Comparative Studies in Early Germanic Languages With a Focus on Verbal Categories |
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| Editor:
| Diewald, Gabriele
Kahlas-Tarkka, Leena
Wischer, Ilse |
| Series title: | Studies in Language Companion Ser. |
| ISBN: | 978-90-272-0605-3 |
| Publication Date: | Oct 2013 |
| Publisher: | John Benjamins Publishing Company
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| Book Format: | Hardback |
| List Price: | USD $149.00 |
Book Description:
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This volume offers a coherent and detailed picture of the diachronic development of verbal categories of Old English, Old High German, and other Germanic languages. Starting from the observation that German and English show diverging paths in the development of verbal categories, even though they descended from a common ancestor language, the contributions present in-depth, empirically founded studies on the stages and directions of these changes combining historical comparative...
More DescriptionThis volume offers a coherent and detailed picture of the diachronic development of verbal categories of Old English, Old High German, and other Germanic languages. Starting from the observation that German and English show diverging paths in the development of verbal categories, even though they descended from a common ancestor language, the contributions present in-depth, empirically founded studies on the stages and directions of these changes combining historical comparative methods with grammaticalisation theory. This collection of papers provides the reader with an indispensable source of information on the early traces of distinct developments, thus laying the foundation for a broad-scale scenario of the grammaticalisation of verbal categories. The volume will be of particular interest to scholars of language change, grammaticalisation, and diachronic sociolinguistics; it offers important new insights for typologists and for everybody interested in the make-up of verbal categories.