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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Grammar, syntax, linguistic structure
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Constructionalization and Constructional Changes (Paperback)
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Constructionalization and Constructional Changes (Paperback)
Series: Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics, 6
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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In this book Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Graeme Trousdale develop
an approach to language change based on construction grammar.
Construction grammar is a theory of signs construed at the level of
the phrase, clause, and complex sentence. Until now it has been
mainly synchronic. The authors use it to reconceptualize
grammaticalization (the process by which verbs like 'to have' lose
semantic content and gain grammatical functions, or word order is
reorganised as syntax-prominent rather than discourse-prominent),
and lexicalization (in which idioms become fixed and complex words
simplified). Basing their argument on the notions that language is
made up of language-specific form-meaning pairings and that there
is a gradient between lexical and grammatical constructions,
Professor Traugott and Dr Trousdale suggest that language change
proceeds by micro-steps that involve closely related changes in
syntax, morphology, phonology, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse
functions. They illustrate their exposition with numerous English
examples drawn from Anglo-Saxon times to the present, many of which
they discuss in depth. The book is organized in six chapters. The
first outlines the approach and the questions to be addressed,
while the second reviews usage-based models of language change, and
the third considers the relation between grammatical
constructionalization and grammaticalization. Chapters 4 and 5
focus respectively on lexical constructionalization and the role of
context, before the final chapter draws the authors' arguments
together and outlines prospects for further research.
Constructionalization and Constructional Changes propounds and
demonstrates a new and productive approach to historical
linguistics.
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