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- Volume 28, Issue, 2011
Diachronica - Volume 28, Issue 4, 2011
Volume 28, Issue 4, 2011
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Grammar change in Anglo-Norman and Continental French: The replacement of non-affirmative indefinite nul by aucun
Author(s): Richard Inghampp.: 441–467 (27)More LessLater Anglo-Norman is conventionally portrayed as moribund, isolated from the mainstream of French, and extensively calqued on English. This study demonstrates that in the evolution of indefinite pronouns and modifiers it followed medieval French syntax, allowing the indefinite aucun (“some”) to replace the polarity indefinite nul first in non-assertive and then in negative clauses. Administrative prose documents from England and Northern France attest these developments between 1250–1425, with a slight lag in the insular context consistent with a wave model of the spread of change. The direction of change, in which a positive indefinite spread to other contexts, was unrelated to the patterns of indefinite expressions in Middle English, supporting the view that later Anglo-Norman was largely grammatically independent, not a learner variety heavily influenced by an English substrate.
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Approaching the historical phonology of three highly eroded Sino-Tibetan languages: Naxi, Na and Laze
Author(s): Guillaume Jacques and Alexis Michaudpp.: 468–498 (31)More LessNaxi, Na and Laze are three languages whose position within Sino-Tibetan is controversial. We propose that they are descended from a common ancestor (‘Proto-Naish’). Unlike conservative languages of the family, such as Rgyalrong and Tibetan, which have consonant clusters and final consonants, Naxi, Na and Laze share a simple syllabic structure (consonant+glide+vowel+tone) due to phonological erosion. This raises the issue of how the regular phonological correspondences between these three languages should be interpreted, and what phonological structure should be reconstructed for Proto-Naish. The regularities revealed by comparing the three languages are interpreted in light of potential cognates in conservative languages. This brings out numerous cases of phonetic conditioning of vowels by place of articulation of a preceding consonant or consonant cluster. Overall, these findings warrant a relatively optimistic conclusion concerning the feasibility of unraveling the phonological history of highly eroded language subgroups within Sino-Tibetan.
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How far can diachronic change be predicted: The Italo-Romance first person plural present indicative
Author(s): Rosella Spina and Wolfgang U. Dresslerpp.: 499–544 (46)More LessThis paper attempts to predict diachronic change in the restricted domain of Italo-Romance first person plural present indicative allomorphs, starting from the reconstructed Proto-Italo-Romance forms -amo, -emo, -imo, preserved in several dialects to this day (with corresponding subjunctives -emo, -iamo, -iamo). The predictions, or rather retrodictions (to be differentiated below) are based on the theory of Natural Morphology (NM). Morphology-initiated changes lead to 64 logically conceivable distributions in the earlier and present Italo-Romance dialects. The retrodictions are meant to account for the identity of attested distributions with possible (‘legal’) distributions, for unattested impossible (‘illegal’) distributions and for two accidental gaps in distributions. Moreover, we try to predict why certain attested distributions are more probable and therefore more frequent than others and introduce a new method of empirically testing such probability retrodictions.
Volumes & issues
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Volume 42 (2025)
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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)
Most Read This Month
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What happened to English?
Author(s): John McWhorter
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