Exploring the dynamics of language evolution, this book delves into the causes and effects of linguistic shifts over time. It examines how social, cultural, and historical contexts influence language development, providing insights into phonetic, grammatical, and lexical changes. Through various case studies, the author illustrates the mechanisms of language change and its implications for communication and identity. This comprehensive analysis serves as a valuable resource for linguists and anyone interested in the intricate nature of language.
Was ist das Ganze, was die Teile? Wie figurieren Holismus und Individualismus in den Einzelwissenschaften, ihren Methodologien, ihrem Selbstverständnis? Welchen Stellenwert haben diese Kategorien in der interdisziplinären, wissenschaftsübergreifenden Arbeit? Diesen und ähnlichen Fragen widmet sich dieser Sammelband. Er führt die unterschiedlichsten Ansätze zu einem Dialog zusammen und wahrt zugleich durch die Fundierung jedes einzelnen Beitrags in einer Wissenschaft die Spezifizität der jeweiligen Disziplin. Da die Reflexion der eigenen Grenzen und Möglichkeiten seitens der Einzelwissenschaften für ein solches Projekt konstitutiv ist, resultiert aus ihm nicht zuletzt eine heterogene Untersuchung des menschlichen Geistes in seiner Beschäftigung mit dieser Welt und mit sich selbst.
This volume provides a comprehensive account of Early Modern English, organized by linguistic level. The volume not only presents detailed outlines of the traditional language levels, it also explores key questions and debates, such as do- periphrasis, the Great Vowel Shift, pronouns and relativization, literary language (including the language of Shakespeare), and sociolinguistics, including contact and standardization.
This volume is one of the first detailed expositions of the history of different varieties of English. It explores language variation and varieties of English from an historical perspective, covering theoretical topics such as diffusion and supraregionalization as well as concrete descriptions of the internal and external historical developments of more than a dozen varieties of English.
This book offers a concise introduction to synchronic English linguistics. Following an introduction to language and linguistics as such, it provides detailed descriptions of the different language levels: phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, and meaning in language (comprising semantics and pragmatics). Furthermore, one chapter deals with constructional approaches to English grammar. The final chapter serves as an outlook on the application of linguistic theory in various domains of language use, including historical linguistics, dialectology, sociolinguistics, language acquisition and forensic linguistics. Every chapter contains specific exercises that help to rehearse the key concepts introduced in this book.
Studies in diachronic linguistics increasingly acknowledge that linguistic change is highly context-dependent and somehow tied to constructions as linguistic units. This is the first volume to investigate the role of constructions and the potential of constructional approaches in linguistic change. The contributions in this volume comprise both theoretical and empirical studies, all of which are accessible for a general audience. While some contributions explicitly aim at comparing and unifying concepts from both traditional grammatical theories and recent construction grammar approaches, others offer detailed case studies of exemplary problems from a constructional point of view. The papers offer a cross-linguistic perspective and deal with a number of different language families, ranging from Germanic to Austronesian.
This book is the first (linguistic) publication which exclusively focuses on one of the most famous and important documents in the history of English: the Early Middle English ‘Peterborough Chronicle’. This book contains 10 original and hitherto unpublished papers which deal with phonological, orthographic, morphosyntactic and lexical aspects pertaining to this special manuscript. Moreover, one section is exclusively devoted to teaching the history of English on the basis of the Peterborough Chronicle.
This analysis explores morphosyntactic variation in a 250,000-word collection of the Middle English Paston Letters (1421-1503) from a historical sociolinguistic perspective. It includes three case studies focusing on two nominal and one verbal variable: the replacement of Old English pronouns with borrowed ones, the introduction and spread of relativizers, and the routinization of light verb constructions (take, make, give, have, do plus deverbal noun). The study integrates various theories and methods from sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, typology, and language change, with a primary emphasis on social network theory and the role of individuals in language structure formation and change. It addresses individual language use and the distinction between deliberate and unmonitored changes, analyzed through social network analysis. The study critiques traditional empirical social network analysis, suggesting it should be complemented by hermeneutic-biographical analyses of speakers' lives when examining historical data. Common theories of language change, such as grammaticalization and generational shifts, are evaluated from the perspectives of individual speakers and social groups within their speech community networks. This work is relevant to advanced students and researchers in English linguistics, historical linguistics, and sociolinguistics.
