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From Utterances to Speech Acts

By Mikhail Kissine

"Kissine offers a new theory of speech acts which is philosophically sophisticated and builds on work in cognitive science, formal semantics, and linguistic typology. This highly readable, brilliant essay is a major contribution to the field."

--François Recanati, Institut Jean-Nicod


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Book Information

   

Title: Grammaticalization as Economy
Written By: Elly van Gelderen
URL: http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=LA%2071
Series Title: Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 71
Description:

This book provides much detail on the changes involving the grammaticalization of personal and relative pronouns, topicalized nominals, complementizers, adverbs, prepositions, modals, perception verbs, and aspectual markers. It accounts for these changes in terms of two structural economy principles. Head Preference expresses that single words, i.e. heads, are used to build structures rather than full phrases, and LateMerge states that waiting as late as possible to merge, i.e. be added to the structure, is preferred over movement. The book also discusses grammar-external processes (e.g. prescriptivist rules) that inhibit change, and innovations that replenish the grammaticalized element. Most of the changes involve the (extended) CP and IP: as elements grammaticalize clause boundaries disappear. Cross-linguistic differences exist as to whether theCP, IP, and VP are all present and split and this is formulated as theLayer Principle. Changes involving the CP are typically brought about byHead Preference, whereas those involving the IP and VP by Late Merge.

Publication Year: 2004
Publisher: John Benjamins
Review: Read the review
BibTex: View BibTex record
Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics
Syntax

Versions:
Format: Hardback
ISBN: 1588115526
ISBN-13: 9781588115522
Pages: xvi, 320 pp.
Prices: U.S. $ 155
 
Format: Hardback
ISBN: 9027227950
ISBN-13: N/A
Pages: xvi, 320 pp.
Prices: Europe EURO 115.00