{"id":645,"date":"2010-07-16T10:00:48","date_gmt":"2010-07-16T08:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=645"},"modified":"2010-05-10T15:01:00","modified_gmt":"2010-05-10T13:01:00","slug":"types-of-variation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=645","title":{"rendered":"Types of variation"},"content":{"rendered":"
Types of variation:<\/strong> Diachronic, dialectal and typological interfaces. <\/strong>Ed. by Terttu Nevalainen<\/strong>, Juhani Klemola<\/strong>, and Mikko Laitinen<\/strong>. (Studies in language companion series 76.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2006. Pp. viii, 378. ISBN 9789027230867<\/a>. $180 (Hb).<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Debra Ziegeler<\/a><\/strong>, National Coalition of Independent Scholars<\/em><\/p>\n

An attempt to combine the three frequently interlinked but underresearched subdisciplines of diachronic, dialectal, and typological linguistics, this volume provides a perspective on the ways in which these fields interact. The volume, which is dedicated to the memory of one of its contributors, Elina Sorva<\/strong>, <\/strong>represents a carefully-selected collection of studies compiled to capture dimensions of linguistic variation relevant to diachronic, dialectal, and typological linguistics. It covers a range of languages\u2014most of which are derived from Indo-European, and specifically, West Germanic languages. As such, this volume is somewhat conservative in its objectives, although it highlights an area of interface studies that has not been recognized to a sufficient degree in similar volumes. Moreover, this volume contributes to the field of typology in that it focuses on the study of nonstandard variation in a language, which is not frequently considered in typological research.<\/p>\n

The book is divided into three parts. Part 1, \u2018Typology and grammaticalization\u2019, begins with \u2018\u201cTriangulation\u201d of diachrony, dialectology and typology: An overview\u2019, in which the editors, Terttu Nevalainen, Juhani Klemola, and Mikko Laitinen introduce the volume. Next, Anna Siewierska<\/strong> and Dik Bakker<\/strong> discuss \u2018Bi-directional vs. uni-directional asymmetries in the encoding of semantic distinctions in free and bound person forms\u2019. Using a large, computerized database of 328 languages, they illustrate crosslinguistic relations between the degree of morpheme boundedness and the degree of semantic distinctiveness.<\/p>\n

In Part 2, \u2018Diachrony and typology\u2019, Dieter Kastovsky<\/strong> investigates \u2018Historical morphology from a typological point of view\u2019, in which he views the derivation of diachronic morphological change from a typological perspective. Kastovsky concludes that changes at the local level may collaborate to feed back into the system and determine the general direction of the future tendency for change. In \u2018Typology and comparative linguistics: Jakobson revisited\u2019, Konstantin Krasukhin<\/strong> uses the middle voice in Greek, Lithuanian, and Russian to exemplify the manner in which diachronic pathways of grammaticalization can be realized in cognate forms that coexist synchronically across related languages.<\/p>\n

In \u2018Primary adjectives in English and German: Variation and change in diachrony and typology\u2019, Thomas Sch\u00f6neborn<\/strong> uses Robert Dixon\u2019s (Where have all the adjectives gone? And other essays in semantics and syntax<\/em>, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1982) classifications of English primary adjectives to investigate whether the same set of adjectives may be found in a related language, German. Sch\u00f6neborn arrives at the conclusion that German has a different set of primary adjectives than English and also that differences can be found throughout various historical stages of the language.<\/p>\n

\u2018The concessive connective albeit<\/em>\u2019, by Elina Sorva, is one of the most well-researched contributions: it exhaustively covers the history and grammaticalization of the English conjunction albeit<\/em>. Using the Helsinki Corpus, the British National Corpus, and data acquired using the Google search engine, Sorva explains the Middle English origin of albeit<\/em> as well as fluctuations in its frequency over time. Next, in \u2018Possessives and determiners in Old English\u2019, Cynthia Allen<\/strong> offers an explanation for the simultaneous occurrence of both possessive-determiner and determiner-possessive constructions in Old English and early Middle English.<\/p>\n

In \u00a0\u2018Analytic of the samyn<\/em> or synthetic its<\/em>: The use of neuter possessives in Older Scots texts\u2019, Joanna Bugaj<\/strong> presents a study of the rise of the neuter possessive pronoun its<\/em> in Older Scots. Using the Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots, Bugaj compares its<\/em> to a number of other variants such as thereof<\/em>, the samyn<\/em>, and of it<\/em>. The study of pronouns is continued by Mikko Laitinen in \u2018Expressing human indefiniteness in English\u2019, which examines the loss of grammatical gender in indefinite pronouns and the rise of plural (gender-neutral) substitutes in Early Modern English.<\/p>\n

Part 3, \u2018Dialectology and typology\u2019, begins with a contribution from Werner Abraham<\/strong>, \u2018Dialect and typology: Where they meet\u2014and where they don\u2019t\u2019. Abraham argues against the general opinion that dialect data must be explained by sociolinguistic or historical factors. Instead, based on the premise that dialects are simply spoken forms of written, standard codes, he offers an explanation in terms of discourse parsing. In \u2018Somerset relativizers revisited\u2019, Kirsti Peitsara <\/strong>compares her observations of the use of relativizers in the dialects of Somerset, England, with previous work by Ossi Ihalainen (e.g. Relative clauses in the dialect of Somerset. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen <\/em>81\/82<\/em>.187\u201396, 1980) and with other corpora. In \u2018Resilient or yielding? Features of Irish English syntax and aspect in early Australia\u2019, Clemens Fritz<\/strong> surveys The Corpus of Oz Early English for residual Irish English features in the grammar of nineteenth-century Australian English.<\/p>\n

Part 4, \u2018Dialectology, typology and diachrony\u2019, begins with \u2018Negative indefinites: A typological and diachronic perspective on a Brabantic construction\u2019, by Johan van der Auwera<\/strong>, Ludovic De Cuypere<\/strong>, and Annemie Neuckermans<\/strong>. Using previous studies, the authors compare the expression of negative indefinite personal pronouns in a dialect of Dutch with typologically similar phenomena in other languages. In \u2018The relatives who<\/em> and what<\/em> in northern East Anglia\u2019, Patricia Poussa<\/strong> discusses the distribution of\u00a0 subject relativizers, preposition stranding, and concomitant features in a historical study of East Anglian. Additionally, Poussa compares her data with the same phenomena in Afrikaans. Finally, in \u2018Vernacular universals? The case of plural was<\/em> in early Modern English\u2019, Terttu Nevalainen argues that the generalization of singular concord with the past tense forms of be<\/em> is a vernacular universal. He compares his Modern English data with data from Finnish.<\/p>\n

Overall, this volume offers an unusual selection of studies (some more interesting than others) with a highly original, unified theme. However, the range of languages studied is rather restricted: the theme could be expanded to include a more diverse, crosslinguistic coverage of topics.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Types of variation: Diachronic, dialectal and typological interfaces. Ed. by Terttu Nevalainen, Juhani Klemola, and Mikko Laitinen. (Studies in language companion series 76.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2006. Pp. viii, 378. ISBN 9789027230867. $180 (Hb). Reviewed by Debra Ziegeler, National Coalition of Independent Scholars An attempt to combine the three frequently interlinked but underresearched subdisciplines of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":646,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645\/revisions\/646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}