: Regine Eckardt, Gerhard Jäger, Tonjes Veenstra
: Variation, Selection, Development Probing the Evolutionary Model of Language Change
: De Gruyter Mouton
: 9783110205398
: Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TiLSM]ISSN
: 1
: CHF 203.70
:
: Allgemeine und Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft
: English
: 416
: Wasserzeichen/DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: PDF

Can language change be modelled as an evolutionary process? Can notions like variation, selection and competition be fruitfully applied to facts of language development? This volume offers a rich spectrum of ways to elucidate these questions, confronting studies from the perspective of historical and creole linguistics with research in Artificial Intelligence and mathematical modelling of language change.



Regine Eckardt, University of Göttingen, Germany;Gerhard Jäger, University of Bielefeld, Germany;Tonjes Veenstra, ZAS Berlin, Germany.
Frontmatter1
Contents7
Introduction9
Language change as cultural evolution: Evolutionary approaches to language change31
Language change as a source of word order correlations83
Evolutionary motivations for semantic universals111
Back to nature or nurture: Using computer models in creole genesis151
Economy of Merge and grammaticalization: Two steps in the evolution of language187
Prehistoric and posthistoric language in oblivion207
Grammaticalization, constructions and the incremental development of language: Suggestions from the development of Degree Modifiers in English227
The two faces of creole grammar and theirimplications for the origin of complex language261
Functional similarities between bimanual coordination and topic/comment structure315
Inflectional morphology and universal grammar:post hoc versus propter hoc345
Why don’t apes point?383
Backmatter403