Download or read book Functional-Historical Approaches to Explanation written by Tim Thornes and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2013-07-25 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributions from both well-known practitioners and new voices in the areas of language typology, historical linguistics, and function-based approaches to language description define this volume, as does its foci in two major geographical areas — southeast Asia and northwestern North America. All of the papers appeal, in one way or another, to functional-historical approaches to explanation. Behind this appeal lies an assumption that languages are selective in their development in ways that are dependent upon the communicative tasks to which they are put. As such, language function accounts for both variation and historical development over time.