Motives for language change / / edited by Raymond Hickey [[electronic resource]]

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910782955303321
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2003
• ISBN: 1-107-12211-2; 1-280-43299-3; 0-511-17733-X; 0-511-04127-6; 0-511-15829-7; 0-511-32568-1; 0-511-48693-6; 0-511-04722-3
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (ix, 286 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)
• Disciplina: 417/.7
• Soggetti: Linguistic change; Linguistic models; Languages in contact
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: On change in 'e-language' / Peter Matthews -- Formal and functional motivation for language change / Frederick J. Newmeyer -- Metaphors, models and language change / Jean Aitchison -- Log(ist)ic and simplistic S-curves / David Denison -- Regular suppletion / Richard Hogg -- On not explaining language change : optimality theory and the great vowel shift / April McMahon -- Grammaticalisation : cause or effect? / David Lightfoot -- From subjectification to intersubjectification / Elizabeth Closs Traugott -- On the role of the speaker in language change / James Milroy -- The quest for the most 'parsimonious' explanations : endogeny vs. contact revisited / Markku Filppula -- Diagnosing prehistoric language contact / Malcolm Ross -- The ingenerate motivation of sound change / Gregory K. Iverson and Joseph C. Salmons -- How do dialects get the features they have? On ; the process of new dialect formation / Raymond Hickey -- Reconstruction, typology and reality / Bernard Comrie -- Reanalysis and typological change / Raymond Hickey.
• Sommario/riassunto: This specially commissioned volume considers the processes involved in language change and the issues of how they can be modelled and studied. The way languages change offers an insight into the nature of language itself, its internal organisation, and how it is acquired and used. Accordingly, the phenomenon of language change has been approached from a variety of perspectives by linguists of many different orientations. This book, originally published in 2003, brings together an international team of leading figures from different areas of linguistics to re-examine some of the central issues in this field and also to discuss new proposals. The volume is arranged into sections, including grammaticalisation, the typological perspective, the social context of language change and contact-based explanations. It seeks to cover the subject as a whole, bearing in mind its relevance for the general analysis of language, and will appeal to a broad international readership.