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Uniquely organized in terms of theoretical approaches, this is an advanced textbook on the study of English historical linguistics.
This book examines the special nature of English both as a global and a local language, focusing on some of the ongoing changes and on the emerging new structural and discoursal characteristics of varieties of English. Although it is widely recognised that processes of language change and contact bear affinities, for example, to processes observable in second-language acquisition and lingua franca use, the research into these fields has so far not been sufficiently brought into contact with each other. The articles in this volume set out to combine all these perspectives in ways that give us a better understanding of the changing nature of English in the modern world.
This volume collects essays that approach notions of creating, maintaining, and crossing boundaries in the history of the English language. The concept of boundaries is variously defined within linguistics depending on the theoretical framework, from formal and theoretical perspectives to specific fields and more empirical, physical, and perceptual angles. The contributions to this volume do not take one particular theoretical or methodological approach but, instead, explore how examining various types of boundaries—linguistic, conceptual, analytical, generic, physical—helps us illuminate and account for historical use, variation, and change in English. In their exploration of various to...
The proposed framework of concept linking combines insights of construction grammar with those of traditional functional descriptions to explain particularly challenging but often neglected areas of English grammar such as negation, modality, adverbials and non-finite constructions. To reach this goal the idea of a unified network of constructions is replaced by the triad of verb-mediated constructions, attribution and scope-based perspectivizing, each of them understood as a syntactically effective concept-linking mechanism in its own right, but involved in interfaces with the other mechanisms. In addition, concept linking supplies a novel approach to early child language. It casts fresh light on widely accepted descriptions of early two-word utterances and verb islands in usage-based models of language acquisition and encourages a new view of children’s ‘mistakes’. Intended readership: Constructionist and cognitive linguists; linguists and psychologists interested in language acquisition; teachers and students of English grammar and grammar in general.
This book looks at how historical linguists accommodate the written records used for evidence. The limitations of the written record restrict our view of the past and the conclusions that we can draw about its language. However, the same limitations force us to be aware of the particularities of language. This collection blends the philological with the linguistic, combining questions of the particular with generalizations about language change.
Linguists have typically studied language change at the aggregate level of speech communities, yet key mechanisms of change such as analogy and automation operate within the minds of individual language users. Drawing on lifespan data from 50 authors and the intriguing case of the special passives in the history of English, this study addresses three fundamental issues relating to individuality in language change: (i) how variation and change at the individual level interact with change at the community level; (ii) how much innovation and change is possible across the adult lifespan; (iii) and to what extent related linguistic patterns are associated in individual cognition. As one of the first large-scale empirical studies to systematically link individual- and community-based perspectives in language change, this volume breaks new ground in our understanding of language as a complex adaptive system.
This book investigates formal characteristics and discourse functions of linguistic creativity at the level of idioms in spoken ELF as represented in the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE). Building on the findings of previous ELF research, the book proposes that creativity might serve as a fundamental concept in accounting for the variation that seems to be central to describing and understanding English as a lingua franca.
This volume contains a set of articles based on papers selected from those delivered at the 20th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL, Edinburgh 2018). It focuses on cutting-edge research in the history of English, while reflecting the diversity that exists in the current landscape of English historical linguistics. Chapters showcase traditional as well as novel methodologies in historical linguistics (the latter made possible by the increasing quality and accessibility of digital tools), work on linguistic interfaces (between segmental phonology and prosody, and syntax and information structure) and work on mechanisms of language change (such as Yang’s Tolerance Principle, on the threshold for the productivity of linguistic rules in language acquisition). The volume will be of interest to those working on the historical phonology, morphology, syntax and pragmatics of English, language change, corpus linguistics, computational historical linguistics, and related sub-disciplines.
The fifteen papers selected for Volume II of English Historical Linguistics 2008 have a different emphasis than those in Volume I (CILT 314, Lenker et al. 2010). Nine concentrate on the development of the English vocabulary and six on historical text linguistics, including the development of text-types and of politeness strategies. Of those in the former group, three have their emphasis on etymology, three on semantic fields, and three on word-formation, although some cover more than one of these areas. The topics include: the treatment of etymological problems in the OED; deverbal derivations formed from native verbs and from loan-verbs; the role of metaphor and metonymy in the evolution of...
Where does today’s English language come from? This book takes its readers on a journey back in time, from present-day varieties to the Old English of Beowulf and beyond. Written for students with little or no background in linguistics, and reflecting the latest scholarship, it showcases the variation and change present throughout the history of English, and includes numerous exercises and sample texts for every period. The reverse-chronological approach taken by this book sets it apart from all existing textbooks of the last fifty years. Innovative features also include its focus on variation, multilingualism and language contact, its use of texts from outside the literary canon, and its inclusion of case studies from syntax, sociophonetics and historical pragmatics.