The evolution of complex spatial expressions within the romance family : : a corpus-based study of French and Italian / / by Thomas Hoelbeek.

• Superior document: Brill's Studies in Historical Linguistics, Volume 7
• VerfasserIn: Hoelbeek, Thomas,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, [Netherlands] ;, Boston, [Massachusetts] : : Brill,, 2017.; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Series: Brill's studies in historical linguistics ; Volume 7.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (263 pages) :; illustrations, tables.
• Notes: "This book is a revised version of my Ph. D. dissertation, which I defended at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel on April 28, 2014."

In The Evolution of Complex Spatial Expressions within the Romance Family , Thomas Hoelbeek offers a corpus-based historical study of a group of expressions in French and Italian. Applying a functional approach, he tackles adpositions containing the French noun travers or the Italian noun traverso , previously never analysed from a diachronic perspective. This study enriches our knowledge of the expressions analysed and their functioning in the past, but also in present-day French and Italian, providing diachronic observations regarding functional notions put to the test. Thomas Hoelbeek’s work also contributes to a better understanding of the grammaticalisation mechanisms of complex constructions, and shows that typologically related languages may evolve differently in their ways of representing space.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- On French and Italian Complex Spatial Expressions -- Data Collection and Research Methodology -- Interpretative Framework -- Results of the French Analysis -- Results of the Italian Analysis -- Contrastive Analysis -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Cited Text Index -- Author Index -- Subject Index.