Reconstructing Syntax / / edited by Jóhanna Barðdal, Spike Gildea, and Eugenio R. Lujan.

• Superior document: Brill's Studies in Historical Linguistics Series ; Volume 11.
• TeilnehmendeR: Jóhanna Barðdal, 1969-; Gildea, Spike,; Luján, Eugenio R.,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, The Netherlands : : Koninklijke Brill NV,, [2020]; ©2020
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Edition: First edition.
• Language: English
• Series: Brill's studies in historical linguistics ; Volume 11.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource.
• Notes: Includes index.

"During several decades, syntactic reconstruction has been more or less regarded as a bootless and an unsuccessful venture, not least due to the heavy criticism in the 1970s from scholars like Watkins, Jeffers, Lightfoot, etc. This fallacious view culminated in Lightfoot's (2002: 625) conclusion: "[i]f somebody thinks that they can reconstruct grammars more successfully and in more widespread fashion, let them tell us their methods and show us their results. Then we'll eat the pudding." This volume provides methods for the identification of (i) cognates in syntax, and (ii) the directionality of syntactic change, showcasing the results in the introduction and eight articles. These examples are offered as both tastier and also more nourishing than the pudding Lightfoot had in mind when discarding the viability of reconstructing syntax"-- Provided by publisher.

Table of Contents

1. The Curious Case of Reconstruction in Syntax / Spike Gildea, Eugenio R. Luja´n and Jo´hanna Barðdal -- Part I. Cognacy: 2. Reconstructing the Source of Nominative-Absolutive Alignment in Two Amazonian Language Families / Spike Gildea and Fla´via de Castro Alves -- 3. Conducting Syntactic Reconstruction of Languages with No Written Records / Kikusawa Ritsuko -- 4. External Possessor Constructions in Indo-European / Silvia Luraghi -- 5. How to Identify Cognates in Syntax? Taking Watkins' Legacy One Step Further / Jo´hanna Barðdal and Tho´rhallur Eytho´rsson -- Part II. Directionality: 6. On the Origins of the Ergative Marker wa~ in the Viceitic Languages of the Chibchan Family / Sara Pacchiarotti -- 7. Voice, Transitivity and Tense/Aspect: Directionality of Change in Indo-European (Evidence from Greek and Vedic) / Nikolaos Lavidas and Leonid Kulikov -- 8. On Shared Structural Innovations: the Diachrony of Adverbial Subordination in Semitic / Na'ama Pat-El -- 9. Reconstructing Semantic Roles: Proto-Indo-European *-bhi / Eugenio R. Luja´n and A´ngel Lo´pez Chala -- Index.