Reorganising Grammatical Variation: Diachronic Studies in the Retention, Redistribution and Refunctionalisation of Linguistic Variants

Dammel, Antje (Editor)/ Eitelmann, Matthias (Editor)/ Schmuck, Mirjam (Editor)

ISBN 10: 9027201641 / ISBN 13: 9789027201645

Published by John Benjamins Pub Co, 2018

About this Item

302 pages. 9.50x6.75x0.75 inches. In Stock.

Seller Inventory # __9027201641

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Reorganising Grammatical Variation: Diachronic Studies in the Retention, Redistribution and Refunctionalisation of Linguistic Variants
• Publisher: John Benjamins Pub Co
• Publication Date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9027201641
• ISBN 13: 9789027201645
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Brand New
• Weight: 0.69 kilograms

About this title

Synopsis

With most studies on grammatical variation concentrating on the synchronic level, a systematic investigation of long-term grammatical variation within the context of language change, i.e. from a predominantly diachronic perspective, has largely remained a desideratum. The present volume fills this research gap by bringing together nine empirically rich bottom-up case studies on morphological and morphosyntactic variation phenomena in standard and dialect varieties of Indo-European languages (Germanic, Romance, Greek). While variation has often been regarded as merely a transitory epiphenomenal symptom of change, the findings of this volume show that variation is a resilient feature of human language and answer the question what makes variation time-stable. Bridging the gap between corpus-based research on language variation and more theory-driven typological and functional approaches, the volume is of special interest for all researchers concerned with interface phenomena seeking to gain a broader understanding of the mechanisms of linguistic variation and change.