On Reconstructing Grammar
On Reconstructing Grammar

Author: Spike Gildea

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9780195109528

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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.

Morphosyntactic Persistence in Spoken English
Morphosyntactic Persistence in Spoken English

Author: Benedikt Szmrecsanyi

Publisher: Happy Colors

Published: 2021-03-28

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 9783119162241

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Language users are creatures of habit with a tendency to re-use linguistic material that they have produced or heard before. In other words, linguistic patterns and tokens, once used, persist in spoken discourse. The book explores the determinants of this persistence in corpus data of spoken English, drawing on regression analyses of a variety of functional, discourse-functional, cognitive, psycholinguistic, and external factors. In providing a variationist-probabilistic framework for examining the ways in which different internal and external factors influence speakers' linguistic choices, the study ultimately contributes to a theory of how spoken language works.