Eintrag

Titel

Reorganising grammatical variation: diachronic studies in the retention, redistribution and refunctionalisation of linguistic variants

Personen

Antje Dammel, Matthias Eitelmann, Mirjam Schmuck

Jahr

2018

Typ

Sammelband

Verlag

John Benjamins Publishing Co.

Ort

Amsterdam, Philadelphia

ISBN

978-90-272-0164-5

Reihe

Studies in language

Band

203

Schlagwörter

Variation

Abstract

With most studies on grammatical variation concentrating on the synchronic level, a systematic investigation of long-term grammatical variation within the context of language change, i.e. from a predominantly diachronic perspective, has largely remained a desideratum. The present volume fills this research gap by bringing together nine empirically rich bottom-up case studies on morphological and morphosyntactic variation phenomena in standard and dialect varieties of Indo-European languages (Germanic, Romance, Greek). While variation has often been regarded as merely a transitory epiphenomenal symptom of change, the findings of this volume show that variation is a resilient feature of human language and answer the question what makes variation time-stable. Bridging the gap between corpus-based research on language variation and more theory-driven typological and functional approaches, the volume is of special interest for all researchers concerned with interface phenomena seeking to gain a broader understanding of the mechanisms of linguistic variation and change.

https://grammis.ids-mannheim.de/bdg/102386