Author : Jacek Fisiak
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 647 pages
File Size : 22,94 MB
Release : 1985-01-01
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9027235287
This volume presents a selection of papers from the 6th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL), which was held in 1983, in Pozna?, Poland.
Author :
Publisher :
Page : 422 pages
File Size : 46,3 MB
Release : 1999
Category : Historical linguistics
ISBN :
Author : Laurel J. Brinton
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 410 pages
File Size : 15,74 MB
Release : 2001-01-01
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9027237220
This is a selection of papers from the 14th International Conference on Historical Linguistics held August 9-13, 1999, at the University of British Columbia. From the rich program and the many papers given during this conference, the present twenty-three papers were carefully selected to display the state of current research in the field of historical linguistics.
Author : Ruth Elizabeth King
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 48,86 MB
Release : 2000
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027237163
This book is a detailed study of French-English linguistic borrowing in Prince Edward Island, Canada which argues for the centrality of lexical innovation to grammatical change. Chapters 14 present the theoretical and methodological perspectives adopted along with the sociolinguistic history of Acadian French. Chapter 5 outlines the basic features of Acadian French morphosyntax. Chapter 6 provides an overview of the linguistic consequences of language contact in Prince Edward Island. Chapters 79 consider three particular cases of grammatical borrowing: the borrowing of the English adverb back and the semantic and syntactic reanalysis it has undergone, the borrowing of a wide range of English prepositions, resulting in dramatic changes in the syntactic behaviour of French prepositions, and the borrowing of English wh-ever words, resulting in the emergence of a new type of free relative. Chapter 10 argues for a theory of grammar contact by which contact-induced grammatical change is mediated by the lexicon.
Author : Susanne Niemeier
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 278 pages
File Size : 27,43 MB
Release : 2000-01-01
Category : Discourse analysis
ISBN : 9789027237057
This volume has arisen from the 26th International LAUD Symposium on "Humboldt and Whorf Revisited. Universal and Culture-Specific Conceptualizations in Grammar and Lexis." While contrasting two or more languages, the papers in this volume either provide empirical evidence confirming hypotheses related to linguistic relativity, or deal with methodological issues of empirical research.These new approaches to Whorf's hypotheses do not focus on mere theorizing but provide more and more empirical evidence gathered over the last years. They prove in a very sophisticated way that Whorf's ideas were very lucid ones, even if Whorf's insights were framed in a terminology which lacked the flexibility of linguistic categories developed over the last quarter of this century, especially in cognitive linguistics. To date, there is sufficient proof to claim that linguistic relativity is indeed a vital issue, and the current volume confirms a more general trend for rehabilitating Whorf's theory complex and also offers evidence for it. It contains articles written by scholars from various fields of linguistics including phonology, psycholinguistics, language acquisition, historical linguistics, anthropological linguistics and (cross-)cultural semantics, which all contribute to a re-evaluation and partial reformulation of Whorf's thinking.
Author : Susan C. Herring
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 469 pages
File Size : 48,66 MB
Release : 2001-01-23
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9027299609
Textual Parameters in Older Languages takes a contemporary approach to the inherent limitations of using older texts as data for linguistic analysis, drawing on methods of text analysis, pragmatics and sociolinguistics to supplement traditional historical and philological methods. The focus of the book is on the importance of controlling for textual parameters-defined by the editors as dimensions of variation associated with texts and their production, including text type, degree of poeticality, orality, and dialect-in the analysis of older language data. Failure to do so can result in invalid generalizations; recognizing the influence of textual parameters, conversely, raises a myriad of issues for the practice and theory of historical linguistics. The 12 essays in this collection apply this approach in analyses of anaphora, non-finite verbal forms, particles, punctuation, word order and other phenomena in a wide range of languages including Ancient Tamil, Sanskrit, Latin, Heian Japanese, Medieval Greek, Old French, Old Russian, Middle English, and Modern Danish. An in-depth introduction by the editors lays out the goals of the textual parameters approach, and considers the methodological and theoretical consequences of the evidence presented in the book as a whole.
Author : Orrin W. Robinson
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 196 pages
File Size : 15,3 MB
Release : 2001
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027237156
The author addresses a number of issues in German and general phonology, using a specific problem in German phonology (the ach/ich alternation) as a springboard. These issues include especially the naturalness, or lack thereof, of the prescriptive standard in German, and the importance of colloquial pronunciations, as well as historical and dialect evidence, for phonological analyses of the standard language. Other important topics include the phonetic and phonological status of German /r/, the phonetic and phonological representation of palatals, the status of loanwords in phonological description, and, especially as regards the latter, the usefulness of Optimality Theory in capturing phonological facts.The book addresses itself to scholars from the fields of German and Germanic linguistics, as well as those concerned more generally with theoretical phonology (whether Lexical or Optimal). It may even appeal to the orthoëpists and lexicographers of modern German.
Author : Jürgen Klausenburger
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 214 pages
File Size : 31,61 MB
Release : 2000-01-01
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027237002
In this monograph, various aspects of the morphosyntactic evolution of the Romance languages are shown to interact in a theory of grammaticalization. The study argues for the incorporation and subordination of inflectional morphology within a grammaticalization continuum, constituting but a portion of the latter. Parameters of natural morphology are seen as principles of grammaticalization, but the reverse is also true, rendering grammaticalization and natural morphology indistinguishable. In the context of this theoretical framework, Chapter 2 deals with Latin, French, and Italian verbal inflection, focusing on universal and system-dependent parameters of natural morphology. In Chapter 3, a theory of grammaticalization is built on divergent elements, including not only grammaticalization studies proper, but also the perception/production line of inquiry, and typology and branching issues, permitting the phasing out of the traditional synthesis/analyis cycle. Chapter 4 touches on nominal inflection, in particular that of Old French and Rumanian, the most revealing histories in the Romance domain. Chapter 5, finally, thoroughly discusses extant theoretical questions in grammaticalization, prominently featuring the relevance of 'invisible hand' explanations and the crucial role played by unidirectionality. This study will be of interest to specialists in Romance and historical linguistics, as well as morphological theory.
Author : Jacqueline Lecarme
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 396 pages
File Size : 11,61 MB
Release : 2000-01-01
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027237095
This volume presents a selection of papers from the 3rd Conference on Afroasiatic Languages, held in Sophia Antipolis, France, in 1996. The languages discussed include (varieties of) Arabic, Hebrew, Berber, Chaha, Wolof, and Old Egyptian.
Author : Mohammad A. Mohammad
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 218 pages
File Size : 40,36 MB
Release : 2000
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027236876
The two related issues of word order, and subject-verb agreement have occupied center stage in the study of Arabic syntax since the time of Sibawayhi in the eighth century. This book is a contribution to both of these areas. It is grounded within the generative grammar framework in one of its most recent versions, namely Minimalism, as expounded in Chomsky (1995). In this volume, a detailed description is given of word order options in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Palestinian Arabic (PA). It is shown that, perhaps surprisingly, the two varieties allow almost the same range of word orders. The important question of whether Arabic has a VP is addressed: the author argues extensively that Arabic has a VP category. The evidence derives from examining superiority effects, ECP effects, binding, variable interpretations, etc. Also discussed is the content of [Spec, TP] in VSO sentences. It is argued that the position is occupied by an expletive pronoun. The author defends the Expletive Hypothesis which states that in VSO sentences the expletive may take part in checking some features of the verb. A typology of the expletive pronoun in Modern Standard Arabic, Palestinian Arabic, Lebanese Arabic, and Moroccan Arabic is provided. A particularly interesting problem involving pronominal co-reference is the following: if the subject is the antecedent of a pronominal clitic, word order is free; if a pronominal is cliticized onto the subject, then the antecedent must precede. An account that derives these restrictions without recourse to linear order is proposed.
