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- Volume 14, Issue 2, 2024
Journal of Historical Linguistics - Volume 14, Issue 2, 2024
Volume 14, Issue 2, 2024
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The tonal morphology of the potential in Coatec Zapotec (Di′zhke′)
Author(s): Rosemary G. Beam de Azconapp.: 179–241 (63)More LessAbstractWhile the phenomenon of tonogenesis is well represented in the literature, diachronic tone change in already-tonal languages has received less attention. This paper considers two types of tonal morphology used to mark the “potential” inflectional category on verbs in Coatec Zapotec (aka Di′zhke′). Some verbs are marked with upstep. Coatec upstepped tones are emergent tonal contrasts that are developing out of high register allotones which assimilated to a historical high tone on a now-deleted preceding syllable. Other verbs display patterns of tone ablaut such that a verb with underlying low or falling tone surfaces with high or rising in the potential. Both upstep and tone ablaut in Coatec can be traced to an earlier floating high tone that could dock onto different syllables according to a set of ranked constraints. Using a combination of internal and comparative reconstruction, details of the earlier tonal system are revealed. This is the first published treatment of Proto-Zapotec tone since Swadesh (1947) and the first paper to address tone in Proto-Zapotecan and Proto Core Zapotec. *ʔ is revealed to have been a consonant through the Core Zapotec period, suggesting that the complex systems of phonation contrasts found in some Central Zapotec languages are a recent development. Cases of tonal contrasts developing out of phonation contrasts are known from Southeast Asia, but Zapotec phonation contrasts arose out of interaction between the glottal consonant and pre-existing tonal contrasts. An exploration of the morphological environments conducive to upstep leads to new discoveries about Zapotecan derivational voice prefixes and reveals the origins of perfective allomorphy.
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Vowel shifts in Middle Wichi (Mataguayan family, South America)
Author(s): Verónica Nercesian and Nicolás Arellanopp.: 242–303 (62)More LessAbstractThis paper analyzes vowel shifts in Wichi (Mataguayan, South America) between the 18th and early 20th centuries, some of which contributed to the emergence of the Pilcomayeño and Bermejeño dialects. Based on a historical database and using the comparative method, we date the vowel shift over the period we have named as Middle Wichi. At the early stage of this period, the /e/ > /a/ lowering is analyzed as a sporadic change, spread across the dialects in part of the vocabulary. At a later stage, the chain shift /ɑ/ > /o/ > /u/ > /e, i/, the merger of /u/ with /e/ and /i/, and the sporadic change of /i/>/e/ lowering in some words took place in Bermejeño. The paper explores implications in the implementation of sound change, the regular changes and the lexical diffusion, in particular, in chain shifting. It also explores some connections with other Mataguayan languages in both the lowering e>a and the possible causes of the changes. Thus, the paper contributes to the historical study of the Wichi language and the Mataguayan family in the Gran Chaco area in South America.
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Construct types in language change
Author(s): Stefan Schneiderpp.: 304–334 (31)More LessAbstractThis article combines ideas and concepts deriving from grammaticalization studies, cognitive linguistics and construction grammar. Specifically, it takes three important ideas developed within grammaticalization research, namely untypical context, bridging or critical context and isolating or switch context (Evans & Wilkins 2000, 2006; Heine 2002), and remodels them with the concepts construct and construction. This enables the definition of three salient construct types present in historical corpora that are placed in the continuum between individual variation and language change: extensional constructs, ambiguous constructs and adaptive constructs. Each construct type characterizes a specific phase in language change. The data presented as illustration of the construct types stem from historical and contemporary corpora of written French, Italian and Spanish.
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Polarity reversal constructions and counterfactuals in Ancient Greek
Author(s): Ezra la Roipp.: 335–375 (41)More LessAbstractPolarity reversal has recently been argued to be the defining characteristic of counterfactuality. Ancient Greek had a diverse set of constructions which bring about polarity reversal that is not the direct result of a negation marker nor do they all express a counterfactual meaning. It is the aim of this paper to detail the major differences between these constructions synchronically and especially diachronically, focusing on counterfactual mood forms, counterfactual modal verbs, avertives (almost+past (im)perfective), non-counterfactual rhetorical questions and non-standard wishes. As a historically varied constructional group, these constructions bring about polarity reversal in different ways with different implicatures (e.g., counterfactual, contradictory, undesirable), but they most importantly differ in their diachronic conventionalization of polarity reversal. Whereas counterfactuals conventionalize their polarity reversal in various ways (e.g., changing temporal reference, counterfactual implicature transfer), non-counterfactual polarity reversal constructions create polarity reversal as a synchronic implicature through pragmatic means (e.g., a rhetorical question identifying a contradictory presupposition in the common ground or a non-standard wish evaluating an undesirable outcome to the speaker).
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Review of Tahmasebi, Borin, Jatowt, Xu & Hengchen (2021): Computational Approaches to Semantic Change
Author(s): Christin Beckpp.: 376–384 (9)More LessThis article reviews Computational Approaches to Semantic Change
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