Perspectives on Language Structure and Language Change PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Perspectives on Language Structure and Language Change PDF full book. Access full book title Perspectives on Language Structure and Language Change by Lars Heltoft. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
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.
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.
Author: Toril Swan
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 311088657X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 361
Get Book Here
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.
Author: Winfred Philipp Lehmann
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027235163
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 392
Get Book Here
Book Description
This volume presents seven extensive essays by specialists in their respective fields of historical linguistics. The first essay after the Introduction states the principles presented in Directions for Historical Linguistics (1968) and assesses the progress made since then towards constructing a general theory of language change. Like the following essays on phonology and morphology, it poses new questions that have arisen in the increasingly ambitious research. Historical attention to discourse, the topic of the next essay, is virtually new, though it too finds predecessors among philologists who devoted themselves to texts. Finally, two essays treat etymology, one concentrating on the rigorously investigated Romance field, the other on Indo-European, especially on new insights prompted by attention to Hittite.
Author: Raymond Hickey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139433679
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Get Book Here
Book Description
This specially commissioned volume considers the processes involved in language change and the issues of how they can be modelled and studied. The way languages change offers an insight into the nature of language itself, its internal organisation, and how it is acquired and used. Accordingly, the phenomenon of language change has been approached from a variety of perspectives by linguists of many different orientations. This book, originally published in 2003, brings together an international team of leading figures from different areas of linguistics to re-examine some of the central issues in this field and also to discuss new proposals. The volume is arranged into sections, including grammaticalisation, the typological perspective, the social context of language change and contact-based explanations. It seeks to cover the subject as a whole, bearing in mind its relevance for the general analysis of language, and will appeal to a broad international readership.
Author: Charles Jones
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317898990
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 366
Get Book Here
Book Description
The contributors to this volume cover the international range of scholarship in the field of Historical Linguistics, as well as some of its major themes. The work and ideas they discuss are relevant not only to other aspects of Historical Linguistics but also to more general developments in linguistic theory. Along with Professor Jones' Introduction, their comments provide a major overview of Historical Linguistics that will be the reference point for its development for many years to come and form an important contribution to general theories of linguistic behaviour.
Author: Evie Coussé
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027270090
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 282
Get Book Here
Book Description
Usage-based approaches to language have gained increasing attention in the last two decades. The importance of change and variation has always been recognized in this framework, but has never received central attention. It is the main aim of this book to fill this gap. Once we recognize that usage is crucial for our understanding of language and linguistic structures, language change and variation inevitably take centre stage in linguistic analysis. Along these lines, the volume presents eight studies by international authors that discuss various approaches to studying language change from a usage-based perspective. Both theoretical issues and empirical case studies are well-represented in this collection. The case studies cover a variety of different languages – ranging from historically well-studied European languages via Japanese to the Amazonian isolate Yurakaré with no written history at all. The book provides new insights relevant for scholars interested in both functional and cognitive linguistic theory, in historical linguists and in language typology.
Author: Bettina Migge
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 396110347X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book brings together papers that discuss social and structural aspects of language contact and language change. Several papers look at the relevance of historical documents to determine the linguistic nature of early contact varieties, while others investigate the specific processes of contact-induced change that were involved in the emergence and development of these languages. A third set of papers look at how new datasets and greater sensitivity to social issues can help to (re)assess persistent theoretical and empirical questions as well as help to open up new avenues of research. In particular they highlight the heterogeneity of contemporary language practices and attitudes often obscured in sociolinguistic research. The contributions all focus on language variation and change but investigate it from a variety of disciplinary and empirical perspectives and cover a range of linguistic contexts.
Author: Patience Epps
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429641613
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Get Book Here
Book Description
This collection showcases the contributions of the study of endangered and understudied languages to historical linguistic analysis, and the broader relevance of diachronic approaches toward developing better informed approaches to language documentation and description. The volume brings together perspectives from both established and up-and-coming scholars and represents a globally and linguistically diverse range of languages.The collected papers demonstrate the ways in which endangered languages can challenge existing models of language change based on more commonly studied languages, and can generate innovative insights into linguistic phenomena such as pathways of grammaticalization, forms and dynamics of contact-driven change, and the diachronic relationship between lexical and grammatical categories. In so doing, the book highlights the idea that processes and outcomes of language change long held to be universally relevant may be more sensitive to cultural and typological variability than previously assumed. Taken as a whole, this collection brings together perspectives from language documentation and historical linguistics to point the way forward for richer understandings of both language change and documentary-descriptive approaches, making this key reading for scholars in these fields.
Author: Marianne Hundt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107086868
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 431
Get Book Here
Book Description
Experts from psycholinguistics and English historical linguistics address core factors in language change.
Author: D. Gary Miller
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199590214
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 412
Get Book Here
Book Description
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.
