Language Contact and Grammatical Change

Offers an interesting insight into how language contact affects grammatical forms and structures.

Bernd Heine (Author), Tania Kuteva (Author)

9780521845748, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 January 2005

328 pages
23.4 x 15.6 x 2.6 cm, 0.622 kg

'…[the book will become] a starting point for further investigation of the interplay between grammaticalization and language contact.' Journal of Linguistics

The phenomenon of language contact, and how it affects the structure of languages, has been of great interest to linguists. This study looks at how grammatical forms and structures evolve when speakers of two languages come into contact, and offers an interesting insight into the mechanism that induces people to transfer grammatical structures from one language to another. Drawing on findings from languages all over the world, Language Contact and Grammatical Change shows that the transfer of linguistic material across languages is quite regular and follows universal patterns of grammaticalization - contrary to previous claims that it is a fairly irregular process - and argues that internal and external explanations of language structure and change are in no way mutually exclusive. Engaging and informative, this book will be of great interest to sociolinguists, linguistic anthropologists, and all those working on grammaticalization, language contact, and language change.

List of maps
List of tables
Series editor's foreword
Preface
List of abbreviations
1. The framework
2. On replicating use patterns
3. Grammaticalization
4. Typological change
5. On linguistic areas
6. Limits of replication
7. Conclusions
8. Notes
References
Index of authors
Index of languages
Index of subjects.

Subject Areas: Sociolinguistics [CFB]