Read more
Zusatztext Important and innovative. Informationen zum Autor Guy Deutscher is at the Department of Languages and Cultures of Ancient Mesopotamia at the University of Leiden in Holland. His book, The Unfolding of Language, was published in 2005 to both critical and popular acclaim. Klappentext Akkadian, an ancient Semitic language spoken in Assyria and Babylonia, is one of the earliest known languages, with a surviving written history from 2500BC to 500BC. Guy Deutscher investigates its development over these two millennia. He shows that changes in the language can be linked to the emergence of complex patterns of communication required by an increasingly sophisticated civilization. His book will interest specialists and general linguists. It offers the former a significant contribution towards a badly needed historical grammar of Akkadian. Its value for the latter lies not only in the central theoretical questions it addresses on how and why languages change, but in the window it opens to a language that, despite its enormous historical importance, has rarely been presented to non-specialists. The fact that the book links linguistic to social change will also make it of interest to archaeologists and historians of the ancient Near East. Zusammenfassung In this book Guy Deutscher examines the historical development of Akkadian, the oldest recorded Semitic language and one of the earliest attested languages. Two thousand years of texts from 2500BC to 500BC provide a unique source for the study of linguistic change.The first two parts of the book present an historical grammar of sentential complementation. Part one traces the emergence of new structures, describing how finite complements first developed, and tracing the grammaticalization of the quotative construction. Part two examines the language's functional history. It looks at the evolution of linguistic structures, showing for example how finite complements and embedded questions became more widespread as other parataxis and non-finite complements receded. In the final part of the book the author puts these changes in a broader typological perspective and compares the development of Akkadian to similar processes in other languages. The emergence of finite complementation may, he suggests, be an adaptive process, related to the growing complexity of communication.This book throws new light on the nature of linguistic change and offers fresh insights on a language that has rarely been presented to non-specialists, despite its enormous historical importance. Inhaltsverzeichnis Part I: Preliminary Chapters 1: Introduction 2: What is Sentential Complementation? 3: Akkadian Part II: Structural History: The Emergence of Complementizers and Quotatives 4: The Emergence of Finite Complements 5: The Grammaticalization of the Quotative Construction Part III: Functional History: The Changes in the Functional Domain of Complementation from 2500 BC to 500 BC 6: The Functional Domain of Complementation in Babylonian 7: Verbs of Knowledge, Perception, and Others 8: Manipulation and Modality 9: The WH-Functional Domain, Direct and Indirect Questions Part IV: The Development of Complementation as an Adaptive Process 10: Functional Parallels for the Babylonian Development 11: The Development of Complementation as an Adaptive Process Glossary References Index of Subjects Index of Quoted Texts ...
