The Linguistic Cycle: Language Change and the Language Faculty - Hardcover

Van Gelderen, Elly

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199756058 ISBN 13: 9780199756056

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2011

Synopsis

Elly van Gelderen provides examples of linguistic cycles from a number of languages and language families, along with an account of the linguistic cycle in terms of minimalist economy principles. A cycle involves grammaticalization from lexical to functional category followed by renewal. Some well-known cycles involve negatives, where full negative phrases are reanalyzed as words and affixes and are then renewed by full phrases again. Verbal agreement is another example: full pronouns are reanalyzed as agreement markers and are renewed again. Each chapter provides data on a separate cycle from a myriad of languages. Van Gelderen argues that the cross-linguistic similarities can be seen as Economy Principles present in the initial cognitive system or Universal Grammar. She further claims that some of the cycles can be used to classify a language as analytic or synthetic, and she provides insight into the shape of the earliest human language and how it evolved.

About this title

About the Author:

Elly van Gelderen is Regents' Professor in the Department of English at Arizona State University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0199756058
• ISBN 13: 9780199756056
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 464