A MODULAR APPROACH TO GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES EVIDENCE FROM LANGUAGE DIVERSITY AND CONTACT

This chapter explores the light that language diversity and contact research may shed on the issue of the integrity of grammatical categories. Data are adduced from different languages, in particular Amerindian and Creole ones, to show that categories are not unitary notions, but emerge at the interface of different components of our human cognitive and communicative capacities. Special attention is paid to borrowing patterns in the Otomanguean language Popoloca. Finally, a research program is developed to reveal how typological and language contact research may illuminate these interfaces.

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