LINGUIST List 9.972

Mon Jun 29 1998

Books: Historical Linguistics

Editor for this issue: Anita Huang <anitalinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Bernadette Martinez-Keck, Books on Historical Linguistics

John Benjamins Publishing would like to call your attention to the
following new title in the field of Historical Linguistics:


TENSE AND ASPECT IN INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES

THEORY, TYPOLOGY AND DIACHRONY

John Hewson & Vit Bubenik

1997 xii, 403 pp. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 145

US/Canada: Cloth: 1 55619 860 4 Price: $89.00

Rest of the world: Cloth: 90 272 3649 6 Price: Hfl. 178,--

John Benjamins Publishing web site: http://www.benjamins.com

For further information via e-mail: servicebenjamins.com

This monograph presents a general picture of the evolution of IE verbal
systems within a coherent cognitive framework. The work encompasses all
the language families of the IE phylum, from prehistory to present day
languages.

Inspired by the ideas of Roman Jakobson and Gustave Guillaume the authors
relate tense and aspect to underlying cognitive processes, and show that
verbal systems have a staged development of time representations
(chronogenesis). They view linguistic change as systemic and trace the
evolution of the earliest tense systems by (a) aspectual split and (b)
aspectual merger from the original aspectual contrasts of PIE, the
evidence for such systemic change showing clearly in the paradigmatic
morphology of the daughter languages.

The nineteen chapters cover first the ancient documentation, then those
families whose historical data are from a more recent date. The last
chapters deal with the systemic evolution of languages that are descended
from ancient forbearers such as Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, and are
completed by a chapter on the practical and theoretical conclusions of
the work.

- ------------------------------------------------------------

Bernadette Martinez-Keck Tel: (215) 836-1200

Publicity/Marketing Fax: (215) 836-1204

John Benjamins North America e-mail:berniebenjamins.com

PO Box 27519 

Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 


Check out the John Benjamins web site:

http://www.benjamins.com

The following contributing LINGUIST publishers have made their backlists available on the World Wide Web:

1998 Contributors