Exaptation and Language Change
Editors
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
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Preface | pp. vii–viii
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Exaptation: Taking stock of a controversial notion in linguisticsFreek Van de Velde and Muriel Norde | pp. 1–35
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Being exacting about exapting: An exaptation omnibusBrian D. Joseph | pp. 37–55
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Co-opting exaptation in a theory of language changeLivio Gaeta | pp. 57–92
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Exaptation in Japanese and beyondHeiko Narrog | pp. 93–120
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Functional changes and (meta-)linguistic evolutionFerdinand von Mengden | pp. 121–162
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Exaptation from the perspective of construction morphologyMuriel Norde and Graeme Trousdale | pp. 163–195
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Exaptation and degrammaticalization within an acquisition-based model of abductive reanalysisDavid Willis | pp. 197–225
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Allogenous exaptationFrancesco Gardani | pp. 227–260
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How functionless is junk, and how useful is exaptation? Probing the - i/esc - morphemeDieter Vermandere and Claire Meul | pp. 261–285
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The history of nominative -er in Danish and Swedish: A case of exaptation?Eva Skafte Jensen | pp. 287–316
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Is the development of linking elements in German a case of exaptation?Renata Szczepaniak | pp. 317–340
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Exploring and recycling: Topichood and the evolution of Ibero-romance articlesAlbert WallÁlvaro Sebastián Octavio de Toledo y Huerta | pp. 341–375
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Exaptation and adaptation: Two historical routes to final particles in JapaneseKatsunobu Izutsu and Mitsuko Narita Izutsu | pp. 377–401
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Language index | pp. 403–405
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Subject index | pp. 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 (22)
Cited by 22 other publications
Elson, Mark J.
Colasanti, Valentina
Ralli, Angela & Andreas Rouvalis
Rosenkvist, Henrik
2021. Clause-final negative particles in varieties of Swedish. Studies in Language 45:3 ► pp. 598 ff.
De Smet, Isabeau & Freek Van de Velde
De Troij, Robbert & Freek Van de Velde
Gaeta, Livio
2020. Remotivating inflectional classes. In Historical Linguistics 2017 [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 350], ► pp. 206 ff.
Ralli, Angela
von Mengden, Ferdinand & Anneliese Kuhle
Kuteva, Tania, Bernd Heine, Bo Hong, Haiping Long, Heiko Narrog & Seongha Rhee
Morin, Yves Charles
Noël, Dirk
2019. The decline of the Deontic nci construction in Late Modern English. Cognitive Linguistic Studies 6:1 ► pp. 22 ff.
Rupp, Laura & David Britain
Nieuwenhuijsen, Dorien
Pato, Enrique
Rosemeyer, Malte
Schmuck, Mirjam, Matthias Eitelmann & Antje Dammel
2018. Introduction. In Reorganising Grammatical Variation [Studies in Language Companion Series, 203], ► pp. 1 ff.
Gąsiorowski, Piotr
Konvička, Martin
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 july 2024. 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
Main BIC Subject
CFF: Historical & comparative linguistics
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General