Up and Down the Cline--the Nature of Grammaticalization

Up and Down the Cline--the Nature of Grammaticalization PDF Author: Olga Fischer
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027229694
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
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.

Up and Down the Cline--the Nature of Grammaticalization

Up and Down the Cline--the Nature of Grammaticalization PDF Author: Olga Fischer
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027229694
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 420

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Pathways of Change

Pathways of Change PDF Author: Olga Fischer
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027230560
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
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.

Degrammaticalization

Degrammaticalization PDF Author: Muriel Norde
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199207925
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
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.

A Functional Discourse Grammar Theory of Grammaticalization

A Functional Discourse Grammar Theory of Grammaticalization PDF Author: Riccardo Giomi
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004520570
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
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.

Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective

Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective PDF Author: Heiko Narrog
Publisher:
ISBN: 019879584X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 493

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Book Description
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.

The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Volume II

The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Volume II PDF Author: Richard D. Janda
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118732219
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 717

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Book Description
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.

Exaptation and Language Change

Exaptation and Language Change PDF Author: Muriel Norde
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027267472
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
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.

Binominal Quantifiers in Spanish

Binominal Quantifiers in Spanish PDF Author: Katrien Dora Verveckken
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311040673X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
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.

New Directions for Historical Linguistics

New Directions for Historical Linguistics PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900441407X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
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).

Discourse Structuring Markers in English

Discourse Structuring Markers in English PDF Author: Elizabeth Closs Traugott
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027257922
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
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.