As such, it offers novel approaches to three key areas of current linguistic debate, viz. (1) Methodological practices, (2) Theoretical applications and (3) Modularity."--BOOK JACKET.

This volume brings together studies that combine both traditional and contemporary tools in the study of syntactic geolectal variation, with a special focus on a subset of Iberian varieties. There is an increasing body of research on syntactic micro-variation, but the interaction between dialectology (which makes use of atlases, corpora, databases, questionnaires, interviews, etc.) and formal syntactic studies has traditionally been weak (or even nonexistent), which is precisely the gap the contributions in this book aim at filling in. From a broader perspective, this collection is meant as a contribution to the subfield of linguistic variation and to the more general field of Romance linguistics, with special interest in Spanish and in other Iberian languages. The volume is meant for both researchers and students interested in linguistic variation or dialectology and, specifically, in syntactic variation in Iberian languages.

The ditransitive (or “dative”) alternation is a much-studied phenomenon in contemporary linguistics. This monograph is the first to address the alternation in present-day written German from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective. As well as providing a corpus-based analysis of extensively annotated data and detailed statistical information, the book also contributes to the theory of language by developing an alternative framework to existing investigations of the alternation. It is shown that the alternation can be accounted for in a comprehensive way by adopting a three-layer approach to meaning and sense based on the work of E. Coseriu and S. Levinson. In this approach, a construction’s language-specific encoded meaning is distinguished both from its conventional (“normal”) uses and its discourse-specific interpretations in particular contexts. The monograph is likely to attract attention from researchers in the fields of German and English linguistics, general and contrastive linguistics as well as linguistic theory.

Richard Kayne’s introduction to this volume stresses that comparative work on the syntax of very closely related languages and dialects is a research tool promising to provide both a broad understanding of parameters at their finest-grained and an approach to the question of the minimal units of syntactic variation. The 11 articles in this collection demonstrate the use of this tool in analyzing microparametric variation, principally with reference to Chomsky’s Minimalist program, in a variety of languages. Topics include se/si constructions, hypothetical infinitives and adverbial quantifiers in French and other Romance languages; that-trace variation, Scandinavian possessive constructions, reflexives and subject-verb agreement in Icelandic & Faroese, and verb clusters in continental West Germanic dialects; anaphoric agreement in Labrador Inuttut; negative particle questions in Chinese; imperative inversion in Belfast English; and the second person singular interrogative in the traditional vernacular of Bolton.

The focus of this volume is on semantic and pragmatic change, its causes and mechanisms. The papers gathered here offer both theoretical proposals of more general scope and in-depth studies of language-specific cases of meaning change in particular notional domains. The analyses include data from English, several Romance languages, German, Scandinavian languages, and Oceanic languages. Detailed case-studies covering central semantic domains, such as concession, evidentiality, intensification, modality, negation, scalarity, subjectivity, and temporality, allow the authors to test and refine current models of semantic change, by focusing, for instance, on the respective roles of speakers and hearers in the process and on the relationship between semantic and syntactic reanalysis. Key theoretical notions, such as presuppositions, paradigms, word order, and discourse status are revisited in a diachronic perspective to provide innovative accounts of causes and motivations for linguistic changes. A prominent theme is the evolution of procedural meanings of various kinds. Thus, several papers feature different types of pragmatic markers as their object of study, while others are concerned with items and constructions expressing modality, evidentiality, negation, and relational meanings. Closely related themes are: the interface between semantics and pragmatics/discourse, with figurative uses of language, rhetorical-argumentational strategies, discourse traditions, information structure, and the importance of dialogic contexts in change playing a salient role in several papers; the relationship between meaning change and processes such as grammaticalization, subjectification and pragmaticalization; and, the thorny issue of the categorization of linguistic items such as discourse markers or modal particles, evidentials or epistemic modals, to which the diachronic data are shown to contribute substantially. The volume will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in the fields of semantics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, grammaticalization, and historical linguistics.

Contemporary Trends in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics offers a panorama of current research into multiple varieties of Spanish from several different regions (Mexico, Puerto Rico, Spain, Costa Rica, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Honduras), Catalan, Brazilian Portuguese, as well as varieties in contact with English and Purépecha. The first part of the volume focuses on the structural aspects and use of these languages in the areas of syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, diachrony, phonetics, phonology and morphology. The second part discusses the effect of interacting multiple grammars, namely, first language acquisition, second language acquisition, varieties in contact, and bilingualism. As a whole, the contributions in this volume provide a methodological balance between qualitative and quantitative approaches to Language and, in this way, represent contemporary trends in Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics.