30.3036, Books: Competition in Language Change: Zehentner

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-30-3036. Mon Aug 05 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.3036, Books: Competition in Language Change: Zehentner

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Date: Mon, 05 Aug 2019 15:56:00
From: Asja Kusnezowa [Asja.Kusnezowa at degruyter.com]
Subject: Competition in Language Change: Zehentner

 


Title: Competition in Language Change 
Subtitle: The Rise of the English Dative Alternation 
Series Title: Topics in English Linguistics [TiEL]  

Publication Year: 2019 
Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
	   http://www.degruyter.com/mouton
	

Book URL: https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/511172 


Author: Eva Zehentner

Hardback: ISBN:  9783110630343 Pages: 476 Price: U.S. $ 114.99


Abstract:

This book addresses one of the most pervasive questions in historical
linguistics – why variation becomes stable rather than being eliminated – by
revisiting the so far neglected history of the English dative alternation.

The alternation between a nominal and a prepositional ditransitive pattern
(John gave Mary a book vs. John gave a book to Mary) emerged in Middle English
and is closely connected to broader changes at that time. Accordingly, the
main quantitative investigation focuses on ditransitive patterns in the
Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English; in addition, the book employs
an Evolutionary Game Theory model. The results are approached from an
‘evolutionary construction grammar’ perspective, combining evolutionary
thinking with diachronic constructionist notions, and the alternation’s
emergence is interpreted as a story of constructional innovation, competition,
cooperation and co-evolution.

The book not only provides a thorough and detailed analysis of the history of
one of the most-discussed syntactic phenomena in English, but by fusing two
frameworks and employing two different methodologies also presents a highly
innovative approach to a problem of relevance to historical linguistics in
general.
 



Linguistic Field(s): Discourse Analysis
                     General Linguistics
                     Historical Linguistics

Subject Language(s): English (eng)


Written In: English  (eng)

See this book announcement on our website: 
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=137476




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