2 New titles: Abraham, Brinton

[Jessica Balaschak]

John Benjamins Publishing would like to announce the publication of two new 
titles in the field of Historical Linguistics:

Präteritumschwund und Diskursgrammatik.
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)
United States and Canada: 1 58811 050 8 / USD 26.95 (Paperback)
Rest of World: 90 272 2576 1 / NLG 60.00 (Paperback)

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.

Historical Linguistics 1999.
Selected papers from the 14th International Conference on Historical 
Linguistics, Vancouver, 9-13 August 1999.
Laurel J. Brinton (University of British Columbia) (ed.)
Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 215
United States and Canada: 1 58811 064 8 / USD 105.00 (Hardcover)
Rest of World: 90 272 3722 0 / NLG 230.00 (Hardcover)

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.
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.

John Benjamins Publishing Co.
Offices:                Philadelphia 
Amsterdam:
Websites:               http://www.benjamins.com 
http://www.benjamins.nl
E-mail:         service at benjamins.com 
customer.services at benjamins.nl
Phone:          +215 836-1200                                        +31 20 
6762325

Call toll free to order: 1-800-562-5666
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/histling/attachments/20010920/6e44b529/attachment.htm>