Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistic Perspective
Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistic Perspective
September 1995
Available
Paperback
9780521478816
$77.99
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In this important new work, Alice Harris and Lyle Campbell set out to establish a general framework for the investigation of syntactic change. Using a cross-linguistic approach, they reveal shared properties of changes across languages, determine what mechanisms lie behind them, and how they correlate to the overall explanation of syntactic change. They draw on data drawn from a wide variety of languages, in particluar those from the Indo-European, Finno-Ugric, Kartvelian, and North East Caucasian families.
- Both authors are distinguished scholars with international reputations
- Draws on data from a wide variety of languages
- Comprehensive treatment, setting up a general framework for the investigation of syntactic change
Product details
September 1995Paperback
9780521478816
508 pages
228 × 151 × 33 mm
0.824kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Preface
- 1. Introduction
- 2. The history of historical syntax: major themes
- 3. Overview of a theory of syntactic change
- 4. Reanalysis
- 5. Extension
- 6. Language contact and syntactic borrowing
- 7. Processes that simplify bi-clausal structures
- 8. Word order
- 9. Alignment
- 10. On the development of complex constructions
- 11. The nature of syntactic change and the issue of causation
- 12. Reconstruction of syntax
- Appendix
- Bibliography.
