Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Prepositional Infinitives in Romance: A Usage-Based Approach to Syntactic Change

Prepositional Infinitives in Romance: A Usage-Based Approach to Syntactic Change

Bernhardt, Karl
Davis, Graeme
Garner, Mark

Paperback

Series: Studies in Historical Linguistics, Book 3

SpanishLiterary CriticismGrammar & Style

ISBN10: 3039113275
ISBN13: 9783039113279
Publisher: Peter Lang Uk
Published: Dec 6 2007
Pages: 414
Weight: 1.21
Height: 0.85 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
This book examines the present-day distribution and diachronic evolution of a set of infinitival structures in Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian, making use of extensive corpus data and investigating how pragmatic factors and usage patterns interact with syntax. After a contrastive account of the patterns of clausal subordination in Latin and Romance, the rise of prepositional infinitives is traced through the documented history of the three languages, revealing astonishing parallels in their development. The analysis of the data shows how cognitive principles such as reanalysis and entrenchment combine with parameters such as relevance and usage frequency to cause syntactic change. Beyond providing a genuine explanation for the observed processes in the Romance languages, this study offers new evidence for the existence of language-independent, cross-linguistically applicable principles and mechanisms in language change.

Also from

Bernhardt, Karl

View All

Also in

Spanish

View All