Meaning Change in Grammaticalization: An Enquiry Into Semantic Reanalysis

ISBN-13: 9780199262601 / Angielski / Twarda / 2006 / 296 str.

Regine Eckardt

Opis

This book explores the key mechanisms underlying semantic change. Meaning changes work, the author shows, through modes of reanalysis undertaken by speakers and listeners, and are particularly evident in processes of grammaticalization in which lexical items lose autonomous meaning. Regine Eckardt's approach is derived from formal semantic theory and developed in the context of several in-depth case studies. Her book will interest scholars and advanced students of historical and comparative linguistics and formal semantics.

Recenzje

The book is well written and presents its argumentation with clarity, frequently supported by illustrative examples from different languages...in this book Eckard undoubtedly makes a significant contribution to our understanding of semantic reanalysis, one which serves as a useful complement to other approaches to meaning change in grammaticalization.

O autorze

Regine Eckardt is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Göttingen and associate editor of the Journal of Semantics. She is the author of Events, Adverbs and Other Things (1998) and of numerous articles on semantics, pragmatics, and language change, and with Klaus von Heusinger and Christoph Schwarze, editor of Words in Time (2003).