1. The Evolution of Complex Spatial Expressions Within the Romance Family : A Corpus-Based Study of French and Italian
- Author
-
Thomas Hoelbeek and Thomas Hoelbeek
- Subjects
- Italian language--Grammar, Comparative--French, Historical linguistics, Romance languages--Grammar, Comparative, Romance languages--Semantics, French language--Grammar, Comparative--Italian
- Abstract
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.
- Published
- 2017