Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistic Perspective

by Alice C. Harris, Lyle Campbell

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521478816
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	09/21/1995
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Linguistics , #74
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	508
Product dimensions:	5.94(w) x 8.98(h) x 1.30(d)

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.