Diachronica - Volume 27, Issue 1, 2010

In Dutch, Frisian and German dialects, bewildering morphological variation is found in the person-marking system (e.g., the Syntactic Atlas of Dutch Dialects for Dutch and Frisian, and Goossens 1994, Weiss 2005 and Fuss 2005 for German). One type of variation concerns the formation of subject clitics in clauses with inverted word order, i.e. with the subject following the verb. These elements are subsequently extended to other syntactic positions through analogy, via a pathway described by Kathol (2001): originally enclitic elements spread first to the position enclitic to the complementiser, then to verbs in sentences with regular word order, and finally, in a rare number of cases, to verbs in the sentence-final position in subclauses. This paper shows that Kathol’s proposed pathway actually comprises two similar but not identical pathways, i.e. one for specifically enclitic elements, and one for elements occurring both pro- and enclitically. This implies that developments must be modelled as an ‘analogical map’ rather than a pathway, which will be illustrated extensively with data from Dutch, Frisian and German dialects. The map will be shown to apply to more data than Kathol’s original pathway: it not only captures the extension of clitics, but also the spread of many innovative agreement markers and pronouns, and, hence, a range of person marking phenomena, including complementiser agreement (e.g., Carstens 2003, Weiss 2005), clitic doubling (e.g., Fuss 2005) and double agreement (e.g., Zwart 1997). Finally, following Hill (2007), some of the motivations underlying the change and the factors determining their direction are discussed.

This study provides a description and analysis of contact-induced language change in a dialect of Burushaski spoken in Srinagar (India). I present a unique situation in which contact outcomes are reflected via interplay of various sociolinguistic factors involving simultaneous contact with two languages — Kashmiri and Urdu, each affecting the language in a specific way: lexical borrowing from Urdu and structural borrowing from Kashmiri. The effects of contact are examined in a trilingual context where the contact languages are placed in a dominance relationship with Urdu occupying the top of the language hierarchy while Burushaski and Kashmiri are competing at the bottom. Data indicate that lexical borrowing and structural borrowing are two different types of contact phenomena which can occur independently of each other. The two processes are influenced by different sociolinguistic factors which may interact in different ways in different contact situations resulting in different types of contact outcomes.

This paper explores the development of third person plural impersonal constructions into passive ones with the aim of determining the conditions most conducive to the emergence of a canonical passive, i.e. one which is both promotional (with an overt lexical subject) and agentive (with an overt agent). On the basis of cross-linguistic data it is argued that the required conditions are, on the one hand, the existence of a morphological alignment which does not distinguish between the O of a transitive clause and the S of a passive one and, on the other hand, the availability of highly grammaticalized third person plural impersonals, i.e. ones which can be used in episodic contexts and with different types of agents, among them individual and specific ones. The documented rarity of promotional passives originating from third person plural impersonal constructions is attributed to the rarity of the coincidence of the above two sets of independent factors.

This article investigates the historical emergence of postverbal negation in Welsh. Welsh undergoes a shift from preverbal negation (Middle Welsh ny(t)) to postverbal negation (Present-day Welsh ddim “not” < Middle Welsh dim “at all” < dim “thing, anything”) (Jespersen’s Cycle). In Middle Welsh, ddim occupies a late clausal position, but it later undergoes a syntactic reanalysis which moves it to an earlier immediately post-subject position. It also shifts in status from a weak negative polarity item, appearing in interrogative, conditional and negative clauses, to a purely negative particle. The article argues that, when ddim begins to occupy an earlier clausal position around 1600, it becomes phonologically less salient, and subsequently loses its emphatic sense in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Finally, the article considers the loss of the preverbal negative marker ni(d) in spoken Welsh, and whether this can best be understood as a push chain (ddim makes ni(d) unnecessary) or as a pull chain (ni(d) is phonologically weak and needs reinforcing by ddim). It concludes that push-chain explanations are most probable for the earlier part of the development up to 1750, with pull-chain explanations being more convincing thereafter.