Perspectives on variation : sociolinguistic, historical, comparative / edited by Nicole Delbecque, Johan van der Auwera, Dirk Geeraerts.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Delbecque, Nicole.

Auwera, Johan van der.

Geeraerts, Dirk, 1955-

Series:

Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs ; 163.

Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs ; 163

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Language and languages--Variation.

Language and languages.

Linguistics.

Physical Description:

vi, 345 p. : ill.

Edition:

Reprint 2011

Place of Publication:

Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, c2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The significant advances witnessed over the last years in the broad field of linguistic variation testify to a growing convergence between sociolinguistic approaches and the somewhat older historical and comparative research traditions. Particularly within cognitive and functional linguistics, the evolution towards a maximally dynamic approach to language goes hand in hand with a renewed interest in corpus research and quantitative methods of analysis. Many researchers feel that only in this way one can do justice to the complex interaction of forces and factors involved in linguistic variability, both synchronically and diachronically. The contributions to the present volume illustrate the ongoing evolution of the field. By bringing together a series of analyses that rely on extensive corpuses to shed light on sociolinguistic, historical, and comparative forms of variation, the volume highlights the interaction between these subfields. Most of the contributions go back to talks presented at the meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea held in Leuven in 2001. The volume starts with a global typological view on the sociolinguistic landscape of Europe offered by Peter Auer. It is followed by a methodological proposal for measuring phonetic similarity between dialects designed by Paul Heggarty, April McMahon, and Robert McMahon. Various papers deal with specific phenomena of socially and conceptually driven variation within a single language. For Dutch, José Tummers, Dirk Speelman, and Dirk Geeraerts analyze inflectional variation in Belgian and Netherlandic Dutch, Reinhild Vandekerckhove focuses on interdialectal convergence between West-Flemish urban dialects, and Arjan van Leuvensteijn studies competing forms of address in the 17th century Dutch standard variety. The cultural and conceptual dimension is also present in the diachronic lexicosemantic explorations presented by Heli Tissari, Clara Molina, and Caroline Gevaert for English expressions referring to the experiential domains of love, sorrow and anger, respectively: the history of words is systematically linked up with the images they convey and the evolving conceptualizations they reveal. The papers by Heide Wegener and by Marcin Kilarski and Grzegorz Krynicki constitute a plea against arbitrariness of alternations at the level of nominal morphology: dealing with marked plural forms in German, and with gender assignment to English loanwords in the Scandinavian languages, respectively, their distributional accounts bring into the picture a variety of motivating factors. The four cross-linguistic studies that close the volume focus on the differing ways in which even closely related languages exploit parallel morphosyntactic patterns. They share the same methodological concern for combining rigorous parametrization and quantification with conceptual and discourse-functional explanations. While Griet Beheydt and Katleen Van den Steen confront the use of formally defined competing constructions in two Germanic and two Romance languages, respectively, Torsten Leuschner as well as Gisela Harras and Kirsten Proost analyze how a particular speaker's attitude is expressed differently in various Germanic languages.

Contents:

Front matter

Table of contents

Introduction

Europe's sociolinguistic unity, or: A typology of European dialect/standard constellations / Auer, Peter

From phonetic similarity to dialect classification: A principled approach / Heggarty, Paul / McMahon, April / McMahon, Robert

Inflectional variation in Belgian and Netherlandic Dutch: A usage-based account of the adjectival inflection / Tummers, Jose / Speelman, Dirk / Geeraerts, Dirk

Interdialectal convergence between West-Flemish urban dialects / Vandekerckhove, Reinhild

Substitutions in epistolary forms of address in the seventeenth century Dutch standard variety / Leuvensteijn, Arjan van

LOVE in words: Experience and conceptualization in the modern English lexicon of LOVE / Tissari, Heli

On the role of semasiological profiles in merger discontinuations / Molina, Clara

The ANGER IS HEAT question : Detecting cultural influence on the conceptualization of ANGER through diachronic corpus analysis. / Gevaert, Caroline

Development and motivation of marked plural forms in German / Wegener, Heide

Not arbitrary, not regular: The magic of gender assignment / Kilarski, Marcin / Krynicki, Grzegorz

Future time reference: English and Dutch compared / Beheydt, Griet

Cleft constructions in French and Spanish / Steen, Katleen Van den

How to express indifference in Germanic: Towards a functional-typological research programme / Leuschner, Torsten

The lexicalization of speech act evaluations in German, English and Dutch / Harras, Gisela / Proost, Kristel

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9783110909579

311090957X

OCLC:

979883585