Explanation in typology : diachronic sources, functional motivations and the nature of the evidence / edited by Karsten Schmidtke-Bode, Natalia Levshina, Susanne Maria Michaelis, Ilja A. Seržant.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schmidtke-Bode, Karsten, Editor.

Contributor:

Schmidtke-Bode, K arsten, editor.

Levshina, Natalia, editor.

Michaelis, Susanne, editor.

Seržant, Ilja A., editor.

Series:

Conceptual foundations of language science ; 3.

Conceptual foundations of language science ; 3

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Typology (Linguistics).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 258 pages) : PDF, digital file(s).

Place of Publication:

Berlin Language Science Press 2019

Berlin, Germany : Language Science Press, [2019]

Language Note:

English

System Details:

text file

Summary:

This volume provides an up-to-date discussion of a foundational issue that has recently taken centre stage in linguistic typology and which is relevant to the language sciences more generally: To what extent can cross-linguistic generalizations, i.e. statistical universals of linguistic structure, be explained by the diachronic sources of these structures? Everyone agrees that typological distributions are the result of complex histories, as “languages evolve into the variation states to which synchronic universals pertain” (Hawkins 1988). However, an increasingly popular line of argumentation holds that many, perhaps most, typological regularities are long-term reflections of their diachronic sources, rather than being ‘target-driven’ by overarching functional-adaptive motivations.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

CC BY

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9783961101474

3961101477