This volume is the first dedicated to the comprehensive, in-depth analysis of constructions with nouns like ‘type’ and ‘sort’. It focuses on type noun constructions in Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages, integrating the different descriptive traditions that had been developed for each language family. As a result, a greater variety of type noun constructions is revealed than in the hitherto more fragmented literature. But attention is also drawn to the cross-linguistic similarity of the new pragmatic meanings, such as ad hoc and approximative categorization, hedging, focus and filler uses, and the new grammatical functions in NPs (e.g. phoric uses), clauses (e.g. adverbial uses) and complex sentences (e.g. quotatives). The volume offers survey chapters of type noun constructions in each language family as well as contributions focusing on specific aspects in one or two languages, such as their grammar, semantics and pragmatics, diachronic development, discursive and sociolinguistic variety. These complementary methodologies elucidate the unique cross-linguistic field of type noun constructions both descriptively and theoretically. Hence, this volume can also serve as a model for similar surveys in other functional domains.

Dieser Band betrachtet das soziolinguistische Konzept der sprachlichen Unsicherheit aus panromanischer Perspektive, indem er Untersuchungen aus verschiedenen Regionen der Romania unter einer einheitlichen Theorie zusammenfuhrt. Die Beitrage des Sammelbandes bieten neue Anreize zur Definition und Einbettung von sprachlicher Unsicherheit in die soziolinguistische Theoriebildung. Das Konzept der sprachlichen Unsicherheit wird in diesem Band auf verschiedene Sprechergruppen und Sprach(kontakt)situationen in der Romania angewendet. Hierzu werden unterschiedliche empirische Methoden zur Untersuchung von sprachlicher Unsicherheit verwendet und diskutiert.