History in Support of Synchrony

In a recent paper I argued that diachronic linguistics can explain certain typological phenomena that are otherwise problematic; in the present paper I want to discuss two other ways the study of historical data can contribute to synchronic linguistics. In §1 I argue that consideration of a prior st...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 2004-06, Vol.30 (1), p.142
Main Author: Harris, Alice C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:In a recent paper I argued that diachronic linguistics can explain certain typological phenomena that are otherwise problematic; in the present paper I want to discuss two other ways the study of historical data can contribute to synchronic linguistics. In §1 I argue that consideration of a prior stage of a language offers the kind of insight also provided by the examination of closely related languages. In §2 I show that diachronic data offer a way of testing hypotheses and claims.
ISSN:0363-2946
2377-1666
DOI:10.3765/bls.v30i1.942