Grammatical Change in Indo-European Languages
Grammatical Change in Indo-European Languages

Author: Vít Bubeník

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 9027248214

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The product of a group of scholars who have been working on new directions in Historical Linguistics, this book is focused on questions of grammatical change, and the central issue of grammaticalization in Indo-European languages. Several studies examine particular problems in specific languages, but often with implications for the IE phylum as a whole. Given the historical scope of the data (over a period of four millennia) long range grammatical changes such as the development of gender differences, strategies of definiteness, the prepositional phrase, or of the syntax of the verbal diathesis and aspect, are also treated. The shifting relevance of morphology to syntax, and syntax to morphology, a central motif of this research, has provoked lively debate in the discipline of Historical Linguistics.

Grammatical Change and Linguistic Theory
Grammatical Change and Linguistic Theory

Author: Þórhallur Eyþórsson

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 9789027233776

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This book contains 15 revised papers originally presented at a symposium at Rosendal, Norway, under the aegis of The Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. The overall theme of the volume is 'internal factors in grammatical change.' The papers focus on fundamental questions in theoretically-based historical linguistics from a broad perspective. Several of the papers relate to grammaticalization in different ways, but are generally critical of 'Grammaticalization Theory'. Further papers focus on the causes of syntactic change, pinpointing both extra-syntactic (exogenous) causes and – more controversially – internally driven (endogenous) causes. The volume is rounded up by contributions on morphological change 'by itself.' A wide range of languages is covered, including Tsova-Tush (Nakh-Dagestan), Zoque, and Athapaskan languages, in addition to Indo-European languages, both the more familiar ones and some less well-studied varieties.

Tense and Aspect in Indo-European Languages
Tense and Aspect in Indo-European Languages

Author: John Hewson

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1997-03-06

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 9027275971

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This monograph presents a general picture of the evolution of IE verbal systems within a coherent cognitive framework. The work encompasses all the language families of the IE phylum, from prehistory to present day languages. Inspired by the ideas of Roman Jakobson and Gustave Guillaume the authors relate tense and aspect to underlying cognitive processes, and show that verbal systems have a staged development of time representations (chronogenesis). They view linguistic change as systemic and trace the evolution of the earliest tense systems by (a) aspectual split and (b) aspectual merger from the original aspectual contrasts of PIE, the evidence for such systemic change showing clearly in the paradigmatic morphology of the daughter languages. The nineteen chapters cover first the ancient documentation, then those families whose historical data are from a more recent date. The last chapters deal with the systemic evolution of languages that are descended from ancient forbears such as Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, and are completed by a chapter on the practical and theoretical conclusions of the work.

Comparative Indo-European Linguistics
Comparative Indo-European Linguistics

Author: Robert S.P. Beekes

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2011-10-18

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 9027285004

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This book gives a comprehensive introduction to Comparative Indo-European Linguistics. It starts with a presentation of the languages of the family (from English and the other Germanic languages, the Celtic and Slavic languages, Latin, Greek and Sanskrit through Armenian and Albanian) and a discussion of the culture and origin of the Indo-Europeans, the speakers of the Indo-European proto-language.The reader is introduced into the nature of language change and the methods of reconstruction of older language stages, with many examples (from the Indo-European languages). A full description is given of the sound changes, which makes it possible to follow the origin of the different Indo-European languages step by step. This is followed by a discussion of the development of all the morphological categories of Proto-Indo-European. The book presents the latest in scholarly insights, like the laryngeal and glottalic theory, the accentuation, the ablaut patterns, and these are systematically integrated into the treatment. The text of this second edition has been corrected and updated by Michiel de Vaan. Sixty-six new exercises enable the student to practice the reconstruction of PIE phonology and morphology.

Linguistic Reconstruction and Indo-European Syntax
Linguistic Reconstruction and Indo-European Syntax

Author: Paolo Ramat

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1980-01-01

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 9027235120

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The aim of the colloquium, from which this volume derives, was to bring together approaches from general linguistics and language reconstruction, to show how these can benefit from eachother. Although the focus was on Indo-European languages, other language families were present in the discussion, as typological insights may provide useful parallels to IE phenomena and problems. At the core of the discussion was the methodological problem of induction vs deduction.

A grammar of modern Indo-European
A grammar of modern Indo-European

Author: Carlos Quiles

Publisher: Indo-European Association

Published: 2011-05-03

Total Pages: 793

ISBN-13: 1461022134

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A Grammar of Modern Indo-European is a complete reference guide to a living Indo-European language. It contains a comprehensive description of Proto-Indo-European grammar, and offers an analysis of the complexities of the prehistoric language and its reconstruction from its descendant languages. Written in a fresh and accessible style, and illustrated with maps, figures and tables, this book focusses on the real patterns of use of Late Indo-European. The book is well organised and is filled with full, clear explanations of areas of confusion and difficulty. It also contains an extensive English - Indo-European, Indo-European - English vocabulary, as well as detailed etymological notes, designed to provide readers with an easy access to the information they require.An essential reference source for the student of Indo-European as a learned and living language, this work will appeal to students of languages, classics, and the ancient world, as well as to general readers interested in the history of language, and in speaking the direct ancestor of the world's largest language family.

From Case to Adposition
From Case to Adposition

Author: Vít Bubeník

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 9027247951

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In the historical development of many languages of the IE phylum the loss of inflectional morphology led to the development of a configurational syntax, where syntactic position marked syntactic role. The first of these configurations was the adposition (preposition or postposition), which developed out of the uninflected particle/preverbs in the older forms of IE, by forming fixed phrases with nominal elements, a pattern later followed in the development of a configurational NP (article + nominal) and VP (auxiliary + verbal). The authors follow this evolution through almost four thousand years of documentation in all twelve language families of the Indo-European phylum, noting the resemblances between the structure of the original IE case system and the systemic oppositions to be found in the sets of adpositions that replaced it. Quite apart from its theoretical analyses and proposals which in themselves amount to a new look at many traditional problems, this study has a value in the collected store of information on cases, and on adpositions and their usage. There is also a considerable store of etymological information that is relevant to the description of the systemic development.

Perspectives on Historical Syntax
Perspectives on Historical Syntax

Author: Carlotta Viti

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2015-04-15

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 9027268932

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This volume discusses topics of historical syntax from different theoretical perspectives, ranging from Indo-European studies to generative grammar, functionalism, and typology. It examines mechanisms of syntactic change such as reanalysis, analogy, grammaticalization, independent drift, and language contact, as well as procedures of syntactic reconstruction. More than one factor is considered to explain a syntactic phenomenon, since it is maintained that an accurate account of multiple causations, of both structural and social nature, is to be preferred to considerations of economy. Special attention is given to the relationship between principles of syntactic theory and a search for data reliability through the methods of corpus linguistics. Data are drawn from a variety of languages, including Hittite, Vedic, Ancient Greek, Latin, Romance, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Austroasiatic, Gulf of Guinea creoles. The book may be therefore of interest for specialists of these languages in addition to scholars and advanced students of syntax and historical linguistics.

On a law of Indo-European word order
On a law of Indo-European word order

Author: Jacob Wackernagel

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published:

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13: 3961102716

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Jacob Wackernagel’s 1892 essay on second-position enclitics in the Indo-European languages has long been hailed as groundbreaking in both historical and theoretical linguistics. Until now, however, it has only been available in the original German. This book provides a full translation into English, including glossed and translated examples from several early Indo-European languages and varieties and full bibliographical details of the references drawn upon, as well as a new edition of the German original. It should be of interest to researchers in historical and Indo-European linguistics and in general linguistics working on the interfaces between morphology, prosody and syntax.

A Comparative Grammar of the Early Germanic Languages
A Comparative Grammar of the Early Germanic Languages

Author: R.D. Fulk

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2018-09-15

Total Pages: 438

ISBN-13: 9027263132

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Fulk’s Comparative Grammar offers an overview of and bibliographical guide to the study of the phonology and the inflectional morphology of the earliest Germanic languages, with particular attention to Gothic, Old Norse / Icelandic, Old English, Old Frisian, Old Saxon, and Old High German, along with some attention to the more sparsely attested languages. The sounds and inflections of the oldest Germanic languages are compared, with a view to reconstructing the forms they took in Proto-Germanic and comparing those reconstructed forms with what is known of the Indo-European protolanguage. Students will find the book an informative introduction and a bibliographically instructive point of departure for intensive research in the numerous issues that remain profoundly contested in early Germanic language history.