Cline (linguistics)

For other uses, see Cline.

In linguistics, a cline is a scale of continuous gradation. While cline is most frequently invoked as a general concept, it has also developed specialized uses in various linguistic sub-disciplines.

Cline of grammaticalisation

Within the study of grammaticalisation, the process of linguistic change in which a content word changes to a function word or a grammatical affix is depicted as a cline of grammaticalisation. ^[1]

Cline of instantiation

In his early work, the linguist Michael Halliday theorized about the cline of instantiation and noted its centrality to corpus linguistics. ^{[2] [3]}

General usage

Less formally, cline has been applied to describe a wide variety of linguistic gradients:

• cline of activity and transitivity
• cline of attribution
• cline of intelligibility
• cline of narrative interference
• cline of metaphor
• cline from metonymy
• semantic cline

See also

• Paleolithic Continuity Theory

References

1. ^ Fischer, Olga; Muriel Norde and Harry Perridon (2004). 59 Up and down the Cline – The Nature of Grammaticalization. John Benjamins. pp. 406 pages. ISBN 9789027229687. http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=TSL 59. 
2. ^ Halliday, Michael (2003). On Language and Linguistics. Continuum. pp. 448 pages. ISBN 0826458696. http://www.continuumbooks.com/Books/detail.aspx?BookID=116210. 
3. ^ Dr Maria Herke, A methodology for theoretically empowered corpus analysis