From Case to Adposition

The development of configurational syntax in Indo-European languages

 | Memorial University of Newfoundland
 | Memorial University of Newfoundland
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ISBN 9789027247957 | EUR 130.00 | USD 195.00
 
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ISBN 9789027292964 | EUR 130.00 | USD 195.00
 
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In the historical development of many languages of the IE phylum the loss of inflectional morphology led to the development of a configurational syntax, where syntactic position marked syntactic role. The first of these configurations was the adposition (preposition or postposition), which developed out of the uninflected particle/preverbs in the older forms of IE, by forming fixed phrases with nominal elements, a pattern later followed in the development of a configurational NP (article + nominal) and VP (auxiliary + verbal).

The authors follow this evolution through almost four thousand years of documentation in all twelve language families of the Indo-European phylum, noting the resemblances between the structure of the original IE case system and the systemic oppositions to be found in the sets of adpositions that replaced it.

Quite apart from its theoretical analyses and proposals which in themselves amount to a new look at many traditional problems, this study has a value in the collected store of information on cases, and on adpositions and their usage. There is also a considerable store of etymological information that is relevant to the description of the systemic development.

[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 280] 2006.  xxx, 420 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 1 July 2008
Table of Contents
“In a clear, succinct, and methodical way, but also with an amazing and admirable command of data from all twelve IE language branches spanning over 3000 years, Hewson and Bubenik offer us a wonderful book with answers to many perplexing questions. This book will become the reference work on the topic, but its worth for typological purposes will also become evident. As in T ense and Aspect in Indo-European Languages (1997), the authors demonstrate why history is important for any meaningful advancement of knowledge. I read the current book with a lot of pleasure and interest, and learned a lot.”
“It's not often that we witness a revolution in linguistics as we do in the present volume. But the study itself demonstrates revolution in language itself as we pass from Latin to French, from Brittanic to Welsh and so on. In the general and massive shift from case to adposition, we have a quantum leap. We have two different analyses of reality. Each is based on a radically different method of systematisation. We become witnesses to a major re-organisation of sentence structure throughout Indo-European, each revealing a similar, yet independent, System of systems. Such a typological shift, as a whole and in individual cases must also be a perceptual shift, i.e. one that looks at things differently, where relationships are realised from a different psycho-mechanical stance.”
Cited by (49)

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Walkden, George, Gemma Hunter McCarley, Raquel Montero, Molly Rolf, Sarah Einhaus & Henri Kauhanen
2023. Sociolinguistic Typology Meets Historical Corpus Linguistics. Transactions of the Philological Society 121:3  pp. 546 ff. DOI logo
Widoff, Andreas
2023. On the feasibility of general meanings in prepositional semantics. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 55:1  pp. 16 ff. DOI logo
Louagie, Dana & Uta Reinöhl
2022. Typologizing nominal expressions: the noun phrase and beyond. Linguistics 60:3  pp. 659 ff. DOI logo
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2021. Revisiting the configurationality issue in Old Icelandic. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 6:1 DOI logo
Karin Ryding & David Wilmsen
2021. The Cambridge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics, DOI logo
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2020. Linguistic system and sociolinguistic environment as competing factors in linguistic variation: A typological approach. Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics 6:2 DOI logo
Ruutma, Mirjam
2019. Do contact languages influence the distribution of prepositions in Estonian dialects?. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 42:3  pp. 365 ff. DOI logo
Ponti, Edoardo Maria & Silvia Luraghi
2018. Non-configurationality in diachrony. Diachronica 35:3  pp. 367 ff. DOI logo
Ponti, Edoardo Maria & Silvia Luraghi
2020. Non-configurationality in diachrony. In Diachronic Treebanks for Historical Linguistics [Benjamins Current Topics, 113],  pp. 70 ff. DOI logo
Reinöhl, Uta & Antje Casaretto
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Bertocci, Davide
2017. “Intensive” verbal prefixes in Archaic Latin. In The role of prefixes in the formation of aspectuality [Biblioteca di Studi Slavistici, 39],  pp. 41 ff. DOI logo
Hintze, A.
2017. Avestan Research 1991–2017, Part 2.. Kratylos 62:1  pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Madariaga, Nerea
2017. Understanding Grammars through Diachronic Change. Frontiers in Psychology 8 DOI logo
Nikitina, Tatiana
2017. Ablative and allative marking of static locations. In Space in Diachrony [Studies in Language Companion Series, 188],  pp. 67 ff. DOI logo
Schätzle, Christin
2017. Genitiv als Stilmittel in der Novelle. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 47:1  pp. 125 ff. DOI logo
Zanchi, Chiara
2017. New evidence for the Source–Goal asymmetry. In Space in Diachrony [Studies in Language Companion Series, 188],  pp. 147 ff. DOI logo
Reinöhl, Uta
2016. A single origin of Indo-European primary adpositions?. Diachronica 33:1  pp. 95 ff. DOI logo
Smitherman, Thomas
2015. Reconstructing non-canonical argument structure for Proto-Indo-European. In Perspectives on Historical Syntax [Studies in Language Companion Series, 169],  pp. 93 ff. DOI logo
Viti, Carlotta
2015. Historical syntax. In Perspectives on Historical Syntax [Studies in Language Companion Series, 169],  pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Viti, Carlotta
Creissels, Denis
2014. Functive phrases in typological and diachronic perspective. Studies in Language 38:3  pp. 605 ff. DOI logo
Creissels, Denis
2016. Functive phrases in typological and diachronic perspective. In Advances in Research on Semantic Roles [Benjamins Current Topics, 88],  pp. 173 ff. DOI logo
Lowe, John
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Verkerk, Annemarie
2014. Diachronic change in Indo-European motion event encoding. Journal of Historical Linguistics 4:1  pp. 40 ff. DOI logo
Verkerk, Annemarie
2015. Where do all the motion verbs come from?. Diachronica 32:1  pp. 69 ff. DOI logo
Cennamo, Michela
2012. Introduction: Argument Realization and Change. Transactions of the Philological Society 110:3  pp. 311 ff. DOI logo
Ledgeway, Adam
2012. From Latin to Romance: Configurationality, Functional Categories and Head‐Marking. Transactions of the Philological Society 110:3  pp. 422 ff. DOI logo
Bubenik, Vit
2011. Review of Bortone (2010): Greek Prepositions from Antiquitiy to the Present. Journal of Historical Linguistics 1:2  pp. 293 ff. DOI logo
Butt, Miriam & Tafseer Ahmed
2011. The redevelopment of Indo-Aryan case systems from a lexical semantic perspective. Morphology 21:3-4  pp. 545 ff. DOI logo
Bortone, Pietro
2010. Prepositions and cases in Medieval Greek. In Greek Prepositions,  pp. 195 ff. DOI logo
Bortone, Pietro
2010. Prepositions and cases in Ancient Greek. In Greek Prepositions,  pp. 109 ff. DOI logo
Hagège, Claude
2010. Conclusion and prospects. In Adpositions,  pp. 330 ff. DOI logo
Hagège, Claude
2010. Adpositions from the semantic point of view. In Adpositions,  pp. 257 ff. DOI logo
Hagège, Claude
2010. Adpositions and adpositional phrases in a syntactic perspective. In Adpositions,  pp. 191 ff. DOI logo
Hagège, Claude
2010. A crosslinguistic survey of the morphological diversity of adpositions and adpositional phrases. In Adpositions,  pp. 106 ff. DOI logo
Hagège, Claude
2010. Towards a comprehensive characterization of adpositions. In Adpositions,  pp. 8 ff. DOI logo
Hagège, Claude
2010. Adpositions, DOI logo
Hewson, John
2009. [no title] - Edith A. Moravcsik. 2006. An introduction to syntax: Fundamentals of syntactic analysis. London/New York: Continuum. Pp. xiv + 273. US$34.95 (softcover). - Edith A. Moravcsik. 2006. An Introduction to syntactic theory. London/New York: Continuum. Pp. xiv + 263. US$34.95 (softcover).. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 54:1  pp. 172 ff. DOI logo
Hewson, John
2016. Carlotta Viti, ed.: Perspectives on historical syntax. Folia Linguistica 50:Historica-vol-37  pp. 337 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2010. Copyright Page. In Greek Prepositions,  pp. iv ff. DOI logo
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2010. Abbreviations. In Adpositions,  pp. ix ff. DOI logo
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2010. Foreword. In Greek Prepositions,  pp. xii ff. DOI logo
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Subjects

Main BIC Subject

CF: Linguistics

Main BISAC Subject

LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General
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U.S. Library of Congress Control Number:  2006047967 | Marc record