Diachronica - Volume 37, Issue 2, 2020

Abstract

A number of indigenous languages of northern Australia have complex systems of noun class prefixation incorporating the formal realization of case or topicality, as well as class. The markers of case and topicality occur inside the marking of class, in an unexpected position according to considerations of scope. In addition, where case is marked, zero marking is associated with oblique case roles while core roles are associated with substantive marking; again, an unexpected pattern given universals of case expression. We present evidence for the diachronic development of these noun class prefixation systems from an older system of demonstratives prefixed for class via a grammaticalization path: demonstrative > topic article > topic prefix. The class/topic prefixes then developed into class/case-marking prefixes through frequency correlations between topic, case, animacy and humanness. All stages in our reconstructed pathway are attested by extant languages.

Abstract

For Japanese verbal suffixes sensitive to the C/V status of the stem-final segment, C-stem alternants are underlying, and regular V-stem alternants result from intervocalic epenthesis of r at stem boundary (de Chene 2016). This “Analysis A” entails that any V-stem suffix not consisting of r plus its C-stem counterpart is irregular and subject to replacement. While the r-Epenthesis rule of Analysis A is naturally understood as a generalization of the r-zero alternation of three suffixes that have shown it since the eighth century, however, the innovative r-initial suffixes of other categories do not appear until the eighteenth. This lag is illuminated by the dialects of Kyūshū, where adoption of Analysis A is blocked by the “bigrade” stem alternation, which in most dialects was leveled in the seventeenth century. Building on a discussion of leveling that treats that phenomenon as a subtype of regularization, it is proposed in explanation of this “bigrade blocking” effect that the order in which alternations become subject to regularization is constrained by the phonological distance between alternants. Investigation of the possibility that the bigrade alternation and Analysis A are related by a triggering effect as well as by a blocking effect then leads to an account of the adoption of Analysis A that, similarly, relies crucially on the concept of phonological distance. Throughout, the focus is on the role of language-internal factors in determining the timing of analogical change.

Abstract

This article discusses two case studies of diachronic “voice flipping” in which the syntax of a participle appears to change from active or “subject-oriented” to passive (Ancient Greek ‑menos to Modern Greek ‑menos) and from resultative/stative to active (Proto-Indo-European *-nt-; Hittite ‑ant‑ vs. Ancient Greek ‑nt‑). While the first type of change is the result of a diachronic reanalysis by which a functional projection (VoiceP) is lost, the second type in fact adds an active Voice head. Both changes are the result of the simultaneous availability of a stative and an eventive reading in deverbal adjectival forms and could belong to a larger “participle cycle”. However, unlike in other changes usually discussed under the label “cycle”, unidirectional economy principles do not apply in these cases. Rather, these cases provide evidence that some types of morphosyntactic change, especially those related to event and argument structure, are driven by reanalysis of the feature content of functional heads under local structural ambiguity.

This article reviews Norsk Språkhistorie IV: Tidslinjer