Vowel-Shifting in the English Language

An Evolutionary Account

von Kamil Kaźmierski

222 Seiten, Hardcover

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

English has long been suspected to be a vowel-shifting language. This hypothesis, often only adumbrated in previous work, is closely investigated in this book. Framed within a novel framework combining evolutionary linguistics and Optimality Theory, the account proposed here argues that the replacement of duration by quality as the primary cue to signaling vowel oppositions has resulted in the ‘shiftiness’ of many post-medieval English varieties.

• Reihe: Topics in English Linguistics [TiEL]
• ISBN: 9783110369502
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 26.02.2015
• Genre: Sprachwissenschaft, Literaturwissenschaft/Allgemeine und Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft
• Verlag: de Gruyter Mouton