Synopses & Reviews
In the context of the increasingly lively debate on paths and processes operative in language change, the concepts grammaticalization and reanalysis/reinterpretation are especially crucial. There does however appear to be a certain degree of confusion about what these terms actually refer to. Are grammaticalization and reanalysis mutually exclusive, or are they complementary? To what extent do grammaticalization processes imply reanalysis, and what is that distinguishes these two processes? On the basis of concrete examples from the Romance languages the articles assembled in this volume (a fruit of the Section titled Between Lexicon and Grammar. Reanalysis in the Romance Languages at the Romance Languages Conference in Jena in 1997) approach these questions from a variety of angles. New insights into the cognitive and linguistic mechanisms underlying these two processes in language change come notably from those studies analyzing reanalysis and grammaticalization with the aid of semantico-pragmatic criteria.
Synopsis
Over the past few decades, the book series Linguistische Arbeiten Linguistic Studies], comprising over 500 volumes, has made a significant contribution to the development of linguistic theory both in Germany and internationally. The series will continue to deliver new impulses for research and maintain the central insight of linguistics that progress can only be made in acquiring new knowledge about human languages both synchronically and diachronically by closely combining empirical and theoretical analyses. To this end, we invite submission of high-quality linguistic studies from all the central areas of general linguistics and the linguistics of individual languages which address topical questions, discuss new data and advance the development of linguistic theory.