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.

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.

Typological Hierarchies in Synchrony and Diachrony

Typological Hierarchies in Synchrony and Diachrony PDF Author: Sonia Cristofaro
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027264457
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
Typological hierarchies are widely perceived as one of the most important results of research on language universals and linguistic diversity. Explanations for typological hierarchies, however, are usually based on the synchronic properties of the patterns described by individual hierarchies, not the actual diachronic processes that give rise to these patterns cross-linguistically. This book aims to explore in what ways the investigation of such processes can further our understanding of typological hierarchies. To this end, diachronic evidence about the origins of several phenomena described by typological hierarchies is discussed for several languages by a number of leading scholars in typology, historical linguistics, and language documentation. This evidence suggests a rethinking of possible explanations for typological hierarchies, as well as the very notion of typological universals in general. For this reason, the book will be of interest not only to the broad typological community, but also historical linguists, cognitive linguists, and psycholinguists.

Synchrony and Diachrony of Ancient Greek

Synchrony and Diachrony of Ancient Greek PDF Author: Georgios K. Giannakis
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110719339
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description
This collective volume contains thirty six original studies on various aspects of Ancient Greek language, linguistics and philology written by an international group of leading authorities in the field. The essays are organized in five thematic groups covering a wide variety of issues of ancient Greek linguistics, ranging from epigraphy and the study of individual dialects to various other aspects of the structure of the language, such as phonetics and phonology, morphology, lexicon and word formation, etymology, metrics as well as many syntactic matters and problems of pragmatics and stylistics of the language; a number of essays move in the middle ground where language, linguistics and philology crosscut and cross-fertilize each other with the application of linguistic theory to the study of classical texts. The work is of special relevance to scholars interested in Greek linguistics in general and in particular aspects of the Greek language.

Corpus-based Analysis and Diachronic Linguistics

Corpus-based Analysis and Diachronic Linguistics PDF Author: Yuji Kawaguchi
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027207704
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Nowadays, linguists do not question the existence of synchronic variation, and the dichotomy between synchrony and diachrony. They recognize that synchrony can be motivated regionally (diatopic variation), sociolinguistically (diastratic variation), or stylistically (diaphasic variation). But, further, they can also recognize the hybrid nature of synchrony, which is referred to as "dynamic synchrony." This conception of synchrony assumes that similar patterns of usage can coexist in a community during a certain period and that their mutual relations are not static but conflicting enough to result in a future systematic change through symptomatic synchronic variation. Emergence of a large corpus of written texts for some languages has enabled quantitative as well as qualitative analyses of the synchronic conditions for diachronic changes, over both long and short spans of time. Most of the 14 papers in this volume represent studies on synchronic and diachronic variations based on such corpus data. For sale in all countries except Japan. For customers in Japan: please contact Yushodo Co.

Diachrony and Synchrony in English Corpus Linguistics

Diachrony and Synchrony in English Corpus Linguistics PDF Author: Alejandro Alcaraz-Sintes
Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften
ISBN: 9783034313261
Category : Corpora (Linguistics)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The book brings together current research on the description of English using a range of corpora. It consists of a foreword, a review of the diachronic studies and another of the synchronic studies, twelve research papers, and a subject index. Five of the papers are about diachronic description and seven are about synchronic description.

Interdependence of Diachronic and Synchronic Analyses

Interdependence of Diachronic and Synchronic Analyses PDF Author: Folke Josephson
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027205701
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
The focus of this volume is the interdependence of diachrony and synchrony in the investigation of syntactic structure. A diverse set of modern and ancient languages is investigated from this perspective, including Hittite, the Classical languages, Old Norse, Coptic, Bantu languages, Australian languages and Creoles. A variety of topics are covered, including TAM, diathesis, valency, case marking, cliticization, and grammaticalization. This volume should be of interest tosyntacticians, typologists, and historical linguists with an interest in syntax and morphology.

English Syntax in Three Dimensions

English Syntax in Three Dimensions PDF Author: Carola Trips
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311029009X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
This book deals with syntax in three dimensions: in part I with the history of grammatical theory, in part II with synchronic aspects of Present-Day English, and in part III with diachronic aspects of English. The most prominent linguistic terms and phenomena are discussed in their historical context and are taken up again in the synchronic and diachronic parts. In this way they can be viewed from different perspectives. At the end of each chapter a summary and recommendations for further reading is provided as well as exercises in parts II and III. There is also a webpage for this book with more material, a glossary, and model answers of the exercises. The aims of the book are 1) to provide an introduction to the history of grammatical theory in order to show how and why generative grammar evolved (alongside other theories); in this way, generative grammar is presented in its historical context, and the motivation for the ideas and assumptions of this theory becomes clear; 2) to show that the terms and phenomena discussed are still applicable and interesting today; 3) to investigate phenomena of Present-Day English and their development in the history of English by means of authentic data, and to find explanations for the developmental paths they took by applying theory. This book primarily aims at undergraduate students of English or linguistics who have already acquired some knowledge of syntax and generative syntactic theory. It is also well suited for students specialising in syntax, syntactic theory, and language change. It can further be used as a study aid for final exams.

Demonstratives

Demonstratives PDF Author: Holger Diessel
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027229422
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
All languages have demonstratives, but their form, meaning and use vary tremendously across the languages of the world. This book presents the first large-scale analysis of demonstratives from a cross-linguistic and diachronic perspective. It is based on a representative sample of 85 languages. The first part of the book analyzes demonstratives from a synchronic point of view, examining their morphological structures, semantic features, syntactic functions, and pragmatic uses in spoken and written discourse. The second part concentrates on diachronic issues, in particular on the development of demonstratives into grammatical markers. Across languages demonstratives provide a frequent historical source for definite articles, relative and third person pronouns, nonverbal copulas, sentence connectives, directional preverbs, focus markers, expletives, and many other grammatical markers. The book describes the different mechanisms by which demonstratives grammaticalize and argues that the evolution of grammatical markers from demonstratives is crucially distinct from other cases of grammaticalization.

Reconciling Synchrony, Diachrony and Usage in Verb Number Agreement with Complex Collective Subjects

Reconciling Synchrony, Diachrony and Usage in Verb Number Agreement with Complex Collective Subjects PDF Author: Yolanda Fernández-Pena
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000282007
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
This book uses corpus-based methodologies to investigate the wide variety of factors behind verb number agreement with complex collective noun phrases in English. The literature on collective nouns and their agreement patterns spans an array of disciplines and approaches. However, little of the research conducted to date has focused on the influence of of-dependents on verb number with relational collective nouns, as in examples such as a bunch of or a group of. Drawing on data from two case studies – one based on the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), and the other on the British National Corpus (BNC) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) – Fernández-Pena uses statistical modelling to unpack the different morphological, syntactic, semantic and lexical dimensions of the variables affecting verb number agreement with complex collective noun phrases in English. This multidimensional analysis of the significance of of-dependents in the patterning and contemporary usage of collective nouns offers new insight into and understanding of both synchronic variation and diachronic change. This book is an essential read for scholars of English language variation and change, historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, and usage-based approaches to the study of language.

The Hittite Middle Voice

The Hittite Middle Voice PDF Author: Guglielmo Inglese
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004432302
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 654

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Book Description
In this book, Inglese offers a new description of the middle voice in Hittite, both from a synchronic and a diachronic perspective. The analysis is based on a corpus of original Hittite texts and is framed within current trends in linguistic typology.