Editor for this issue: Fatemeh Abdollahi
<fatemehlinguistlist.org>
New! Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships: http://multitree.linguistlist.org/
Links to the websites of all LINGUIST's supporting publishers are available at the end of this issue.
Date: 08-Feb-2011 From: Julia Ulrich <julia.ulrichdegruyter.com> Subject: Typological Changes in the Lexicon: Haselow E-mail this message to a friend
Title: Typological Changes in the Lexicon
Subtitle: Analytic Tendencies in English Noun Formation
Series Title: Topics in English Linguistics [TiEL] 72
Published: 2011
Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
http://www.degruyter.com/mouton
Author: Alexander Haselow
Electronic: ISBN: 9783110238211 Pages: 316 Price: Europe EURO 99.95
Hardback: ISBN: 9783110238204 Pages: 316 Price: Europe EURO 99.95
Abstract:
This is the first study of the typological change of English from a synthetic towards an analytic language that focuses exclusively on the lexical domain of the language. It presents an innovative approach to linguistic typology by focusing on the different encoding techniques used in the lexicon, providing a theoretical framework for the description of structural types (synthetic, analytic) and encoding techniques (fusional, isolating, agglutinative, incorporating) found in the lexicon of a language.
It is argued that, in the case of English, the change from syntheticity to analyticity did not only affect its inflectional system and the encoding of grammatical information, but also the derivational component. Based on a cognitive approach to derivation, the book provides empirical evidence for a considerable decline in the use of synthetic structures and a trend towards higher degrees of analyticity in a specific lexical domain of English, the formation of nouns by means of derivation. The full extent of this change surfaced during the transition from Old English to early Middle English, but it was later partly reversed though influence from French. The typological shift was thus the result of a global structural reorganization of the language that resulted in a fundamental change of the structure of words.
The book also presents a comprehensive account of the historical development of nominal derivation from the beginnings of Old English until the end of the early Middle English period. Based on empirical data from written sources the study documents the frequency of use of all Germanic-based derivational morphemes for nominalizations over different subperiods and discusses their origin as well as important changes of their semantic and morphological properties.
Linguistic Field(s):
Historical Linguistics
Lexicography
Morphology
Semantics
Typology
New! Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated
from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships:
http://multitree.linguistlist.org/
Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
Page Updated: 14-Feb-2011
About LINGUIST
|
Contact Us
While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed
on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.