Markedness and language change : the Romani sample / by Viktor Elsik, Yaron Matras.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Elšik, Viktor.

Contributor:

Matras, Yaron, 1963-

Series:

Empirical approaches to language typology ; 32.

Empirical approaches to language typology ; 32

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Romani language--Markedness.

Romani language.

Romani language--Dialects.

Markedness (Linguistics).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (500 pages) : illustrations, maps

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, c2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

'Markedness' is a central notion in linguistic theory. This book is the first to provide a comprehensive survey of markedness relations across various grammatical categories, in a sample of closely-related speech varieties. It is based on a sample of over 100 dialects of Romani, collected and processed via the Romani Morpho-Syntax (RMS) Database - a comparative grammatical outline in electronic form, constructed by the authors between 2000-2004. Romani dialects provide an exciting sample of language change phenomena: they are oral languages, which have been separated and dispersed from some six centuries, and are strongly shaped by the influence of diverse contact languages. The book takes a typological approach to markedness, viewing it as a hierarchy among values that is conditioned by conceptual and cognitive universals. But it introduces a functional-pragmatic notion of markedness, as a grammaticalised strategy employed in order to priositise information. In what is referred to as 'dynamic', such prioritisation is influenced by an interplay of factors: the values within a category and the conceptual notions that they represent, the grammatical structure onto which the category values are mapped, and the kind of strategy that is applied in order to prioritise certain value. Consequently, the book contains a thorough survey of some 20 categories (e.g Person, Number, Gender, and so on) and their formal representation in various grammatical structures across the sample. The various accepted criteria for markedness (e.g. Complexity, Differentiation, Erosion, and so on) are examined systematically in relation to the values of each and every category, for each relevant structure. The outcome is a novel picture of how different markedness criteria may cluster for certain categories, giving a concrete reality to the hitherto rather vague notion of markedness. Borrowing and its relation to markedness is also examined, offering new insights into the motivations behind contact-induced change.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction: Markedness and asymmetry in language

Chapter 2 The Markedness Hypothesis

Chapter 3 Toward a communication-based model of asymmetry in language

Chapter 4 The sample: Methodological considerations

Chapter 5 Early Romani

Chapter 6 Number

Chapter 7 Person

Chapter 8 Gender

Chapter 9 Degree

Chapter 10 Negation

Chapter 11 Cardinality

Chapter 12 Discreteness

Chapter 13 Tense, aspect, and mood

Chapter 14 Modality

Chapter 15 Transitivity

Chapter 16 Case and case roles

Chapter 17 Localisation

Chapter 18 Orientation

Chapter 19 Indefiniteness

Chapter 20 Ontological category

Chapter 21 Lexicality

Chapter 22 Associativity

Chapter 23 Chronological compartmentalisation

Chapter 24 Criteria for asymmetry and their distribution across categories

Chapter 25 Patterns of asymmetry

Chapter 26 Conceptual motivations for asymmetry

Chapter 27 Concluding remarks

Back matter

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [441]-454) and indexes.

ISBN:

9786612193965

9781282193963

1282193961

9783110197594

3110197596

OCLC:

191926184