Degrammaticalisation is an oft-dismissed category of language change. In this paper evidence is provided for its existence, its triggers, and its conditions. This case study details the development of an understudied Old Italo-Romance indefinite, covelle, a polarity-sensitive item roughly translating as ‘anything’ which originated from a Latin free relative with Free-Choice interpretation. It is shown that in Old Italo-Romance the original Free Choice use was expanded to further nonveridical contexts. Subsequently, a curious development of covelle in Old Romagnol, a 16th-century Gallo-Italic variety, is examined whereby polar neutralisation (loss of sensitivity to polarity) of the indefinite was taking place. Contextually, a process of degrammaticalisation had begun through which the indefinite pronoun developed into the classifier ‘thing’. In Modern and Contemporary Romagnol cvël is almost exclusively employed as a noun/classifier. It is argued that two parallel processes have initiated a cycle that led cvël to complete degrammaticalisation: (i) the grammaticalization of the old noun for ‘thing’, co(n)sa, into a wh-word, calling for lexical replacement, and (ii) competition from the Negative Concord Item gnit. The development of covelle in Romagnol represents a well-documented case of degrammaticalisation, whose causes and conditions can be thoroughly described and motivated within an interaction with cyclical change.
{"title":"From Latin QUO(D) VELLES to Romagnol Cvël: A Case of Degrammaticalisation from a Free-choice Indefinite to the Noun ‘Thing’1","authors":"Nicola D’Antuono","doi":"10.1111/1467-968x.12277","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968x.12277","url":null,"abstract":"Degrammaticalisation is an oft-dismissed category of language change. In this paper evidence is provided for its existence, its triggers, and its conditions. This case study details the development of an understudied Old Italo-Romance indefinite, <i>covelle</i>, a polarity-sensitive item roughly translating as ‘anything’ which originated from a Latin free relative with Free-Choice interpretation. It is shown that in Old Italo-Romance the original Free Choice use was expanded to further nonveridical contexts. Subsequently, a curious development of covelle in Old Romagnol, a 16th-century Gallo-Italic variety, is examined whereby polar neutralisation (loss of sensitivity to polarity) of the indefinite was taking place. Contextually, a process of degrammaticalisation had begun through which the indefinite pronoun developed into the classifier ‘thing’. In Modern and Contemporary Romagnol <i>cvël</i> is almost exclusively employed as a noun/classifier. It is argued that two parallel processes have initiated a cycle that led <i>cvël</i> to complete degrammaticalisation: (i) the grammaticalization of the old noun for ‘thing’, <i>co</i>(<i>n</i>)<i>sa</i>, into a wh-word, calling for lexical replacement, and (ii) competition from the Negative Concord Item <i>gnit</i>. The development of <i>covelle</i> in Romagnol represents a well-documented case of degrammaticalisation, whose causes and conditions can be thoroughly described and motivated within an interaction with cyclical change.","PeriodicalId":44794,"journal":{"name":"TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138534181","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We investigate the possibility that contact with Greek through the translation of biblical texts may have played a role in the development of Latin proprius ‘personal’, ‘peculiar’ into a reflexive possessive adjective. A few centuries earlier, post-Classical Greek witnesses a similar development with the adjective ídios ‘private’, ‘personal’: we determine that in the New Testament this adjective has innovative uses as a reflexive possessive, and we argue that this is a system-internal development triggered by the loss of the reflexive possessive forms of Classical Greek. The comparison between the Greek original and the Latin Vulgata translation of the New Testament furthermore shows that Latin proprius was used, with just one exception, as a translation equivalent of Greek ídios. We conclude that contact through translation acts as a catalyst for a change that, also in Latin, responds to the system-internal pressure created by the loss of an unambiguous 3rd person reflexive possessive.
我们研究了通过圣经文本的翻译与希腊语的接触可能在拉丁语的发展中发挥了作用，“个人的”，“特殊的”成为一个反身所有格形容词。几个世纪前，后古典希腊语见证了形容词ídios ' private '， ' personal '的类似发展:我们确定在新约中，这个形容词作为反身所有格有创新的用途，我们认为这是一个系统内部的发展，是由古典希腊语中反身所有格形式的丧失引发的。希腊原文和新约的拉丁文Vulgata译本之间的比较进一步表明，拉丁文proprius被用作希腊语ídios的翻译，只有一个例外。我们得出的结论是，通过翻译进行的接触是一种变化的催化剂，这种变化在拉丁语中也是对系统内部压力的回应，这种压力是由于失去了明确的第三人称自反所有格而产生的。
{"title":"Morphosyntactic Contact in Translation: Greek ídios and Latin proprius in the Bible","authors":"Marina Benedetti, Chiara Gianollo","doi":"10.1111/1467-968x.12278","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968x.12278","url":null,"abstract":"We investigate the possibility that contact with Greek through the translation of biblical texts may have played a role in the development of Latin <i>proprius</i> ‘personal’, ‘peculiar’ into a reflexive possessive adjective. A few centuries earlier, post-Classical Greek witnesses a similar development with the adjective <i>ídios</i> ‘private’, ‘personal’: we determine that in the New Testament this adjective has innovative uses as a reflexive possessive, and we argue that this is a system-internal development triggered by the loss of the reflexive possessive forms of Classical Greek. The comparison between the Greek original and the Latin <i>Vulgata</i> translation of the New Testament furthermore shows that Latin <i>proprius</i> was used, with just one exception, as a translation equivalent of Greek <i>ídios</i>. We conclude that contact through translation acts as a catalyst for a change that, also in Latin, responds to the system-internal pressure created by the loss of an unambiguous 3rd person reflexive possessive.","PeriodicalId":44794,"journal":{"name":"TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138534186","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract When linguists make inferences about language contact, control data is required for reliable analysis. Historical data or reconstructions are typically used for that purpose. However, historical data is globally mostly unavailable, and reconstructions are laborious if comparing outcomes of language contact in a typological way. We assess a recent typological proposal (Di Garbo & Napoleão de Souza 2023) that argues that using a single language, called Benchmark language, can serve as a viable control for making inferences about contact. To evaluate this approach, we use as a case study a documented contact situation in Eastern Indonesia between the Austronesian language Alorese and the Papuan language Adang. We sample languages related to Alorese and use computational phylogenetic methods for ancestral reconstruction to analyse if using a single Benchmark produces deviating inferences about contact compared to using Bayesian ancestral reconstructions. Additionally, we test for isolation by distance effects by analysing if the probability of contact effects correlates with increasing geographic distance from the contact region. The results suggest that no isolation by distance effects exist in the data and that none of the single Benchmarks significantly deviate from the ancestral reconstructions.
当语言学家对语言接触进行推断时，需要对照数据进行可靠的分析。历史数据或重建通常用于此目的。然而，历史数据在全球范围内大多是不可用的，如果以类型学的方式比较语言接触的结果，重建是很费力的。我们评估了最近的一个类型学提案(Di Garbo &napole o de Souza 2023)，他认为使用一种称为基准语言的单一语言可以作为对接触进行推断的可行控制。为了评估这种方法，我们以记录在案的东印度尼西亚南岛语Alorese和巴布亚语Adang之间的接触情况为例进行了研究。我们对与Alorese相关的语言进行了采样，并使用计算系统发育方法进行祖先重建，以分析与使用贝叶斯祖先重建相比，使用单个基准是否会产生关于接触的偏差推断。此外，我们通过分析接触效应的概率是否与距离接触区域的地理距离增加相关来检验距离效应造成的隔离。结果表明，数据中不存在距离隔离效应，单个基准没有明显偏离原始重建。
{"title":"Testing Inferences about Language Contact on Morphosyntax: A Typological Case Study on Alorese–Adang Contact","authors":"Kaius Sinnemäki, Noora Ahola","doi":"10.1111/1467-968x.12284","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968x.12284","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract When linguists make inferences about language contact, control data is required for reliable analysis. Historical data or reconstructions are typically used for that purpose. However, historical data is globally mostly unavailable, and reconstructions are laborious if comparing outcomes of language contact in a typological way. We assess a recent typological proposal (Di Garbo & Napoleão de Souza 2023) that argues that using a single language, called Benchmark language, can serve as a viable control for making inferences about contact. To evaluate this approach, we use as a case study a documented contact situation in Eastern Indonesia between the Austronesian language Alorese and the Papuan language Adang. We sample languages related to Alorese and use computational phylogenetic methods for ancestral reconstruction to analyse if using a single Benchmark produces deviating inferences about contact compared to using Bayesian ancestral reconstructions. Additionally, we test for isolation by distance effects by analysing if the probability of contact effects correlates with increasing geographic distance from the contact region. The results suggest that no isolation by distance effects exist in the data and that none of the single Benchmarks significantly deviate from the ancestral reconstructions.","PeriodicalId":44794,"journal":{"name":"TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135342647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Development of negative markers along the lines of the well‐known Jespersen's Cycle occurred in a wide number of languages. This article investigates the possibility of contact playing a role in such developments in Lengadocian Occitan. The evolution of negation in Lengadocian Occitan followed two main lines. It first developed a postverbal negative marker ges , until increased contact with French from the fifteenth century onwards meant that the language initially adopted the two main postverbal negative markers of French pas and point , in the form of their cognates pas and ponch . In the early modern period (fifteenth to eighteenth century), prolonged contact with French was a key factor in the ultimate selection of pas as the sole postverbal marker. But the pace of grammaticalisation of this marker in Occitan was quicker and went further than in French, in that from the eighteenth century pas is often the sole negative marker, and that it starts early on to appear together with negative polarity items. This means that when the preverbal negative marker disappears, negative concord is maintained, contrary to modern spoken French.
{"title":"Negation in Contact: French and Occitan","authors":"Xavier C. A. Bach","doi":"10.1111/1467-968x.12280","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968x.12280","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Development of negative markers along the lines of the well‐known Jespersen's Cycle occurred in a wide number of languages. This article investigates the possibility of contact playing a role in such developments in Lengadocian Occitan. The evolution of negation in Lengadocian Occitan followed two main lines. It first developed a postverbal negative marker ges , until increased contact with French from the fifteenth century onwards meant that the language initially adopted the two main postverbal negative markers of French pas and point , in the form of their cognates pas and ponch . In the early modern period (fifteenth to eighteenth century), prolonged contact with French was a key factor in the ultimate selection of pas as the sole postverbal marker. But the pace of grammaticalisation of this marker in Occitan was quicker and went further than in French, in that from the eighteenth century pas is often the sole negative marker, and that it starts early on to appear together with negative polarity items. This means that when the preverbal negative marker disappears, negative concord is maintained, contrary to modern spoken French.","PeriodicalId":44794,"journal":{"name":"TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135391100","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
George Walkden, Gemma Hunter McCarley, Raquel Montero, Molly Rolf, Sarah Einhaus, Henri Kauhanen
Abstract This paper makes the case for using historical corpora to assess questions of sociolinguistic typology. A full account of any contact‐induced change will need to establish what the linguistic innovation in question was, who was in contact, where and when the contact took place and how the change happened, both at the individual level and at the population level. The historical corpus approach complements other methods by narrowing down the where and the when , allowing us to develop a clearer picture of how the change diffused. In support of our approach, we present three case studies of potential morphosyntactic simplification using quantitative evidence gleaned from historical corpora: the loss of number concord in the history of English, change in the null‐subject system(s) of Latin American Spanish and reduction of the case system in the history of Balkan Slavic. All three cases allow us to test theoretical predictions and uncover new influencing factors in a way that would be impossible without fine‐grained quantitative corpus research.
{"title":"Sociolinguistic Typology Meets Historical Corpus Linguistics","authors":"George Walkden, Gemma Hunter McCarley, Raquel Montero, Molly Rolf, Sarah Einhaus, Henri Kauhanen","doi":"10.1111/1467-968x.12275","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968x.12275","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper makes the case for using historical corpora to assess questions of sociolinguistic typology. A full account of any contact‐induced change will need to establish what the linguistic innovation in question was, who was in contact, where and when the contact took place and how the change happened, both at the individual level and at the population level. The historical corpus approach complements other methods by narrowing down the where and the when , allowing us to develop a clearer picture of how the change diffused. In support of our approach, we present three case studies of potential morphosyntactic simplification using quantitative evidence gleaned from historical corpora: the loss of number concord in the history of English, change in the null‐subject system(s) of Latin American Spanish and reduction of the case system in the history of Balkan Slavic. All three cases allow us to test theoretical predictions and uncover new influencing factors in a way that would be impossible without fine‐grained quantitative corpus research.","PeriodicalId":44794,"journal":{"name":"TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135868084","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Several Eastern Mayan languages of central highland Guatemala have an innovative perfect participle suffix ‐maχ , whose distribution suggests that it diffused areally. This article describes the innovation of ‐maχ in Poqom and argues that it spread to other Mayan languages in a newly proposed contact area called the “Sacapulas Corridor.” I explore three case studies where the distribution of the perfect participle ‐maχ changed in the recipient language: functional change to a general passive in Uspantek, matter replication without pattern replication in Sakapultek and Sipakapense, and contact‐induced multiple exponence in Northern Mam. The diffusion of ‐maχ exemplifies how structural similarity and bilingualism between the source and recipient language can facilitate direct affix borrowing.
{"title":"Tracing Eastern Mayan Perfect <i>‐maχ</i>: Outcomes of Direct Affix Borrowing in the Sacapulas Corridor","authors":"James Tandy","doi":"10.1111/1467-968x.12273","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968x.12273","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Several Eastern Mayan languages of central highland Guatemala have an innovative perfect participle suffix ‐maχ , whose distribution suggests that it diffused areally. This article describes the innovation of ‐maχ in Poqom and argues that it spread to other Mayan languages in a newly proposed contact area called the “Sacapulas Corridor.” I explore three case studies where the distribution of the perfect participle ‐maχ changed in the recipient language: functional change to a general passive in Uspantek, matter replication without pattern replication in Sakapultek and Sipakapense, and contact‐induced multiple exponence in Northern Mam. The diffusion of ‐maχ exemplifies how structural similarity and bilingualism between the source and recipient language can facilitate direct affix borrowing.","PeriodicalId":44794,"journal":{"name":"TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135973046","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Some verbs in Romance (e.g. the reflexes of faciō ‘do’, dīcō ‘say’, habeō ‘have’, sapiō ‘know’, possum ‘be able’, and volō ‘want’) display alternations between a short (e.g. It. f‐are , f‐a , d‐ire ) and a long (e.g. It. fac‐evo , dic‐e , dic‐evo ) stem. This paper contains an exploration of the lexical and paradigmatic distribution of these stem alternations across Romance varieties to trace when they emerged, how and why. The results suggest a comparatively early emergence as a result of the interaction between preexisting morphological predictability relations within the paradigm and an evolutionary preference for shorter forms in high‐frequency word forms and lexemes.
罗曼语中的一些动词(如facihi ' do '， d ' say '， habehi ' have '， sapihi ' know '， possum ' be able '和voli ' want ')在一个短词(如It。f - are, f - a, d - ire)和一个长(例如It。face - evo, dic - e, dic - evo)系统。本文探讨了这些词干交替在罗曼语变体中的词汇和范式分布，以追踪它们出现的时间、方式和原因。结果表明，由于范式中预先存在的形态可预测性关系与高频词形和词素中对较短形式的进化偏好之间的相互作用，相对较早出现。
{"title":"Short vs Long Stem Alternations in Romance Verbal Inflection: The S‐Morphome","authors":"Borja Herce, Chundra A. Cathcart","doi":"10.1111/1467-968x.12271","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968x.12271","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Some verbs in Romance (e.g. the reflexes of faciō ‘do’, dīcō ‘say’, habeō ‘have’, sapiō ‘know’, possum ‘be able’, and volō ‘want’) display alternations between a short (e.g. It. f‐are , f‐a , d‐ire ) and a long (e.g. It. fac‐evo , dic‐e , dic‐evo ) stem. This paper contains an exploration of the lexical and paradigmatic distribution of these stem alternations across Romance varieties to trace when they emerged, how and why. The results suggest a comparatively early emergence as a result of the interaction between preexisting morphological predictability relations within the paradigm and an evolutionary preference for shorter forms in high‐frequency word forms and lexemes.","PeriodicalId":44794,"journal":{"name":"TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135739917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Colloquial Persian: Towards a New Rise of Simple Verbs?1","authors":"Dorian Pastor, A. Korn, C. Rammer","doi":"10.1111/1467-968x.12270","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968x.12270","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44794,"journal":{"name":"TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42579743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Svenja Bonmann, Jakob Halfmann, Natalie Korobzow, B. Bobomulloev
{"title":"A Partial Decipherment of the Unknown Kushan Script*","authors":"Svenja Bonmann, Jakob Halfmann, Natalie Korobzow, B. Bobomulloev","doi":"10.1111/1467-968x.12269","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968x.12269","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44794,"journal":{"name":"TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"62620420","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Towards a New Generalisation of the Tri‐Axial Orientation System in Situ Rgyalrong","authors":"Zhang Shuya","doi":"10.1111/1467-968x.12264","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968x.12264","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44794,"journal":{"name":"TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43981818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：