Exaptation and Language Change
Editors
| Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
| University of Leuven
This volume is the first collection of papers that is exclusively dedicated to the concept of exaptation, a notion from evolutionary biology that was famously introduced into linguistics by Roger Lass in 1990. The past quarter-century has seen a heated debate on the properties of linguistic exaptation, its demarcation from other processes of linguistic change, and indeed the question of whether it is a useful concept in historical linguistics at all. The contributions in the present volume reflect these diverging points of view. Along with a comprehensive introduction, covering the history of the notion of exaptation from its conception in the field of biology to its adoption in linguistics, the book offers extensive discussion of the concept from various theoretical perspectives, detailed case studies as well as critical reviews of some stock examples. The book will be of interest to scholars working in the fields of evolutionary linguistics, historical linguistics, and the history of linguistics.
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 336] 2016. viii, 411 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
Preface
|
vii–viii
|
1–35
|
|
37–55
|
|
57–92
|
|
93–120
|
|
121–162
|
|
163–195
|
|
197–225
|
|
227–260
|
|
261–285
|
|
287–316
|
|
317–340
|
|
341–375
|
|
377–401
|
|
Language index
|
403–405
|
Subject index
|
407–411
|
“Rather than attempting a unified picture of exaptation, this volume opens it up for further exploration and provides a forum for a discussion of refunctionalization of grammatical elements, with the focus on ''unexpected'' changes that set exaptation apart from cross-linguistically recurrent changes such as those captured by grammaticalization clines. The main value of this collection is in the diversity of views it offers and the variety of phenomena that get discussed under a common rubric.”
Natalie Operstein, on Linguist List 28.811 (10/02/2017)
“As the editors remark, even readers ‘reluctant to accept a new term in linguistics’ will find that this collection ‘has a lot to offer, as the plethora of changes that the authors present are often difficult to account for in well-known types of change like grammaticalization, and lay bare the intriguing dynamics of linguistic change’. I would agree whole-heartedly with this assessment.”
Roger Lass, University of Edinburgh, in Diachronica 34:1 (2017)
Cited by
Cited by 11 other publications
No author info given
De Smet, Isabeau & Freek Van de Velde
Gaeta, Livio
Konvička, Martin
Kuteva, Tania, Bernd Heine, Bo Hong, Haiping Long, Heiko Narrog & Seongha Rhee
Noël, Dirk
Ralli, Angela
Rupp, Laura & David Britain
Schmuck, Mirjam, Matthias Eitelmann & Antje Dammel
von Mengden, Ferdinand & Anneliese Kuhle
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 04 april 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
Subjects
BIC Subject: CFF – Historical & comparative linguistics
BISAC Subject: LAN009000 – LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General