Typological Hierarchies In Synchrony And Diachrony

Download or read book Typological Hierarchies in Synchrony and Diachrony written by Sonia Cristofaro and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2018-07-15 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Sociolinguistic and Typological Perspectives on Language Variation written by Silvia Ballarè and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-10-04 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linguistic variation, loosely defined as the wholesale processes whereby patterns of language structures exhibit divergent distributions within and across languages, has traditionally been the object of research of at least two branches of linguistics: variationist sociolinguistics and linguistic typology. In spite of their similar research agendas, the two approaches have only rarely converged in the description and interpretation of variation. While a number of studies attempting to address at least aspects of this relationship have appeared in recent years, a principled discussion on how the two disciplines may interact has not yet been carried out in a programmatic way. This volume aims to fill this gap and offers a cross-disciplinary venue for discussing the bridging between sociolinguistic and typological research from various angles, with the ultimate goal of laying out the methodological and conceptual foundations of an integrated research agenda for the study of linguistic variation.

Download or read book The Hittite Middle Voice written by Guglielmo Inglese and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-07-13 with total page 654 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Special Onymic Grammar in Typological Perspective written by Thomas Stolz and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-12-04 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time place names are made the topic of a cross-linguistic account of morphosyntactic properties which formally distinguish place names from personal names and common nouns. It is shown that the behavior of place names in morphology and syntax frequently disagrees with the rules established for other word classes independent of the language’s genetic affiliation, grammatical structure, and geographic location. Place names boast a grammar of their own. They are candidates for the status of a distinct word class. The special grammar of place names comes frequently to the fore in the domain of spatial relations. This fact is explained with reference to functional notions.

Download or read book Proper Names versus Common Nouns written by Javier Caro Reina and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-11-07 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent research has shown that proper names morphosyntactically differ from common nouns in many ways. However, little is known about the morphological and syntactic/distributional differences between proper names and common nouns in less known (Non)-Indo-European languages. This volume brings together contributions which explore morphosyntactic phenomena such as case marking, gender assignment rules, definiteness marking, and possessive constructions from a synchronic, diachronic, and typological perspective. The languages surveyed include Austronesian languages, Basque, English, German, Hebrew, and Romance languages. The volume contributes to a better understanding not only of the contrasts between proper names and common nouns, but also of formal contrasts between different proper name classes such as personal names, place names, and others.

Download or read book The Diachrony of Ditransitives written by Chiara Fedriani and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While ample studies exist on ditransitives in various languages, notably from a typological perspective, more work needs to be done on identifying the main processes and factors that trigger and constrain the changes they undergo over time. The goal of this volume is to help fill this gap by bringing together data and information on individual languages that have thus far been left out of the discussion and by expanding our knowledge of already studied linguistic traditions so as to achieve a broader diachronic description. Since one of the distinctive features of ditransitives is their synchronic variability in terms of structural alternation and alignment split, diachronic research can throw up new insights into developmental dynamics that are eminently complementary; namely, on the one hand, the emergence, development and loss of construction alternation and, on the other, the acquisition of new functions over time. The analyses offered in the book yield different and interconnected answers to the general question of how ditransitives change by drawing on different functional principles that play a role in the diachronic reorganization of this dynamic domain and by providing a number of original theoretical suggestions.

Download or read book Antipassive written by Katarzyna Janic and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2021-03-15 with total page 655 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive treatment of the morpho-syntactic and semantic aspects of the antipassive construction from synchronic, diachronic, and typological perspectives. The nineteen contributions assembled in this volume address a wide range of aspects pertinent to the antipassive construction, such as lexical semantics, the properties of the antipassive markers, as well as the issue of fuzzy boundaries between the antipassive construction and a range of other formally and functionally similar constructions in genealogically and areally diverse languages. Purely synchronically oriented case studies are supplemented by contributions that shed light on the diachronic development of the antipassive construction and the antipassive markers. The book should be of central interest to many scholars, in particular to those working in the field of language typology, semantics, syntax, and historical linguists, as well as to specialists of the language families discussed in the individual contributions.