Reconstructing Grammar

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Reconstructing Grammar
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Author : Spike Gildea
language : en
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Release Date : 2000-07-15
Reconstructing Grammar written by Spike Gildea and has been published by John Benjamins Publishing this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2000-07-15 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
Comparative linguistics and grammaticalization theory both belong to the broader category of historical linguistics, yet few linguists practice both. The methods and goals of each group seem largely distinct: comparative linguists have by and large avoided reconstructing grammar, while grammaticalization theoreticians have either focused on explaining attested historical change or used internal reconstruction to formulate hypotheses about processes of change. In this collection, some of the leading voices in grammaticalization theory apply their methods to comparative data (largely drawn from indigenous languages of the Americas), showing not only that grammar can be reconstructed, but that the process of reconstructing grammar can yield interesting theoretical and typological insights.
On Reconstructing Grammar
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Author : Spike Gildea
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 1998
On Reconstructing Grammar written by Spike Gildea and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1998 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
This book shows how to combine grammaticalization theory with the comparative method to reconstruct the grammar of Proto-Languages. To showcase the methodology, seven morphosyntactically distinct verbal systems in the Cariban family--three ergative, three nominative, and one inverse--are reconstructed. Spike Gildea presents detailed data in his reconstruction of Proto-Carib verbal and nominal morphologies. The inverse verbal system reconstructs to Proto-Carib; the other six are innovative, and reconstruct to Proto-Carib nonfinite source-constructions.
Reconstructing Grammar
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Author : Spike Gildea
language : en
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Release Date : 2000
Reconstructing Grammar written by Spike Gildea and has been published by John Benjamins Publishing this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2000 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
Comparative linguistics and grammaticalization theory both belong to the broader category of historical linguistics, yet few linguists practice both. The methods and goals of each group seem largely distinct: comparative linguists have by and large avoided reconstructing grammar, while grammaticalization theoreticians have either focused on explaining attested historical change or used internal reconstruction to formulate hypotheses about processes of change. In this collection, some of the leading voices in grammaticalization theory apply their methods to comparative data (largely drawn from indigenous languages of the Americas), showing not only that grammar can be reconstructed, but that the process of reconstructing grammar can yield interesting theoretical and typological insights.
Reconstructing Syntax
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Author :
language : en
Publisher: BRILL
Release Date : 2020-06-15
Reconstructing Syntax written by and has been published by BRILL this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2020-06-15 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
During several decades, syntactic reconstruction has been more or less regarded as a bootless and an unsuccessful venture, not least due to the heavy criticism in the 1970s from scholars like Watkins, Jeffers, Lightfoot, etc. This fallacious view culminated in Lightfoot’s (2002: 625) conclusion: “[i]f somebody thinks that they can reconstruct grammars more successfully and in more widespread fashion, let them tell us their methods and show us their results. Then we’ll eat the pudding.” This volume provides methods for the identification of i) cognates in syntax, and ii) the directionality of syntactic change, showcasing the results in the introduction and eight articles. These examples are offered as both tastier and also more nourishing than the pudding Lightfoot had in mind when discarding the viability of reconstructing syntax.
Grammatical Reconstruction
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Author : Don Daniels
language : en
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Release Date : 2020-03-09
Grammatical Reconstruction written by Don Daniels and has been published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2020-03-09 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
There is still widespread disagreement among historical linguists about how, or whether, syntactic reconstruction can be done. This book presents a comprehensive methodology for syntactic reconstruction, grounded in a constructional understanding of language. The author then uses that methodology to reconstruct Proto-Sogeram, the ancestor to ten languages in Papua New Guinea. Chapters are devoted to phonology, lexicon, verbal morphosyntax, nominal morphosyntax, and syntactic constructions. The work culminates in a sketch of Proto-Sogeram grammar. Based largely on the author's original fieldwork, this is an innovative application of a novel methodology to new data, and the most complete reconstruction of a Papuan proto-language to date. It will be of interest to scholars of language change, language reconstruction, typology, and Papuan languages.
On Reconstructing Proto Bantu Grammar
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Author : Koen Bostoen
language : en
Publisher: Language Science Press
Release Date : 2023-03-15
On Reconstructing Proto Bantu Grammar written by Koen Bostoen and has been published by Language Science Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2023-03-15 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
This book is about reconstructing the grammar of Proto-Bantu, the ancestral language at the origin of current-day Bantu languages. While Bantu is a low-level branch of Niger-Congo, the world’s biggest phylum, it is still Africa’s biggest language family. This edited volume attempts to retrieve the phonology, morphology and syntax used by the earliest Bantu speakers to communicate with each other, discusses methods to do so, and looks at issues raised by these academic endeavours. It is a collective effort involving a fine mix of junior and senior scholars representing several generations of expert historical-comparative Bantu research. It is the first systematic approach to Proto-Bantu grammar since Meeussen’s Bantu Grammatical Reconstructions (1967). Based on new bodies of evidence from the last five decades, most notably from northwestern Bantu languages, this book considerably transforms our understanding of Proto-Bantu grammar and offers new methodological approaches to Bantu grammatical reconstruction.
Universal Grammar In The Reconstruction Of Ancient Languages
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Author : Katalin É. Kiss
language : en
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Release Date : 2011-12-22
Universal Grammar In The Reconstruction Of Ancient Languages written by Katalin É. Kiss and has been published by Walter de Gruyter this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2011-12-22 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
Philologists aiming to reconstruct the grammar of ancient languages face the problem that the available data always underdetermine grammar, and in the case of gaps, possible mistakes, and idiosyncracies there are no native speakers to consult. The authors of this volume overcome this difficulty by adopting the methodology that a child uses in the course of language acquisition: they interpret the data they have access to in terms of Universal Grammar (more precisely, in terms of a hypothetical model of UG). Their studies, discussing syntactic and morphosyntactic questions of Older Egyptian, Coptic, Sumerian, Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, Classical Greek, Latin, and Classical Sanskrit, demonstrate that descriptive problems which have proved unsolvable for the traditional, inductive approach can be reduced to the interaction of regular operations and constraints of UG. The proposed analyses also bear on linguistic theory. They provide crucial new data and new generalizations concerning such basic questions of generative syntax as discourse-motivated movement operations, the correlation of movement and agreement, a shift from lexical case marking to structural case marking, the licensing of structural case in infinitival constructions, the structure of coordinate phrases, possessive constructions with an external possessor, and the role of event structure in syntax. In addition to confirming or refuting certain specific hypotheses, they also provide empirical evidence of the perhaps most basic tenet of generative theory, according to which UG is part of the genetic endowment of the human species - i.e., human languages do not "develop" parallel with the development of human civilization. Some of the languages examined in this volume were spoken as much as 5000 years old, still their grammars do not differ in any relevant respect from the grammars of languages spoken today.
Principles Of Syntactic Reconstruction
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Author : Gisella Ferraresi
language : en
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Release Date : 2008
Principles Of Syntactic Reconstruction written by Gisella Ferraresi and has been published by John Benjamins Publishing this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2008 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
This is a collection of state-of-the-art papers in the field of syntactic reconstruction. It treats a range of topics which are representative of current debates in historical syntax. The novelty and merit of the present book is, the editors believe, that, in contrast to most previous work on diachronic syntax, it combines the perspectives of the traditional philological research on syntactic reconstruction with the insights of modern syntactic theory, as it is emphasised in the Foreword by Giuseppe Longobardi. The volume includes articles by well-recognized researchers in historical linguistics with a focus on syntactic change. In the present volume syntactic reconstruction is discussed from a variety of angles, including historical linguistics, phenomena of language contact, generative approaches as well as typological and variationist research. In the articles, languages from a diverse range of families are discussed, including Indo-European, North and South Caucasian, Sino-Tibetan, and Turkic.
Diachronic Construction Grammar
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Author : Jóhanna Barðdal
language : en
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Release Date : 2015-07-15
Diachronic Construction Grammar written by Jóhanna Barðdal and has been published by John Benjamins Publishing Company this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2015-07-15 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
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.
Syntactic Reconstruction And Proto Germanic
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Author : George Walkden
language : en
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Release Date : 2014-08-21
Syntactic Reconstruction And Proto Germanic written by George Walkden and has been published by OUP Oxford this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2014-08-21 with Language Arts & Disciplines categories.
This book offers reconstructions of various syntactic properties of Proto-Germanic, including verb position in main clauses, the syntax of the wh-system, and the (non-)occurrence of null pronominal subjects and objects. Although previous studies have looked at the lexical and phonological reconstruction of Proto-Germanic, little is currently known about the syntax of the language, and it has even been argued that the reconstruction of syntax is impossible. Dr Walkden uses extensive evidence from the early Germanic languages - Old English, Old High German, Old Saxon, Old Norse, and Gothic - to show that syntactic reconstruction is not only possible but also profitable. He argues that while the reconstruction of syntax differs from lexical-phonological reconstruction due to the so-called 'correspondence problem', this is not insurmountable. In fact, the approach taken in current Minimalist theories, in which syntactic variation is attributed to the properties of lexical items, opens the door for syntactic reconstruction as lexical reconstruction. The book also discusses practical solutions for circumventing the correspondence problem, in particular the use of both distributional properties of lexical items and the phonological forms of such items in order to establish cognacy. The book will be of interest to historical linguists working on syntactic reconstruction and the Germanic languages, from graduate level upwards, as well as to advanced students of syntactic change more generally.