The evolution of complex spatial expressions within the Romance family : a corpus-based study of French and Italian / by Thomas Hoelbeek.

"This book is a revised version of my Ph. D. dissertation, which I defended at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel on April 28, 2014."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on March 22, 2017).

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.

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- On French and Italian Complex Spatial Expressions -- Data Collection and Research Methodology -- Interpretative Framework -- Results of the French Analysis -- Results of the Italian Analysis -- Contrastive Analysis -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Cited Text Index -- Author Index -- Subject Index.

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