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- Volume 13, Issue 1, 2023
Journal of Historical Linguistics - Volume 13, Issue 1, 2023
Volume 13, Issue 1, 2023
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Tracing semantic change in Portuguese
Author(s): Patrícia Amaral, Zuoyu Tian, Dylan Jarrett and Juan Escalona Torrespp.: 1–34 (34)More LessAbstractThis study uses word embeddings to investigate the semantic changes underlying the creation of two adversative connectives in Portuguese, porém and mas ‘but, however’. For porém, we chart its development from an original PP formed by a preposition with a causal meaning (por) and a demonstrative pronoun that referred anaphorically to a previous proposition (en(de)). For mas, we trace its change from an adverb meaning ‘more’. Adopting a distributional semantics approach, we use word embedding models trained on two corpora, the CIPM (Corpus Informatizado do Português Medieval, containing texts from the 12th–16th centuries) and COLONIA (containing texts from the 16th–20th centuries). We produce a measure of change based on the similarity scores of porém and mas with respect to words in relevant semantic categories in each corpus, representing the source and the target meanings. This paper, which constitutes the first computational study of semantic change in Portuguese, also discusses challenges and outlines steps to be taken into consideration when choosing embedding algorithms for small historical corpora.
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The negative cycle in Chinese
Author(s): Barbara Meisterernstpp.: 35–81 (47)More LessAbstractThe present discussion proposes that renewal processes in the domain of negation manifest themselves predominantly in the change from bi-morphemic, synthetic negation to analytic negation neg+aux by introducing a new auxiliary verb as verbal head. Some of these new verbs may subsequently be merged with the negator resulting into new bi-morphemic negation. The proposed analyticization process accounts for different kinds of complex negation, including aspectual and modal negation, the copula and negative focus markers. I propose a unified mechanism for the morpho-syntactic processes, which change the system of negation in Chinese. Two morpho-syntactic factors contribute to this particular grammaticalization process of Chinese: (1) the diachronically consistent head initial word order within the functional and the lexical (CP/vP) domains (with the exception of sentence-final particles); and (2) the morpho-phonological rule that negation has to attach directly to aux, i.e., to a weak verbal head. Based on particularly the second constraint, I propose that only the combination neg+auxmod leads to the emergence of new fused negators constituting the head of a Negative/Modal phrase, i.e., a negative phrase (NegP) with modal features. The renewal process of the verbal heads of bi-morphemic negation is caused by semantic bleaching and an increasing intransparency of the negator which triggers the grammaticalization of new (often defective) lexical verbs via upward movement from the lexical to the functional domain. It accounts for the grammaticalization of the aspectual negator wèi 未, of the (negative) copula of Early Archaic Chinese into focus marker and complementizer, and for the replacement of synthetic by analytic modal negation negmod > neg+auxmod.
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Phonological features of Caijia that are notable from a diachronic perspective
Author(s): Man Hei Leepp.: 82–114 (33)More LessAbstractThis study sets out several phonological features in Caijia that are notable from a diachronic point of view. The Caijia language is an endangered language spoken in northwestern Guìzhōu, China. It was first formally documented in the early 1980s and is generally viewed as a Sinitic language. Some aspects of Caijia phonology are noteworthy from the perspective of historical phonology. There exist features which cannot be accounted for in terms of Middle Chinese (MC), such as the retention of the contrast between Old Chinese (OC) T-type and L-type onsets in words with d- or dr- in Middle Chinese. Moreover, Caijia also demonstrates features which are observed or preserved in Middle Chinese, but absent in mainstream modern Sinitic varieties, including the retention of bilabial stops in words with initials Fēi/Fū/Fèng. This study will also explore the implications certain phonological features have for the classification of Caijia in the Sinitic clade and examine the relationship between Caijia and Bai.
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The historical dialectology of stative morphology in Zapotecan
Author(s): Rosemary G. Beam de Azconapp.: 115–172 (58)More LessAbstractThis paper updates the reconstruction of the stative aspect prefix in Proto-Zapotecan as *n- and tracks innovations in stative marking. An early change is proposed to have deleted preconsonantal nasals, rendering segmentally unmarked stative forms of consonant-initial verbs in varieties of Zapotec then spoken in and around the city of Monte Albán. Contact with Chatino may be a factor in the retention of preconsonantal *n in Zapotec varieties spoken to the south. A fuller stative prefix, usually *na-, arose later from a grammaticalized form of the stative-marked copula (Munro 2007; Uchihara 2021). *na- is more productive than *n- and provides the basis for a new proposed “Eastern Zapotec” genetic grouping. However, the isogloss for *na- crosscuts the earlier isogloss for preconsonantal nasal deletion, showing that any model of Zapotecan linguistic history needs to address not only divergence but also convergence. Ethnohistorical and archaeological evidence provide a social context to the linguistic changes discussed.
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Save the trees
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