Free Variation in Grammar

Know about the book -

Free Variation in Grammar is written by Kristin Kopf and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 9027249334 (ISBN 10) and 9789027249333 (ISBN 13).

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.