The Changing Languages of Europe
Abstract
Abstract The main goal of this book is to demonstrate that the languages and dialects of Europe are becoming increasingly alike. This unifying process — that goes at least as far back as the Roman empire — is accelerating and affects every one of Europe's 150 or so languages, including those of different families such as Basque and Finnish. The changes are by no means restricted to lexical borrowing, but involve every grammatical aspect of the language. They are usually so minute that neither native speakers nor trained linguists notice them. But they accumulate and give rise to new grammatical structures that lead, in turn, to new patterns of areal relationship. The book describes linguistic transfer from one language to another in terms of grammatical replication, using grammaticalization theory as a framework. The linguistic domains covered in more detail are definite and indefinite articles, possession, case marking, and the relationship between questions and subordination.
Cite this
Bernd Heine, Tania Kuteva (2006). The Changing Languages of Europe. Oxford University Press eBooks. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297337.001.0001
@book{bernd2006the,
title = {The Changing Languages of Europe},
author = {Heine, Bernd and Kuteva, Tania},
year = {2006},
publisher = {Oxford University Press eBooks},
doi = {10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297337.001.0001}
}Citations in this library
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