Full Description
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This volume explores the long-held assumption in linguistics that language change may proceed in a cyclical fashion. Cyclic change has recently attracted renewed interest, most notably with respect to the evolution of negation across a range of languages, but also in relation to a wide range of other phenomena. The chapters in this book take as their point of departure the hypothesis that cyclic change is pragmatically driven, and analyse forms of this change in morphosyntax, the lexicon, and semantics and pragmatics - as well as the interaction between these levels - across a range of mainly Indo-European languages and language families, but also including Semitic, Sinitic, and Austronesian languages. They also discuss the epistemological status of cycles; explore their relationship with other recognized forms of change; examine the limits of the notion of a cycle in language change; and discuss cyclicity from a cognitive-pragmatic and sociopragmatic perspective.
Contents
1: Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Richard Waltereit: Cyclic change in grammar and discourse: An introduction
Part I. Cyclic Change in Grammar
2: Johan van der Auwera and Daniel Van Olmen: Additive negation in Dutch, from synchrony to diachrony, cyclical and noncyclical
3: Chiara Fedriani and Piera Molinelli: The role of pragmatics in the cyclical renewal and reinforcement of demonstratives from Latin to Italian
4: Urd Vindenes: Conflicting mechanisms in cycles of similative demonstrative reinforcement
5: Ittamar Erb and Mira Ariel: Prototypicalization in cyclic change
6: Ljuba Veselinova and Anastasia Panova: The continuative cycle
7: Ezra la Roi: The counterfactual life cycle: Cyclicity, pragmatics, and modality
8: Yueh Hsin Kuo: Bidirectional cycles of indirectness in Mandarin
9: Haiping Long and Jian Wang: Morphological coordination in Sinitic languages as a form of cyclic change
10: Mira Ariel and Caterina Mauri: 'Or' cycles
Part II: Cyclic Change in Discourse
11: Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen: A new look at grammaticalization vs pragmaticalization in the rise of pragmatic markers: A typology of linear and nonlinear forms of evolution
12: Giulio Scivoletto: A typology of cyclicity: Waves and spirals, constructions and features
13: Ruti Bardenstein: Clines and cycles of meaning change
14: Sandra Paoli: The rise and fall of Occitan be(n) and pla(n): A semantic-pragmatic cycle?
15: Luísa Ferrari: The role of reanalysis in the renewal of contrast: A cyclical evolution from simultaneity to opposition in Brazilian Portuguese
16: Adrià Pardo Llibrer: Spanish approximators en plan and rollo between two centuries: Microdiachrony of a pragmatic cycle
17: Chiara Ghezzi: Weakening of pragmatic force and socio-cultural factors: The pragmaticalization cycle of Italian grammatical deference
18: Ana Llopis Cardona: Pragmatic cycles in Spanish farewell routines
