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Constraints on diachronic development: the Animacy Hierarchy and the Relevance Constraint
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Hans-Olav Enger
Published/Copyright:
September 20, 2011
Abstract
The present paper investigates language change in the categories of Number, Gender, Case and Definiteness from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. On the basis of data from Germanic and Slavic, as well as from Greek, Breton, Spanish and Persian, it is claimed that the observed changes are constrained by the Animacy Hierarchy and what we call the Relevance Constraint, which says that language change targets the part of the lexicon where the categories in question are most relevant for human experience and the changes do not make any ‘leaps’ along the Hierarchy. It is suggested that animacy and relevance presuppose a linguistic theory based on embodiment and construal, such as cognitive linguistics.
Published Online: 2011-09-20
Published in Print: 2011-09
© by Akademie Verlag, Tromsø, Germany
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Articles in the same Issue
- Constraints on diachronic development: the Animacy Hierarchy and the Relevance Constraint
- Revisiting the conjugation classes of Eastern Highlands Otomi
- Ditransitive constructions in Ainu
- The distribution of labor between adpositions and case within complex spatial PPs
- Review
- Review
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