Abstract This article argues that with the original emphasis on dialectal variation, using primarily literary texts from various regions, analysis of Old French has routinely neglected social variation, providing an incomplete picture of its grammar. Accordingly, Old French has been identified as typically featuring e.g. “pro-drop”, brace constructions, and single negation. Yet examination of these features in informal texts, as opposed to the formal texts typically dealt with, demonstrates that these documents do not corroborate the picture of Old French that is commonly presented in the linguistic literature. Our reconstruction of Old French grammar therefore needs adjustment and further refinement, in particular by implementing sociolinguistic data. With a broader scope, the call for inclusion of sociolinguistic variation may resonate in the investigation of other early languages, resulting in the reassessment of the sources used, and reopening the debate about social variation in dead languages and its role in language evolution.
{"title":"Language sources and the reconstruction of early languages","authors":"B. Bauer","doi":"10.1075/dia.18026.bau","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.18026.bau","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article argues that with the original emphasis on dialectal variation, using primarily literary texts from various regions, analysis of Old French has routinely neglected social variation, providing an incomplete picture of its grammar. Accordingly, Old French has been identified as typically featuring e.g. “pro-drop”, brace constructions, and single negation. Yet examination of these features in informal texts, as opposed to the formal texts typically dealt with, demonstrates that these documents do not corroborate the picture of Old French that is commonly presented in the linguistic literature. Our reconstruction of Old French grammar therefore needs adjustment and further refinement, in particular by implementing sociolinguistic data. With a broader scope, the call for inclusion of sociolinguistic variation may resonate in the investigation of other early languages, resulting in the reassessment of the sources used, and reopening the debate about social variation in dead languages and its role in language evolution.","PeriodicalId":44637,"journal":{"name":"Diachronica","volume":"37 1","pages":"273-317"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46437401","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article discusses two case studies of diachronic “voice flipping” in which the syntax of a participle appears to change from active or “subject-oriented” to passive (Ancient Greek -menos to Modern Greek -menos) and from resultative/stative to active (ProtoIndo-European *-nt-; Hittite -antvs. Ancient Greek -nt-). While the first type of change is the result of a diachronic reanalysis by which a functional projection (VoiceP) is lost, the second type in fact adds an active Voice head. Both changes are the result of the simultaneous availability of a stative and an eventive reading in deverbal adjectival forms and could belong to a larger “participle cycle”. However, unlike in other changes usually discussed under the label “cycle”, unidirectional economy principles do not apply in these cases. Rather, these cases provide evidence that some types of morphosyntactic change, especially those related to event and argument structure, are driven by reanalysis of the feature content of functional heads under local structural ambiguity.
{"title":"The diachrony of participles in the (pre)history of Greek and Hittite","authors":"L. Grestenberger","doi":"10.1075/dia.18040.gre","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.18040.gre","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses two case studies of diachronic “voice flipping” in which the syntax of a participle appears to change from active or “subject-oriented” to passive (Ancient Greek -menos to Modern Greek -menos) and from resultative/stative to active (ProtoIndo-European *-nt-; Hittite -antvs. Ancient Greek -nt-). While the first type of change is the result of a diachronic reanalysis by which a functional projection (VoiceP) is lost, the second type in fact adds an active Voice head. Both changes are the result of the simultaneous availability of a stative and an eventive reading in deverbal adjectival forms and could belong to a larger “participle cycle”. However, unlike in other changes usually discussed under the label “cycle”, unidirectional economy principles do not apply in these cases. Rather, these cases provide evidence that some types of morphosyntactic change, especially those related to event and argument structure, are driven by reanalysis of the feature content of functional heads under local structural ambiguity.","PeriodicalId":44637,"journal":{"name":"Diachronica","volume":"37 1","pages":"215-263"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41983215","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Sicoli & Holton (2014) (PLoS ONE 9:3, e91722) use computational phylogenetics to argue that linguistic data from the putative, but likely, Dene-Yeniseian macro-family are better compatible with a homeland in Beringia (i.e., northeastern Siberia plus northwestern Alaska) than with one in central Siberia or deeper Asia. I show that a more careful examination of the data invalidates this conclusion: in fact, linguistic data do not support Beringia as the homeland. In the course of showing this, I discuss, without requiring a deep mathematical background, a number of methodological issues concerning computational phylogenetic analyses of linguistic data and drawing inferences from them. The aim is to contribute to making computational phylogenetics less of a black box for historical linguists. I conclude with a brief overview of the current evidence bearing on the Dene-Yeniseian homeland from linguistics, archaeology, folklore studies and genetics, and suggest current best practice for linguistic phylogenetics, the use of which would have helped to avoid some of the problems in Sicoli and Holton’s Dene-Yeniseian study, and in turn the percolation of those problems into subsequent synthetic interdisciplinary research.
Sicoli & Holton (2014) (PLoS ONE 9:3, e91722)利用计算系统遗传学论证了来自假定的(但可能的)dene - yenisei宏观家族的语言数据与白令陆桥(即西伯利亚东北部加上阿拉斯加西北部)的家园比西伯利亚中部或亚洲更相容。我认为,对这些资料进行更仔细的检查,就会使这个结论无效:事实上,语言学资料并不支持白令陆桥是他们的故乡。在展示这一点的过程中,我讨论了一些关于语言数据的计算系统发育分析的方法问题,并从中得出推论,而不需要深厚的数学背景。其目的是使计算系统发育学对历史语言学家来说不再是一个黑盒子。最后,我从语言学、考古学、民俗学研究和遗传学方面简要概述了目前与Dene-Yeniseian家园有关的证据,并提出了当前语言系统发育学的最佳实践,这些实践将有助于避免Sicoli和Holton的Dene-Yeniseian研究中的一些问题,并反过来将这些问题渗透到随后的综合跨学科研究中。
{"title":"Phylogenetic linguistic evidence and the Dene-Yeniseian homeland","authors":"I. Yanovich","doi":"10.1075/dia.17038.yan","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.17038.yan","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Sicoli & Holton (2014) (PLoS ONE 9:3, e91722) use computational phylogenetics to argue that linguistic data from the putative, but likely, Dene-Yeniseian macro-family are better compatible with a homeland in Beringia (i.e., northeastern Siberia plus northwestern Alaska) than with one in central Siberia or deeper Asia. I show that a more careful examination of the data invalidates this conclusion: in fact, linguistic data do not support Beringia as the homeland. In the course of showing this, I discuss, without requiring a deep mathematical background, a number of methodological issues concerning computational phylogenetic analyses of linguistic data and drawing inferences from them. The aim is to contribute to making computational phylogenetics less of a black box for historical linguists. I conclude with a brief overview of the current evidence bearing on the Dene-Yeniseian homeland from linguistics, archaeology, folklore studies and genetics, and suggest current best practice for linguistic phylogenetics, the use of which would have helped to avoid some of the problems in Sicoli and Holton’s Dene-Yeniseian study, and in turn the percolation of those problems into subsequent synthetic interdisciplinary research.","PeriodicalId":44637,"journal":{"name":"Diachronica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44799896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Palenquero is a Spanish-lexified creole spoken in Columbia. We argue that existing hypotheses regarding its birth are problematic in several regards. This article addresses the inconsistencies in these hypotheses and provides an alternative, more coherent account. More precisely, we take issue with the following three claims: (a) Palenquero is the result of a two-language encounter; (b) it has its roots in a West African Afro-Portuguese proto-variety; (c) an ancestral form of the creole emerged in the port city of Cartagena. We then set out to present our own, more economical, formation scenario, according to which Palenquero was formed in the early 1600s in the linguistically heterogenous maroon communities of the Cartagenan hinterlands.
{"title":"Palenquero origins","authors":"Mikael Parkvall, B. Jacobs","doi":"10.1075/dia.19019.par","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.19019.par","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Palenquero is a Spanish-lexified creole spoken in Columbia. We argue that existing hypotheses regarding its birth are problematic in several regards. This article addresses the inconsistencies in these hypotheses and provides an alternative, more coherent account. More precisely, we take issue with the following three claims: (a) Palenquero is the result of a two-language encounter; (b) it has its roots in a West African Afro-Portuguese proto-variety; (c) an ancestral form of the creole emerged in the port city of Cartagena. We then set out to present our own, more economical, formation scenario, according to which Palenquero was formed in the early 1600s in the linguistically heterogenous maroon communities of the Cartagenan hinterlands.","PeriodicalId":44637,"journal":{"name":"Diachronica","volume":"37 1","pages":"540-576"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41815693","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
For Japanese verbal suffixes sensitive to the C/V polarity of the stem-final segment, C-stem alternants are underlying, and regular V-stem alternants result from intervocalic epenthesis of r at stem boundary (de Chene 2016). This “Analysis A” entails that any V-stem suffix not consisting of r plus its C-stem counterpart is irregular and subject to replacement. While the r-Epenthesis rule of Analysis A is naturally understood as a generalization of the r-zero alternation of three suffixes that have shown it since the eighth century, however, the innovative r-initial suffixes of other categories do not appear until the eighteenth. This lag is illuminated by the dialects of Kyūshū, where adoption of Analysis A is blocked by the “bigrade” stem alternation, which in most dialects was leveled in the seventeenth century. Building on a discussion of leveling that treats that phenomenon as a subtype of regularization, it is proposed in explanation of this “bigrade blocking” effect that the order in which alternations become subject to regularization is constrained by the phonological distance between alternants. Investigation of the possibility that the bigrade alternation and Analysis A are related by a triggering effect as well as by a blocking effect, finally, leads to a new account of the adoption of Analysis A.
{"title":"r-Epenthesis and the bigrade alternation","authors":"Brent de Chene","doi":"10.1075/dia.18038.dec","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.18038.dec","url":null,"abstract":"For Japanese verbal suffixes sensitive to the C/V polarity of the stem-final segment, C-stem alternants are underlying, and regular V-stem alternants result from intervocalic epenthesis of r at stem boundary (de Chene 2016). This “Analysis A” entails that any V-stem suffix not consisting of r plus its C-stem counterpart is irregular and subject to replacement. While the r-Epenthesis rule of Analysis A is naturally understood as a generalization of the r-zero alternation of three suffixes that have shown it since the eighth century, however, the innovative r-initial suffixes of other categories do not appear until the eighteenth. This lag is illuminated by the dialects of Kyūshū, where adoption of Analysis A is blocked by the “bigrade” stem alternation, which in most dialects was leveled in the seventeenth century. Building on a discussion of leveling that treats that phenomenon as a subtype of regularization, it is proposed in explanation of this “bigrade blocking” effect that the order in which alternations become subject to regularization is constrained by the phonological distance between alternants. Investigation of the possibility that the bigrade alternation and Analysis A are related by a triggering effect as well as by a blocking effect, finally, leads to a new account of the adoption of Analysis A.","PeriodicalId":44637,"journal":{"name":"Diachronica","volume":"37 1","pages":"178-214"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46312399","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract A number of indigenous languages of northern Australia have complex systems of noun class prefixation incorporating the formal realization of case or topicality, as well as class. The markers of case and topicality occur inside the marking of class, in an unexpected position according to considerations of scope. In addition, where case is marked, zero marking is associated with oblique case roles while core roles are associated with substantive marking; again, an unexpected pattern given universals of case expression. We present evidence for the diachronic development of these noun class prefixation systems from an older system of demonstratives prefixed for class via a grammaticalization path: demonstrative > topic article > topic prefix. The class/topic prefixes then developed into class/case-marking prefixes through frequency correlations between topic, case, animacy and humanness. All stages in our reconstructed pathway are attested by extant languages.
{"title":"Anti-scope prefix order and zero-marked obliques","authors":"B. Baker, M. Harvey","doi":"10.1075/dia.18048.bak","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.18048.bak","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract\u0000 A number of indigenous languages of northern Australia have complex systems of noun class prefixation\u0000 incorporating the formal realization of case or topicality, as well as class. The markers of case and topicality occur inside the\u0000 marking of class, in an unexpected position according to considerations of scope. In addition, where case is marked, zero marking\u0000 is associated with oblique case roles while core roles are associated with substantive marking; again, an unexpected pattern given\u0000 universals of case expression. We present evidence for the diachronic development of these noun class prefixation systems from an\u0000 older system of demonstratives prefixed for class via a grammaticalization path: demonstrative > topic article > topic\u0000 prefix. The class/topic prefixes then developed into class/case-marking prefixes through frequency correlations between topic,\u0000 case, animacy and humanness. All stages in our reconstructed pathway are attested by extant languages.","PeriodicalId":44637,"journal":{"name":"Diachronica","volume":"37 1","pages":"133-177"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48689566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The paper addresses the emergence and development of the Chinese correlative comparative construction (CrCC) from the perspective of constructionalization. Most previous historical studies of the CrCC take a grammaticalization approach (e.g., Long 2013), focusing mainly on morphosyntax alone rather than investigating syntax and semantics in an integrated way. However, the architecture of construction grammar requires approaching linguistic analysis with both form and meaning equally in mind. This approach suggests that what have sometimes been considered to be merely different formal expressions of the CrCC are in fact two different constructions, one correlative, and the other a simple incremental. We identify the critical contexts (see Diewald & Smirnova 2010) that by hypothesis enabled the constructionalization of the CrCC, and point to the importance of considering network reorganization and multiple sources in the development of the simple incremental construction (see e.g., Boas 2008; Van de Velde et al. 2013).
本文从建构主义的角度论述了中国关联比较建构的产生和发展。以往对CrCC的大多数历史研究都采取了语法化的方法(例如,Long 2013),主要关注形态语法,而不是综合研究语法和语义。然而,建构语法的架构要求在进行语言分析时,要同时考虑形式和意义。这种方法表明,有时被认为只是CrCC的不同形式表达,实际上是两种不同的结构,一种是相关的,另一种是简单的增量。我们确定了关键背景(见Diewald&Smirnova,2010年),这些背景通过假设实现了CrCC的构建,并指出了在开发简单的增量构建中考虑网络重组和多个来源的重要性(例如,见Boas 2008;Van de Velde等人2013)。
{"title":"A study of the development of the Chinese correlative comparative construction from the perspective of\u0000 constructionalization","authors":"Fangqiong Zhan, E. Traugott","doi":"10.1075/dia.18025.zha","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.18025.zha","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The paper addresses the emergence and development of the Chinese correlative comparative construction (CrCC) from the perspective of constructionalization. Most previous historical studies of the CrCC take a grammaticalization approach (e.g., Long 2013), focusing mainly on morphosyntax alone rather than investigating syntax and semantics in an integrated way. However, the architecture of construction grammar requires approaching linguistic analysis with both form and meaning equally in mind. This approach suggests that what have sometimes been considered to be merely different formal expressions of the CrCC are in fact two different constructions, one correlative, and the other a simple incremental. We identify the critical contexts (see Diewald & Smirnova 2010) that by hypothesis enabled the constructionalization of the CrCC, and point to the importance of considering network reorganization and multiple sources in the development of the simple incremental construction (see e.g., Boas 2008; Van de Velde et al. 2013).","PeriodicalId":44637,"journal":{"name":"Diachronica","volume":"37 1","pages":"83-126"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48027911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}