LINGUIST List 11.2566

Tue Nov 28 2000

Books: Historical Linguistics

Editor for this issue: Naomi Ogasawara <naomilinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Paul Peranteau, Historical Ling: A History of English Reflexive Pronouns, van Gelderen

John Benjamins Publishing announces this new work:

A History of English Reflexive Pronouns.
Person, Self, and Interpretability.
Elly van GELDEREN (Arizona State University)
Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 39
US & Canada: 1 55619 988 0 / USD 85.00 (Hardcover)
Rest of world: 90 272 2760 8 / NLG 170.00 (Hardcover)

This book brings together a number of seemingly distinct phenomena in
the history of English: the introduction of special reflexive pronouns
(e.g. myself), the loss of verbal agreement and pro-drop, and the
disappearance of morphological Case. It provides vast numbers of
examples from Old and Middle English texts showing a person split
between first, second, and third person pronouns. Extending an
analysis by Reinhart & Reuland, the author argues that the 'strength'
of certain pronominal features (Case, person, number) differs
cross-linguistically and that parametric variation accounts for the
changes in English. The framework used is Minimalist, and
Interpretable and Uninterpretable features are seen as the key to
explaining the change from a synthetic to an analytic language.




			John Benjamins Publishing Co.
Offices:	Philadelphia			Amsterdam:
Websites: 	http://www.benjamins.com	http://www.benjamins.nl
E-mail:		servicebenjamins.com		customer.servicesbenjamins.nl
Phone:		+215 836-1200			+31 20 6762325
Fax: 		+215 836-1204			+31 20 6739773