Papers From The 4th International Conference On Historical Linguistics

The studies in this volume are revised versions of a selection from the papers presented at the Fourth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, held at Stanford University on 26 30 March 1979. Papers at this conference, and in this volume, treat aspects of all current topics in historical linguistics, including topics that are only recently considered relevant, such as acquisition, structure, and language use.

These papers are a selection from papers presented at the 4th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (Amsterdam, 1985). Most studies deal with some aspect of an earlier stage of English, though present day varieties of English are also under investigation. Many of the papers show that there is a growing interest in the question why a certain change has taken place. Furthermore, the volume contains a considerable number of papers on historical syntax.

The Twelfth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, which is the major forum for the presentation of work in progress in the field of diachronic linguistics, took place at the University of Manchester in August 1995. The quality and breadth of the abstracts submitted for the general programme was such that four parallel sessions were needed throughout the conference. The present volume contains selected papers which deal with the Germanic languages. A companion volume, edited by J.C. Smith and Delia Bentley, contains papers on general problems in historical linguistics and studies of non-Germanic languages. The conference reflected the current health of diachronic linguistics. There were more papers and more participants than at past conferences, and the discussion covered a broader range of languages than hitherto. Sometimes it has been possible to isolate a particular preoccupation which has dominated much of the conference; but the overall impression to be gained from the Manchester meeting was one of stimulating diversity — the discipline appears to be moving forward on many fronts simultaneously, yet without losing focus. This stimulating diversity is well reflected in this important collection.

The collected articles in this volume address an array of cutting-edge issues in the field of historical linguistics, including new theoretical approaches and innovative methodologies for studying language through a diachronic lens. The articles focus on the following themes: I. Case & Argument Structure, II. Alignment & Diathesis, III. Patterns, Paradigms, & Restructuring, IV. Grammaticalization & Construction Grammar, V. Corpus Linguistics & Morphosyntax, VI. Languages in Contact. Papers reflect a wide range of perspectives, and focus on issues and data from an array of languages and language families, from new analyses of case and argument structure in Ancient Greek to phonological evidence for language contact in Vietnamese, from patterns of convergence in Neo-Aramaic to the development of the ergative in Basque. The volume contributes substantially to the debate surrounding core issues of language change: the role of the individual speaker, the nature of paths of grammaticalization, the role of contact, the interface of diachrony and synchrony, and many other issues. It should be useful to any reader hoping to gain insight into the nature of language change.

The volume contains 37 papers originally presented at the 8th International Conference on Historical Linguistics in Lille, France. The papers bring historical data to bear on issues in theoretical linguistics, both descriptive and diachronic or deal with specific questions in the history of individual languages. The theoretical issues range from phonology over morphology and syntax to the lexicon, as well as questions of historical dialectology, language contact, the theory of linguistic change, and problems of comparative reconstruction. The languages discussed are Finno-Ugric and Indo-European, most of the papers dealing with Germanic and Romance languages (especially English and French), but some being devoted to Greek, Celtic, Slavic, and Hittite.

The collected articles in this volume address an array of cutting-edge issues in the field of historical linguistics, including new theoretical approaches and innovative methodologies for studying language through a diachronic lens. The articles focus on the following themes: I. Case & Argument Structure, II. Alignment & Diathesis, III. Patterns, Paradigms, & Restructuring, IV. Grammaticalization & Construction Grammar, V. Corpus Linguistics & Morphosyntax, VI. Languages in Contact. Papers reflect a wide range of perspectives, and focus on issues and data from an array of languages and language families, from new analyses of case and argument structure in Ancient Greek to phonological evidence for language contact in Vietnamese, from patterns of convergence in Neo-Aramaic to the development of the ergative in Basque. The volume contributes substantially to the debate surrounding core issues of language change: the role of the individual speaker, the nature of paths of grammaticalization, the role of contact, the interface of diachrony and synchrony, and many other issues. It should be useful to any reader hoping to gain insight into the nature of language change.

The studies in this volume are revised versions of a selection from the papers presented at the Fourth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, held at Stanford University on 26–30 March 1979. Papers at this conference, and in this volume, treat aspects of all current topics in historical linguistics, including topics that are only recently considered relevant, such as acquisition, structure, and language use.

These papers, deriving from the 7th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL) in Pavia in 1984, provide an overview of the current status of research in this field. They clearly show that new issues are emerging in the theory of linguistic change which tend to incorporate non-autonomous principles like naturalness in phonetic processes, the influence of socio-cultural settings and discourse pragmatics.