Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction
Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction

Author: Gisella Ferraresi

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9027248184

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

Reconstructing Syntax
Reconstructing Syntax

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-06-15

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 9004392009

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

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

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

Principles of Historical Linguistics
Principles of Historical Linguistics

Author: Hans Henrich Hock

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2021-10-25

Total Pages: 1101

ISBN-13: 3110746441

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Historical linguistic theory and practice consist of a large number of chronological "layers" that have been accepted in the course of time and have acquired a permanence of their own. These range from neogrammarian conceptualizations of sound change, analogy, and borrowing, to prosodic, lexical, morphological, and syntactic change, and to present-day views on rule change and the effects of language contact. To get a full grasp of the principles of historical linguistics it is therefore necessary to understand the nature of each of these "layers". This book is a major revision and reorganization of the earlier editions and adds entirely new chapters on morphological change and lexical change, as well as a detailed discussion of linguistic palaeontology and ideological responses to the findings of historical linguistics to this landmark publication.

Linguistic Reconstruction
Linguistic Reconstruction

Author: Anthony Fox

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 9780198700012

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Anthony Fox's new textbook is primarily for students with an elementary knowledge of general linguistics who need an up-to-date introduction to historical linguistics, particularly to new developments in the theory and practice of linguistic reconstruction." -- Back cover.

Reconstructing Syntax
Reconstructing Syntax

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-06-15

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 9004392009

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

Syntactic Change and Syntactic Reconstruction
Syntactic Change and Syntactic Reconstruction

Author: John R. Costello

Publisher: Sil International, Global Publishing

Published: 1983

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Shows how to reconstruct syntactic constructions, their constituents, and the functions of these constituents for a protolanguage by applying certain procedures of internal and comparative reconstruction to data from other languages concerned.

The Cambridge Handbook of Historical Syntax
The Cambridge Handbook of Historical Syntax

Author: Adam Ledgeway

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-03-09

Total Pages: 1321

ISBN-13: 1316720586

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Change is an inherent feature of all aspects of language, and syntax is no exception. While the synchronic study of syntax allows us to make discoveries about the nature of syntactic structure, the study of historical syntax offers even greater possibilities. Over recent decades, the study of historical syntax has proven to be a powerful scientific tool of enquiry with which to challenge and reassess hypotheses and ideas about the nature of syntactic structure which go beyond the observed limits of the study of the synchronic syntax of individual languages or language families. In this timely Handbook, the editors bring together the best of recent international scholarship on historical syntax. Each chapter is focused on a theme rather than an individual language, allowing readers to discover how systematic descriptions of historical data can profitably inform and challenge highly diverse sets of theoretical assumptions.

The Emergence of Order in Syntax
The Emergence of Order in Syntax

Author: Fortuny

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9789027255020

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The syntactic component of the faculty of language is argued to be a rewiring of a few independently motivated components: features, the conjunction of a successive operation of union-formation ('Merge') and of derivational records ('nests'), and principles of analysis. Since nests linearize terminals (Kuratowski 1921), Kayne's (1994) LCA becomes dispensable. The study of how features are ordered in discontinuous, analytic and syncretic patterns, governed by the Full Interpretation Condition and the Maximize Matching Effects Principle, provides a simple account for several syntactic phenomena, like the C-Infl connection, certain cartographic observations due to Cinque (1999), the A'-status of preverbal subjects in Null Subject Languages (Solà 1992), the alleviation of wh-island effects in English when the embedded wh-phrase is a subject (Chomsky 1986) and the dynamic V2 patterns in double agreement dialects observed by Zwart (1993). The possibility that Comp-trace effects derive from the contraction of the C-Infl discontinuity is explored and subject islands and wh-islands are derived from the Relativized Opacity Principle, an alternative to Chomsky's PIC.