at the 23rd International Conference on Historical Linguistics in San Antonio, Texas, in 2017, as well as an introduction by the editors. The roundtable discussed the evolution of historical linguistics since the 1966 symposium on “Directions for Historical Linguistics,” held in Austin, Texas. Six prominent scholars of historical linguistics and sociolinguistics contributed: William Labov (the only surviving author from the 1968 volume), Gillian Sankoff, Elizabeth Traugott, Brian Joseph, Sarah Thomason, and Paul Hopper (a graduate student assistant at the original symposium).

Download or read book Discourse Structuring Markers in English written by Elizabeth Closs Traugott and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a contribution to the growing field of diachronic construction grammar. Focus is on corpus evidence for the importance of including conventionalized pragmatics within construction grammar and suggestions for how to do so. The empirical domain is the development of Discourse Structuring Markers in English such as after all, also, all the same, by the way, further and moreover (also known as Discourse Markers). The term Discourse Structuring Markers highlights their use not only to connect discourse segments but also to shape discourse coherence and understanding. Monofunctional Discourse Structuring Markers like further, instead, moreover are distinguished from multifunctional ones like after all and by the way. Drawing on usage-based work on constructionalization and constructional changes, the book is in three parts: foundational concepts, case studies, and currently open issues in diachronic construction grammar. These open issues are how to incorporate the concepts subjectification and intersubjectification into a constructional account of change, whether position in a clause is a construction, and the nature of constructional networks and how they change.

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.

Download or read book New Trends in Nordic and General Linguistics written by Martin Hilpert and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-02-17 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a survey of current work in Nordic and General Linguistics, with a special focus on language contact. The papers in this book were presented at the 11th International Conference of Nordic and General Linguistics (ICNGL) in Freiburg. The ICNGL conference series aims to facilitate the exchange of ideas on Scandinavian and other languages, between researchers from the Nordic countries and elsewhere. The present volume focuses on language contact, which has always been a topic of great interest in Nordic Linguistics. Additionally, the contributions in this book address issues of phonology, morpho-syntax, syntax, and grammaticalization. The book is meant to be a snapshot of Nordic Linguistics as it is practiced today, reflecting at the same time its established research traditions as well as its forages into new methodologies and theories.

Download or read book Historical Linguistics 2009 written by Ans van Kemenade and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The International Conference on Historical Linguistics has always been a forum that reflects the general state of the art in the field, and the 2009 edition, held in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, fully allows the conclusion that the field has been thriving over the years. The studies presented in this volume are an expression of ongoing theoretical discussions as well as new analytical approaches to the study of issues concerning language change. Taken together, they reflect some of the current challenges in the field, as well as the opportunities offered by judicious use of theoretical models and careful corpus-based work. The volume's contributions are organized under the following headings: I. General and Specific Issues of Language Change, II. Linguistic Variation and Change in Germanic, III. Linguistic Variation and Change in Greek, and IV. Linguistic Change in Romance.

Download or read book Language Variation European Perspectives VI written by Isabelle Buchstaller and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2017-07-26 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language Variation - European Perspectives VI showcases a selection of papers from the 8th International Conference on Language Variation in Europe which was held in Leipzig in 2015. The volume includes plenaries by Miriam Meyerhoff and Steffen Klaere (“The large and the small of it: Big issues with smaller samples in the study of language variation”), Martin Haspelmath and Susanne Maria Michaelis (“Analytic and synthetic: Typological change in varieties of European languages”) and Jürgen Erich Schmidt (“Dynamics, variation and the brain“). In addition, the editors have selected 11 papers which exemplify the breadth of research on European languages. The contributions to this volume encompass languages as varied as Swedish, Greek, Galician, Dutch, German, Swedish, English (including English-lexified contact varieties), French, Spanish, Croatian, Luxembourgish and Romani. The variety of theoretical frameworks and methodological perspectives and particularly the combination of different methods attests to the scope of research currently being conducted on language variation and change in European languages.

Download or read book French through Corpora written by Virginie André and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-06-02 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a series of studies that come together in their concern for furthering an understanding of the French language, of its uses, its forms, its variation, and its acquisition. Other than contributing to a general understanding of French, this book also addresses the use of corpora for the study of language and the links between tools, methods, analyses and applications. What data are used, and how? What are the underlying theoretical and/or methodological considerations? How have these changed our way of formulating linguistic descriptions? What are the implications for descriptive accounts of French today? What are the applications of corpus studies? These questions (and many more) are addressed here in a series of scholarly contributions grouped into four broad areas: diachrony, syntax, sociolinguistics, and the learning and teaching of French. The book provides an up-to-date and challenging account of French for researchers in French linguistics. It will also be suitable for use on post-graduate and some undergraduate courses, providing useful information not only for students and teachers of French, but also for language and linguistics students in general. Many of the issues addressed are not specific to the French language and can be accounted for within a more general area of reflection within linguistics on changing relations between data, theory and methods.

Download or read book Nominalization in Asian Languages written by Foong Ha Yap and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2011-06-29 with total page 818 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research on nominalization, a process that gives rise to referring expressions, has always played a central role in linguistic investigations. Over the years there has also been growing evidence that nominalization constructions often extend to non-referential domains. They participate in noun-modifying expressions (e.g. genitive and relative clauses), subordinate clauses and topic constructions, finite structures with the nominalizers reanalyzed as TAM markers, and stance constructions with evaluative, attitudinal, evidential and epistemic overtones. This volume brings together historical and crosslinguistic evidence from more than 20 different languages representing six different language families spanning the Asian continent and the Pacific and Indian oceans to elucidate the strategies and grammaticalization pathways that give rise to both referential and non-referential uses of nominalization constructions. This collection highlights the diversity of strategies and at the same time the robust cyclical nature of change within and across languages. The combined diachronic and typological analyses in this volume are particularly valuable for linguistic research on diachronic morphosyntax and linguistic ‘universals’, and are also an important supplementary cross-referencing tool for linguistic investigations of versatile and ubiquitous morphemes in under-documented languages.

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Pragmatics written by Anne Barron and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-01-20 with total page 599 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Pragmatics provides a state-of-the-art overview of the wide breadth of research in pragmatics. An introductory section outlines a brief history, the main issues and key approaches and perspectives in the field, followed by a thought-provoking introductory chapter on interdisciplinarity by Jacob L. Mey. A further thirty-eight chapters cover both traditional and newer areas of pragmatic research, divided into four sections: Methods and modalities Established fields Pragmatics across disciplines Applications of pragmatic research in today’s world. With accessible, refreshing descriptions and discussions, and with a look towards future directions, this Handbook is an essential resource for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in pragmatics within English language and linguistics and communication studies.