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The routledge handbook of historical linguistics
... Despite centuries of inquiry, the reasons for this diversity and its patterning remain one of the greatest enigmas of the language sciences (Evans and Levinson, 2009). However, one of the main explanatory factors is the way changes in language, usually small, accumulate, and amplify across time in space, resulting in this astonishing diversity (Evans and Levinson, 2009;Levinson and Evans, 2010;Bowern and Evans, 2014;Dediu et al., 2017). There are currently many proposals that identify various factors shaping language change, ranging from those internal to language (Lass, 1997;Campbell, 1998;Bowern and Evans, 2014), to demography and population movements (Ostler, 2005;Hua et al., 2019), to environmental and ecological factors , and even to the biology and cognition of the language users Wong et al., 2020). ...
... However, one of the main explanatory factors is the way changes in language, usually small, accumulate, and amplify across time in space, resulting in this astonishing diversity (Evans and Levinson, 2009;Levinson and Evans, 2010;Bowern and Evans, 2014;Dediu et al., 2017). There are currently many proposals that identify various factors shaping language change, ranging from those internal to language (Lass, 1997;Campbell, 1998;Bowern and Evans, 2014), to demography and population movements (Ostler, 2005;Hua et al., 2019), to environmental and ecological factors , and even to the biology and cognition of the language users Wong et al., 2020). However, this enigma cannot be answered without fully embracing the complexity of language itself, "evolving" and "living" at the interface of biology, cognition, society, and culture (Levinson, 2006;. ...
... Here, we take a broad cultural evolutionary view of language change (Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman, 1981;Croft, 2008;Richerson and Boyd, 2008;Dediu et al., 2013) in which linguistic variation is first generated through innovation, and then it may spread (or not) through the linguistic community, due to the complex interplay between random factors (akin to drift in evolutionary biology) and various types of selective pressures (or biases). Even though predicting language change (and evolutionary change, in general) is notoriously hard (Stadler, 2016), the mechanisms underlying language change have been the object of intensive study in particular in sociolinguistics (Milroy and Gordon, 2008;Meyerhoff, 2015) and historical linguistics (Bowern and Evans, 2014), but also in phonetics and phonology (Ohala, 1989;Yu, 2013). Of special interest is the so-called "actuation problem" (Weinreich et al., 1968;Yu, 2013;, which can be briefly stated as "[w]hy do changes in a structural feature take place in a particular language at a given time, but not in other languages with the same feature, or in the same language at other times?" ...
The question whether all languages are similarly complex is at the centre of some of the most heated debates within linguistics. These debates focus on such issues as the universality of syntactic recursion, the exceptional simplicity of creole languages, complexity trade-offs between structural levels, as well as sociolinguistic correlates of complexity profiles. Discussions concerning complexity have implications that go far beyond linguistics in the narrow sense, including e.g. the role of nature vs. nurture in human cognition and culture, or the distinction between message and noise in information theory. In consequence, debates on linguistic complexity shape our perception of human nature and variation among human populations.
In this Research Topic, we investigate the motivations driving the research on linguistic complexity. Thus, Menzerath’s law about complexity trade-offs was inspired by bottom-up empirical observations. By contrast, the claim about the universality of syntactic recursion was primarily informed by theoretical considerations. Due to its normative dimension, the notion of complexity has also served as a vehicle for advancing ideological agendas, such as characterizing speakers as more or less advanced based on perceived properties of their languages. By bringing these perspectives together, we contribute to a critical assessment of how linguistic research is motivated by both epistemic and non-epistemic goals.
... The literature shows dozens of examples that follow the cline in (1) (see, for example, Al Zahrani, 2020;Eifan, 2017;Hopper & Traugott, 1993, 2003Jarad, 2014Jarad, , 2017Norde, 2012;Norde & Beijering, 2014, to mention a few). Some typical examples include the change of some lexical motion verbs into future markers as is the case with the English to be going to, the French aller and the Dutch gaan (Norde, to appear in ORE ); this is the case in all Roman languages (see, Fleischman, S. (1982), for more examples). ...
... Once again, the aforementioned studies have shown that the cross-linguistic elements follow the same cline of grammaticality, which in turn suggests a cross-linguistic regularity, which is an important aspect of grammaticalization. Heine (1993Heine ( , 1997Heine ( , 2003 argues that the crosslinguistic regularity is resulted by the cognitive processes that, as the examples have shown, cannot be language-specific. This is also evidenced by the regularity across languages where the concepts of some body parts are extended to function as locative markers (Heine, 1997(Heine, , 2003Heine & Kuteva, 2002). ...
... Heine (1993Heine ( , 1997Heine ( , 2003 argues that the crosslinguistic regularity is resulted by the cognitive processes that, as the examples have shown, cannot be language-specific. This is also evidenced by the regularity across languages where the concepts of some body parts are extended to function as locative markers (Heine, 1997(Heine, , 2003Heine & Kuteva, 2002). Examples include the English back, the HA Dahr 'back', the Danish bag and the Old Danish baker (Norde, to appear in ORE ) that can express the special notion of 'behind'. ...
The present study aims at describing the grammaticalization phenomenon of some HA elements that, to the best of the author’s knowledge, have not been dealt with. It argues that the elements xən, ʕsəs and lissa have gradually developed from the verb xalla, the preposition phrases (PP) ʕla asa:s and ila al-sa:ʕah respectively. To achieve this, the paper speculates that these developed forms have followed the prevalently agreed upon grammaticalization chains where they have undergone desemanticization (semantic shift), decategorialization (morphosyntactic shift), cliticization (morphophonological shift) and erosion (phonetic shift). These chains exhibit the grammaticalization stages of the elements under study.
... Despite centuries of inquiry, the reasons for this diversity and its patterning remain one of the greatest enigmas of the language sciences (Evans and Levinson, 2009). However, one of the main explanatory factors is the way changes in language, usually small, accumulate, and amplify across time in space, resulting in this astonishing diversity (Evans and Levinson, 2009;Levinson and Evans, 2010;Bowern and Evans, 2014;Dediu et al., 2017). There are currently many proposals that identify various factors shaping language change, ranging from those internal to language (Lass, 1997;Campbell, 1998;Bowern and Evans, 2014), to demography and population movements (Ostler, 2005;Hua et al., 2019), to environmental and ecological factors (Everett et al., 2016;Bentz et al., 2018), and even to the biology and cognition of the language users Wong et al., 2020). ...
... However, one of the main explanatory factors is the way changes in language, usually small, accumulate, and amplify across time in space, resulting in this astonishing diversity (Evans and Levinson, 2009;Levinson and Evans, 2010;Bowern and Evans, 2014;Dediu et al., 2017). There are currently many proposals that identify various factors shaping language change, ranging from those internal to language (Lass, 1997;Campbell, 1998;Bowern and Evans, 2014), to demography and population movements (Ostler, 2005;Hua et al., 2019), to environmental and ecological factors (Everett et al., 2016;Bentz et al., 2018), and even to the biology and cognition of the language users Wong et al., 2020). However, this enigma cannot be answered without fully embracing the complexity of language itself, "evolving" and "living" at the interface of biology, cognition, society, and culture (Levinson, 2006;Mufwene et al., 2017). ...
... Here, we take a broad cultural evolutionary view of language change (Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman, 1981;Croft, 2008;Richerson and Boyd, 2008;Dediu et al., 2013) in which linguistic variation is first generated through innovation, and then it may spread (or not) through the linguistic community, due to the complex interplay between random factors (akin to drift in evolutionary biology) and various types of selective pressures (or biases). Even though predicting language change (and evolutionary change, in general) is notoriously hard (Stadler, 2016), the mechanisms underlying language change have been the object of intensive study in particular in sociolinguistics (Milroy and Gordon, 2008;Meyerhoff, 2015) and historical linguistics (Bowern and Evans, 2014), but also in phonetics and phonology (Ohala, 1989;Yu, 2013). Of special interest is the so-called "actuation problem" (Weinreich et al., 1968;Yu, 2013;, which can be briefly stated as " [w]hy do changes in a structural feature take place in a particular language at a given time, but not in other languages with the same feature, or in the same language at other times?" ...
Treating the speech communities as homogeneous entities is not an accurate representation of reality, as it misses some of the complexities of linguistic interactions. Inter-individual variation and multiple types of biases are ubiquitous in speech communities, regardless of their size. This variation is often neglected due to the assumption that “majority rules,” and that the emerging language of the community will override any such biases by forcing the individuals to overcome their own biases, or risk having their use of language being treated as “idiosyncratic” or outright “pathological.” In this paper, we use computer simulations of Bayesian linguistic agents embedded in communicative networks to investigate how biased individuals, representing a minority of the population, interact with the unbiased majority, how a shared language emerges, and the dynamics of these biases across time. We tested different network sizes (from very small to very large) and types (random, scale-free, and small-world), along with different strengths and types of bias (modeled through the Bayesian prior distribution of the agents and the mechanism used for generating utterances: either sampling from the posterior distribution [“sampler”] or picking the value with the maximum probability [“MAP”]). The results show that, while the biased agents, even when being in the minority, do adapt their language by going against their a priori preferences, they are far from being swamped by the majority, and instead the emergent shared language of the whole community is influenced by their bias.
... The traditional term for the process by which languages (typically in so-called "linguistic areas" such as the Balkans) become more similar over time is convergence. Lucas (2015) extends the use of this term to specifically those contact-induced changes brought about by individuals who are native speakers of both the RL and the SL. ...
... Finally, a word is required here on changes, such as reduction or elimination of inflectional distinctions, which are characteristic of the usage of second-language speakers, but which do not necessarily have the effect of making the RL more closely resemble the native language of those speakers, and are not therefore properly classified as instances of transfer. Lucas (2015) gives the label "restructuring" to changes of this kind, which presumably occur in almost any contact situation where imposition is also taking place, though they will usually go undetected, being indistinguishable after the fact from purely internally caused changes. One circumstance where restructuring changes are clearly identifiable, however, concerns pidgins and creoles. ...
... This is certainly not to claim, however, that Van Coetsem's framework, in the way that he himself presents it, is without its weaknesses. We have already discussed in §4.4 some instances of contact-induced change which are not easily accommodated by the neat dichotomy between the two main transfer types: this is why Lucas (2015) proposes extending Van Coetsem's model to accommodate convergence and restructuring as additional transfer types. ...
... The traditional term for the process by which languages (typically in so-called "linguistic areas" such as the Balkans) become more similar over time is convergence. Lucas (2015) extends the use of this term to specifically those contact-induced changes brought about by individuals who are native speakers of both the RL and the SL. ...
... Finally, a word is required here on changes, such as reduction or elimination of inflectional distinctions, which are characteristic of the usage of second-language speakers, but which do not necessarily have the effect of making the RL more closely resemble the native language of those speakers, and are not therefore properly classified as instances of transfer. Lucas (2015) gives the label "restructuring" to changes of this kind, which presumably occur in almost any contact situation where imposition is also taking place, though they will usually go undetected, being indistinguishable after the fact from purely internally caused changes. One circumstance where restructuring changes are clearly identifiable, however, concerns pidgins and creoles. ...
... This is certainly not to claim, however, that Van Coetsem's framework, in the way that he himself presents it, is without its weaknesses. We have already discussed in §4.4 some instances of contact-induced change which are not easily accommodated by the neat dichotomy between the two main transfer types: this is why Lucas (2015) proposes extending Van Coetsem's model to accommodate convergence and restructuring as additional transfer types. ...
This introductory chapter gives an overview of the aims, scope, and approach of the volume, while also providing a thematic bibliography of the most significant previous literature on Arabic and contact-induced change.
... Debido a lo complejo que resulta definirlas (Gómez Torrego, 1988Iglesias Bango, 1988;Fernández de Castro, 1999;Gómez Manzano, 1992;García Fernández, 2006), asumimos la propuesta de Hella Olbertz (1998), para quien una perífrasis es la "combinación indisoluble y productiva, por un lado, de un verbo conjugado que funciona como auxiliar y, por otro lado, de un verbo en forma no personal, […] donde el verbo conjugado concuerda morfológicamente con el rol semántico de agente" exigido por el verbo en forma no conjugada, en un proceso que es gradualmente interactivo (Fernández Martín 2014, 2015b, 2015c. Esta interacción se percibe, especialmente, con las perífrasis de verbos de movimiento que son, al fin y al cabo, las que ejemplifican de una manera más transparente el proceso de gramaticalización (Heine, 1992(Heine, , 2003Garachana, 2010Garachana, , 2011aGarachana, , 2011b, como demuestra, de hecho, la clasificación de Zieliński (2014) empleada aquí, por ofrecer una visión holística del proceso diacrónico de creación de las perífrasis y, a la vez, permitir comprender la convivencia de ejemplos con mayor o menor grado de fusión en los distintos estadios sincrónicos de la lengua. ...
... La perífrasis aspectual incoativa (García Fernández, 2006) o de gradación ingresiva (Fernández de Castro, 1999) empezar a + infinitivo ofrece cinco ejemplos en la Respuesta, de los cuales tres se encuentran en primera persona del singular y en pretérito indefinido. En "y apenas yo vi el movimiento y la figura, cuando empecé, con esta mi locura, a considerar el fácil moto de la forma esférica" (778-780), puede resultar interesante la intercalación de un sintagma preposicional (con esta mi locura) entre el auxiliar y la preposición a, pues esta posibilidad implica un grado de gramaticalización menor del esperado con otras perífrasis, en las que resulta totalmente imposible introducir un constituyente oracional entre el auxiliar y el auxiliado (Heine, 1992(Heine, , 2003Girón Alconchel, 2004, 2005a, 2007. ...
El objetivo de este artículo es describir el uso de las perífrasis verbales factuales empleadas por sor Juana Inés de la Cruz en su Respuesta de la poetisa a la muy ilustre sor Filotea de la Cruz (1691). Para ello, se comienza con algunas cuestiones ecdóticas sobre el texto estudiado y asunciones sobre la perífrasis verbal. A continuación, se ofrecen los datos según los auxiliares sean verbos de movimiento o las construcciones expresen gradación, cuantificación o pasividad. La interpretación de los datos lingüísticos permite concluir con la posibilidad de que la carta tenga forma de autobiografía pero se deje imbuir por un contenido claramente ensayístico de tipo filosófico-teológico plasmable en su estructura gramatical.
... Even Bybee (2015, 248-250) points out that sound changes and sound evolution convergence are seldom associated to language contact, affirming that other paths of change may be explored before attributing common sound solutions to interference phenomena. Nevertheless, bilingualism seems to be an important complementary factor in the triggering and/or spreading of certain sound changes (Lleó/Benet/Cortés 2008;Lucas 2015), so it cannot be dismissed. This paper focusses on the bilingual context in Majorca (Balearic Islands, Spain, where there is contact between Spanish and Majorcan Catalan) and how it affects a specific sound change in Spanish, yeísmo, which is not unique to this language (see Subsection 1.1) but has been rapidly gaining ground in Spanish over the last century. ...
... The mechanism through which this situation could operate may accommodate a borrowing context in the sense of Winford (2005, 376-377), which he claims to be a rare situation as borrowing usually involves vocabulary (in general, less stable components of linguistic structure); while it is the other kind of transferimpositionthe one that usually involves more stable and resistant components, such as phonology (cf. also Lucas 2015). What would seem more plausible is that Majorcan Catalandominant speakers could transfer the /ʎ/-/j/ contrast from their L1 to their output in Spanish, as referred to in Romera (2003, 371-372). ...
Yeísmo has been accounted for as a merger process occurring in Spanish irrespective of language contact effects though some scholars have claimed that the interference between Spanish and the variety of Catalan spoken in Majorca (Balearic Islands, Spain) has an inhibiting effect on yeísmo. This paper focusses on whether this inhibiting effect can be demonstrated at the perception level and whether it has an effect in the linguistic behaviour of bilinguals. To examine these effects, we conducted an identification experiment with three groups of listeners (Majorcan Catalan-dominant bilinguals, Spanish-dominant bilinguals and a control group of Spanish monolinguals). Results show that Catalan dominants do recognise [ʎ] stimuli, but Spanish dominants only identify [ʎ] at chance level. Consequently, it would seem that bilingual subjects display a bimodal performance at the perception level.
... (1) Is dao in Dao-NP-VP a preposition? (2) Is dao in V-Dao a verb or a preposition? (3) Is dao in V-Dao-C a complement marker? ...
... This syntactic reanalysis is accompanied by a semantic reinterpretation of a very specific, lexical meaning into a more general, grammatical one. The relevant process is referred to as semantic bleaching, erosion, or reduction, or as desemanticization etc. [2]579 Later, Givon places great emphasis on the dynamic process by suggesting 'today's morphology is yesterday's syntax.' [1]43 Today, many scholars question the classic definition and hold that the study of grammaticalization should be widened. Therefore, they have redefined the term 'Grammaticalization refers to that part of the study of language that focuses on how grammatical forms and construction arise, how they are used and how they shape the language.' ...
... According to Lucas (2015), there are a lot of controversies regarding the definition of language change and the role of language contact. Lucas specifies how there are basically two opposing views on this matter: the first one, favoring Chomsky, defines language change as happening on an individual level, while the second one, favoring sociohistorical approaches, defines it as happening to all speakers of a group. ...
... Lucas specifies how there are basically two opposing views on this matter: the first one, favoring Chomsky, defines language change as happening on an individual level, while the second one, favoring sociohistorical approaches, defines it as happening to all speakers of a group. Both of these views differentiate contact-induced change from language internal change, because in the former the change is due to bi-and/or multilingualism in the speech community, and thus due to language contact (Lucas 2015). Nevertheless, these two opposing views do not agree on what contact-induced change actually encompasses. ...
... (cf. Traugott 1989, Hopper 1991, Heine 2003, Killie 2015 a) paradigmatization = grammaticalized forms may be arranged into paradigms b) obligatorification = optional elements may become obligatory c) condensation (phonological reduction) = the shortening of forms d) extension = the spread of a linguistic expression to new contexts e) persistence = traces of the original meaning remain and this may constrain the use of the grammaticalized construction f) specialization = increased preference for a specific form within a functional domain g) subjectification = increased grounding in speaker perspective over time ...
The present paper analyzes and discusses the origin and evolution of English sentence adverbs as an instance of secondary grammaticalization which is mainly viewed in the literature as a case of categorical reanalysis from a minor category to another. The paper also explores the idea that the precursor of the class of English sentence adverbs is in fact the class of manner adverbs (cf. Swan 1988, Protopopescu 2009, 2012).
... Proses Meminjam dari sumber asing akan memunculkan pemetaan inovasi antara kata dan konsep dalam suatu sistem linguistik. Dalam proses peminjaman kata asing materi leksikal juga diadaptasi (Bowern & Evans, 2015). Pada kasus pemaknaan kata asing, proses peminjaman dapat mencakup makna dan simbol atau hanya meminjam simbol saja tanpa makna. ...
The word Taliban has been used by the public and is widely known as the name of the faction of the armed political movement in Afghanistan. However, in the past some time, the term Taliban is often used as a name for a group within the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). This raises different meanings and different perceptions. This study aims to analyze how the word Taliban is understood and used in the KPK, how the shape shifts in meaning, and how the construction process patterns. This study uses a descriptive-qualitative approach with data taken from literature and it is enriched with interview and questionnaire data. This study found that the development of meaning was unpredictable but found conclusions in synchronic phenomena when there was a large and open use of words. The common conception and common understanding on the word "Taliban” is doubtful because it can be broadly constructed. The semantic fields used are nouns and adjectives with various meanings. Meaning is constructed from individual perspectives, social and cultural contexts, the it is continued to mutual understanding and natural agreement. Peryoration and amelioration types were the most noticeable patterns of change. However, the positive-positive meaning is also a different pattern found in shifting the meaning of the Taliban in the KPK.
... Although Heine (2003) argues that "grammaticization theory" has been based both on diachronic and on synchronic considerations (see also Hopper & Traugott 1993), the literature seems to have provided much more typological than diachronic documentation, and the former has even been more detailed than the latter. For instance, of all the chapters in the two volumes of Heine & Traugott (1991) only that by Frantisek Lichtenberk is clearly diachronically oriented, using techniques of the comparative method to determine the paths of grammaticization in To'aba'ita. ...
A central assumption of this chapter is Mufwene’s (2001) uniformitarian position that creole vernaculars have evolved by the same restructuring processes observable in non-creole languages. However, I disagree with positions as in Campbell & Janda (2001) which, while arguing correctly that grammaticization is not a (combination of) restructuring process(es) that is/are distinct from changes that have traditionally been the objects of historical linguistics (see also Campbell 2001; Joseph 2001; New-meyer 2001), also conclude that the “theory of grammaticization” is superfluous.
I submit that like the notion “creolization”, “grammaticization” identifies the status outcome of a combination of changes, rather than the particular changes themselves, which remain in the general domain of historical linguistics. Thus they represent spe-cific outcomes of otherwise normal and regular changes that are individually identifi-able in the evolution of several other language varieties (in the case of creoles) or in other domains of historical linguistics (in the case of grammaticization). As much as we can debate over the term “grammaticalization theory” is justifiably applied to this research program (cf. Newmeyer 2001), the relevant literature to date has been in-formative in highlighting particular evolutionary trends (a view that is also shared by Campbell 2001 and Newmeyer 2001). The research has also enriched historical lin-guistics with a typological dimension that prompts interesting questions, such as whether there are changes that tend to be concurrent.
... It is clear that this is a contact-induced change. But since with this and the similar changes discussed below there is no transfer of lexical matter, it seems impossible at present to judge whether they are the result of borrowing or imposition, or whether they were actuated by speakers for whom neither the source language nor the recipient language were dominant, in the process that Lucas (2015) calls "convergence". ...
This chapter presents an overview of the most prominent contact-induced developments in the history of Maltese, a language which is genetically a variety of Arabic, but which has undergone significant changes, largely as a result of lengthy contact with Sicilian, Italian, and English. We first address the precise affiliation of Maltese and the nature of the historical and ongoing contact situations, before detailing relevant developments in the realms of phonology, inflectional and derivational morphology, syntax, and lexicon.
... Om de structuur en variatie van het Nederlandsof enige andere taalgoed te begrijpen, moet de interactie met andere talen in beeld gebracht worden. De grote rol van taalcontact in taalvariatie en -verandering is van meet af aan erkend in de sociolinguïstiek (via het werk van Uriel Weinreich), maar is het afgelopen decennium nog eens uitvoerig voor het voetlicht gebracht door onder meer Heine en Kuteva (2005, 2006, Drinka (2010), Trudgill (2011), Kortmann en Szmrecsanyi (2012) en Lucas (2015). Binnen de cognitieve linguïstiek heeft dat geleid tot wat men 'cognitieve contactlinguïstiek' zou kunnen noemen (Wolf en Polzenhagen, 2009;Winter-Froemel, 2011;Zenner, 2013;Zenner en Kristiansen, 2014;Backus, 2014;Soares da Silva, 2015). ...
This introductory paper outlines the different trends and movements that have in recent years led to a marked increase in the number of linguistic studies that combine a construction-based theoretical outlook on grammar with a dedicated interest in issues of synchronic and/or diachronic language variation. In addition, it gives an overview of the papers included in this thematic issue and links them with broader tendencies in the fields of cognitive linguistics and construction grammar.
... It is clear that this is a contact-induced change. But since with this and the similar changes discussed below there is no transfer of lexical matter, it seems impossible at present to judge whether they are the result of borrowing or imposition, or whether they were actuated by speakers for whom neither the RL or the SL were dominant, in the process that Lucas (2015) calls "convergence". ...
This chapter presents an overview of the most prominent contact-induced developments in the history of Maltese, a language which is genetically a variety of Arabic, but which has undergone significant changes, largely as a result of lengthy contact with Sicilian, Italian, and English. We first address the precise affiliation of Maltese and the nature of the historical and ongoing contact situations, before detailing relevant developments in the realms of phonology, inflectional and derivational morphology, and syntax.
... 17 15. See, among others, Heine (2003) and Traugott (2005) for an overview of the topic. ...
This chapter focuses on a rather neglected type of morphological change, that is, the change from derivation to inflection. Contrary to the assumption that derivational patterns usually do not develop any further, this analysis proposes that some derivational constructions may change by acquiring a more functional status, which is characteristic of inflectional categories. Based on the distinction between contentful and procedural constructions, as proposed by Traugott & Trousdale (2013), the emergence of the new constructions can be conceived of as a gradual shift on the contentful-procedural gradient. The argumentation is based on examination of the -idz(o) constructions in Griko, a Greek-based dialect spoken in South Italy.
... Sumerian numbers are typically described as a system in which early numerical signs were used with an oral counting sequence of only small quantities, signs for higher quantities like 600 were used without any corresponding vocabulary, and there was no ability to expand spoken numerals systematically before writing was invented (Høyrup, 2016). The textual evidence for a numerical lexicon thus requires context: The emergence of phonetic values for lexical and ordinal words (e.g. and respectively, one, thousand and first, thousandth) and grammatical singular-plural distinctions in the 3 rd millennium is more likely related to increased expressiveness (greater specificity) in writing, rather than indicating these features had only recently emerged in speech, for three reasons: The recency hypothesis (i.e., the idea that unrestricted lexical numbers emerged in Sumerian only after the invention of proto- cuneiform) and the fact that lexical forms precede grammatical ones (Corbett, 2000;Overmann, 2015) entail a significantly accelerated timeline at odds with the gradual pace of such grammaticalization generally (Heine, 2003;Traugott & Heine, 1991). The recency hypothesis also ignores the import of token precursors and the semantic (non-phonetic) sufficiency of numerical representation, which suggest, respectively, the early development of a numerical lexicon and a late emergence for its phonetic representation. ...
The characterization of early token-based accounting using a concrete concept of number, later numerical notations an abstract one, has become well entrenched in the literature. After reviewing its history and assumptions, this article challenges the abstract–concrete distinction, presenting an alternative view of change in Ancient Near Eastern number concepts, wherein numbers are abstract from their inception and materially bound when most elaborated. The alternative draws on the chronological sequence of material counting technologies used in the Ancient Near East—fingers, tallies, tokens, and numerical notations—as reconstructed through archaeological and textual evidence and as interpreted through Material Engagement Theory, an extended-mind framework in which materiality plays an active role (Malafouris 2013).
... The latter is treated as crucial to understanding language itself [28]. As [43] states some linguistic patterns may only make sense with knowledge from outside the discipline. Change diffusion among communities by correlating linguistic variation with social factors is examined in [39]. ...
Multimodal social networks are omnipresent in Web 2.0 with virtually every human communication action taking place there. Nonetheless , language remains by far the main premise such communicative acts unfold upon. Thus, it is statutory to discover language communities especially in social data stemming from historically multilingual countries such as Luxemburg. An adjacency tensor is especially suitable for representing such spatiosocial data. However, because of its potentially large size, heuristics should be developed for locating community structure efficiently. Linguistic structure discovery has a plethora of applications including digital marketing and online political campaigns, especially in case of prolonged and intense cross-linguistic contact. This conference paper presents TENSOR-G, a flexible genetic algorithm for approximate tensor clustering along with two alternative fitness functions derived from language variation or diffusion properties. The Kruskal tensor decomposition serves as a benchmark and the results obtained from a set of trilingual Luxemburgian tweets are analyzed with linguistic criteria.
... Om de structuur en variatie van het Nederlandsof enige andere taalgoed te begrijpen, moet de interactie met andere talen in beeld gebracht worden. De grote rol van taalcontact in taalvariatie en -verandering is van meet af aan erkend in de sociolinguïstiek (via het werk van Uriel Weinreich), maar is het afgelopen decennium nog eens uitvoerig voor het voetlicht gebracht door onder meer Heine en Kuteva (2005, 2006, Drinka (2010), Trudgill (2011), Kortmann en Szmrecsanyi (2012) en Lucas (2015). Binnen de cognitieve linguïstiek heeft dat geleid tot wat men 'cognitieve contactlinguïstiek' zou kunnen noemen (Wolf en Polzenhagen, 2009;Winter-Froemel, 2011;Zenner, 2013;Zenner en Kristiansen, 2014;Backus, 2014;Soares da Silva, 2015). ...
... The third question, that of the nature of the contact situation, is largely ignored by some authors, but we take it to be crucial. We follow van Coetsem (1988van Coetsem ( , 2000, Winford (2003Winford ( , 2005, and Lucas (2012Lucas ( , 2014, who distinguish between two types of transfer according to agentivity. Borrowing occurs under recipientlanguage agentivity: speakers of the language that is to receive the transferred item deliberately import that item into their language. ...
In this paper we investigate the place of origin of the change from Jes-persen's Cycle stage II – bipartite ne + not – to stage III, not alone. We use the LAEME corpus to investigate the dialectal distribution in more detail, finding that the change must have begun in Northern and Eastern England. A strong effect of region and time period can be clearly observed, with certain linguistic factors also playing a role. We attribute the early onset of the change to contact with Scandinavian: North Germanic is known to have undergone Jespersen's Cycle earlier in its history, and the geographical distribution of early English stage III fits neatly with the earlier boundaries of the Danelaw.
... Busco neste artigo 1 tecer algumas considerações a respeito da interface teórica que vem sendo denominada no Brasil por sociofuncionalismo, ligadas não à análise de algum objeto sob este quadro, mas justamente a seu aspecto teórico híbrido, um hibridismo decorrente da aproximação de duas vertentes teóricas de origens distintas, quais sejam, a sociolinguística variacionista (WEINREICH; HERZOG, 1968; LABOV, 1972; 1982; 1994; 2001) e o funcionalismo voltado aos estudos da gramaticalização (GIVÓN, 1984; 1995; 2001; 2005; HOPPER, 1991; HEINE, 2003 NEVES, 1999; NARO; BRAGA, 2000; entre outros), apenas mais recentemente essa aproximação teórica tem sido debatida com mais fôlego (TAVARES, 2003; GÖRSKI; TAVARES, a publicar): consideram-se os pontos convergentes entre as duas propostas de análise, os divergentes, enfim, a possibilidade de se traçar " uma conversa na diferença " (PIRES DE OLIVEIRA, 1999). Parto aqui do pressuposto de que sim, embora haja pontos de conflito entre certos postulados variacionistas e funcionalistas – os quais, vale notar, não serão abordados aqui –, é tanto possível quanto desejável uma aproximação entre as duas correntes. ...
http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1984-8420.2009v10n2p69
Faço algumas considerações a respeito da interface teórica que articula princípios da sociolinguística variacionista e do funcionalismo voltado aos estudos da gramaticalização e que vem sendo denominada no Brasil por sociofuncionalismo. Esboço, neste momento, um quadro inicial de contribuições que uma perspectiva funcional da linguagem traz ao modelo teórico-metodológico da sociolinguística variacionista na configuração da proposta sociofuncionalista, com a discussão de alguns pontos que se assumem no trabalho sociolinguístico que acredito ganharem nova perspectiva ao entrarem em cena certos pressupostos funcionalistas.
Based on the natural utterances of six Chinese-speaking preschool children, this paper examines the syntactic and semantic features of possession constructions. First of all, in terms of the syntax, there are three main types of possession constructions, including adnominal, predicative, and external possessions, as well as eight variations. Meanwhile, the older the children are, the more syntactic variations and frequencies they produce, and the more complex their syntactic structures become, following a developmental pattern from simple to complex. Secondly, in terms of semantics, the children express four main types of semantics: interpersonal, whole-part, ownership and spatiotemporal relationships, involving nine subtypes, such as social relationships, kinship and so on. The longitudinal features of the semantics have a developmental path from familiar to unfamiliar, concrete to abstract, and single to diverse. Finally, Studies have shown that children actively and gradually construct language in their interactions with adults, in a certain degree, which means that the driving force for children’s syntactic acquisition and development comes from language use.
Language is a reflection of history, and as such, changes in the social life of a community are signaled by corresponding layers of language change. The island community of Babuyan Claro, located in the far north of the Philippines, demonstrates the importance of this connection. The island is home to the Ibatans, a community which emerged from a century and a half of intense social contact between people from different, but closely related, ethnolinguistic groups: Ivatan and Itbayaten (Batanic) and Ilokano (Cordilleran). The mixed ancestry of the present-day Ibatan people, coupled with sustained social contact among the groups, resulted in the maintenance of bilingualism, which has driven the development of Ibatan as a language distinct from its sister Batanic languages. Ibatan reflects striking contact-induced linguistic features, not only in the lexicon, but also in structure, namely phonology and morphosyntax. These outcomes of language contact are driven by mechanisms that apply on both the aggregates of the individual and the community (cf. Muysken 2010). Specifically, patterns of speaker agentivity and language dominance (van Coetsem 2000) as well as various social factors, such as intensity of social contact and population structure (Thomason and Kaufman 1988), interact to drive contact-induced language change. Language change therefore is embedded within the socio-historical context of the community. Teasing apart layers of language change thus allows us to reconstruct the stratigraphy of a community. That is, particular kinds of contact-induced change are argued to be linked to specific agents of change, agents with varying language dominance, which are in turn shaped by the social ecology of the community. The accumulation of social change in the 150 years of the Babuyan Claro community involves changing patterns of agentivity, language dominance, and population structure, which continue to shape the Ibatan language. This case study on Babuyan Claro that links linguistic outcomes to the mechanisms and agents that drive them ultimately allows us to understand the nature of language contact and change more deeply. References: Muysken, Pieter. 2010. Scenarios for language contact. In The handbook of language contact, edited by Raymond Hickey, 265-281. Oxford: Blackwell. Thomason, Sarah and Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Van Coetsem, Frans. 2000. A general and unified theory of the transmission process in language contact. Heidelberg: Winter.
Giriş Gözəl Qarabağ Azərbaycan və Ermənistan, azərbaycanlı və ermənilər arasında gərginliyə, qarşıdurma meydanına, düşmənçiliyin alovlanma-sına və savaşlara səbəb oldu. Bu necə oldu? Niyə belə oldu? Nə durur bu məsələnin kökündə? Çıxılmaz vəziyyət, açılmayan düyün necə əmələ gəldi? Düyünü necə açmaq olar? Bu və bənzər suallar, həmçinin 2020-ci ilin payızında baş verən 2-ci Qarabağ savaşı ətrafında düşün-cələr məni bu yazı üzərində işləməyə çağırdı. Əvvəllər də bu barədə xeyli düşünmüş, danışmış, kiçik yazılar yazmışdım, dərc olunmamış qeydlərim də vardı. Pandemiyanın bizi ev həbsində saxlaması da 2020-ci ilin oktyabr-noyabr ayları ərzində araşdırmamı maneəsiz davam etdirməyə, bu yazı üzərində işimi sürətləndirməyə və tamamlamağa təkan verdi. Azərbaycan və erməni xalqları, Azərbaycan və Ermənistan arasında münasibətlər tarixi, xüsusilə son dövrdə baş verənlər, mənim öz mü-şahidələrim, başıma gələnlər, Azərbaycan və erməni xalqlarının həyatı və qayğıları barədə Azərbaycan və erməni ədəbiyyatı və mətbuatında yazılanlar, indiki vəziyyətdə nə etməli, gələcəyimiz necə ola bilər
This thesis presents a polylectal study of Senhaja Berber varieties (Northwestern Morocco), underlining the differences and commonalities between them. The thesis is based on fieldwork data, issuing from seven varieties. Three varieties – Ketama (West), Hmed (Center), and Zerqet (East) – are focused on to cover Senhaja most fully and accurately. The studied varieties are important for the understanding of the linguistic variation and history of the region. Senhaja shows some similarities to the Ghomara language (spoken to its West), and to Tarifiyt (spoken to its East), but there are also substantial differences. Senhaja and Ghomara might share a common origin.The thesis covers the major domains of the language (phonology, morphology, morphosyntax) and pays attention to the contact linguistics phenomena. Senhaja has been heavily influenced by Arabic in its lexicon, morphology, and syntax. Arabic patterns are found, for example, in verb derivation and derivation of diminutives. In Senhaja, adjectives form a distinct class, which is not common in Berber. Some Senhaja varieties allow for adjectives to be conjugated, which makes them similar to verbs. Another special feature of Senhaja is the divergent behavior of the verbal clitics. Across Berber, clitics are fronted under specific syntactic conditions. In Ketama, clitic fronting can be incomplete, and the deictic clitic may be doubled. In other parts of Senhaja, clitics can remain postposed, where they normally should be fronted. It is argued that the main driving forces behind the divergent clitic behavior in Senhaja are reanalysis, grammaticalization, and the drive to avoid ambiguity.
The chapter looks at language variation and change, and the relation of these processes to language reconstruction and classification. The chapter gives an overview of theories, models, methods, and data, describing how diversity and variation is modelled and measured for reconstruction and classification within traditional, comparative and statistical, evolutionary, or phylogenetic methods. First, the chapter identifies the basic principles of language change and the way in which these differ within various subdomains of language. A second part delves into the outcomes of change, describing the diverse results of sound change, lexical change, and typological/morphosyntactic change. Here, important aspects include the inherent propensity of change, the role of arbitrariness, the role of systems, horizontal transfer, and the outcome of change at macro-levels. Finally, the chapter deals with the issue of the ontological status of the reconstruction, and how various theoretical approaches may affect the interpretation of results. The chapter reviews results and controversies arising from current research.
Karabakh has long been a source of tensions and confrontations; it has long exacerbated hostilities, and as a result, it has given rise to wars between Azerbaijan and Armenia and between Azerbaijanis and Armenians. How did this happen? Why did this happen? What is the root of this issue? How did this difficult situation, this jumbled knot, arise? How can this knot come untangled? These and similar questions, as well as thoughts on the Second Karabakh War in the fall of 2020, compelled me to complete this work. I have thought about Karabakh a lot, discussed it with many people, written small papers, and jotted down numerous unpublished notes. The fact that the pandemic kept us under house arrest also prompted me to continue research between October and November 2020 without hindrance, allowing me to accelerate and complete the work. There are numerous aspects of this publication that I feel might be of interest to readers, including the history of relations between the Azerbaijani and Armenian people, my own personal observations and experiences, passages from Azerbaijani and Armenian literature, articles in the media on the life and concerns of the Azerbaijani and Armenian people, possible solutions for the current situation, and possible outcomes for the future of Karabakh. First of all, I appeal to both Azerbaijani and, especially, Armenian readers. I think there is a strong need for such a conversation between our people…
Many languages express ‘blue’ and ‘green’ under an umbrella term ‘grue’. To explain this variation, it has been suggested that changes in eye physiology, due to UV-light incidence, can lead to abnormalities in blue-green color perception which causes the color lexicon to adapt. Here, we apply advanced statistics on a set of 142 populations to model how different factors shape the presence of a specific term for blue. In addition, we examined if the ontogenetic effect of UV-light on color perception generates a negative selection pressure against inherited abnormal red-green perception. We found the presence of a specific term for blue was influenced by UV incidence as well as several additional factors, including cultural complexity. Moreover, there was evidence that UV incidence was negatively related to abnormal red-green color perception. These results demonstrate that variation in languages can only be understood in the context of their cultural, biological, and physical environments.
While speech and language do not fossilize, they still leave traces that can be extracted and interpreted. Here, we suggest that the shape of the hard structures of the vocal tract may also allow inferences about the speech of long-gone humans. These build on recent experimental and modelling studies, showing that there is extensive variation between individuals in the precise shape of the vocal tract, and that this variation affects speech and language. In particular, we show that detailed anatomical information concerning two components of the vocal tract (the lower jaw and the hard palate) can be extracted and digitized from the osteological remains of three historical populations from The Netherlands, and can be used to conduct three-dimensional biomechanical simulations of vowel production. We could recover the signatures of inter-individual variation between these vowels, in acoustics and articulation. While ‘proof-of-concept’, this study suggests that older and less well-preserved remains could be used to draw inferences about historic and prehistoric languages. Moreover, it forces us to clarify the meaning and use of the uniformitarian principle in linguistics, and to consider the wider context of language use, including the anatomy, physiology and cognition of the speakers.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Reconstructing prehistoric languages’.
Khuzestan Arabic is an Arabic variety spoken in the southwestern Iranian province
of Khuzestan. It has been in contact with (Modern) Persian since the arrival of
Arab tribes in the region before the rise of Islam. Persian is the socio-politically
dominant language in the modern state of Iran and has influenced the grammar of
Khuzestan Arabic on different levels. The present article discusses phenomena of
contact-induced change in Khuzestan Arabic and considers their limiting factors.
In the course of this chapter we will discuss what is known about the effects that contact with Arabic has had on the Modern South Arabian languages of Oman and Yemen. Documentation concerning these languages is not abundant, and even more limited is our knowledge of the history of their interaction with Arabic. By integrating the existing bibliography with as yet unpublished fieldwork materials, we will try to provide as complete a picture of the situation as possible, also discussing the current linguistic and sociolinguistic landscape of Dhofar and eastern Yemen.
The method of linguistic palaeontology (or palaeolinguistics) has a controversial status within archaeology. According to its defenders, it promises the ability to see into the social and material cultures of prehistoric societies and uncover facts about peoples beyond the reach of archaeology. Its critics see it as essentially flawed and unscientific. Using a particular case-study, the Indo-European homeland problem, this paper attempts to discern the kinds of inference which proponents of linguistic palaeontology make and whether they can be warranted. I conclude that, while the case for linguistic palaeontology has often been overstated, so has the case against it.
Many studies have dealt with the /ʎ/-/j/ merger in Spanish varieties. Nevertheless, it is a sound change phenomenon that not only occurs in this language, but also in other Romance systems. Particularly, this process has been claimed to arise due to the influence of Spanish in some Ibero-Romance languages, i. e. Catalan or Galician, due to the bilingualism situation in these areas (Dubert-García 2005, Bibiloni 2016). However, other authors have stated that language contact may inhibit such a change, at least in some Catalan speaking regions (Enrique-Arias 2010).
This paper examines cross-linguistic influence in morphology among adult monolingual and heritage speakers (Arabic-English and Chinese-English). Participants performed a task requiring them to form past tenses for English nonce words. Arabic-English bilinguals produced significantly more vowel change past tenses than either English monolinguals or Chinese-English bilinguals. We attribute the preponderance of vowel change past tenses to cross-linguistic influence of Arabic, as vowel change is a dominant morphological property in Arabic but not in English or Chinese. These results support dynamic models of bilingualism with constantly active and interacting languages and contribute to the phenomenology of crosslinguistic interference.
Grammaticalization research has led to important insights into the driving processes of innovation and propagation. Yet what has generally been lacking is a principled way of analyzing their interaction. Research into innovation focuses on the role of individual language users and tends to take a more qualitative approach, while propagation is typically studied in terms of the community grammar and tends to be more statistically driven. We propose an approach that bridges the two. Drawing on a much larger historical data set than is commonly done, our study shows how a high-resolution analysis of semantic and morphosyntactic behavior can be married to statistics, resulting in a method that measures the degree of grammaticalization at the level of single attestations. We apply this method to the early grammaticalization of be going to inf, showing how a communal increase breaks down into different rates of change in the run-up to, the middle of, and right after conventionalization. Additionally, we trace lifespan change of individual authors longitudinally. While not robustly in evidence, there are hints of postadolescence reanalysis in the run-up generation, and of increased realization of innovative features in the middle generation.*
Phylogenetic methods offer a promising advance for the historical study of language and cultural relationships. Applications to date, however, have been hampered by traditional approaches dependent on unfalsifiable authority statements: in this regard, historical linguistics remains in a similar position to evolutionary biology prior to the cladistic revolution. Influential phylogenetic studies of Bantu languages over the last two decades, which provide the foundation for multiple analyses of Bantu sociocultural histories, are a major case in point. Comparative analyses of basic lexica, instead of directly treating written words, use only numerical symbols that express non‐replicable authority opinion about underlying relationships. Building on a previous study of Uto‐Aztecan, here we analyse Bantu language relationships with methods deriving from DNA sequence optimization algorithms, treating basic vocabulary as sequences of sounds. This yields finer‐grained results that indicate major revisions to the Bantu tree, and enables more robust inferences about the history of Bantu language expansion and/or migration throughout sub‐Saharan Africa. “Early‐split” versus “late‐split” hypotheses for East and West Bantu are tested, and overall results are compared to trees based on numerical reductions of vocabulary data. Reconstruction of language histories is more empirically based and robust than with previous methods.
Lies are typically defined as believed falsehoods asserted with the intention of deceiving the hearer. A particularly problematic case for this definition is that of false implicatures. These are prototypically cases where the proposition expressed by the speaker's utterance is true, yet an implicature conveyed by this proposition in context is false. However, implicature is a diverse category and whether a blanket statement such as “false implicatures are lies,” as some have argued can account for all of them is open to investigation. We present an experimental investigation of whether naïve participants define different types of implicatures as lies. Our results show that only a couple of types of implicatures were strongly rated as lies by participants. These results suggest that participants distinguish between different types of communicated meanings on linguistic grounds, contributing both to the literature on lying, as well as to theoretical discussions of how different types of meaning are communicated.
Toekomsverwysing in Afrikaans kan grammatikaal en leksikaal aangedui word, soortgelyk aan ander Wes-Germaanse tale soos Nederlands en Engels. Die modale hulpwerkwoord sal, afkomstig van Nederlandse zullen, en die hulpwerkwoord gaan, van Nederlandse gaan, word algemeen gebruik vir toekomsverwysing, asook die toekomstige presens waar sinne sonder tempusaanduiding na die toekoms verwys. Die totale gebruiksfrekwensie van gaan toon nie tekens van verandering sedert standaardisering nie, maar die verskillende gebruike het tog nie stabiel gebly nie. Sedert standaardisering het die sintaktiese en semantiese gebruikskontekste van toekomsverwysende gaan uitgebrei, en waar die leksikale item gaan vroeg in die twintigste eeu nog oorwegend as hoofwerkwoord gebruik is, word dit vandag oorwegend as 'n hulpwerkwoord (direkte skakelwerkwoord en toekomsverwysende hulpwerkwoord) gebruik.
This is a small research regarding about the history of linguistics in comparative and historical linguistics research.
P/S: Please bear in mind that this is just an undergraduate class assignment. Hence, it might won't be as details and perfect as those who did their post-graduate research and academic publication.
Different structural features of human language change at different rates and thus exhibit different temporal stabilities. Existing methods of linguistic stability estimation depend upon the prior genealogical classification of the world's languages into language families; these methods result in unreliable stability estimates for features which are sensitive to horizontal transfer between families and whenever data are aggregated from families of divergent time depths. To overcome these problems, we describe a method of stability estimation without family classifications, based on mathematical modelling and the analysis of contemporary geospatial distributions of linguistic features. Regressing the estimates produced by our model against those of a genealogical method, we report broad agreement but also important differences. In particular, we show that our approach is not liable to some of the false positives and false negatives incurred by the genealogical method. Our results suggest that the historical evolution of a linguistic feature leaves a footprint in its global geospatial distribution, and that rates of evolution can be recovered from these distributions by treating language dynamics as a spatially extended stochastic process.
”[Der findes ikke abstract til denne artikel]”
Since the beginnings of historical linguistics, the family tree has been the most widely accepted model for representing historical relations between languages. While this sort of representation is easy to grasp, and allows for a simple, attractive account of the development of a language family, the assumptions made by the tree model are applicable in only a small number of cases: namely, when a speaker population undergoes successive splits, with subsequent loss of contact among subgroups. A tree structure is unsuited for dealing with dialect continua, as well as language families that develop out of dialect continua (for which Ross 1988 uses the term “linkage”); in these situations, the scopes of innovations (in other words, their isoglosses) are not nested, but rather they persistently intersect, so that any proposed tree representation is met with abundant counterexamples. In this paper, we define “Historical Glottometry”, a new method capable of identifying and representing genealogical subgroups even when they intersect. Finally, we apply this glottometric method to a specific linkage, consisting of 17 Oceanic languages spoken in northern Vanuatu.
Kalyan, Siva and Alexandre François. 2018. Freeing the Comparative Method from the tree model: A framework for Historical Glottometry.
In Ritsuko Kikusawa & Lawrence Reid (eds), _Let's talk about trees: Genetic Relationships of Languages and Their Phylogenic Representation_ (Senri Ethnological Studies, 98). Ōsaka: National Museum of Ethnology. 59–89.
This chapter describes some instances of grammaticalization processes that occurred in the history of Portuguese focusing mainly on the principles of persistence and decategorialization. The persistence principle allows people to assume that some original meanings will tend to survive in the new grammaticalized form. According to the principle of decategorialization, grammaticalized constructions tend to lose the morphosyntactic properties of the source forms. The chapter then discusses the development of some verbal forms and constructions. Moreover, it focuses on the grammaticalization of nominal and pronominal categories. The Portuguese synthetic future and cognate forms in other Romance languages are the result of morphologization of the Latin auxiliary habere have into a marker of future tense. In Contemporary Portuguese, the compound past perfect expresses values that are clearly distinct from those expressed by the large majority of other Romance compound tenses originated from the same sources.
La verdad es siempre simple (con motivo de 'El verbo como espacio: seis nuevos temas de gramática del español' de José Plácido Ruiz Campillo) The truth is always simple (on the occasion of de 'The verb as space: six new issues of Spanish grammar' by José Plácido Ruiz Campillo) Manuel Martí Sánchez Universidad de Alcalá. manuel.marti@uah.es Martí Sánchez, M. (2017). La verdad es siempre simple : (con motivo de 'El verbo como espacio: seis nuevos temas de gramática del español' de José Plácido Ruiz Campillo). Revista Nebrija de Lingüística Aplicada (2017) 22/. " El verbo como espacio: seis nuevos temas de gramática del Español " de J. P. Ruiz Campillo contiene, en efecto, seis temas gramaticales. Sin embargo, es bastante más. Tras estos temas de novedad diversa existe una personal ordenación del sistema verbal, cuyos fundamentos son el carácter espacial de este y la existencia en cada forma de un significado constante. Reconstruir el proceso que concluye en estos seis temas, nos ha obligado, a su vez, a remontarnos a la teoría de la gramática, que es también de su enseñanza y de su aprendizaje en ELE, en la que viene trabajando el autor con el nombre de gramática operativa. Escalonado en los tres niveles de abstracción (teórico, descriptivo y aplicado), este recorrido nos ha permitido acercarnos a un pensamiento y descripción gramaticales caracterizados por la coherencia y el interés didáctico. Palabras clave: gramática operativa, cognitivismo, verbo, espacio, tiempo, modo, ELE " El verbo como espacio: seis nuevos temas de gramática del Español " (The verb as space: six new issues of Spanish grammar), written by J. P. Ruiz Campillo, covers indeed six grammatical issues. However, it is much more. Behind these issues, innovative in various ways, there is a personal arrangement of the verbal system, grounded on its own spatial nature and the fixed meaning that is to be found in each form. In order to reconstruct the process from which these six issues emerge, we had to likewise draw on grammar theory. This field of study, to which the author refers as operational grammar, is here also presented in connection to its teaching and learning in the area of Spanish as a foreign language. Classified into three levels of abstraction-theoretical, descriptive, and applied-, this journey has allowed us to come closer to a grammatical insight and description, characterised by its cohesion and its pedagogical value 1 .
Historical linguistics is concerned with language change in general and with specific changes in languages, and in particular with describing them, with cataloging them, and, ultimately, with explaining them. To set the stage for the discussion to follow and by way of framing the various issues to be considered, this chapter discusses five key questions concerning language change: the “constraints” problem, the “transition” problem, the “embedding” problem, the “evaluation” problem, and the “actuation” problem. Various facets of historical linguistics are explored as the study of both language change and language history; and some of the methods used by historical linguists in their investigations are brought to light. There are four main kinds of factors that play a role in inducing language change: psychological (cognitive) factors, physiological factors, systemic factors, and social factors. Finally, the chapter talks about two dramatic discoveries among those emerged from this subfield: language relatedness and regularity of sound change.
The Andes are of unquestioned significance to the human story: a cradle of agriculture and of 'pristine' civilisation with a pedigree of millennia. The Incas were but the culmination of a succession of civilisations that rose and fell to leave one of the richest archaeological records on Earth. By no coincidence, the Andes are home also to our greatest surviving link to the speech of the New World before European conquest: the Quechua language family. For linguists, the native tongues of the Andes make for another rich seam of data on origins, expansions, and reversals throughout prehistory. Historians and anthropologists, meanwhile, negotiate many pitfalls to interpret the conflicting mytho-histories of the Andes, recorded for us only through the distorting prism of the conquistadors' world-view. Each of these disciplines opens up its own partial window on the past: very different perspectives, to be sure, but all the more complementary for it. Frustratingly though, specialists in each field have all too long proceeded largely in ignorance of great strides being taken in the others. This book brings together a cast of scholars from each discipline, converging their disparate perspectives into a true cross-disciplinary focus, to weave together a coherent account of what was, after all, one and the same prehistory. The result, instructive also far beyond the Andes, is a case-study in the pursuit of a more holistic vision of the human past.
Aims and Scope This volume focuses on the interface of different motivating factors that contribute to language change. It combines linguistic case studies with current theoretical debate and contains hitherto unpublished data from English, French, Karaim, Modern Greek, Jordanian, Spanish, Latin and Arabic. © 2002 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin. All rights reserved.
The Handbook of Language Contact offers systematic coverage of the major issues in this field - ranging from the value of contact explanations in linguistics, to the impact of immigration, to dialectology - combining new research from a team of globally renowned scholars, with case studies of numerous languages. An authoritative reference work exploring the major issues in the field of language contact: the study of how language changes when speakers of distinct speech varieties interact. Brings together 40 specially-commissioned essays by an international team of scholars. Examines language contact in societies which have significant immigration populations, and includes a fascinating cross-section of case studies drawing on languages across the world. Accessibly structured into sections exploring the place of contact studies within linguistics as a whole; the value of contact studies for research into language change; and language contact in the context of work on language and society. Explores a broad range of topics, making it an excellent resource for both faculty and students across a variety of fields within linguistics. © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd except for editorial material and organization
This article is based on an extensive panel study wherein
the real-time progress of several language changes was mapped
over a period of ten years. Our study suggests that categorical
linguistic features are inclined to remain categorical in the idiolect.
If a speaker, as a child, “learns” a feature with little or
no variation in it, no major changes are likely to take place during
the speaker's lifetime. In other words, new changes rarely
commence in an idiolect later in life. If, however, a speaker adopts a
feature as a variable one, with two or more truly competing variants,
it is possible that the balance of the variants will shift during the
speaker's lifetime. The more equal the proportions of the
rivalling variants are, the more likely it is that one of the variants
will gain dominancy during the speaker's lifetime. a
Language contact has been invoked with increasing frequency over the past two or three decades as a, or the, cause of a wide range of linguistic changes. Historical linguists have (of course) mainly addressed these changes from a diachronic perspective ‐ that is, analyzing ways in which language contact has influenced lexical and/or structural developments over time. But sociolinguists, and many or most of the scholars who would characterize their specialty as contact linguistics, have focused on processes involving contact in analyzing synchronic variation. A few scholars have even argued that contact is the sole source of language variation and change; this extreme position is a neat counterpoint to an older position in historical linguistics, namely, that language contact is responsible only for lexical changes and quite minor structural changes. In this chapter I will argue that neither extreme position is viable. This argument will be developed through a survey of general types of contact explanations, especially explanations for changes over time, juxtaposed with a comparative survey of major causal factors in internally motivated language change. My goal is to show that both internal and external motivations are needed in any full account of language history and, by implication, of synchronic variation. Progress in contact linguistics depends, in my opinion, on recognizing the complexity of change processes ‐ on resisting the urge to offer a single simple explanation for all types of structural change. The structure of the chapter is as follows. Section 1 provides some background concepts and definitions, and sections 2 and 3 compare and contrast contact explanations with internal explanations of change. Section 4 is a brief conclusion that includes a warning about the need to be cautious in making claims about the causes of change ‐ both because in most cases no cause can be firmly established and because of the real possibility that multiple causes are responsible for a particular change.