Variation in Language: System- and Usage-based Approaches
Description
Where is the locus of language variation? In the grammar, outside the grammar or somewhere in between? Taking up the debate between system- and usage-based approaches, this volume provides new discussions of fundamental issues of language variation. It includes several highly insightful theoretical contributions as well as innovative empirical studies considering different types of data, the role of priming in language change and rare phenomena.
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Persons
Aria Adli and Marco García García , Cologne University; Göz Kaufmann , Freiburg University.
Content
- Intro
- Contents
- System and usage: (Never) mind the gap
- Part 1: System, usage, and variation
- Language variation and the autonomy of grammar
- The grammar of use and the use of grammar
- Looking for structure-dependence, category-sensitive processes, and long-distance dependencies in usage
- Variation in syntax: Two case studies on Brazilian Portuguese
- Part 2: Rare phenomena and variation
- Rare phenomena revealing basic syntactic mechanisms: The case of unexpected verb-object sequences in Mennonite Low German
- The no man's land between syntax and variationist sociolinguistics: The case of idiolectal variability
- What you like is not what you do: Acceptability and frequency in syntactic variation
- Part 3: Grammar, evolution, and diachrony
- "Intelligent design" of grammars - a result of cognitive evolution
- Syntactization, analogy and the distinction between proximate and evolutionary causations
- Gradual loss of analyzability: Diachronic priming effects
- How usage rescues the system: Persistence as conservation
