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The present volume presents scholarly study into Old French as it is practiced today, in all of its forms, within a variety of theoretical frameworks, from Optimality Theory to Minimalism to Discourse Analysis. Many of the chapters are corpus-based, reflecting a new trend in the field, as more electronic corpora become available. The chapters contribute to our understanding of both the synchronic state and diachronic evolution, not only of Old French, but of language in general. Its breadth is extensive in that contributors pursue research on a wide variety of topics in Old French focusing on the various subsystems of language. All examples are carefully glossed and the relevant characteristics of Old French are clearly explained, which makes it uniquely accessible to non-specialists and linguists at all levels of training.
This volume presents novel analyses of morphosyntax and phonology by well-known scholars in their respective fields. The book offers chapters on a range of Romance languages and dialects, including Canadian French, Standard French, Modern French, Sardinian, Sicilian, and Spanish. Other chapters focus on diachronic topics on French and Italian. The volume will be of interest to researchers looking for current research in linguistics on the Romance languages. It will also serve as a reference volume or supplemental reading for graduate students and advanced undergraduate students in linguistics.
This book provides the most comprehensive and detailed formal account to date of the evolution of French syntax. It makes use of the latest formal syntactic tools and combines careful textual analysis with a detailed synthesis of the research literature to provide a novel analysis of the major syntactic developments in the history of French. The empirical scope of the volume is exceptionally broad, and includes discussion of syntactic variation and change in Latin, Old, Middle, Renaissance, and Classical French, and standard and non-standard varieties of Modern French. Following an introduction to the general trends in grammatical change from Latin to French, Sam Wolfe explores a wide range ...
This book is the first to present a comprehensive theory of non-canonical questions, those question types that do not (only) request information from the addressee, but rather (additionally) tell us something about the speaker's epistemic and/or emotional state, such as can't-find-the-value questions, echo questions, rhetorical questions, and surprise questions. While much recent research has explored the formal semantics and the phonetics and phonology of both canonical and non-canonical questions, the literature is still lacking a comprehensive account from a syntax-pragmatics perspective that brings together the multiple findings and strands of research from the last twenty years. The sta...
This volume is the first to explore the formal linguistic expressions of emotions at different levels of linguistic complexity. Research on the language-emotion interface has to date concentrated primarily on the conceptual dimension of emotions as expressed via language, with semantic and pragmatic studies dominating the field. The chapters in this book, in contrast, bring together work from different linguistic frameworks: generative syntax, functional and usage-based linguistics, formal semantics and pragmatics, and experimental phonology. The volume contributes to the growing field of research that explores the interaction between linguistic expressions and the 'expressive dimension' of language, and will be of interest to linguists from a range of theoretical backgrounds who are interested in the language-emotion interface.
The concept of ‘negative concord’ refers to the seemingly multiple exponence of semantically single negation as in You ain’t seen nothing yet. This book takes stock of what has been achieved since the notion was introduced in 1922 by Otto Jespersen and sets the agenda for future research, with an eye towards increased cross-fertilization between theoretical perspectives and methodological tools. Major issues include (i) How can formal and typological approaches complement each other in uncovering and accounting for cross-linguistic variation? (ii) How can corpus work steer theoretical analyses? (iii) What is the contribution of diachronic research to the theoretical debates?
This book applies contemporary linguistic theories and the findings of traditional grammar to the study of Latin syntax. It the first full-scale work of its kind in English, and contains extensive examples from literary and non-literary sources including Plautus and Cicero.
This work reconsiders obviation in Romance subjunctive clauses in light of diachronic evidence from French and Spanish. A detailed examination of coreference in subjunctive clauses in Old French and Old Spanish is presented. Furthermore, it is argued that Old French lacked the Disjoint Reference Required (DRR), but that Old Spanish evinced a DRR from the earliest documents. Contents: Introduction; Diachronic Evidence From French and Spanish; Obviation and Temporal Argument Structure; Issues of of Language Change; Summary and Conclusions; Bibliography; Index of Names; Index of Subjects.
While much of the literature has focused on explaining diachronic variation and change, the fact that sometimes change does not seem to happen has received much less attention. The current volume unites ten contributions that look for the determinants of diachronic stability, mainly in the areas of morphology and (morpho)syntax. The relevant question is approached from different angles, both empirical and theoretical. Empirically, the contributions deal with the absence of change where one may expect it, uncover underlying stability where traditionally diachronic change was postulated, and, inversely, superficial stability that disguises underlying change. Determining factors ranging from internal causes to language contact are explored. Theoretically, the questions of whether stable variation is possible, and how it can be modeled are addressed. The volume will be of interest to linguists working on the causes of language change, and to scholars working on the history of Germanic, Romance, and Sinitic languages.