Free Variation in Grammar

Download or read book Free Variation in Grammar written by Kristin Kopf and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2023-10-15 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent years have seen a growing interest in grammatical variation, a core explanandum of grammatical theory. The present volume explores questions that are fundamental to this line of research: First, the question of whether variation can always and completely be explained by intra- or extra-linguistic predictors, or whether there is a certain amount of unpredictable – or ‘free’ – grammatical variation. Second, the question of what implications the (in-)existence of free variation would hold for our theoretical models and the empirical study of grammar. The volume provides the first dedicated book-length treatment of this long-standing topic. Following an introductory chapter by the editors, it contains ten case studies on potentially free variation in morphology and syntax drawn from Germanic, Romance, Uralic and Mayan.