Book contents
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors to Volume II
- General Preface
- Abbreviations for Corpora and Other Electronic Resources
- General Editor’s Introduction
- Introduction to Volume II
- Part I The Textual Record
- Part II Lighthouse Works and Authors
- Part III Genre and Medium in the Record
- Part IV Modelling the Record: Methods and Theories
- 27 Quantitative Methods and the History of English
- 28 Generative Accounts of Change
- 29 Functional Accounts of Change
- 30 Grammaticalisation
- 31 Cognitive Approaches to the History of English
- 32 Construction Grammar and English Historical Linguistics
- 33 Psycholinguistic Perspectives on Language Change
- Appendix: List of Corpora and Other Electronic Resources
- Index
- References
29 - Functional Accounts of Change
from Part IV - Modelling the Record: Methods and Theories
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 October 2025
Book contents
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- The New Cambridge History of the English Language
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors to Volume II
- General Preface
- Abbreviations for Corpora and Other Electronic Resources
- General Editor’s Introduction
- Introduction to Volume II
- Part I The Textual Record
- Part II Lighthouse Works and Authors
- Part III Genre and Medium in the Record
- Part IV Modelling the Record: Methods and Theories
- 27 Quantitative Methods and the History of English
- 28 Generative Accounts of Change
- 29 Functional Accounts of Change
- 30 Grammaticalisation
- 31 Cognitive Approaches to the History of English
- 32 Construction Grammar and English Historical Linguistics
- 33 Psycholinguistic Perspectives on Language Change
- Appendix: List of Corpora and Other Electronic Resources
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter deals with changes in the history of English as they are informed by the functional approach to language, which starts from the assumption that linguistic structure cannot be analysed independently from the uses to which it is put. Three types of external, functional explanation are distinguished: communication-based (discourse- and information-structural), processing and cognitive explanations. Against this background, I discuss the impact of these external functional factors on the traditional domains of language change: sound change, morphological change, syntactic change and semantic-pragmatic change. In a final section, I address grammaticalisation as a domain combining morphosyntactic and semantic-pragmatic change.
Keywords
Information
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The New Cambridge History of the English LanguageDocumentation, Sources of Data and Modelling, pp. 718 - 743Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
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