The Linguistic Cycle : Language Change and the Language Faculty PDF
by Elly Van Gelderen
Description
Elly van Gelderen provides examples of linguistic cycles from a number of languages and language families, along with an account of the linguistic cycle in terms of minimalist economy principles.
A cycle involves grammaticalization from lexical to functional category followed by renewal.
Some well-known cycles involve negatives, where full negative phrases are reanalyzed as words and affixes and are then renewed by full phrases again.
Verbal agreement is another example: full pronouns are reanalyzed as agreement markers and are renewed again.
Each chapter provides data on a separate cycle from a myriad of languages.
Van Gelderen argues that the cross-linguistic similarities can be seen as Economy Principles present in the initial cognitive system or Universal Grammar.
She further claims that some of the cycles can be used to classify a language as analytic or synthetic, and she provides insight into the shape of the earliest human language and how it evolved.
Information
-
Download - Immediately Available
- Format:PDF
- Publisher:Oxford University Press
- Publication Date:08/04/2011
- Category:
- ISBN:9780199877157
Information
-
Download - Immediately Available
- Format:PDF
- Publisher:Oxford University Press
- Publication Date:08/04/2011
- Category:
- ISBN:9780199877157
