Grammatical Change in Indo-European Languages
What is it about?
This is a collection of 17 articles presented at the workshop on 'Grammatical Changes in Indo-European Languages' at the XVIIIth International Conference on Historical Linguistics (Montreal 2007) edited by Vit Bubenik, John Hewson and Sarah Rose. It is divided into 5 sections: A. Gender, Animacy and Number (5 articles) B. Definiteness, Case and Prepositions (3 articles) C. Tense/Aspect and Diathesis (4 articles) D. Morphosyntax (4 articles) E. Reconstruction of Inflectional Categories in Indo-European Languages (1 article)
Why is it important?
This colletion is a product of a group of scholars who have been working on new directions in Historical Linguistics focusing on questions of grammatical change and the central issue of grammaticalization. Several studies examine particular problems in a specific language, but often with implications for the IE phylum as a whole, above all in terms of long range grammatical changes in the developemnt of gender differences, strategies of definiteness and the status of prepositional phrase, and the syntax of the verbal diathesis and tense/aspect.