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: 9027295476
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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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.

Grammaticalization

Grammaticalization PDF Author: Paul J. Hopper
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780521366557
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
The first general introduction to grammaticalization, the processes whereby ordinary lexical items change over time into grammatical elements.

Pathways of Change

Pathways of Change PDF Author: Olga Fischer
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027298696
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: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191548936
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Grammaticalization is a well-attested process of linguistic change in which a lexical item becomes a function word, which may be further reduced to a clitic or affix. Proponents of the universality of grammaticalization have usually argued that it is unidirectional and have thus found it a useful tool in linguistic reconstruction. In this book Prof Norde shows that change is reversible on all levels: semantic, morphological, syntactic, and phonological. As a consequence, the alleged unidirectionality of grammaticalization is not a reliable reconstructional tool, even if degrammaticalization is a rare phenomenon. Degrammaticalization, she argues, is essentially different from grammaticalization: it usually comprises a single change, examples being shifts from affix to clitic, or from function word to lexical item. And where grammaticalization can be seen as a process, degrammaticalization is often the by-product of other changes. Nevertheless, she shows that it can be described, like grammaticalization, in a principled way, in order to establish whether a change in a word has been from more to less grammatical or vice versa, and the stages by which it has become so. Using data from different languages she constructs a typology of degrammaticalization changes. She explains why degrammaticalization is so rare and why some linguists have such strongly negative feelings about the possibility of its existence. She adds to the understanding of grammaticalization and makes a significant contribution to methods of linguistic reconstruction and the study of language change. She writes clearly, aiming to be understood by advanced undergraduate students as well as appealing to scholars and graduate researchers in historical linguistics.

Grammatical Change

Grammatical Change PDF Author: Dianne Jonas
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191617938
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This book advances research on grammatical change and shows the breadth and liveliness of the field. Leading international scholars report and reflect on the latest research into the nature and outcomes of all aspects of syntactic change including grammaticalization, variation, complementation, syntactic movement, determiner-phrase syntax, pronominal systems, case systems, negation, and alignment. The authors deploy a variety of generative frameworks, including minimalist and optimality theoretic, and bring these to bear on a wide range of languages: among the latter are typologically distinct examples from Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Greek, Korean and Japanese, Austronesian, Celtic, and Nahuatl. They draw on sociolinguistic evidence where appropriate. Taken as a whole, the volume provides a stimulating overview of key current issues in the investigation of the origins, nature, and outcome of syntactic change.

Gradience, Gradualness and Grammaticalization

Gradience, Gradualness and Grammaticalization PDF Author: Elizabeth Closs Traugott
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027288445
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
This volume, which emerged from a workshop at the New Reflections on Grammaticalization 4 conference held at KU Leuven in July 2008, contains a collection of papers which investigate the relationship between synchronic gradience and the apparent gradualness of linguistic change, largely from the perspective of grammaticalization. In addition to versions of the papers presented at the workshop, the volume contains specially commissioned contributions, some of which offer commentaries on a subset of the other articles. The articles address a number of themes central to grammaticalization studies, such as the role of reanalysis and analogy in grammaticalization, the formal modelling of grammaticalization, and the relationship between formal and functional change, using data from a range of languages, and (in some cases) from particular electronic corpora. The volume will be of specific interest to historical linguists working on grammaticalization, and general linguists working on the interface between synchrony and diachrony.

Grammaticalization as Economy

Grammaticalization as Economy PDF Author: Elly van Gelderen
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027227959
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
This book provides much detail on the changes involving the grammaticalization of personal and relative pronouns, topicalized nominals, complementizers, adverbs, prepositions, modals, perception verbs, and aspectual markers. It accounts for these changes in terms of two structural economy principles. Head Preference expresses that single words, i.e. heads, are used to build structures rather than full phrases, and Late Merge states that waiting as late as possible to merge, i.e. be added to the structure, is preferred over movement. The book also discusses grammar-external processes (e.g. prescriptivist rules) that inhibit change, and innovations that replenish the grammaticalized element. Most of the changes involve the (extended) CP and IP: as elements grammaticalize clause boundaries disappear. Cross-linguistic differences exist as to whether the CP, IP, and VP are all present and split and this is formulated as the Layer Principle. Changes involving the CP are typically brought about by Head Preference, whereas those involving the IP and VP by Late Merge.

Grammaticalization and Language Change

Grammaticalization and Language Change PDF Author: Kristin Davidse
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027205973
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
This collective volume focuses on the latest developments in the study of grammaticalization and related processes of change such as degrammaticalization, constructionalization, lexicalization, and petrification. It addresses topical issues relating to the motivations, sources, defining features, and outcomes of these changes. New theoretical reflections are offered on the pragmatic motivation of grammaticalization paths, process-oriented differences between grammaticalization, lexicalization and degrammaticalization, the question of gradualness and pace of grammaticalization, and deictics as a distinct source of grammaticalization. The articles describe various constructional and distributional changes affecting deictics, determiners, reflexives, clitics, nouns, affixes, adverbs and (auxiliary) verbs, mainly in the Germanic and Romance languages. The volume will be of great interest to historical linguists working on grammaticalization and related changes, and to all linguists working on the interface between morphosyntax, semantics, pragmatics and discourse.

Grammaticalization

Grammaticalization PDF Author: Heiko Narrog
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198747853
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
This textbook introduces and explains the fundamental issues, major research questions, and current approaches in the study of grammaticalization - the development of new grammatical forms from lexical items, and of further grammatical functions from existing grammatical forms. The chapters provide a detailed account of the major issues in the field, as well as offering guidance on further reading and study questions to encourage further discussions; there is also a glossary of key terminology.