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This book deals with synchronic variation in Chinese through a diachronic lens, based on the evidence from a quantitative, longitudinal corpus study. Departing from the traditional analysis in diachronic changes in Chinese linguistics, the cognitive constructionist approach employed in this book is able to capture incremental changes by combining syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Topics such as word order, focus, scopes of quantifiers, information structure, and negation have been important issues in linguistics, but they are rarely integrated as a whole. The book makes their diachronic interactions available to the students and researchers in the fields of general and Chinese linguistics.
Construction Grammar as a framework offers a new perspective on traditional historical questions in diachronic linguistics and language change: how do new constructions arise, how should competition in diachronic variation be accounted for, how do constructions fall into disuse, and how do constructions change in general, formally and/or semantically, and with what implications for the language system as a whole? This volume offers a broad introduction to the confluence of Construction Grammar and historical syntax, and also detailed case studies of various instances of syntactic change modeled within Construction Grammar. The volume demonstrates that Construction Grammar as a theory is particularly well suited for modeling historical changes in morphosyntax, and it also documents challenging new phenomena that require a theoretical account within any competing framework of syntactic change.
A pioneering collection of new research that explores categories, constructions, and change in the syntax of the English language. The volume, with contributions by world-renowned scholars as well as some emerging scholars in the field, covers a wide variety of approaches to grammatical categories and categorial change, constructions and constructional change, and comparative and typological research. Each of the fourteen chapters, based on the analysis of authentic data, highlights the wealth and breadth of the study of English syntax (including morphosyntax), both theoretically and empirically, from Old English through to the present day. The result is a body of research which will add substantially to the current study of the syntax of the English language, by stimulating further research in the field.
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.
Examines the emergence and spread of three types of complements from the Middle English period to the present day
On Understanding Grammar covers the interdependencies among the various aspects of linguistics and the human language. This eight-chapter text considers some pertinent topics in linguistics, such as discourse-pragmatics, diachronic syntax, topology, creology, method, and ontology. Chapter 1 describes the notions of fact, theory, and explanation, particularly about how these notions manifest themselves in actual practice. Chapter 2 redefines syntax in terms of communicative function and discourse-pragmatics, and about the relation between the function of grammatical devices and their formal properties. Chapter 3 deals with discourse-pragmatics and how it transcends the narrow bounds of deductive logic, as well as the function and ontology of negation in language, and how those relate to the fundamental information-theoretic principle of figure versus ground. Chapter 4 explores the two major aspects of case systems, namely, the semantic role and pragmatic function, and how the two interact in determining the typological characteristics of grammars. Chapter 5 examines the relation between discourse and syntax based on diachronic, ontogenetic, phylogenetic viewpoints. Chapter 6 tackles the relation between synchronic grammar and diachronic change, while Chapter 7 describes the relationship between human language and its phylogenetic evolution. Chapter 8 is about language and ontology, as well as the relation between cognition and the universe. This book will prove useful to linguistics and language researchers.
Survival of the Fittest provides an in-depth analysis of weakening processes attested in Spanish and English within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT). The book examines fricative lenition as an instance of sound change in progress, contributing to the study of phonological change and the notion of strength in phonology. It also provides motivation for the introduction of a derivational stage in OT analysis. A critical discussion of various OT sub-theories presented by the author leads to interesting conclusions concerning the way in which lenition and opacity processes should be addressed in OT. Furthermore, under the assumption that language change should be conceived in evolutionary terms, the book concludes that sounds undergo continuous modification which is not at all accidental. The direction of change tends to be a constant on the temporal axis, and the leniting character of a large portion of phonological processes observed in the world’s languages points to the universal tendency for sounds to gradually fade and give way to other, stronger segments, which may be interpreted as an instantiation of ‘'natural selection’ within language. In taking a broader perspective on language, the book considers phonological processes to be successors of phonetic innovations, and predecessors of morphological and lexical shifts. Thus, in order to encompass more than just a formal discussion of certain phonological phenomena, this book pursues the more profound question of why and how certain regularities within irregularities are attested across languages. The empirical data from Chilean Spanish and English serve as instantiations of these universal patterns.
This study demonstrates how historical linguistics regains a central role for the understanding of language as soon as the artificial distinction between synchrony and diachrony is abandoned. The author systematically explores the potential of the concept of analogy within the new framework of "Soft Syntax," illustrating his analysis with numerous examples from the history of the Romance languages. He shows that the openness of analogy allows historical linguistics to improve on old problems and to ask new questions about language change.
The relationship between diachronic change and synchronic variation at the articulatory, auditory, acoustic and social level is one of the greatest puzzles in the study of language. Even though plentiful examples exist to suggest that dynamics of synchronic variation and diachronic change are tightly interconnected, a unified theory to account for language change in its relationship to all layers of synchronic variation remains a desideratum. This volume compiles new evidence from articulatory, acoustic, auditory, sociolinguistic, and phonological analyses of segmental and prosodic data and computational modelling, and offers a refreshing theoretical angle on the ongoing debates in language change. The volume is divided into three sections, each focusing on one aspect of speech dynamics – the historical, the emerging and the theoretical, each making a step toward a unified view of speech dynamics at the interface of synchronic variation and diachronic change. The large range of methodologies and theories represented in this book will appeal to scholars from a variety of linguistic fields with an interest in speech dynamics, including phoneticians, phonologists, sociolinguists, typologists, computational and historical linguists.
This volume explores multiple aspects of cyclical syntactic change, including the diachrony of negation, the internal structure of wh-words, and changes in argument structure. It combines descriptions of novel data with detailed theoretical analysis, and will appeal to historical linguists and to anyone working on language variation and change.