Meaning Change in Grammaticalization: An Enquiry Into Semantic ReanalysisThis book explores the semantic and pragmatic mechanisms underlying grammaticalization. Regine Eckardt argues that language change frequently involves a structural reorganization at the phonological, morphological, and syntactic levels. Speakers not only master the structural aspect of such reanalyses, they also-as the author argues-keep a detailed mental record of what has happened to meaning. The author develops semantic reanalysis as the semantic correlate and tracks its effects in meaning change. Several case studies offer new insights in the architecture of conceptual thinking that is part of the human language faculty. Professor Eckardt develops her approach in terms of formal semantic theory. She shows how neatly tailored analyses in truth-conditional compositional semantics can elucidate the structural mechanisms of meaning change. Her exposition is advanced in the context of several in-depth case studies containing data new to historical linguistics. This book will be of central interest to scholars and advanced students of historical and comparative linguistics and of formal semantics in departments of linguistics and philosophy. |
Contents
Previous Views | 22 |
Truth Conditional Semantics | 59 |
What is Going to Happen | 91 |
Copyright | |
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Meaning Change in Grammaticalization: An Enquiry into Semantic Reanalysis Regine Eckardt Limited preview - 2006 |
Meaning Change in Grammaticalization: An Enquiry Into Semantic Reanalysis Regine Eckardt Limited preview - 2006 |
Common terms and phrases
adjective adverbial analysis Andreas Gryphius assertion bleaching bonbons change under reanalysis Chapter cline combination concepts construction contribution Corpus count noun denote diachronic discourse markers downward entailing emphatic focus emphatic negation English event examples express fact focus alternatives focus particle formal semantics function words German going to future goutte grammatical grammaticalization hearer Heine hence Hopper and Traugott Horatio implicatures instance interpretation intuition investigation Jespersen kind König lambda lambda abstraction language change lauter lexical linguistic logical semantics meaning change metaphor metonymy Middle French negation particles negative polarity item noun phrase objects offer personne pragmatic pragmatic inferences present presupposition proposed proposition puzzling quantifiers question reading reference relation rien selbst/even selbst/self semantic change semantic reanalysis semantic representation sense sentence speakers specific stage structure syntactic temporal tense and aspect Traugott and Dasher truth conditional semantics type logic universal quantification utterance variable verb