Comparative studies in early Germanic languages
Subtitle: with a focus on verbal categories
By: Edited by Gabriele Diewald, Leibniz University Hannover ; Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, University of Helsinki ; Ilse Wischer, University of Potsdam
Contributors: Diewald, Gabriele, editor of compilation; Kahlas-Tarkka, Leena, editor of compilation; Wischer, Ilse, 1959- editor of compilation
Series: Studies in Language Companion series -- volume 138
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Amsterdam; Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 318
ISBN-13: 9789027206053; 9789027271457
Subjects: English language; Comparative Grammar; Historical Grammar; Germanic languages; Comparative and general Grammar; Grammaticalization
Description: This volume offers a coherent and detailed picture of the diachronic development of verbal categories of Old English, Old High German, and other Germanic languages. Starting from the observation that German and English show diverging paths in the development of verbal categories, even though they descended from a common ancestor language, the contributions present in-depth, empirically founded studies on the stages and directions of these changes combining historical comparative methods with grammaticalisation theory. This collection of papers provides the reader with an indispensable source of information on the early traces of distinct developments, thus laying the foundation for a broad-scale scenario of grammaticalisation of verbal categories. The volume will be of particular interest to scholars of language change, grammaticalisation, and diachronic sociolinguistics; it offers important new insights for typologists and for everybody interested in the make-up of verbal categories.
Notes: This publication comprises the papers presented at a workshop on the "Contrastive study of the verbal categories and their grammaticalisation in Old English and Old High German" held at the 16th ICEHL in Pécs, Hungary, in August 2010.

Includes bibliographical references and index.