Information Structure and Syntactic Change in Germanic and Romance Languages - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Information Structure and Syntactic Change in Germanic and Romance Languages write by Kristin Bech. This book was released on 2014-05-15. Information Structure and Syntactic Change in Germanic and Romance Languages available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The contributions of this volume offer new perspectives on the relation between syntax and information structure in the history of Germanic and Romance languages, focusing on English, German, Norwegian, French, Spanish and Portuguese, and both from a synchronic and a diachronic perspective. In addition to discussing changes in individual languages along the syntax–information structure axis, the volume also makes a point of comparing and contrasting different languages with respect to the interplay between syntax and information structure. Since the creation of increasingly sophisticated annotated corpora of historical texts is on the agenda in many research environments, methods and schemes for information structure annotation and analysis of historical texts from a theoretical and applied perspective are discussed.
Information Structure and Language Change
Information Structure and Language Change - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Information Structure and Language Change write by Roland Hinterhölzl. This book was released on 2009. Information Structure and Language Change available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The volume presents new approaches to explaining word order variation and change in the Germanic languages and thus relates to one of the most prominent and widely discussed topics in the theory of language change and diachronic syntax. The novelty of our approach consists in three main points. First of all, we aim at describing functional variety in the field of word order and verb placement in the early Germanic languages not as a result of language contact, but rather as a language-internal phenomenon related to stylistic and grammatical conditions in information packaging. Second, given that information structure is not directly accessible in texts from historical corpora that are available only in written form and bear no or little information on prosody and intonation, it presents various methods of retrieving information-structural categories in such texts. Third, it presents empirical studies on the relation between word order and information structure of the four main texts of the Old High German period and embeds these results in the wider picture of word order change in Germanic. The volume will be of interest to students of German, English, and general linguistics as well as to researchers interested in diachronic syntax, philology of Older German, language change, information structure, discourse semantics, language typology, computational linguistics, and corpus studies.
The Noun Phrase in Romance and Germanic
The Noun Phrase in Romance and Germanic - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Noun Phrase in Romance and Germanic write by Antonia Petronella Sleeman. This book was released on 2011. The Noun Phrase in Romance and Germanic available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. One of the recurrent questions in historical linguistics is to what extent languages can borrow grammar from other languages. It seems for instance hardly likely that each 'average European' language developed a definite article all by itself, without any influence from neighbouring languages. It is, on the other hand, by no means clear what exactly was borrowed, since the way in which definiteness is expressed differs greatly among the various Germanic and Romance languages and dialects. One of the main aims of this volume is to shed some light on the question of what is similar and what is different in the structure of the noun phrase of the various Romance and Germanic languages and dialects, and what causes this similarity or difference.
Syntactic Change in Germanic
Syntactic Change in Germanic - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Syntactic Change in Germanic write by Kate Burridge. This book was released on 1993-01-01. Syntactic Change in Germanic available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This study examines certain features of Dutch syntax between approximately 1300 and 1650. Of central importance are the overall developments in the word order patterning and the various changes they entail elsewhere in the grammar, such as in the negative construction. After an introductory chapter providing goals and background for the study, the quantitative analysis of the data is presented in Chapter 2. Considerable attention is paid to contextual considerations and the pragmatic aspect of word order. Chapter 3 deals specifically with the question of exbraciation; Chapter 4 returns to the functional aspect of word order and discusses the importance of the notion 'topic'. Chapter 5 provides a detailed analysis of the development of negation supported by comparative data from related Germanic languages and in a wider context of overall typological change. The concluding chapter discusses possible explanations of the findings. Two Appendices are added to the book, one providing a sketch grammar of Dutch, the other an annotated list of the corpus used. This study is purposefully eclectic in its approach, drawing upon many different traditions and areas in linguistics. This multifaceted approach is a major strength of the book, which moreover makes an important contribution to theoretical issues by presenting a vast descriptive data base for Dutch.
Continuity and Variation in Germanic and Romance
Continuity and Variation in Germanic and Romance - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Continuity and Variation in Germanic and Romance write by Sam Wolfe. This book was released on 2021-05-20. Continuity and Variation in Germanic and Romance available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This volume offers a range of synchronic and diachronic case studies in comparative Germanic and Romance morphosyntax. These two language families, spoken by over a billion people today, have played a central role in linguistic research, but many significant questions remain about the relationship between them. Following an introduction that sets out the methodological, empirical, and theoretical background to the book, the volume is divided into three parts that deal with the morphosyntax of subjects and the inflectional layer; inversion, discourse pragmatics, and the left periphery; and continuity and variation beyond the clause. The contributors adopt a diverse range of approaches, making use of the latest digitized corpora and presenting a mixture of well-known and under-studied data from standard and non-standard Germanic and Romance languages. Many of the chapters challenge received wisdom about the relationship between these two important language families. The volume will be an indispensable resource for researchers and students in the fields of Germanic and Romance linguistics, historical and comparative linguistics, and morphosyntax.
