Perspectives on Language Structure and Language Change

Perspectives on Language Structure and Language Change PDF Author: Lars Heltoft
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027262632
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
This volume centers on three important theoretical concepts for the study of language change and the ways in which language structure emerges and turns into new structure: reanalysis, actualization, and indexicality. Reanalysis is a part of ongoing everyday language use, a process through which language is reproduced and changed. Actualization refers to the processes through which a reanalyzed structure spreads throughout single communities and society. Indexicality covers the way in which parts of a linguistic system can point to other parts of the system, both syntagmatically and paradigmatically. The inclusion of indexicality leads to fine-grained analysis in morphology, word order, and constructional syntax.

Perspectives on Language Structure and Language Change

Perspectives on Language Structure and Language Change PDF Author: Lars Heltoft
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027262632
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 431

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume centers on three important theoretical concepts for the study of language change and the ways in which language structure emerges and turns into new structure: reanalysis, actualization, and indexicality. Reanalysis is a part of ongoing everyday language use, a process through which language is reproduced and changed. Actualization refers to the processes through which a reanalyzed structure spreads throughout single communities and society. Indexicality covers the way in which parts of a linguistic system can point to other parts of the system, both syntagmatically and paradigmatically. The inclusion of indexicality leads to fine-grained analysis in morphology, word order, and constructional syntax.

Language Structure, Variation and Change

Language Structure, Variation and Change PDF Author: Ian E. Mackenzie
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030105679
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
This book offers an original account of the dynamics of syntactic change and the evolving structure of Old Spanish that combines rigorous manuscript-based investigation, quantitative analysis and a syntactic approach grounded in Minimalist thinking. Its analysis of both successful and failed changes demonstrates the degree of unpredictability caused by the interaction of competing factors and will shed fresh light on the assumed unidirectionality of linguistic change. Importantly, it reveals that Old Spanish and modern Spanish are more similar to one another than is usually supposed and demonstrates that many of the differences between the two varieties are quantitative rather than qualitative. This theoretically sophisticated examination of historical corpora will provide an invaluable resource for students and scholars of Old and modern Spanish, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and syntax.

Information Structure and Language Change

Information Structure and Language Change PDF Author: Roland Hinterhölzl
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110216116
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
The volume presents new approaches to explaining word order variation and change in the Germanic languages and thus relates to one of the most prominent and widely discussed topics in the theory of language change and diachronic syntax. The novelty of our approach consists in three main points. First of all, we aim at describing functional variety in the field of word order and verb placement in the early Germanic languages not as a result of language contact, but rather as a language-internal phenomenon related to stylistic and grammatical conditions in information packaging. Second, given that information structure is not directly accessible in texts from historical corpora that are available only in written form and bear no or little information on prosody and intonation, it presents various methods of retrieving information-structural categories in such texts. Third, it presents empirical studies on the relation between word order and information structure of the four main texts of the Old High German period and embeds these results in the wider picture of word order change in Germanic. The volume will be of interest to students of German, English, and general linguistics as well as to researchers interested in diachronic syntax, philology of Older German, language change, information structure, discourse semantics, language typology, computational linguistics, and corpus studies.

Language Usage and Language Structure

Language Usage and Language Structure PDF Author: Kasper Boye
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110219174
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Addresses an issue hotly debated in the linguistic theory: the relation between language usage and language structure

Structure and Variation in Language Contact

Structure and Variation in Language Contact PDF Author: Ana Deumert
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027252513
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
This volume presents a careful selection of fifteen articles presented at the SPCL meetings in Atlanta, Boston and Hawai'i in 2003 and 2004. The contributions reflect - from various perspectives and using different types of data - on the interplay between structure and variation in contact languages, both synchronically and diachronically. The contributors consider a wide range of languages, including Surinamese creoles, Chinook Jargon, Yiddish, AAVE, Haitian Creole, Afro-Hispanic and Afro-Portuguese varieties, Nigerian Pidgin, Sri Lankan Malay, Papiamentu, and Bahamian Creole English (Hackert). A need to question and test existing claims regarding pidginization/creolization is evident in all contributions, and the authors provide analyses for a variety of grammatical structures: VO-ordering and affixation, agglutination, negation, TMAs, plural marking, the copula, and serial verb constructions. The volume provides ample evidence for the observation that pidgin/creole studies is today a mature subfield of linguistics which is making important contributions to general linguistic theory.

Patterns of Language

Patterns of Language PDF Author: Robbins Burling
Publisher: Brill Academic Pub
ISBN: 9780121449209
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
Presents a comprehensive introduction to linguistics, This book includes chapters on variation and change in lexicon, phonology, and syntax. It also covers topics such as pidgins and creoles, first and second language acquisition, development of language in the human species, growth of writing, printing in information technology and others.

Language Change and Language Structure

Language Change and Language Structure PDF Author: Toril Swan
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 311088657X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.

Deconstructing Language Structure and Meaning

Deconstructing Language Structure and Meaning PDF Author: Mihaela Tănase-Dogaru
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527571815
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
This volume brings together a number of researchers working on generative syntax and semantics, language acquisition and phonology to explore various theoretical frameworks, ranging from generative grammar and formal semantics to more descriptive approaches. The contributions gathered here investigate various aspects in the syntax, semantics, phonology and acquisition of Romanian in comparison with other (mainly Romance) languages. The book will be of interest to linguists who are keen on keeping up with the latest advances in the field of Romance studies, as well as those whose research bears on languages such as Hungarian, German, and Maltese, among others.

Syntactic Structures

Syntactic Structures PDF Author: Noam Chomsky
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3112316002
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
No detailed description available for "Syntactic Structures".

Contact, Structure, and Change

Contact, Structure, and Change PDF Author: Anna M. Babel
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781607856078
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Contact, Structure, and Change addresses the classic problem of how and why languages change over time through the lens of two uniquely productive and challenging perspectives: the study of language contact and the study of Indigenous American languages. Each chapter in the volume draws from a distinct theoretical positioning, ranging from documentation and description, to theoretical syntax, to creole languages and sociolinguistics. This volume acts as a Festschrift honoring Sarah G. Thomason, a long-time professor at the University of Michigan, whose career spans the disciplines of historical linguistics, contact linguistics, and Native American studies. This conversation among distinguished scholars who have been influenced by Thomason extends and in some cases refracts the questions her work addresses through a collection of studies that speak to the enduring puzzles of language change.