Walter Bisang

Walter Bisang

List of John Benjamins publications for which Walter Bisang plays a role.

Journals

Title

Paradigm Change: In the Transeurasian languages and beyond

Edited by Martine Robbeets and Walter Bisang

[Studies in Language Companion Series, 161] 2014. xix, 345 pp.
Subjects Historical linguistics | Morphology | Syntax

Articles

The paucity or absence of inflectional morphology (radical analyticity) and the omission of verbal arguments with no concomitant agreement (radical pro-drop) are well-known characteristics of East and mainland Southeast Asian languages (EMSEA). Both of them have a special status in typology and… read more | Article
Bisang, Walter. 2018. Nominal and verbal classification: A comparative perspective. The Diachrony of Classification Systems, McGregor, William B. and Søren Wichmann (eds.), pp. 241–282
The present paper starts from the observation that classification is cross-linguistically very widespread in the domain of the noun and rather rare in the domain of the verb. It argues that this asymmetry is not arbitrary. It is motivated by two conditions: (i) the markers used for classification… read more | Chapter
Bisang, Walter. 2016. Finiteness, nominalization, and information structure: Convergence and divergence. Finiteness and Nominalization, Chamoreau, Claudine and Zarina Estrada-Fernández (eds.), pp. 13–42
The correlation between finiteness and nominalization is frequently discussed in the literature. This paper will introduce information structure as a third factor that has an important impact on processes of grammaticalization. Nominalized verb forms can be used in the formation of relative clauses… read more | Article
This paper will present a historical explanation of radical pro-drop based on the strength of morphological paradigms. It will start out from the observation that East and mainland Southeast Asian languages (EMSEA) with their reduced or absent morphology are radical pro-drop, while West African… read more | Chapter
Robbeets, Martine and Walter Bisang. 2014. Chapter 1. When paradigms change. Paradigm Change: In the Transeurasian languages and beyond, Robbeets, Martine and Walter Bisang (eds.), pp. 1–20
Chapter
Bisang, Walter, Wang Luming and Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky. 2013. Subjecthood in Chinese: Neurolinguistics meets typology. Increased Empiricism: Recent advances in Chinese Linguistics, Jing-Schmidt, Zhuo (ed.), pp. 23–48
The existence of subject-object asymmetry in Chinese is a point of controversy. From a UG perspective, the syntactic category of subject is invariably the same, while LaPolla (1990) argues that there is no such category in Chinese. This paper takes an intermediate position and starts out from the… read more | Article
Bisang, Walter. 2010. Grammaticalization in Chinese: A construction-based account. Gradience, Gradualness and Grammaticalization, Traugott, Elizabeth Closs and Graeme Trousdale (eds.), pp. 245–277
The present paper shows that constructions are the driving force of grammaticalization in Chinese. It will be argued that this is due to two typological properties: the relative freedom with which a lexical item can be assigned to different grammatical functions (precategoriality in Late Archaic… read more | Article
Article
Grammaticalization in East and mainland Southeast Asian languages is characterized by a set of properties which seem to be typical of that area. The aim of this paper is to present these properties and to examine them from the perspective of several prominent approaches to grammaticalization:… read more | Article
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Late Archaic Chinese is a precategorial language, i.e., a language whose lexical items are not preclassified in the lexicon for the syntactic functions of N and V. This will be shown on the basis of structural-conceptual criteria as those developed by Croft (2000) and Sasse (1993b) as well as on… read more | Article
Bisang, Walter. 2007. Some general thoughts about linguistic typology and dialogue linguistics. Dialogue and Culture, Grein, Marion and Edda Weigand (eds.), pp. 53–72
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Article
Bisang, Walter. 1998. Grammaticalization and Language Contact, Constructions and Positions. The Limits of Grammaticalization, Giacalone Ramat, Anna and Paul J. Hopper (eds.), pp. 13–58
Article
Grammaticalization processes in East and mainland South East Asian languages show remarkable areal parallels within the domain of the verb and the noun. Since language contact increases processes of reanalysis it supports grammaticalization and its cross-linguistic similarity. Grammaticalization… read more | Article
Four operations of nominal concretization are crucial for presenting a typology of classifier languages: individualization, classification, relationalization (possession), and referentialization. The first three of these operations are at work in the Hmong classifier system. The development of… read more | Article