Journal of Historical Linguistics - Online First

Semantic change proceeds via an A > A/B (> B) trajectory (Traugott & Dasher 2002). While semantic extension (i.e., A > A/B) is now relatively well-understood, semantic loss (i.e., A/B (>B)) is not. This article argues that the mechanism of semantic extension is a determinant of the likelihood of loss. Specifically, loss is more likely following extension through inference-driven metonymy than following metaphorical extension. This is because metaphorically related senses tend to be contextually more distinct, which better supports polysemy sustenance. Conversely, because inference-driven extensions typically rely on bridging contexts, related senses often occur in overlapping contexts. This makes loss of the source sense more likely following extension. Evidence to support this argument is drawn from different corpus-based case studies into the semantic development of the English adjectives bright, dumb, narrow, and strange, and Dutch eng ‘frightening’.

This paper explores the relationship between ambiguity and reanalysis in syntactic change, with a particular focus on the interplay between structural and semantic ambiguity. The diachronic corpus study examines two cases of syntactic reanalysis. The first involves the development of the German directional adverb hinaus ‘out, outward’ into a verbal particle, while the second traces the evolution of the same adverb into an adposition, specifically as part of the circumposition [über NPACC hinaus] ‘beyond, besides’. The paper argues that structural ambiguity may, but does not necessarily, align with semantic ambiguity, which has implications for potential diachronic shifts. Structural ambiguity alone does not necessarily lead to reanalysis and should not be regarded merely as a transitional stage in gradual diachronic change; rather, it may represent a relatively stable state. In this sense, structural ambiguity can serve as a potential starting point for reanalysis, though it does not inherently drive the process.

In this article we analyze the translation strategies used by medieval and early modern Spanish translators when rendering the infinitive absolute (IA) in the Hebrew Bible. In a literal translation, this structure, which had no immediate equivalent in the Spanish of the time, would be rendered with the infinitive followed by a conjugated form of the same verb, as in Spanish llorar llorarás ‘to cry you will cry’, meaning either ‘for sure you will cry’ or ‘you will cry a lot’. The exhaustive analysis of the IA construction in a parallel corpus reveals the full repertoire of structures — from literal calque to creative paraphrases — used to convey the pragmatic values expressed by the Hebrew IA. In addition to characterizing each of the twelve Bible translations in the corpus in terms of literalness or creativity, we also address the question of the permeability of the calque into non-translated texts and even oral registers. Based on structural, chronological, and socio-historical factors, we conclude that this type of fronted infinitive did not evolve into a productive pattern, and that present-day Spanish topicalized infinitives (which superficially resemble the IA calque) are an independent development. Instead, the translation of the Hebrew IA into Spanish crystallized over time into tautological gerunds rather than infinitives.

This paper hypothesises that there is a universal cognitively and semiotically grounded preference for word-form shapes that signal the morphotactic structure of the word forms they represent. By exploring three historical changes in English, we demonstrate how such a bias might plausibly constrain the actuation and implementation of sound changes. The changes we discuss are the emergence of /z/ as the underlying form in English plural, genitive, and 3rd person present suffixes; Middle English Open Syllable Lengthening; and the emergence and stabilization of irregular past tense and participle forms ending on sonorant+/t/ clusters instead of the expected ones resulting from regular /d/-suffixation. The present study shows how a preference for morphotactically indicative (and unambiguous) word-form shapes can be detected and measured and suggests that the existence of such a preference appears to be highly plausible. We conclude by pointing to more ways in which this hypothesis can be tested and potentially corroborated.

It has often been argued that ambiguity plays a role in language change, but the cognitive mechanisms and constraints that might facilitate ambiguity-related change are as yet poorly understood. In this article I discuss syntactic ambiguity and its potential role in grammatical change in the contexts of real-time language comprehension and production. In order to comprehend in real-time, readers or listeners usually process syntactically ambiguous strings of words as if they were unambiguous. Syntactic change may come about when innovative syntactic analyses are computed during comprehension and later spread and are incorporated into the grammar. Although ambiguity will not normally be a problem for language producers, avoiding ambiguity in language production may be motivated by audience design considerations. Experimental evidence for speakers choosing to avoid syntactic ambiguity is mixed, however. Psycholinguistic models that propose a tight link between real-time production and comprehension offer an integrative perspective on ambiguity avoidance and its possible role in language change.

This paper focuses on the origin of a polyfunctional morpheme ti42 in Tunxi Hui Chinese, a little-studied Hui Sinitic language with about 140,000 speakers in Tunxi, Anhui Province of China. This versatile morpheme represents a radical syncretism of nine disparate functions, including that between the lexical verb give and the allative, locative, and temporal marking, which is seldom reported in the literature. By first-hand synchronic data and the historical comparative method, we propose that ti42 originated as a send-type verb *diai6 ‘pass’ in Middle Chinese, which has extended to a general ditransitive verb give in modern Tunxi Hui. During this process, it has developed into two separate grammaticalization clines, one from ‘pass’ to the allative, locative, and temporal markers, and the other from give to recipient, beneficiary, purpose, permissive, and passive markers. The polysemy of ti42 sheds light on the complex processes of semantic shift from pass to give, and language-internal and contact-induced polygrammaticalization.

In European Portuguese, nunca ‘never’ is traditionally classified as a temporal adverb and it can convey sentential negation on its own, therefore behaving as a strong negative polarity item (NPI). Nevertheless, in early stages of the language we find nunca with a non-negative interpretation, in contexts that are considered ungrammatical in contemporary Portuguese. Unlike negative indefinites that started as weak NPIs and became inherently negative, nunca was already a strong negative polarity item in 13th century Portuguese. In this article I will show that, apart from the strong NPI nunca, there was also an ambiguous item nunca that corresponded to a modal polarity item. In the Romance context, items originating from Latin numquam also unfold into ambiguous items with different polarity. In Portuguese, however, ambiguity was not preserved. The evolution of nunca reinforces the idea that Portuguese is the most innovative of Romance languages regarding the outcomes of polarity items.

This paper offers quantitative observations on the argument structural change from object to subject experiencers for the verb fear (from causative ‘frighten’ to stative ‘feel fear’) during late medieval and Early Modern English. The empirical statements are based on a corpus of 7.5m words spanning 1350–1600. The paper explores the precise time course of the change, disambiguating cues and ambiguous contexts, the influence of other lexical items, and other facts. In so doing, it reconstructs the history of the argument structure change in fear. It introduces a concept of “polysemous competition” as a more abstract type of change exemplified by this specific case, presents a survey of observable phenomena that may generally accompany such a development, and discusses other implications.

The development of the Persian definitive object marker -rā from Old Persian rādī through Middle Persian benefactive rāy has been established as a model grammaticalization process by Bossong (1985). His explanations on other modern Iranian languages, and their interplay in the historical development, have received far less research attention. This article offers a novel and comprehensive account of the historical development of -rā in West Iranian, from Old Persian up to approximately 20 New Iranian languages. Based on the semantic map model, it demonstrates that concerning -rā, most West Iranian languages can be subdivided into three typological groups, two of which represent more or less clearly defined genetic subgroups within the continuum of West Iranian. The interplay of genetic and typological/functional factors is complex, and open questions remain. The present study aims to provide empirical data, and to raise relevant questions, for future in-depth studies.

This paper investigates the diachronically changing syntactic and semantic status of the Spanish Absolute Construction (AC) on the Communicative Continuum (Koch & Oesterreicher 1990 [2011]) in a corpus of 15th- to 18th-century translations from Latin. Previous research has already demonstrated that the 15th-century preclassical Spanish AC evolved from a highly formal past participial Latin calque in the realm of Communicative Distance to an entrenched gerundial absolute in the 18th century, positioned slightly further from the Communicative Distance pole (Del Rey Quesada 2018, 2021, Molenaers 2023). This study highlights that, besides the altering predicate, other characteristics enhanced the AC’s progression along the Continuum, including one syntactic (non-augmentation) and two semantic (non-adverbial, coreferential) factors. By means of clause linkage (Raible 1992, 2001), a development is traced to a syntactically less dense and semantically less complex gerundial AC, which displays a high frequency of the three outlined features. Complementary analyses grounded in a functional-pragmatic theory of subordination (Cristofaro 2003) have revealed a moderate widening of the innovative AC’s clausal status beyond strict subordination. Two language-internal evolutions, the case switch from ablative to nominative in the transition from Latin to Spanish and priming with the gerundial unaugmented free adjunct (FA), are identified as the driving forces behind the Spanish AC’s syntactic and semantic promenade beyond the extremes of Communicative Distance.