Diachronica - Volume 37, Issue 4, 2020

Conventional wisdom holds that verbs are more difficult to borrow than nouns. Recent studies have supported this claim, inferring it from the fact that synchronically almost every language studied contains a larger proportion of identifiable borrowings among nouns than among verbs. In this paper, I demonstrate that, while true, there is a logical fallacy in this inference. Using a large diachronic corpus of Russian texts, I show that verbs have lower turnover rates and, consequently, longer life expectancies than nouns, i.e., they are generally more difficult to replace. I argue that this fact alone could theoretically result in the synchronically observed disparities. The hypothesis of cross-linguistically lower verbal turnover rates, which I propose based on these findings, is difficult to verify directly on a large sample of languages. However, it makes a non-trivial prediction, which can be tested more easily. It predicts that if a contact situation lasted for a while, but ceased to exist several centuries ago, the proportion of verbs borrowed during that period and surviving to the present day may equal or exceed the proportion of such borrowings among nouns. The data found in the World Loanword Database (Haspelmath & Tadmor 2009) are consistent with this prediction, thus providing evidence in favor of the hypothesis.

The use of interrogative pronouns as relative clause markers is often mentioned as a typical feature of European languages. This study presents an empirical approach to the distribution of interrogative pronouns as relative clause markers in time and space in the Indo-European language family. Based on a comprehensive sample of ancient and modern Indo-European languages, it is shown that interrogative-marked relative clauses are present in all stages of Indo-European within and outside of Europe. An analysis by branch suggests that this constitutes a case of parallel innovations subsequently spreading via language contact. The study also shows that interrogatives are used as relative clause markers independently of whether they are inflected pronouns or invariable markers.

This article investigates the diachronic development of Russian numeral constructions consisting of a paucal numeral (dva “two”, tri “three”, četyre “four”) followed by an adjective and a noun. Based on statistical analysis of more than 6,000 corpus examples, it is shown that a split took place in the second half of the twentieth century when feminine nouns developed a different agreement pattern from that of masculine and neuter nouns. This split is argued to represent the final step in a long “birth process” of gender-specific paucal constructions that started with the loss of the dual in the Middle Ages. It is suggested that we are witnessing a cascading effect, whereby the feminine pattern develops when the pattern for masculine and neuter nouns is approaching stabilization. The article furthermore includes a discussion of the hypothesis that “S-curves” represent a template for language change. While the documented changes resemble S-curves, the proposed analysis also addresses some general problems with testing the S-curve hypothesis empirically.

Palenquero is a Spanish-lexified creole spoken in Columbia. We argue that existing hypotheses regarding its birth are problematic in several regards. This article addresses the inconsistencies in these hypotheses and provides an alternative, more coherent account. More precisely, we take issue with the following three claims: (a) Palenquero is the result of a two-language encounter; (b) it has its roots in a West African Afro-Portuguese proto-variety; (c) an ancestral form of the creole emerged in the port city of Cartagena. We then set out to present our own, more economical, formation scenario, according to which Palenquero was formed in the early 1600s in the linguistically heterogenous maroon communities of the Cartagenan hinterlands.