Diachronic Changes Underlying Synchronic Distribution

Diachronic Changes Underlying Synchronic Distribution PDF Author: I-Hsuan Chen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811301700
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
This book deals with synchronic variation in Chinese through a diachronic lens, based on the evidence from a quantitative, longitudinal corpus study. Departing from the traditional analysis in diachronic changes in Chinese linguistics, the cognitive constructionist approach employed in this book is able to capture incremental changes by combining syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Topics such as word order, focus, scopes of quantifiers, information structure, and negation have been important issues in linguistics, but they are rarely integrated as a whole. The book makes their diachronic interactions available to the students and researchers in the fields of general and Chinese linguistics.

Diachronic Changes Underlying Synchronic Distribution

Diachronic Changes Underlying Synchronic Distribution PDF Author: I-Hsuan Chen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811301700
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book deals with synchronic variation in Chinese through a diachronic lens, based on the evidence from a quantitative, longitudinal corpus study. Departing from the traditional analysis in diachronic changes in Chinese linguistics, the cognitive constructionist approach employed in this book is able to capture incremental changes by combining syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Topics such as word order, focus, scopes of quantifiers, information structure, and negation have been important issues in linguistics, but they are rarely integrated as a whole. The book makes their diachronic interactions available to the students and researchers in the fields of general and Chinese linguistics.

Synchrony and Diachrony

Synchrony and Diachrony PDF Author: Anna Giacalone Ramat
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027272077
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
The focus of this volume is on the relation between synchrony and diachrony. It is examined in the light of the most recent theories of language change and linguistic variation. What has traditionally been treated as a dichotomy is now seen rather in terms of a dynamic interface. The contributions to this volume aim at exploring the most adequate tools to describe and understand the manifestations of this dynamic interface. Thorough analyses are offered on hot topics of the current linguistic debate, which are all involved in the analysis of the synchrony-diachrony interface: gradualness of change, synchronic variation and gradience, constructional approaches to grammaticalization, the role of contact-induced transfer in language change, analogy. Case studies are discussed from a variety of languages and dialects including English, Welsh, Latin, Italian and Italian dialects, Dutch, Swedish, German and German dialects, Hungarian. This volume is of great interest to a broad audience within linguistics, including historical linguistics, typology, pragmatics, and areal linguistics.

Diachronic Construction Grammar

Diachronic Construction Grammar PDF Author: Jóhanna Barðdal
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027268614
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Construction Grammar as a framework offers a new perspective on traditional historical questions in diachronic linguistics and language change: how do new constructions arise, how should competition in diachronic variation be accounted for, how do constructions fall into disuse, and how do constructions change in general, formally and/or semantically, and with what implications for the language system as a whole? This volume offers a broad introduction to the confluence of Construction Grammar and historical syntax, and also detailed case studies of various instances of syntactic change modeled within Construction Grammar. The volume demonstrates that Construction Grammar as a theory is particularly well suited for modeling historical changes in morphosyntax, and it also documents challenging new phenomena that require a theoretical account within any competing framework of syntactic change.

Spreading Patterns

Spreading Patterns PDF Author: Hendrik De Smet
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199812756
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Examines the emergence and spread of three types of complements from the Middle English period to the present day

Diachronic Syntax

Diachronic Syntax PDF Author: Susan Pintzuk
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780198250272
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
This text reflects developing trends in linguistic research, specifically the study of syntax and its pivotal position in current theories of language acquisition.

Categories, Constructions, and Change in English Syntax

Categories, Constructions, and Change in English Syntax PDF Author: Nuria Yáñez-Bouza
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108419569
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
A pioneering collection of new research that explores categories, constructions, and change in the syntax of the English language. The volume, with contributions by world-renowned scholars as well as some emerging scholars in the field, covers a wide variety of approaches to grammatical categories and categorial change, constructions and constructional change, and comparative and typological research. Each of the fourteen chapters, based on the analysis of authentic data, highlights the wealth and breadth of the study of English syntax (including morphosyntax), both theoretically and empirically, from Old English through to the present day. The result is a body of research which will add substantially to the current study of the syntax of the English language, by stimulating further research in the field.

On Understanding Grammar

On Understanding Grammar PDF Author: Talmy Givón
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 1483259935
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
On Understanding Grammar covers the interdependencies among the various aspects of linguistics and the human language. This eight-chapter text considers some pertinent topics in linguistics, such as discourse-pragmatics, diachronic syntax, topology, creology, method, and ontology. Chapter 1 describes the notions of fact, theory, and explanation, particularly about how these notions manifest themselves in actual practice. Chapter 2 redefines syntax in terms of communicative function and discourse-pragmatics, and about the relation between the function of grammatical devices and their formal properties. Chapter 3 deals with discourse-pragmatics and how it transcends the narrow bounds of deductive logic, as well as the function and ontology of negation in language, and how those relate to the fundamental information-theoretic principle of figure versus ground. Chapter 4 explores the two major aspects of case systems, namely, the semantic role and pragmatic function, and how the two interact in determining the typological characteristics of grammars. Chapter 5 examines the relation between discourse and syntax based on diachronic, ontogenetic, phylogenetic viewpoints. Chapter 6 tackles the relation between synchronic grammar and diachronic change, while Chapter 7 describes the relationship between human language and its phylogenetic evolution. Chapter 8 is about language and ontology, as well as the relation between cognition and the universe. This book will prove useful to linguistics and language researchers.

Language and Rhythm in Plautus

Language and Rhythm in Plautus PDF Author: Benjamin Fortson
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110210029
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
The plays of Plautus have long been recognized as a unique mine of information about the spoken Latin of the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. But detailed and up-to-date linguistic treatments of the Plautine meters and other phenomena in his plays have hitherto been lacking. This book seeks to remedy that gap by presenting a series of case-studies to glean information about the synchronic grammar of Plautine Latin, in particular the rhythmic organization of Latin speech and the effects of syntactic processes on Latin prosodic phonology. Some of the topics, such as enjambement and the aphaeresis of “est”, have never before received such treatment, while others, such as Meyer’s and Luchs’s laws, split resolutions, and iambic shortening, are provided a firmer linguistic footing, and fuller discussion of allied issues, than hitherto. Topics in Italic syntax (such as the syntactic structure of adpositional phrases and their history) and in Indo-European morphophonology (such as the prosodic status of finite verbs) are dealt with as well, as is an investigation into the effects of pragmatics on the rhythmic organization of phrases. The book will be of interest to classicists, comparative philologists, and general linguists.

The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics

The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics PDF Author: Dirk Geeraerts
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0199738637
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1366

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Book Description
With 49 chapters written by experts in the field, this reference volume authoritatively covers cognitive linguistics, from basic concepts and models to practical applications.

The Power of Analogy

The Power of Analogy PDF Author: Dieter Wanner
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110919818
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
In The Power of Anology, Dieter Wanner argues for reinstating historical linguistics, especially in (morpho-)syntax, as constitutive of any theoretical account of language. In the first part, he provides a critique of some foundational concepts of an object-oriented linguistic perspective, questioning the distinction between synchrony and diachrony, dichotomous parametrization, grammaticality judgments, and formal generalization. Instead, the immanent perspective of the linguistic individual, licensed by broad cognitive functions, highlights such relegated dimensions as similarity, (surface) redundancy, frequency of form, and social and environmental conditions on language use. In the second part, Dieter Wanner relies on a systematic construct of analogy as the dynamic force enabling language, tying together acquisition, language use, and linguistic change. Such analogy is pervasive, driven by local models, and inevitably spreading through the social web of linguistic practice. The unpredictability, incompletion, and typical slowness of change thereby become the norm, while categorical closure remains a marked possibility. The framework of "Soft Syntax" spells out an operative model for syntax relying on precedence, cohesion, dependence, agreement, constructional identity, and concatenation. These six dimensions and their interplay undergo a detailed exploration of their diachronic operation and implications, applying them to typical examples taken from the history of the Romance languages. The openness of the framework enables diachronic linguistics to approach old problems in a new light and to ask new questions about the mechanics and nature of language change.