Diachronica - Online First

This paper investigates two instances of alignment change, both of which resulted from reanalysis of a nominalized embedded clause type, in which the external argument was marked with genitive case and the internal argument was focused. We show that a subject marked with genitive case in the early development of Austronesian languages became ergative-marked when object relative clauses in cleft constructions were reanalyzed as transitive root clauses. In contrast to this, the genitive case in Old Japanese nominalized clauses, marking an external argument, was extended to mark all subjects. This occurred after adnominal clauses were reanalyzed as root clauses. Japanese underwent one more step in order for genitive to be reanalyzed as nominative: the reanalysis of impersonal psych transitive constructions as intransitives.

With these two case studies of Austronesian and Japanese, we show that reanalysis of nominalization goes in either direction, ergative or accusative, depending on the syntactic conditions involved in the reanalysis.

This article explores temporally extended innovations as a form of phonological reanalysis and extension. Polabian (West Slavic) exhibits multiple dissimilatory innovations that target the reflexes of Late Common Slavic (LCS) *v/w. In this paper, I propose that the outputs of syllable structure changes in early West Slavic were reinterpreted as restrictions on the distribution of [w], thus introducing dissimilation to the language. The new grammar was not able to stop other innovations from occurring (prophylaxis) and instead restructured intermediate outputs from subsequent innovations into an acceptable phonetic form (repair) thereby extending dissimilation to new items. I demonstrate that (a) outputs of an earlier onset epenthesis grammar conform to the surface-true generalizations enforced by the reanalyzed dissimilation grammar and (b) a single grammar can account for both the dissimilation which developed during the West Slavic period and subsequent extensions which occurred after Polabian was fully differentiated from its relatives.

While analysing lexical data of Western Kho-Bwa languages of the Sino-Tibetan or Trans-Himalayan family with the help of a computer-assisted approach for historical language comparison, we observed gaps in the data where one or more varieties lacked forms for certain concepts. We employed a new workflow, combining manual and automated steps, to predict the most likely phonetic realisations of the missing forms in our data, by making systematic use of the information on sound correspondences in words that were potentially cognate with the missing forms. This procedure yielded a list of hypothetical reflexes of previously identified cognate sets, which we first preregistered as an experiment on the prediction of unattested word forms and then compared with actual word forms elicited during secondary fieldwork. In this study we first describe the workflow which we used to predict hypothetical reflexes and the process of elicitation of actual word forms during fieldwork. We then present the results of our reflex prediction experiment. Based on this experiment, we identify four general benefits of reflex prediction in historical language comparison. These comprise (1) an increased transparency of linguistic research, (2) an increased efficiency of field and source work, (3) an educational aspect which offers teachers and learners a wide plethora of linguistic phenomena, including the regularity of sound change, and (4) the possibility of kindling speakers’ interest in their own linguistic heritage.

The development of the Egyptian palatals ḏ and ṯ has long been a thorny issue in Egyptian linguistics. No convincing phonological rule for it has been identified so far. In the present paper I argue that the distribution of these phonemes is the result of inter-dialectal borrowings between a pre-Coptic dialect (C‑Dialect) in which ḏ , ṯ → c = ϫ and a pre-Coptic dialect (T‑Dialect) in which ḏ , ṯ → t = ⲧ. It is then argued that the attested Coptic dialects derive from T‑Dialects with lexical borrowings from C‑Dialects. A preliminary discussion of the sociolinguistic contexts of these dialects is presented in the second part of the article, where it is suggested that the C‑Dialect may have been associated with the area of the cities of Avaris/Pi-Ramses/Tanis and may have become a prestigious dialect and thus a source of lexical borrowings starting from the 19th dynasty.