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Since antiquity, scholars have been fascinated by the phenomena of case. The explanation for this fascination is, as Hjelmslev already pointed out over fifty years ago, the fact that he who can unravel the meaning of case-relations, has the key to language structure as a whole.For over three years, a team of twenty scholars affiliated with the Linguistics Department of Leuven University in Belgium has concentrated on case phenomena in different languages, both Indo- and non-Indo-European. It is the first time that such a large scale investigation into case has been undertaken. Noteworthy is also its reliance on computer-stored corpora of authentic material.The results are published as a seri...
Spoken by millions of people on four continents, Portuguese remains a lesser studied language. To help improve the linguistic understanding of this pluricentric language, the present volume brings together ten studies about different grammatical phenomena observed in Portuguese varieties – from suffixation to intercalated temporal clauses and non-concatenative verbal inflection, among other topics. Focusing on two main axes – usage and cognition –, these studies draw on the theoretical frameworks of Functional Linguistics and Cognitive Linguistics, but build a cohesive whole insofar as they all offer usage-based language approaches. By presenting an overview of recent research on Portuguese and its varieties, the book paves the way for the inclusion of Portuguese in the set of Neo-Latin languages best known to the general public.
The Romance languages offer a particularly fertile ground for the exploration of the relationship between language and society in different social contexts and communities. Focusing on a wide range of Romance languages – from national languages to minoritised varieties – this volume explores questions concerning linguistic diversity and multilingualism, language contact, medium and genre, variation and change. It will interest researchers and policy-makers alike.
This textbook introduces and explains the fundamental issues, major research questions, and current approaches in the study of grammaticalization. Each chapter offers guidance on further reading, and concludes with study questions to encourage further discussion; there is also a glossary of key terminology in the field.
This manual is the first comprehensive account of Brazilian Portuguese linguistics written in English, offering not only linguists but also historians and social scientists new insights gained from the intensive research carried out over the last decades on the linguistic reality of this vast territory. In the 20 overview chapters, internationally renowned experts give detailed yet concise information on a wide range of language-internal as well as external synchronic and diachronic topics. Most of this information is the fruit of large-scale language documentation and description projects, such as the project on the linguistic norm of educated speakers (NURC), the project “Grammar of spok...
This volume brings together two particularly dynamic areas of contemporary research on the French language. The chapters showcase the most innovative current scholarship in historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and in the burgeoning field of historical sociolinguistics which lies at their intersection. The research across the volume is strongly data-centred, drawing on a wide range of both well-established and more novel theoretical and methodological approaches in order to open up new perspectives on the study of the French language in the twenty-first century. Although it is written in English, the work presented here is underpinned by a range of different approaches from across the Francophone and Anglophone worlds. Particular emphasis is placed on combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, on diversifying tools, methods, and objects of inquiry, and on adopting comparative and multilingual perspectives where these shed new light on important questions relating to French. In these ways, Historical and Sociolinguistic Approaches to French highlights some of the most exciting new directions for linguistic research on the French language.
The volume provides the first systematic comparative approach to the history of forms of address in Portuguese and Spanish, in their European and American varieties. Both languages share a common history—e.g., the personal union of Philipp II of Spain and Philipp I of Portugal; the parallel colonization of the Americas by Portugal and Spain; the long-term transformation from a feudal to a democratic system—in which crucial moments in the diachrony of address took place. To give one example, empirical data show that the puzzling late spread of Sp. usted ‘you (formal, polite)’ and Pt. você ‘you’ across America can be explained for both languages by the role of the political and military colonial administration. To explore these new insights, the volume relies on an innovative methodology, as it links traditional downstream diachrony with upstream diachronic reconstruction based on synchronic variation. Including theoretical reflections as well as fine-grained empirical studies, it brings together the most relevant authors in the field.
Gramática española: Variación social presenta conceptos gramaticales claves de la lengua española a los alumnos intermedios y avanzados de una manera que enfatiza las conexiones entre lo social y lo lingüístico. Esta segunda edición ofrece varios puntos de gramática nuevos y sugerencias de lecturas adicionales. Otro componente nuevo de esta edición es el sitio web que incluye actividades y ejercicios que cubren los temas principales del libro de texto. El sitio web también provee amplias oportunidades para practicar las estructuras gramaticales. Este libro de texto, que está escrito en español, ofrece un repaso de la gramática a través de una presentación de variantes comunes ...
Grammar is seen as a complex sign system, and, as a consequence, grammatical change always comprises semantic change. The book introduces the concept of connecting grammaticalisation to describe the formation, restructuring and dismantling of such complex paradigms. It offers a broad general discussion of theoretical issues and three case studies
This book examines grammatical changes during the transition from Latin to the Romance languages and the factors proposed to explain them. It challenges orthodoxy, presents new perspectives on language change, structure, and variation, and will appeal equally to Romance linguists, Latinists, philologists, and historical linguists of all persuasions.