Paperback / softback. New. Considers how and why forms and meanings of different languages at different times may resemble each other. This book investigates the relationship between a real diffusion and the genetic development of languages, and reveals the means of distinguishing what may cause one language to share the characteristics of another. ISBN 0199283087 9780199283088 [GB]

ISBN10: 0199283087, ISBN13: 9780199283088, [publisher: Oxford University Press, Oxford] Softcover Paperback. Two languages can resemble each other in the categories, constructions, and types of meaning they use; and in the forms they employ to express these. Such resemblances may be the consequence of universal characteristics of language, of chance or coincidence, of the borrowing by one language of another's words, or of the diffusion of grammatical, phonetic, and phonological characteristics that takes place when languages come into contact. Languages sometimes showlikeness because they have borrowed not from each other but from a third language. Languages that come from the same ancestor may have similar grammatical categories and meanings expressed by similarforms: such languages are said to be genetically affiliated. This book considers how and why forms and meanings of different languages at different times may resemble one another. Its editors and authors aim (a) to explain and identify the relationship between areal diffusion and the genetic development of languages, and (b) to discover the means of distinguishing what may cause one language to share the characteristics of another. The introduction outlines the issues thatunderlie these aims, introduces the chapters which follow, and comments on recurrent conclusions by the contributors. The problems are formidable and the pitfalls numerous: for example, several of theauthors draw attention to the ...