Theoretical approaches to linguistic variation / edited by Ermenegildo Bidese, Federica Cognola and Manuela Caterina Moroni.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Bidese, Ermenegildo, editor.

Cognola, Federica, editor.

Moroni, Manuela Caterina, editor.

Series:

Linguistics Today = Linguistik Aktuell, 0166-0829 ; Volume 234

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Language and languages--Variation--Research.

Language and languages.

Languages in contact--Research.

Languages in contact.

Linguistic change--Research.

Linguistic change.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (386 pages).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam, [Netherlands] ; Philadelphia, [Pennsylvania] : John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2016.

Summary:

The contributions of this book deal with the issue of language variation. They all share the assumption that within the language faculty the variation space is hierarchically constrained and that minimal changes in the set of property values defining each language give rise to diverse outputs within the same system. Nevertheless, the triggers for language variation can be different and located at various levels of the language faculty. The novelty of the volume lies in exploring different loci of language variation by including wide-ranging empirical perspectives that cover different levels of analysis (syntax, phonology and prosody) and deal with different kinds of data, mostly from Romance and Germanic languages, from dialects, idiolects, language acquisition, language attrition and creolization, analyzed from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives.The volume is divided in three parts. The first part is dedicated to synchronic variation in phonology and syntax; the second part deals with diachronic variation and language change, and the third part investigates the role of contact, attrition and acquisition in giving rise to language change and language variation in bilingual settings.This volume is a useful tool for linguistics of diverse theoretical persuasions working on theoretical and comparative linguistics and to anyone interested in language variation, language change, dialectology, language acquisition and typology.

Contents:

Intro

Theoretical Approaches to Linguistic Variation

Editorial page

Title page

LCC data

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. General overview: Current trends in language variation and aims of this volume

2. Language variation and the notion of interface

3. On the relationship between language variation and language change

4. The single contributions

References

Germanic and Romance Onset Clusters - how to account for microvariation

1. Introduction

2. Consonant clusters and the sonority sequencing principle

3. Onset clusters in Standard German and in Southern Bavarian varieties

3.1 Standard German

3.2 The Tyrolean dialects, Mòcheno, and Lusern Cimbrian

4. Standard Italian and the Trentino dialects

5. An analysis of dialectal microvariation

5.1 A typology of sonority distance in onset clusters

5.2 Alternative analyses of minimal grammatical difference

6. Conclusions

Adverb and participle agreement

2. Status quaestionis in Romance

2.1 Adverbs in southern Italian dialects

2.2 Adjectival adverbs, adverbial adjectives

3. Adverb agreement in southern Italian dialects

3.1 The dialects of the 'Lausberg Area'

3.2 Transitives

3.2.1 A subject-adverb agreement pattern?

3.3 Unaccusatives

3.4 Unergatives

3.5 Interim summary

4. Effects on past participle agreement

4.1 The general picture

4.2 Insertion of the adjectival adverbs

5. Towards a structural interpretation

5.1 Agreement of non-metaphonic participles

5.2 Notes on the roots bon- and mal-

5.3 Adverb and participle agreement in Parameter Hierarchies

6. Conclusive remarks and remaining questions

Appendix

Why a bed can be slept in but not under

Introduction: The class of English prepositional verbs*.

1. Extracting from inside the PP: Wh- vs DP-extraction

2. Tackling (V+P): Reanalysis

2.1 The problems with Reanalysis

3. Incorporation "without" incorporation

3.1 Baker (1988) on PPass

3.2 A little diatopic variation: P-Stranding in Northern German and Dutch

4. Breaking down vP

4.1 Are applied objects "more object-like" than canonical objects?

4.2 The level of affectedness

4.3 The basic structure of PVs

4.4 The odd men out: Non-passivizing PVs

4.6 Variation in applicative constructions

Conclusions

On the variable nature of head final effects in German and English

2. The HFF as a syntactic condition

3. On the mapping between syntactic and prosodic structure

3.1 Background Information

3.2 Prosodic domain formation in a phase-based approach

3.3 Syntactic structure and default prominence

3.4 Further operations in phonology proper

4. The HFF as a metrical condition

5. The HFF as a morphological condition

6. Additional HF-effects in the German v-domain

7. HF-Effects and the FOFC

8. Conclusions

Variation and change in Italian phonology

1.1 The Latin and Italian segment inventories

1.2 Phasing processes

2. Theoretical background

2.1 Learning as constraint demotion

2.2 Opacity as a motor of lexical innovation

2.3 Constraint cloning

3. To input irrecoverability…and beyond

3.1 The emergence of velar palatalization

3.2 Constructing and breaking a chain

3.3 Borrowing with an already unstable grammar

3.4 Restructuring of the input leads to reorganization of the grammar

3.5 On the productivity of velar palatalization and the life cycle of constraint rankings

4. Conclusions

Which clues for which V2

1. Introduction.

2. The properties of the CP in Old Italian

3. The properties of the vP phase in OI

4. Scrambling to the DP left periphery

5. Structural genitive and residual N to d

6. Scrambling in the AdjP

7. Conclusion

Parameter typology from a diachronic perspective

2. CI in Contemporary English

3. Pre-20th-century Modern English (1700 onwards)

4. Early Modern English (mid-15th to 18th century)

5. Old and Middle English (450-1150CE and 1150 to 1550CE)

6. Summary and conclusions

Attrition at the interfaces in bilectal acquisition (Italian/Gallipolino)

2. The double complementation system in Gallipolino

3. Study on ku- and ka-constructions in migrant speakers of Gallipolino

3.1 Stimuli

3.2 Participants

3.3 Procedure

4. Results

4.1 Results for grammatical and ungrammatical sentences

4.2 Sequential bilectals vs. simultaneous bilectals

4.3 Passive bilectals vs. active bilectals

5. Discussion and conclusions

Acknowledgments

Little v and cross-linguistic variation

2. Evidence of the light verb's grammatical roles

3. Linearization

4. Sranan/Dutch switching

5. Creole clause structure

On language acquisition and language change

2. The adult grammars: An overview

2.1 The socio-linguistic context

2.2 Subject pronouns and pro-drop

2.2.1 Subject pronouns in Mòcheno: A three-way classification

2.2.2 Syntactic and discourse properties of subject pronominal forms

2.3 A brief comparison with contact Romance varieties

3. Subject pronouns in Mòcheno preschool children

3.1 Population and sociolinguistic situation

3.2 Data collection and participants

4. Subject pronouns in children's production.

4.1 Setting the pro-drop parameter

4.2 Syntactic and discourse factors

5. Discussion of results

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters and index.

Description based on print version record.