Stefan Pfänder – författare

This volume embarks on an exploration of the processual and dynamic character of grammatical constructions in emergence, both from an ‘emergent’ and an ‘emerging’ perspective. ‘Emerging’ constructions develop out of their discourse contexts. Talking of emerging constructions is compatible with a view of grammar as a stable system of rules and structures which may ‘emerge’ (i.e., come into existence) out of a pool of previously unordered elements. ‘Emergent’ constructions on the contrary are due to the on-line production of grammar in time. The term ‘emergent’ emphasises the fact that a grammatical structure is always temporary and ephemeral. In both senses, grammar is modelled as a highly adaptive resource for interaction. On the basis of empirical studies on spoken English, German, Hebrew, Swedish and French, the volume addresses the following questions: How can what initially appears to be construction x end up being construction y in on-line syntax? What are the local interactional needs which such processes respond to in the process of their emergence? Does the on-line (re-)modelling of a construction concern its syntactic or semantic side ‑ or both? And finally: Should emergent grammatical structures as they unfold in real time be seen as stages in the emerging of grammar?

Modern contact linguistics has primarily focused on contact between languages that are genetically unrelated and structurally distant. This compendium of articles looks instead at the effects of pre–existing structural congruency between the affected languages at the time of their initial contact, using the Romance and Slavic languages as examples. In contact of this kind, both genetic and typological similarities play a part.

Frequency has been identified as one of the most influential factors in language processing, and plays a major role in usage-based models of language learning and language change. The research presented in this volume challenges established models of linguistic representation. Instead of learning and processing language compositionally, larger units and co-occurence relations are at work. The main point taken by the authors is that by studying the effect of distributional patterns and changes in such patterns we can establish a unified framework that explains the dynamics of language systems with a limited set of processing factors.

The Narratologia series publishes state-of-the-art monographs and collective volumes devoted to modern narrative theory and its historical reconstruction in all the philological disciplines. It is the first narratological forum of its kind in Germany. In addition to literary texts, the series focuses on narration in everyday contexts, in pictorial media, in film and in the new media as well as on narration in historiography, ethnology, medicine, and the law.The series publishes in German and English. All volumes are peer reviewed by two anonymous assessors.

This book takes a fresh approach to analysing how new languages are created, combining in-depth colonial history and empirical, usage-based linguistics.

This book takes a fresh approach to analysing how new languages are created, combining in-depth colonial history and empirical, usage-based linguistics.