New Benjamins title: van Gelderen- Cyclical Change

[Paul Peranteau]

Cyclical Change

Edited by Elly van Gelderen
Arizona State University

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 146

2009. viii, 329 pp.

Hardbound
978 90 272 5529 7 / EUR 99.00 / USD 149.00

e-Book  Not yet available
978 90 272 8921 6 / EUR 99.00 / USD 149.00

Linguistic Cycles are ever present in language change and involve a 
phrase or word that gradually disappears and is replaced by a new 
linguistic item. The most well-known cycles involve negatives, where 
an initial single negative, such as not, is reinforced by another 
negative, such as no thing, and subjects, where full pronouns are 
reanalyzed as endings on the verb. This book presents new data and 
insights on the well-known cyclical changes as well as on less 
well-known ones, such as the preposition, auxiliary, copula, modal, 
and complementation cycles. Part I covers the negative cycle with 
chapters looking in great detail at the steps that are typical in 
this cycle. Part II focuses on pronouns, auxiliaries, and the left 
periphery. Part III includes work on modals, prepositions, and 
complementation. The book ends with a psycholinguistic chapter. This 
book brings together linguists from a variety of theoretical 
frameworks and contributes to new directions in work on language change.

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Table of contents

List of contributors  viiviii
Chapter 1. Cyclical change, an introduction
Elly van Gelderen
Part I. Negatives
Chapter 2. Jespersen recycled
Jack Hoeksema
Chapter 3. The Jespersen cycles
Johan van der Auwera
Chapter 4. The negative cycle in Early and Modern Russian
Olena Tsurska
Chapter 5. Jespersen off course? The case of contemporary Afrikaans negation
Theresa Biberauer
Part II. Pronouns, agreement, and topic markers
Chapter 6. Weak pronouns in Italian: Instances of a broken cycle?
Diana Vedovato
Chapter 7. The subject cycle of pronominal auxiliaries in Old North Russian
Kyongjoon Kwon
Chapter 8. Two instances of a broken cycle: Sentential particles in 
Old Italian
Cecilia Poletto
Part III. Copulas, auxiliaries, and adpositions
Chapter 9. The Copula cycle
Terje Lohndal
Chapter 10. RATHER  On a modal cycle
Remus Gergel
Chapter 11. Cycles of complementation in the Mayan languages
Clifton Pye
Chapter 12. The Preposition cycle in English
Cathleen Waters
Part IV. An experiment
Chapter 13. The study of syntactic cycles as an experimental science
Roeland Hancock and Thomas G. Bever
Author index
Subject index

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Subject classification
  Linguistics
  Historical linguistics
  Syntax
  Theoretical linguistics


Paul Peranteau (paul at benjamins.com)
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