Title: A cultural evolutionary model of patterns in semantic change
Abstract: Language change has been described as an unintended effect of language in use (Keller, On language change: The invisible hand in language, Routledge, 1994). In this view, change results from the way individuals use their language; the challenge is thus to explain change and its properties in terms of factors operating on the individual level, and population dynamics. An intriguing example of such a phenomenon is the finding that language change shows some highly regular tendencies. This has recently received considerable attention in the literature (Bybee et al., Why small children cannot change language on their own: Suggestions from the English past tense, John Benjamins, 1994; Heine and Kuteva, World lexicon of grammaticalization, Cambridge University Press, 2002; Traugott and Dasher, Regularity in semantic change, Cambridge University Press, 2002; Hopper and Traugott, Grammaticalization, CambridgeUniversity Press, 2003). In unrelated languages, similar words often change in similar ways, along similar “trajectories” of development. This phenomenon is called “unidirectionality”, and it is an important part of processes of grammaticalization, items changing from a lexical meaning to a grammatical function. It has been claimed that around 90–99% of all processes of grammaticalization are unidirectional (Haspelmath, Linguistics 37: 1043–1068, 1999).
Publication Year: 2010
Publication Date: 2010-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 31
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