|
Showing 1 - 2 of
2 matches in All Departments
While variation within individual languages has traditionally been
focused upon in sociolinguistics, its relevance for grammatical
theory has only recently been acknowledged. On the methodological
side, there is an ongoing competition between large-scale
statistical analyses and investigations that rely more heavily on
introspection and elicited grammaticality judgements. The aim of
this volume is to bridge the 'cultural gap' between
empirical-variationist and formal-theoretical approaches in
linguistics. The volume offers case studies that seek to combine
corpus-based and competence-based approaches to the description of
variation. In doing so, it opens up new avenues for locating and
analyzing variability, both at the level of the individual speaker
and between speakers of different dialects and generations. The
contributions document the plurality of current research into
models of grammatical competence that live up to the challenge of
variationist data. More specifically, parameter-based (e.g.
Minimalist), constraint-based (e.g. Optimality Theoretic), and
usage-based (e.g. Construction Grammar) approaches to variation are
discussed. The volume therefore is of interest to a broad public
within linguistics, including syntacticians of different
theoretical persuasion, morphologists and sociolinguists. While a
majority of contributions addresses facets of variation in English
and German, the volume also includes variationist studies written
by specialists of French, Dutch, Icelandic, and Uralic.
Complexity of grammatical structure has become a center of interest
in recent typological and dialectological research. The
contributions of the present volume discuss structural complexity
from the perspective of language variation and change. Particular
attention is paid to the hypothesis that languages and varieties
spoken by small, isolated communities tend to display greater
complexity than others.
|
You may like...
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.