Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistic Perspective

Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistic Perspective PDF Author: Alice C. Harris
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521478816
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
In this major new work Alice Harris and Lyle Campbell set out to establish a general framework for the investigation of linguistic change. Systematic cross-linguistic comparison of syntactic change across a wide variety of languages is used to construct hypotheses about the universals and limits of language change more generally. In particular, the authors seek to move closer towards describing the range of causes of syntactic change to develop an understanding of the mechanisms of syntactic change, and to provide an understanding of why some languages undergo certain changes and not others. The authors draw on languages as diverse as Pipil and French, Georgian and Estonian, and the data presented is one of the book's great strengths. Rigor and precision are combined here with a great breadth of scholarship to produce a unique resource for the study of linguistic change, which will be of use to scholars and students alike.

Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistic Perspective

Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistic Perspective PDF Author: Alice C. Harris
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521478816
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 512

Get Book

Book Description
In this major new work Alice Harris and Lyle Campbell set out to establish a general framework for the investigation of linguistic change. Systematic cross-linguistic comparison of syntactic change across a wide variety of languages is used to construct hypotheses about the universals and limits of language change more generally. In particular, the authors seek to move closer towards describing the range of causes of syntactic change to develop an understanding of the mechanisms of syntactic change, and to provide an understanding of why some languages undergo certain changes and not others. The authors draw on languages as diverse as Pipil and French, Georgian and Estonian, and the data presented is one of the book's great strengths. Rigor and precision are combined here with a great breadth of scholarship to produce a unique resource for the study of linguistic change, which will be of use to scholars and students alike.

Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistic Perspective

Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistic Perspective PDF Author: Alice Harris
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780521474351
Category : Grammar, Comparative and general
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description


Historical Linguistics, fourth edition

Historical Linguistics, fourth edition PDF Author: Lyle Campbell
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262542188
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 521

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Book Description
The new edition of a comprehensive, accessible, and hands-on text in historical linguistics, revised and expanded, with new material and a new layout. This accessible, hands-on textbook not only introduces students to the important topics in historical linguistics but also shows them how to apply the methods described and how to think about the issues. Abundant examples from a broad range of languages and exercises allow students to focus on how to do historical linguistics. The book is distinctive for its integration of the standard topics with others now considered important to the field, including syntactic change, grammaticalization, sociolinguistic contributions to linguistic change, distant genetic relationships, areal linguistics, and linguistic prehistory.

Perspectives on Historical Syntax

Perspectives on Historical Syntax PDF Author: Carlotta Viti
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027268932
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
This volume discusses topics of historical syntax from different theoretical perspectives, ranging from Indo-European studies to generative grammar, functionalism, and typology. It examines mechanisms of syntactic change such as reanalysis, analogy, grammaticalization, independent drift, and language contact, as well as procedures of syntactic reconstruction. More than one factor is considered to explain a syntactic phenomenon, since it is maintained that an accurate account of multiple causations, of both structural and social nature, is to be preferred to considerations of economy. Special attention is given to the relationship between principles of syntactic theory and a search for data reliability through the methods of corpus linguistics. Data are drawn from a variety of languages, including Hittite, Vedic, Ancient Greek, Latin, Romance, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Austroasiatic, Gulf of Guinea creoles. The book may be therefore of interest for specialists of these languages in addition to scholars and advanced students of syntax and historical linguistics.

Similative and Equative Constructions

Similative and Equative Constructions PDF Author: Yvonne Treis
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027265976
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
While comparative constructions have been extensively studied in the past decades, the expression of equality and similarity has so far attracted little attention in the typological literature. The fifteen contributions assembled in this volume study similative and equative constructions in typologically and genetically distant languages, albeit with a focus on Africa, and from a range of perspectives. Purely synchronically oriented case studies are supplemented by contributions that also shed light on the diachronic development of similative and equative constructions in language contact situations. Sources of similative morphemes and lexically expressed concepts of likeness are examined, and little-known multifunctionality patterns and grammaticalisation targets of similative morphemes – such as purpose clause markers, modality morphemes and markers of glottonyms – are discussed. Based on a sample of 119 languages worldwide, a new typology of equative constructions is proposed. The book should be of interest to typologists, semanticists, specialists of grammaticalization, historical linguistics and syntax.

Adverbs and Functional Heads

Adverbs and Functional Heads PDF Author: Guglielmo Cinque
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195115279
Category : Grammar, Comparative and general
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This text presents evidence locating adverb phrases in the specifiers of distinct functional projections within a theory of the clause. In this theory, both adverbs and heads, which encode the functional notions of the clause, are ordered in a rigid sequence. The author's proposal suggests that the structure of natural language sentences is much richer than previously assumed.

Chinese Syntax in a Cross-linguistic Perspective

Chinese Syntax in a Cross-linguistic Perspective PDF Author: Yen-hui Audrey Li
Publisher: Oxford Studies in Comparative
ISBN: 0199945675
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
"Chinese Syntax in a Cross-linguistic Perspective collects twelve new papers that explore the syntax of Chinese in comparison with other languages"--

Historical Linguistics

Historical Linguistics PDF Author: Lyle Campbell
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262532679
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 478

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Book Description
This accessible, hands-on text not only introduces students to the important topicsin historical linguistics but also shows them how to apply the methods described and how to thinkabout the issues; abundant examples and exercises allow students to focus on how to do historicallinguistics. Distinctive to this text is its integration of the standard topics with others nowconsidered important to the field, including syntactic change, grammaticalization, sociolinguisticcontributions to linguistic change, distant genetic relationships, areal linguistics, and linguisticprehistory. Examples are taken from a broad range of languages; those from the more familiarEnglish, French, German, and Spanish make the topics more accessible, while those fromnon-Indo-European languages show the depth and range of the concepts they illustrate.This secondedition features expanded explanations and examples as well as updates in light of recent work inlinguistics, including a defense of the family tree model, a response to recent claims on lexicaldiffusion/frequency, and a section on why languages diversify and spread.

Historical Linguistics, third edition

Historical Linguistics, third edition PDF Author: Lyle Campbell
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 026251849X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The new edition of a comprehensive, accessible, and hands-on text in historical linguistics, revised and expanded to reflect recent developments in the field. This accessible, hands-on textbook not only introduces students to the important topics in historical linguistics but also shows them how to apply the methods described and how to think about the issues. Abundant examples and exercises allow students to focus on how to do historical linguistics. The book is distinctive for its integration of the standard topics with others now considered important to the field, including syntactic change, grammaticalization, sociolinguistic contributions to linguistic change, distant genetic relationships, areal linguistics, and linguistic prehistory. It also offers a defense of the family tree model, a response to recent claims on lexical diffusion/frequency, and a section on why languages diversify and spread. Examples are taken from a broad range of languages; those from the more familiar English, French, German, and Spanish make the topics more accessible, while those from non-Indo-European languages show the depth and range of the concepts they illustrate. This third edition includes new material based on the latest developments in the field, increased coverage of computational approaches, and additional exercises. Many of the chapters have been revised or expanded, with new coverage of such topics as morphological change, language families, language isolates, language diversity, the Romani migration case, and misconceptions in recent work about historical linguistics. New for this edition is a downloadable instructor's manual with answers to exercises.

Split Auxiliary Systems

Split Auxiliary Systems PDF Author: Raúl Aranovich
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027229816
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
The alternation between the auxiliaries BE and HAVE, which this collection examines, is often discussed in connection with generative analyses of split intransitivity. But this book's purpose is to place the phenomenon in a broader context. Well-known facts in the Romance and Germanic language families are extended with data from lesser studied languages and dialects (Romanian, Paduan), and also with experimental and historical data. Moreover, the book goes beyond the usual language families in which the phenomenon has been studied, with the inclusion of two chapters on Chinese and Korean. The theoretical background of the contributors is also broad, ranging from current Generative approaches to Cognitive and Optimality-Theoretical frameworks. Readers interested in the structural, historical, developmental, or experimental aspects of auxiliary selection should profit from this book's comprehensive empirical coverage and from the plurality of contemporary linguistic analyses it contains.