Morphology and Language History
In honour of Harold Koch
Yale University / University of Manchester / University of Western Australia
This volume aims to make a contribution to codifying the methods and practices linguists use to recover language history, focussing predominantly on historical morphology. The volume includes studies on a wide range of languages: not only Indo-European, but also Austronesian, Sinitic, Mon-Khmer, Basque, one Papuan language family, as well as a number of Australian families. Few collections are as cross-linguistic as this, reflecting the new challenges which have emerged from the study of languages outside those best known from historical linguistics. The contributors illustrate shared methodological and theoretical issues concerning genetic relatedness (that is, the use of morphological evidence for classification and subgrouping), reconstruction and processes of change with a diverse range of data. The volume is in honour of Harold Koch, who has long combined innovative research on understudied languages with methodological rigour and codification of practices within the discipline.
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 298]
2008.
x, 364 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Hardbound – Available
ISBN
9789027248145
|
EUR
115.00
|
USD
173.00
e-Book – Sold by e-book platforms
ISBN
9789027290960
|
EUR
115.00
|
USD
173.00
Table of Contents
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Contributors' addresses
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vii–ix
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1–11
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Part I. Genetic relatedness
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13
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15–30
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31–41
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43–58
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59–69
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71–87
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Part II. Reconstruction
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89
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91–97
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99–106
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107–121
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123–137
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139–154
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155–166
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167–183
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185–200
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201–209
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211–219
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221–234
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235–250
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251–265
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Part III. Processes of change
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267
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269–280
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281–298
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299–312
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313–327
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329–339
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341–348
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349–354
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Index of languages
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355–359
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Index of subjects
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361–364
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Quotes
“Comparative studies of Australian languages have recurrently suffered either from a lack of methodological rigour, or from the belief that the comparative method simply does not apply on this continent. Over three decades Harold Koch's patient and painstaking work, by bringing an Indo-Europeanist training to bear on what appear to be intractable problems, is a welcome corrective to these trends. The papers in this volume pay a suitable tribute to his work, ranging over a number of philological problems in Australian languages with a leavening of other reconstructive work on Hittite, Papuan, Mon-Khmer, Basque and Sino-Tibetan. There is a particular emphasis on morphological reconstruction, which is at the same time a still-underdeveloped aspect of the comparative method and the likely key to many problems in comparative Australian linguistics.”
Nick Evans, Professor of Linguistics, Australian National University
Subjects
Benjamins Subject classification
BIC Subject
CFF: Historical & comparative linguistics
BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics
U.S. Library of Congress Control Number: 2008019102