New Functional Books: Ziegeler, Gildea

[Paul Peranteau]

John Benjamins Publishing announces the availability of these two new works
in Functional Linguistics:

Reconstructing Grammar.
Comparative Linguistics and Grammaticalization.
Spike GILDEA (ed.) (Rice University)
Typological Studies in Language 43
US & Canada: 1 55619 658 X / USD 82.00 (Hardcover) 1 55619 659 8 / USD
34.95 (Paperback)
rest of world: 90 272 2944 9 / NLG 164.00 (Hardcover) 90 272 2945 7 / NLG
70.00 (Paperback)

Comparative linguistics and grammaticalization theory both belong to the
broader category of historical linguistics, yet few linguists practice
both. The methods and goals of each group seem largely distinct:
comparative linguists have by and large avoided reconstructing grammar,
while grammaticalization theoreticians have either focused on explaining
attested historical change or used internal reconstruction to formulate
hypotheses about processes of change. In this collection, some of the
leading voices in grammaticalization theory apply their methods to
comparative data (largely drawn from indigenous languages of the
Americas), showing not only that grammar can be reconstructed, but that
the process of reconstructing grammar can yield interesting theoretical
and typological insights.

Contributions by: Alexandra A. Aikhenvald; Wallace Chafe; Spike Gildea; T.
Givón; Joseph H. Greenberg; Bernd Heine; Sérgio Meira; Marianne Mithun.

*********************
Hypothetical Modality.
Grammaticalisation in an L2 dialect.
Debra ZIEGELER (National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan)

Studies in Language Companion Series 51
US & Canada: 1 55619 937 6 / USD 85.00 (Hardcover)
Rest of world: 90 272 3054 4 / NLG 170.00 (Hardcover)

This book marks a new development in the field of grammaticalisation
studies, in that it extends the field of grammaticalisation studies from
relatively homogeneous languages to those possessing well-established and
institutionalised second language varieties. In Hypothetical Modality,
special reference is made to Singaporean English, a native-speaker L2
dialect of considerable importance in the South-East Asian region, and to
the expression in the dialect of hypothetical modality, which appears to
be indistinguishable from non-hypothetical modality in terms of the use of
preterite or past forms of modal verbs. Within a grammaticalisation
framework, a number of factors can be seen to be relevant to an
explanation, including substratum and contact features such as
tense/aspect marking, levels of lexical retention as an individual
(psychological) phenomenon, and the fact that such dialects have a
discontinuity in their development. In addition, the book defines
pragmatic approaches to the understanding of hypothetical modality, in
both diachronic and synchronic terms.



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