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Language Acquisition and Change
Under which circumstances does grammatical change come about? Is the child the principle agent of change as suggested by historical linguistics?This book discusses diachronic change of languages in terms of restructuring of speakers' internal grammatical knowledge. Efforts to construct a theory of diachronic change consistent with findings from psycholinguistics are scarce. Here, these questions are therefore addressed against the background of insights from research on monolingual and bilingual acquisition. Given that children are remarkably successful in reconstructing the grammars of their ambient languages, commonly held views need to be reconsidered according to which language change is...
Multilingual Individuals and Multilingual Societies
The 25 contributions of this volume represent a selection from the more than 120 papers originally presented at the International Conference on Multilingual Individuals and Multilingual Societies (MIMS), held in Hamburg (October 2010) and organized by the Collaborative Research Center Multilingualism after twelve years of successful research. It presents a panorama of contemporary research in multilingualism covering three fields of investigation: (1) the simultaneous and successive acquisition of more than one language, including language attrition in multilingual settings, (2) historical aspects of multilingualism and variance, and (3) multilingual communication. The papers cover a vast variety of linguistic phenomena including morphology, syntax, segmental and prosodic phonology as well as discourse production and language use, taking both individual and societal aspects of multilingualism into account. The languages addressed include numerous Romance, Slavic and Germanic varieties as well as Welsh, Hungarian, Turkish, and several South African autochthonous languages.
Syntactic Structures and Morphological Information
The book contains ten papers discussing issues of the relation between syntax and morphology from the perspective of morphologically rich languages including, among others, Indo-European languages, indigenous languages of the Americas, Turkish, and Hungarian. The overall question discussed in this book is to what extent morphological information shows up in syntactic structures and how this information is represented. The authors adopt different theoretical frameworks such as the Derivational Theory of Morphology, Distributed Optimality, Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical-Functional Grammar, Lexical Decomposition Grammar combined with Linking Theory and OT-like constraints, Paradigm-Based Morphosyntax as well as the Principles and Parameters Approach of Generative Grammar.
Diachronic Studies on Information Structure
In the last few years a lively discussion on information packaging has arisen, where traditional dichotomies Theme/Rheme, Topic/Comment and Focus/Background have been taken up again and partly reinterpreted. The discussion is mainly being held in syntax, but also in the fields of semantics and pragmatics. Some remarkable progress has been made especially in Focus phonology. Even if the role of information conveying and information packaging in the Indoeuropean languages was hinted at as early as in the classical studies of the Neogrammarians, this field has remained neglected in today's historical linguistics. This volume tries to partly cover this lack with a sample of papers which offer a ...
Null Subjects in Generative Grammar
This book considers the null-subject phenomenon, whereby some languages lack an overtly realized referential subject in specific contexts. It explores novel empirical data and new theoretical analyses covering the major approaches to null subjects in generative grammar, and examines a wide range of languages from different families.
Syntactic Complexity from a Language Acquisition Perspective
The volume examines syntactic complexity from an acquisitional perspective, which offers a peculiarly grounded starting point when dealing with linguistic complexity, under the assumption that what is simpler is acquired earlier than what must be thought of as complex. Connecting acquisitional data inseparably to formal linguistic analyses, it not only allows a comparison between structures at various levels in terms of complexity, but also a deeper insight into the factors determining complexity in different populations of acquirers. The book is divided into two parts following an introductory chapter. The papers in Part I consider the first language acquisition of some complex structures s...
Linguistic Universals and Language Variation
The volume explores the relationship between linguistic universals and language variation. Its contributions identify the recurrent patterns and principles behind the complex spectrum of observable variation. The volume bridges the gap between cross-linguistic variation, regional variation, diachronic variation, contact-induced variation as well as socially conditioned variation. Moreover, it addresses fundamental methodological and theoretical issues of variation research. The volume brings together internationally renowned specialists of their fields while, at the same time, offering a platform for gifted and highly talented young researchers. The authors come from different theoretical backgrounds and through their work illustrate a rich array of scientific methods. All authors share a strong belief in empirically founded theoretical work. The contributions span a high number of languages and dialects from many parts of the world. They are extremely broad in their empirical coverage addressing an impressive selection of grammatical domains.
Syntactic architecture and its consequences III
This volume collects novel contributions to comparative generative linguistics that “rethink” existing approaches to an extensive range of phenomena, domains, and architectural questions in linguistic theory. At the heart of the contributions is the tension between descriptive and explanatory adequacy which has long animated generative linguistics and which continues to grow thanks to the increasing amount and diversity of data available to us. The chapters develop novel insights into a number of core syntactic phenomena, such as the structure of and variation in diathesis, alignment types, case and agreement splits, and the syntax of null elements. Many of these contributions show the influence of research by Ian Roberts and collaborators and they provide varied perspectives on current research in synchronic and diachronic comparative syntax.
Grammatical Variation Across Space and Time
Interrogative clauses in French show abundant variation, especially with regard to the position of the subject vis-à-vis the finite verb, the placement of the wh-word, and the use of question markers such as est-ce que and ti/tu. This book presents a comprehensive study of the evolution and use of French interrogative constructions across a time span of approximately five hundred years by drawing on written sources (15th to 17th century) and oral data (19th and 20th century). Special attention is paid to the regional variation between European French and Quebec French. A variationist analysis reveals the relevant sociolinguistic factors conditioning variant choice. On the basis of the results obtained, the syntax of the different variants is modeled within the framework of generative grammar. In particular, the progressive diachronic decline and restriction of subject-verb inversion is argued to mirror the loss of verb movement. This book is of interest to anyone concerned with syntactic variation and change.
From Formal Linguistic Theory to the Art of Historical Editions
Romance is a fertile ground for linguistic research. Instead of limiting their studies to one specialised area, some Romance scholars have managed to combine different aspects of the broad field of Romance linguistics in an impressive way. This volume is dedicated to the multifaceted research interests of Guido Mensching: Part 1 focusses on different aspects of the architecture of grammar and linguistic theory, covering Italian, Portuguese, French, Sardinian and Romance. The focus of Part 2 is on historical linguistics, discussing Old Occitan lexicography and Romance in Hebrew scripts. Part 3 is dedicated to aspects relating to plurilingualism, language contact and sociolinguistics. Part 4 explores research arguments that go beyond Romance philology but are nonetheless intertwined with it.
