Historical Linguistics 2005: Selected papers from the 17th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Madison, Wisconsin, 31 July - 5 August 2005(284 Current Issues in Linguistic Theory)

This volume contains 22 revised papers originally presented at the 17th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, held August 2005 in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. The papers cover a broad range of languages, including well-studied languages of Europe but also Aramaic, Zoque and Uto-Aztecan, Japanese and Korean, Afrikaans, and the Pilbara languages of Australia. The theoretical approaches taken are equally diverse, often bringing together aspects of ‘formal’ and ‘functional’ theories in a single contribution. Many of the chapters provide fresh data, including several drawing on data from electronic corpora. Topics range from traditional comparative reconstruction to prosodic change and the role of processing in syntactic change.

Table of Contents:
1. Foreword; 2. Part I. Grammaticalization; 3. Lexicalization and grammaticalization all over again (by Brinton, Laurel J.); 4. Grammaticalization as reduction: Focus constructions in Chiapas Zoque (by Faarlund, Jan Terje); 5. Metaphor and teleology do not drive grammaticalization (by Juge, Matthew L.); 6. Part II. Syntax and semantics; 7. Processing factors in syntactic variation and change: Clitics in Medieval and Renaissance Spanish (by Bouzouita, Miriam); 8. Dynamic Syntax and dialogue modelling: Preliminaries for a dialogue-driven account of syntactic change (by Kempson, Ruth M.); 9. An economy approach to the triggering of the Russian instrumental predicate case (by Madariaga, Nerea); 10. Change and variation in ga/no conversion in Tokyo Japanese (by Nambu, Satoshi); 11. Perfect change: Synchrony meets diachrony (by Ritz, Marie-Eve); 12. Variable use of negation in Middle Low German (by Sundquist, John D.); 13. Is there a DP in Old English? (by Wood, Johanna L.); 14. Part III. Morphology; 15. Some semantic and pragmatic aspects of case-loss in Old French (by Ashdowne, Richard); 16. The final stages of deflection: The case of Afrikaans het "have" (by Conradie, C. Jac); 17. Demonstrative paradigm splitting in the Pilbara languages of Western Australia (by Dench, Alan); 18. Infinitival forms in Aramaic (by Fassberg, Steven E.); 19. The role of productivity in word-formation change (by Scherer, Carmen); 20. Part IV. Phonetics and phonology; 21. Structured imbalances in the emergence of the Korean vowel system (by Ahn, Sang-Cheol); 22. Final features and proto-Uto-Aztecan: A contribution using morphological reconstruction (by Dakin, Karen); 23. Facts, theory and dogmas in historical linguistics: Vowel quantity from Latin to Romance (by Loporcaro, Michele); 24. On the irregularity of Open Syllable Lengthening in German (by Page, B. Richard); 25. The resilience of prosodic templates in the history of West Germanic (by Smith, Laura Catharine); 26. Part V: Variation; 27. Urban interactions and written standards in Early Modern German (by Spencer, Bruce H.); 28. The Hollandish roots of Pella Dutch in Iowa (by Reenen, Pieter van); 29. Language index; 30. Name index; 31. Subject index