Nominal classification : a history of its study from the classical period to the present
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Nominal classification : a history of its study from the classical period to the present
（Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science, ser. 3 . Studies in the history of the language sciences ; v. 121）
John Benjamins, c2013
- : hb
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [337]-380) and indexes
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This book offers the first comprehensive survey of the study of gender and classifiers throughout the history of Western linguistics. Based on an analysis of over 200 genetically and typologically diverse languages, the author shows that these seemingly arbitrary and redundant categories play in fact a central role in the lexicon, grammar and the organization of discourse. As a result, the often contradictory approaches to their functionality and semantic motivation encapsulate the evolving conceptions of such issues as cognitive and cultural correlates of linguistic structure, the diverse functions of grammatical categories, linguistic complexity, agreement phenomena and the interplay between lexicon and grammar. The combination of a typological and historiographic perspective adopted here allows the reader to appreciate the detail and insight of earlier, supposedly 'prescientific' accounts in light of the data now available and to examine contemporary discussions in the context of prevailing conceptions in the study of language at different points in its history since antiquity.
Table of Contents
- 1. Preface & Acknowledgments
- 2. List of abbreviations
- 3. 1.Preliminaries
- 4. 2. Nominal classification systems: An overview
- 5. 3. From Protagoras to the philosophical grammars
- 6. 4. From the 'Romantics' to the Neogrammarians
- 7. 5. Structuralism
- 8. 6. Contemporary studies of gender/noun classes
- 9. 7. Contemporary studies of classifiers
- 10. 8. Final discussion
- 11. References
- 12. Index
- 13. Index of biographical names
- 14. Index of subjects and terms
- 15. Language index
by "Nielsen BookData"