LINGUIST List 17.1098

Tue Apr 11 2006

Books: Applied Ling/Typology: Elšik, Matras

Editor for this issue: Maria Moreno-Rollins <marialinguistlist.org>

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Directory         1.    Julia Ulrich, Markedness and Language Change: Elšik, Matras

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Message 1: Markedness and Language Change: Elšik, Matras
Date: 10-Apr-2006
From: Julia Ulrich <julia.ulrichdegruyter.com>
Subject: Markedness and Language Change: Elšik, Matras


Title: Markedness and Language Change Subtitle: The Romani Sample Series Title: Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 32

Publication Year: 2006 Publisher: Mouton de Gruyter http://www.mouton-publishers.com

Book URL: http://www.degruyter.de/rs/bookSingle.cfm?id=IS-3110184524-1&l=E

Author: Viktor El?ik, Author: Yaron Matras, University of Manchester

Hardback: ISBN: 3110184525 Pages: 475 Price: Europe EURO 98.00 Comment: for USA, Canada, Mexico US$ 132.30

Abstract:

'Markedness' is a central notion in linguistic theory. This book is the first to provide a comprehensive survey of markedness relations across various grammatical categories, in a sample of closely-related speech varieties. It is based on a sample of over 100 dialects of Romani, collected and processed via the Romani Morpho-Syntax (RMS) Database - a comparative grammatical outline in electronic form, constructed by the authors between 2000-2004. Romani dialects provide an exciting sample of language change phenomena: they are oral languages, which have been separated and dispersed from some six centuries, and are strongly shaped by the influence of diverse contact languages.

The book takes a typological approach to markedness, viewing it as a hierarchy among values that is conditioned by conceptual and cognitive universals. But it introduces a functional-pragmatic notion of markedness, as a grammaticalised strategy employed in order to priositise information. In what is referred to as 'dynamic', such prioritisation is influenced by an interplay of factors: the values within a category and the conceptual notions that they represent, the grammatical structure onto which the category values are mapped, and the kind of strategy that is applied in order to prioritise certain value. Consequently, the book contains a thorough survey of some 20 categories (e.g Person, Number, Gender, and so on) and their formal representation in various grammatical structures across the sample. The various accepted criteria for markedness (e.g. Complexity, Differentiation, Erosion, and so on) are examined systematically in relation to the values of each and every category, for each relevant structure. The outcome is a novel picture of how different markedness criteria may cluster for certain categories, giving a concrete reality to the hitherto rather vague notion of markedness. Borrowing and its relation to markedness is also examined, offering new insights into the motivations behind contact-induced change.



Linguistic Field(s): Typology Applied Linguistics Language Change

Subject Language(s): None ()

Language Family(ies): Romani

Written In: English (eng)

See this book announcement on our website: http://linguistlist.org/get-book.html?BookID=19015

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