Edited by Petra Sleeman, Freek Van de Velde and Harry Perridon
Although the Germanic and Romance languages are two branches of the same language family and although both have developed the adjective as a separate syntactic and morphological category, the syntax, morphology, and interpretation of adjectives is by no means the same in these two language groups,… read more
One of the recurrent questions in historical linguistics is to what extent languages can borrow grammar from other languages. It seems for instance hardly likely that each 'average European' language developed a definite article all by itself, without any influence from neighbouring languages. It… read more
Edited by Olga Fischer, Muriel Norde and Harry Perridon
The basic idea behind this volume is to probe the nature of grammaticalization. Its contributions focus on the following questions: (i) In how far can grammaticalization be considered a universal diachronic process or mechanism of change and in how far is it conditioned by synchronic factors? (ii)… read more
In this introductory chapter the similarities and differences in the development and the current behavior of the adjective in Germanic and Romance, both within and between the language families, are discussed. A deeper analysis suggests that what seem to be differences may in fact be similarities… read more
In this introductory chapter some of the main (dis)similarities in DP-syntax between the Germanic and Romance languages, as well as between the individual languages of each group, are explored. We take a look at the following subjects: (a) the ways in which the various languages express… read more
