Journal of Historical Linguistics - Volume 16, Issue 1, 2026

This study aims at describing the verbs of the visual sensory domain in Old Anatolian Turkish (oat), including basic and compound verb forms. We shall specifically focus on intra-field and trans-field meaning extensions of visual perception verbs such as baḳ-, naẓar et-, gör-, and görin-/gözük-. Our findings are based on a corpus consisting of 11 texts both in prose and poetry from the 13th to 15th centuries. There are mainly two types of verbs that conceptualise mental and emotive states through visual perception: one pertains to idiomatic expressions with göz ‘eye’, such as göz-(ün) aç- (eye-poss.acc open), göz-den düş- (eye-abl fall), and göz dut- (eye hold). The second form includes basic verbs including baḳ- (to look at), gör- (to see), naẓar et- (to look at) and gör-in-/göz-ük- (to appear). We shall show that visual perception constitutes a rich source for expressing emotive states, and the use of vision verbs for the expression of emotions is as productive as it is for mental states. Similar to Sweetser’s body is mind metaphor, we suggest that vision is emotion. The domain of visual perception in oat texts displays a strong connection to intellection; however, there is no evidence in our data indicating that the verbs gör- and baḳ- have meaning extension to ‘to know’. The phenomenon-based verbs görin- and gözük- have mainly two meaning extensions: one is related to physical existence, as in ‘occur’ and ‘appear’ in English. When these verbs co-occur with nouns and adjectives, they reflect the speakers’ judgements and beliefs by means of a metaphor.

Some varieties of Camuno, an Eastern Lombard variety spoken in Valcamonica, Italy, show clear evidence of what appears to be an unconditioned sound change of S > h, where S had [s] and [θ] variants (Bonfadini 1995a; Cresci 2014). However, neighboring varieties in the upper parts of the valley retain inherited S and, in at least one village, Cerveno, debuccalization is limited to intervocalic position. In this study, we attempt to explain dialect variation in Camuno in terms of s-debuccalization as a lenition process within the general framework of Evolutionary Phonology (Blevins 2004a, 2006, 2015) building on the typology established by Ferguson (1990). The probability of articulatory undershoot is greatest in the V_V environment, and all dialects with S > h show the sound change in this context. In medial clusters like rS, lS, nS, where there is articulatory overlap and longer sustained constriction, articulatory undershoot is less likely, and S is most likely to be maintained, as it is in Cerveno. A treatment of S > h as lenition implies that [s] and [θ] were produced with spread vocal folds in languages where this sound change has been observed. Here we offer additional evidence for aspiration as an active feature in Camuno phonology and suggest possible origins of this feature during the long period of contact with Longobardic. Another central issue explored in this study are phonetic factors that might differentiate intervocalic s > h from s > h that originates in the syllable coda, as in many varieties of Spanish.

In this contribution we examine current views of the relationship between innovation on the one hand, and diffusion of a change through a community on the other. We also note in the recent literature much discussion of the role of the listener vs. the role of the speaker in innovation and spread. This paper re-examines the dichotomies just mentioned — innovation vs. spread and speaker vs. listener — and finds them unjustified. We consider two types of change — sound change and grammaticalization — which are similar in that they both show directional patterns across time and across languages, and they are both considered to be gradual. Based on empirical evidence from a wide range of studies from interactional linguistics, sociolinguistics, and diachronic linguistics, we argue that innovation occurs jointly between speaker and listener in the same speech community and spreads gradually on all dimensions.

The paper deals with how syntax of coordination interacts with the second position constraint. It is claimed, on the basis of Hittite data, that the cliticization scope of the enclitic coordinator can be limited to its complement with the exclusion of its (inner) specifier. This aspect of the interaction of coordination syntax and second position constraint has not been observed previously. Besides, Hittite broadens the dataset of the few languages with the “too-low” position of coordinators. Moreover, it is shown that the same type of cliticization domain is available for another extraCP clitic in Hittite — the direct speech particle. This is in stark contrast to CP bound clitics that take both the complement and the specifier of the head they target (C⁰) as their cliticization domain. Thus, we see a non-trivial correlation of the position the clitic is generated in (or targets) and its distribution. This compares to a similar (yet different in detail) correlation in Ancient Greek between sentential and clausal clitics.