[Lingtyp] Question about functional linguistics

[Juergen Bohnemeyer]

Hi Eitan – Below are some candidates from my personal selection of indispensable functionalist classics I want every student of mine to have read. Since you said “articles”, I picked only articles and chapters in edited volumes etc. Plus, I’m limiting myself to contributions that are narrowly functionalist in that they point out a morphosyntactic pattern in a number of languages and propose an explanation based on assumptions about processing and/or general cognition.  – Best – Juergen

Bybee, J. L., W. Pagliuca, & R. Perkins. (1990).  On the asymmetries in the affixation of grammatical material. In W. Croft, K. Denning and S. Kemmer (eds.) Studies in diachronic typology for Joseph H. Greenberg. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 1-42.

Chafe, W. (1976). Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics and point of view. In C. N. Li (ed.), Subject and topic. New York, NY: Academic Press. 27-55.

Du Bois, J. W. (1987). The discourse basis of ergativity. Language 63(4): 805-855.

Givón, T. (1980). The binding hierarchy and the typology of complements. Studies in Language 4(3): 333-377.

Givón, T. (1983). Introduction. In T. Givón (ed.), Topic continuity in discourse: A quantitative cross-language study. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 1-42.

Gundel, J. K., N. Hedberg, & R. Zacharski. (1993). Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions in discourse. Language 69: 274-307.

Haiman, J. (1983). Iconic and economic motivation. Language 59(4):781–819.

Hawkins, J. A. (1990). A parsing theory of word order universals. Linguistic Inquiry 21: 223-261.

Hopper, P. J. & S. A. Thompson. (1980). Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language 56(2): 251-299.



Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
Professor, Department of Linguistics
University at Buffalo

Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus
Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260
Phone: (716) 645 0127
Fax: (716) 645 3825
Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu<mailto:jb77 at buffalo.edu>
Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/

Office hours Tu/Th 3:30-4:30pm in 642 Baldy or via Zoom (Meeting ID 585 520 2411; Passcode Hoorheh)

There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In
(Leonard Cohen)
--


From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Eitan Grossman via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Monday, September 22, 2025 at 09:57
To: LINGTYP <LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: [Lingtyp] Question about functional linguistics
Hi all,

This is maybe a mail for a mailing list that no longer exists, the old FunkNet, but I thought I'd give it a try.

I am putting together a syllabus for an advanced BA course on functional linguistics, and have been re-reading a lot of the articles that have been meaningful for me over the years, and it is difficult to make a choice.

I wanted to ask for the wisdom of the crowd -- what articles (or books) in functional linguistics have been meaningful for you? What have you read with students? What works do you think every student should read?

I should say that I have in mind what is usually called West Coast Functionalism and usage-based linguistics, but would be happy to hear your thoughts on other perspectives.

Any replies would be much appreciated, and I would be happy to share the resulting reading list/syllabus.

Eitan


Eitan Grossman
Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Tel: +972 2 588 3809


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20250923/f9854185/attachment.htm>