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<font face="arial" size=2>John Benjamins Publishing would like to
announce the publication of two new titles in the field of Historical
Linguistics:<br>
<br>
Präteritumschwund und Diskursgrammatik. <br>
Präteritumschwund in gesamteuropäischen Bezügen: areale Ausbreitung,
heterogene Entstehung, Parsing sowie diskursgrammatische Grundlagen und
Zusammenhänge. Werner Abraham (University of Groningen, University
of California at Berkeley)and C. Jac Conradie (Randse Afrikaanse
Universiteit Johannesburg)<br>
United States and Canada: 1 58811 050 8 / USD 26.95 (Paperback)<br>
Rest of World: 90 272 2576 1 / NLG 60.00 (Paperback)<br>
<br>
This work demonstrates that what is commonly called 'preterite decay in
Upper German' (PS; cf. German Präteritumschwund) is in fact a phenomenon
common to a great number of European languages, all of which are in areal
con-tact. However, the conclusion that this is a phenomenon arising under
areal influence appears clearly mistaken - not only so because it would
no more than postpone the search for the real trigger of this
development. It will be shown, first, that the preterite loss in the
languages under inspection comes in different states of completion. It
will be seen that the loss of the preterite, under this perspective,
German is by no means a completed process. Second, and what is more, it
will be argued that the trigger for this decay of the synthetic preterite
and its replacement by analytic preterite forms is the specific criteria
under which oral (as opposed to written) communication is executed.
Counter to the rich, existing literature on the topic, a number of
parsing principles will be claimed to be responsible for this diachronic
development yielding different results due to a different execution of
these principles. <br>
<br>
Historical Linguistics 1999. <br>
Selected papers from the 14th International Conference on Historical
Linguistics, Vancouver, 9-13 August 1999. <br>
Laurel J. Brinton (University of British Columbia) (ed.) <br>
Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 215 <br>
United States and Canada: 1 58811 064 8 / USD 105.00 (Hardcover)<br>
Rest of World: 90 272 3722 0 / NLG 230.00 (Hardcover)<br>
<br>
This is a selection of papers from the 14th International Conference on
Historical Linguistics held August 9-13, 1999, at the University of
British Columbia. From the rich program and the many papers given during
this conference, the present twenty-three papers were carefully selected
to display the state of current research in the field of historical
linguistics.<br>
Contributions by: Minoji Akimoto: How far has far from become
grammaticalized?; Gregory D.S. Anderson and Norman H. Zide: Recent
advances in the reconstruction of the Proto-Munda verb; Janice M. Aski:
Multivariable analysis and phonological split; Kristin Bech: Are Old
English conjunct clauses really verb-final?; Delia Bentley and Thórhallur
Eythórsson: Alternation according to person in Italo-Romance; Vit
Bubenik: On ablaut and aspect in the history of Aramaic; Young-mee Y.
Cho: Language change and the phonological lexicon of Korean; Karen Dakin:
Animals and vegetables, Uto-Aztecan noun derivation, semantic
classification, and cultural history; David Denison: Gradience and
linguistic change; Randall Gess: Distinctive vowel length in Old French:
evidence and implications; Gunnar Ólafur Hansson: Remains of a submerged
continent: preaspiration in the languages of Northwest Europe; Jacob
Hoeksema: Rapid change among expletive polarity items; Maria M. Manoliu:
The conversational factor in language change: from prenominal to
postnominal demonstratives; Ana Maria Martins: On the origin of the
Portuguese inflected infinitive: a new perspective on an enduring debate;
D. Gary Miller: Innovation of the indirect reflexive in Old French;
Marianne Mithun: Lexical forces shaping the evolution of grammar; Johanna
Nichols: Why 'me' and 'thee'?; Anette Rosenbach: The English s-genitive:
animacy, topicality and possessive relationship in a diachronic
perspective; Gregory Stump: Default inheritance hierarchies and the
evolution of inflectional classes; Marie-Lucie Tarpent: On the eve of a
new paradigm: the current challenges to comparative linguistics in a
Kuhnian perspective; Donald N. Tuten: Modeling koineization; Annette
Veerman-Leichsenring: Coreference in the Popolocan languages; Theo
Vennemann: Atlantis Semitica: structural contact features in Celtic and
English.<br>
</font><br>
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