EMERGENCE OF FUNCTIONS IN LANGUAGE C

This volume explores the question of why languages - even those spoken in the same geographical area by people who share similar social structures occupations and religious beliefs - differ in the meanings expressed by their grammatical systems. Zygmunt Frajzyngier and Marielle Butters outline a new methodology to explore these differences and to discover the motivations behind the emergence of meanings. The motivations that they identify include: the communicative need triggered when the grammatical system inherently produces ambiguities; the principle of functional transparency; the opportunistic emergence of meaning whereby unoccupied formal niches acquire a new function; metonymic emergence whereby a property of an existing function receives a formal means of its own thus creating a new function; and the emergence of functions through language contact. The book offers new analyses of a range of phenomena across different languages such as benefactives and progressives in English and point of view of the subject and goal orientation in Chadic languages. It also draws on a wealth of data from other languages including French Spanish Polish Russian and a variety of less familiar Sino-Russian idiolects.