The evolution of complex spatial expressions within the Romance family /

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."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 indexes.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