Full Description
Usage-based approaches to language have gained increasing attention in the last two decades. The importance of change and variation has always been recognized in this framework, but has never received central attention. It is the main aim of this book to fill this gap. Once we recognize that usage is crucial for our understanding of language and linguistic structures, language change and variation inevitably take centre stage in linguistic analysis. Along these lines, the volume presents eight studies by international authors that discuss various approaches to studying language change from a usage-based perspective. Both theoretical issues and empirical case studies are well-represented in this collection. The case studies cover a variety of different languages - ranging from historically well-studied European languages via Japanese to the Amazonian isolate Yurakaré with no written history at all. The book provides new insights relevant for scholars interested in both functional and cognitive linguistic theory, in historical linguists and in language typology.
Contents
1. Introduction. The role of change in usage-based conceptions of language (by Mengden, Ferdinand von); 2. Part 1. Challenging mainstream models of language change; 3. Does innovation need reanalysis? (by De Smet, Hendrik); 4. On cognition and communication in usage-based models of language change (by Zeige, Lars Erik); 5. Part 2. The role of usage in semantic change; 6. From inferential to mirative: An interaction-based account of an emerging semantic extension (by Gipper, Sonja); 7. The motivation for using English suspended dangling participles: A Usage-based development of (Inter)subjectivity (by Hayase, Naoko); 8. The nature of speaker creativity in linguistic innovation (by Ishiyama, Osamu); 9. Part 3. The role of usage and structure in language change; 10. Reanalysis and gramma(ticaliza)tion of constructions: The case of the deictic relative construction with perception verbs in French (by Kragh, Kirsten Jeppesen); 11. Constructional change, paradigmatic structure and the orientation of usage processes (by Heltoft, Lars); 12. Filling empty distinctions of expression with content: Usage-motivated assignment of grammatical meaning (by Norgard-Sorensen, Jens); 13. Author index; 14. Subject index
