Textual Parameters in Older Languages
Published on 23. January 2001
Book
Hardback
448 pages
978-1-55619-973-8 (ISBN)
Description
Textual Parameters in Older Languages takes a contemporary approach to the inherent limitations of using older texts as data for linguistic analysis, drawing on methods of text analysis, pragmatics and sociolinguistics to supplement traditional historical and philological methods. The focus of the book is on the importance of controlling for textual parameters-defined by the editors as dimensions of variation associated with texts and their production, including text type, degree of poeticality, orality, and dialect-in the analysis of older language data. Failure to do so can result in invalid generalizations; recognizing the influence of textual parameters, conversely, raises a myriad of issues for the practice and theory of historical linguistics.
The 12 essays in this collection apply this approach in analyses of anaphora, non-finite verbal forms, particles, punctuation, word order and other phenomena in a wide range of languages including Ancient Tamil, Sanskrit, Latin, Heian Japanese, Medieval Greek, Old French, Old Russian, Middle English, and Modern Danish. An in-depth introduction by the editors lays out the goals of the textual parameters approach, and considers the methodological and theoretical consequences of the evidence presented in the book as a whole.
The 12 essays in this collection apply this approach in analyses of anaphora, non-finite verbal forms, particles, punctuation, word order and other phenomena in a wide range of languages including Ancient Tamil, Sanskrit, Latin, Heian Japanese, Medieval Greek, Old French, Old Russian, Middle English, and Modern Danish. An in-depth introduction by the editors lays out the goals of the textual parameters approach, and considers the methodological and theoretical consequences of the evidence presented in the book as a whole.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Amsterdam/Philadelphia
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Weight
710 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-55619-973-8 (9781556199738)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Content
1. THEORETICAL OVERVIEW; 2. On Textual Parameters and Older Languages (by Herring, Susan C.); 3. Methodologies and Ideologies in Historical Linguistics: On working with older languages (by Fleischman, Suzanne); 4. TEXT TYPE; 5. The Pragmatic Functions of the Old French Particles AINZ, APRES, DONC, LORS, OR, PUIS, and SI (by Reenen, Pieter van); 6. Discourse Organization and Anaphora in Latin (by Bolkestein, A. Machtelt); 7. The Importance of Discourse Types in Grammaticalization: The case of anon (by Brinton, Laurel J.); 8. POETICALITY; 9. Genre, Discourse, and Syntax in Early Indo-European, with Emphasis on Sanskrit (by Hock, Hans Henrich); 10. Poeticality and Word Order in Old Tamil (by Herring, Susan C.); 11. Suppressed Assertion and the Functions of the Final-Attributive in Prose and Poetry of Heian Japanese (by Iwasaki, Shoichi); 12. ORALITY; 13. Robert Keayne's Notebooks: A verbatim record of spoken English in early Boston? (by Kyto, Merja); 14. Textual Authenticity: Evidence from Medieval Greek (by Joseph, Brian D.); 15. Parameters Underlying Punctuation in Older Russian Texts (by Gvozdanovic, Jadranka); 16. DIALECT; 17. The Middle English Verb-Second Constraint: A case study in language contact and language change (by Kroch, Anthony S.); 18. A la Recherche du Word Order Not Quite Perdu (by Gregersen, Frans); 19. Index of Languages; 20. Index of Subjects