Language Contact and Grammatical Change
Bernd Heine author Tania Kuteva author
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Cambridge University Press
Published:27th Jan '05
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This hardback is available in another edition too:
- Paperback£42.99(9780521608282)
Offers an interesting insight into how language contact affects grammatical forms and structures.
The phenomenon of language contact has been of great interest to linguists. This study looks at how grammatical forms and structures evolve when speakers of two languages come into contact, and the mechanism that induces people to transfer grammatical structures from one language to another.The phenomenon of language contact, and how it affects the structure of languages, has been of great interest to linguists. This study looks at how grammatical forms and structures evolve when speakers of two languages come into contact, and offers an interesting insight into the mechanism that induces people to transfer grammatical structures from one language to another. Drawing on findings from languages all over the world, Language Contact and Grammatical Change shows that the transfer of linguistic material across languages is quite regular and follows universal patterns of grammaticalization - contrary to previous claims that it is a fairly irregular process - and argues that internal and external explanations of language structure and change are in no way mutually exclusive. Engaging and informative, this book will be of great interest to sociolinguists, linguistic anthropologists, and all those working on grammaticalization, language contact, and language change.
'…[the book will become] a starting point for further investigation of the interplay between grammaticalization and language contact.' Journal of Linguistics
ISBN: 9780521845748
Dimensions: 234mm x 156mm x 26mm
Weight: 622g
328 pages