The Changing Languages of Europe

The Changing Languages of Europe by Bernd Heine

The languages and dialects of Europe, this book shows, are becoming increasingly alike. Furthermore this unifying process 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. Professor Heine and Professor Kuteva look for the causes of linguistic change in cultural and economic exchanges across national and regional boundaries and in the processes that occur when speakers learn or are in close contact with another language. Testing their data and conclusions against findings from elsewhere in the world, the authors reconstruct and reveal when, how, and why common grammatical structures have evolved and continue to evolve in processes of change that will, they argue, transform the linguistic landscape of Europe. The book is written in clear, non-technical language. It will appeal to scholars and students of language change and variation in Europe and elsewhere. It will also interest everyone concerned to understand the nature of language and language change.

This excellent monograph offers an insightful study in which European languages have influenced each other in their grammar..[a] richly documented and convinvingly argued book. * Edith Moravcsik, Studies in Language *

Bernd Heine is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the Institute of African Studies, University of Cologne. His 33 books include Auxiliaries: Cognitive forces and grammaticalization (OUP USA, 1993); Cognitive Foundations of Grammar (OUP USA, 1997); Possession: Cognitive sources, forces, and grammaticalization (CUP, 1997); and, with Derek Nurse, African Languages: An introduction (CUP, 2000). Tania Kuteva is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Dusseldorf and author of Auxiliation: An enquiry into the nature of grammaticalization (OUP, 2001). Bernd Heine and Tania Kuteva are the joint authors of World Lexicon of Grammaticalization (CUP, 2002) and Language Contact and Grammatical Change (CUP, 2005).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780199297344
ISBN 10	0199297347
Title	The Changing Languages of Europe
Author	Bernd Heine
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Year published	2006-06-22
Number of pages	376
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.