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- Volume 21, Issue, 2004
Diachronica - Volume 21, Issue 1, 2004
Volume 21, Issue 1, 2004
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On reanalysis and actualization in syntactic change: The rise and development of English verbal gerunds
Author(s): Teresa Fanegopp.: 5–55 (51)More LessThis paper examines the process whereby the English gerund, originally an abstract deverbal noun of action, was reinterpreted as part of the verb system and acquired verbal properties, such as the ability to govern a direct object (e.g., by writing a letter). The analysis of the data reveals that by Early Middle English some gerundial patterns had become structurally ambiguous and thus served as the basis for the reanalysis of a nominal category as a verbal one. The actualization (Timberlake 1977) of the innovated underlying structure at the observable level of language use is also discussed, as are the implications of the changes undergone by the gerund for current views of grammaticalization as the main mechanism of syntactic change.
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Why are language families larger in some regions than in others?
Author(s): Eric W. Holmanpp.: 57–84 (28)More LessFor most of the world’s language families that are not included in yet larger families, published sources were surveyed to determine the number of languages in the family, and also the lexical diversity among those languages as measured by cognate percentages in lexicostatistical wordlists. In this database, lexical diversity tends to be lower in American families than elsewhere; this result is consistent with several alternative explanations, some methodological and some historical. At any given level of diversity, however, African and Eurasian families tend to contain more languages than elsewhere; this result suggests faster historical expansion of language families, relative to lexical replacement within languages, in Africa and Eurasia.
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Into the past: Morphological change in the dying years of Dalmatian
Author(s): Martin Maidenpp.: 85–111 (27)More LessThis study is concerned with Vegliote, the last remnant of the Dalmatian branch of the Romance languages, as used by its very last speaker in the last quarter of the 19th century. Specifically, I shall deal with a peculiar morphological neutralization of the distinction between present and past imperfect tenses, which becomes increasingly common in that speaker’s usage over the last twenty years of his life. After careful consideration of the status and significance of data gleaned from analysis of the idiolect of just this one speaker, I shall explain the analogical mechanisms of the change and argue that they constitute strong evidence for the diachronic importance of Aronoff’s notion of the ‘morphome’ — a recurrent distributional regularity, wholly lacking in extramorphological motivation, within the inflectional paradigm. I shall also consider the significance of these facts for our understanding of the morphological processes at work in language death.
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Innovation in language contact: Be after V-ing as a future gram in Irish English, 1670 to the present
Author(s): Kevin McCaffertypp.: 113–160 (48)More LessThe be after V-ing gram has been used in representations of Irish English since the seventeenth century. In early texts it often has future meanings that have been regarded as inauthentic because the Irish Gaelic construction that is the source of the gram is a perfect. This article accounts for the coexistence of future and perfect uses as an outcome of the interaction of two types of language transfer: the gram was ‘borrowed’ (‘pull transfer’) into English by English-speakers as well as being ‘imposed’ (‘push transfer’) on English by Gaelic-speakers. In borrowing the gram, English-speakers attributed to after prospective senses that grammaticalise as futures, especially desire and goalward movement. In imposition, Gaelic-speakers and language-shifters used be after V-ing as a perfect, in line with retrospective meanings of after and the semantics of the Gaelic construction. Both transfer types occurred simultaneously, though future uses dominated the record until the mid-eighteenth century. This gave way to a century of change until mid-nineteenth century, and perfect senses have dominated since the 1850s. The timing coincides with the spread of bilingualism and language shift: as more Irish shifted to English, imposition became the dominant transfer type. Thus, future uses are an outcome of ‘negotiation’ in the contact between Gaelic and English: Gaelic contributed the structure and perfect semantics, English the future semantics. Comparison with a crosslinguistic model of future grammaticalisation shows future uses of be after V-ing to conform to the development typical of future grams.
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A production account of sound changes affecting diphthongs and triphthongs in Romance
Author(s): Daniel Recasenspp.: 161–197 (37)More LessThis paper is an investigation processes of sound change (i.e., assimilations, dissimilations, elisions) affecting diphthongs and triphthongs derived from Latin mid low vowels in Romance. This analysis is carried out with reference to the Degree of Articulatory Constraint model of coarticulation according to which adaptation effects between consecutive segments in the speech chain, as well as their regressive or progressive direction, are determined by the requirements imposed by speakers upon the articulatory structures. Several findings are consistent with this theoretical framework, namely, assimilatory vowel raising in diphthongs and triphthongs appear to be facilitated by a homorganic onglide in accordance with the prominence of the carryover effects associated with the articulatory gestures for /j/ and /w/, and dissimilatory vowel lowering is not prone to be implemented in rising diphthongs with a (mid) high front vowel perhaps since speakers attempt to avoid vocalic sequences imposing high articulatory demands.
Volumes & issues
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Volume 41 (2024)
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Volume 40 (2023)
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Volume 39 (2022)
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Volume 38 (2021)
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Volume 37 (2020)
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Volume 36 (2019)
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Volume 35 (2018)
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Volume 34 (2017)
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Volume 33 (2016)
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Volume 32 (2015)
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Volume 31 (2014)
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Volume 30 (2013)
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Volume 29 (2012)
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Volume 28 (2011)
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Volume 27 (2010)
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Volume 26 (2009)
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Volume 25 (2008)
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Volume 24 (2007)
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Volume 23 (2006)
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Volume 22 (2005)
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Volume 21 (2004)
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Volume 20 (2003)
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Volume 19 (2002)
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Volume 18 (2001)
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Volume 17 (2000)
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Volume 16 (1999)
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Volume 15 (1998)
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Volume 14 (1997)
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Volume 13 (1996)
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Volume 12 (1995)
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Volume 11 (1994)
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Volume 10 (1993)
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Volume 9 (1992)
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Volume 8 (1991)
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Volume 7 (1990)
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Volume 6 (1989)
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Volume 5 (1988)
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Volume 4 (1987)
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Volume 3 (1986)
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Volume 2 (1985)
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Volume 1 (1984)
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What happened to English?
Author(s): John McWhorter
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