Studying Language Change in the 21st Century

Theory and Methodologies
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-90-04-51056-2
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 16, 396 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 805 g

Reihe: Brill's Studies in Historical Linguistics

The volume brings together contributions by scholars working in different theoretical frameworks interested in systematic explanation of language change and the interrelation between current linguistic theories and modern analytical tools and methodology; the integrative basis of all work included in the volume is the special focus on phenomena at the interface of semantics and syntax and the implications of corpus-based, quantitative analyses for researching diachrony.

The issues addressed in the 13 papers include the following: explanations of change in the interface of semantics and syntax; universal constraints and principles of language change (e.g., economy, reanalysis, analogy) and the possibility of predicting language change; constructional approaches to change and their relation to corpus-based research; language contact as an explanation of change and approaches to historical bilingualism and language contact, all on the basis of empirical corpus findings; the challenges of creating diachronic corpora and the question of how quantitative linguistics and diachronic corpora inform explanations of language change variation.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Lavidas, Nikolaos

Nikiforidou, Kiki

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Historische & Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Semantik & Pragmatik
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Grammatik, Syntax, Morphologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Figures and Tables

Notes on Contributors

1 Introduction

Nikolaos Lavidas and Kiki Nikiforidou

Part 1 New Theories, New Challenges

2 On the Redundancy of a Theory of Language Contact: Cue-Based Reconstruction in a Socio-linguistically Informed Manner

Ioanna Sitaridou

3 Modeling Reanalysis, Naturally

Leah Bauke, Dagmar Haumann and Kristin Killie

4 The Spread of the VO Pattern in Subject Relative Clauses: The OV/ VO Alternation in Old and Middle English

Barthe Bloom

5 The Syntax and Semantics of the Old English Predicative Construction

Javier Martín Arista

6 Antagonistic Complement Structures and Cyclical Change in English and Greek

Konstantinos Sampanis and Eleni Karantzola

7 Perfect ‘Under Construction’: A Diachronic Perspective from Medieval and Modern Greek

Thanasis Giannaris and Nikolaos Pantelidis

Part 2 New Theories, New Tools

8 From Relativizer to Adverbial Connective: Transitional Constructions and Reanalysis in Medieval Greek (o)pu [?p??]

Kiki Nikiforidou

9 Purpose Verbs, Phrases and Clauses in Greek of the 20th Century: A Diachronic Corpus Study

Georgia Fragaki and Dionysis Goutsos

10 Change from above in a Sixteenth-Century Corpus of Tuscan Correspondence: The Spread of the Codified Form of the Masculine Determiner

Eleonora Serra

11 Detecting Prescriptivism’s Effects on Language Change: The Corpus-Linguistic Approach

Spiros A. Moschonas

12 Tracing the Evolution of Subjectless ing-/ed-supplements in English: A Diachronic Corpus-Based Analysis

Carla Bouzada-Jabois

13 How Does Language Change (Not) Affect Translation? A Corpus-Based Study on Lexical Transfer in Renaissance English and Greek Literary Texts

Thomi Gamagari and Nikolaos Lavidas

Über Autor(innen)

Nikolaos Lavidas is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. His research interests lie in the areas of language change, historical linguistics, syntax-semantics interface, argument structure, (historical) language contact and historical corpora. He is the author of Transitivity Alternations in Diachrony. Changes in Argument Structure and Voice Morphology (C-S-P, 2009) and of The Diachrony of Written Language Contact. A Contrastive Approach (Brill, 2021).

Kiki Nikiforidou is Professor of Linguistics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. Her research interests lie in the areas of construction grammar, cognitive semantics, grammaticalization, and lexicography. Her current research focuses on the relationship of grammar to discourse and grammatical approaches to genre. She has recently co-edited the volume Advances in Frame Semantics (Benjamins, 2013) and the special issue "On the Interaction of Constructions with Register and Genre" (Benjamins 2015); she is currently co-editing The Cambridge Handbook of Construction Grammar (to appear in 2024).