Journal of Historical Linguistics - Online First

Wanderwords are a very common phenomenon among the languages of the world, but they are rarely discussed in detail. Their paths of spreading are often considered hardly reconstructible and their origins beyond reach, and being non-inherited, they are often ignored by the linguists working on the history of the languages involved. The present article questions both these tendencies, as it aims at exploring, as far as possible, the origins and interconnections of a series of related words referring to “apples”, “plums”, and other fruits attested in various languages and language families of the Near East. The article has two goals. First, to try to reconstruct the borrowing chains and general spread of these terms, thus going as close as possible to their putative origin. Second, to provide a test case and an illustration of a general methodological framework that can be used to study the history of such wanderwords.

The paper studies the development of several properties of the reflexive enclitic sě/se dependent on a finite verb in the Czech language. We focus on the word order position of the reflexive and on the influence which the length of the initial phrase has on the position. We also investigate the shift of the reflexive from an enclitic into a prosodically indifferent clitic. Nine Czech translations of the Gospel of Matthew from the 14th to the 21st century are used as language material.

Besides highly grammaticalized analytic verb forms that constitute the system’s main tense, aspect, and mood forms, Basque has a handful of less grammaticalized periphrases for secondary aspectual and modal meanings. In both older and more recent texts, some of these periphrases have been reanalyzed as monoclausal and readjusted in accordance with the auxiliated verb’s argument structure. This readjustment or actualization process involves changes in two respects: case-marking and indexation through auxiliary change. The reanalysis and actualization of theses periphrases seem to be driven by analogy with highly extended and frequent analytic verb forms. With regard to their actualization, it seems to depend on three factors: word order, valency of the auxiliated verb, and plural patient agreement.

While 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.

The aim and scope of this article is to take a closer look at the functions and semantics of the three relative particles da, so, and wo, and to show that they have developed differently over a period from 1350 to 1800, continuing up to our modern dialects and the standard language. We will focus on wo because it is the only relativizer which is attested both as locative relative and as general relative clause marker, and we will propose that wo has extended its functional domain from a locative relative to a general relative marker. We will furthermore discuss if there has been a grammaticalization path “relative locative > general relative clause marker” in German diachrony or not. Finally, we will suggest that standardization processes are responsible for the different degrees of functional extension of wo attested in the historical/modern varieties and the standard language.

Some North American indigenous languages have names for ‘common nighthawk’ (Chordeiles minor)’, ‘robin’, and ‘bird’ that are strikingly similar phonetically and have served to advocate long-distance genetic relationships among language families. While the Algonquian proto-form for ‘nighthawk’ has a rather straightforward pedigree, this is not the case for Siouan languages. Despite their phonetic resemblance, the ornithonyms for ‘nighthawk’ in half a dozen Siouan languages are unrelated; some are mimetic innovations and others are borrowed. This article analyses how and why ornithonyms are problematic in the application of the comparative method, a reality that affects the validity of long-distance claims, and offers alternative ways to deal with this issue. While ornithonyms can be inherited and undergo all the regular sound changes (or not) like other words, they are also problematic in many respects. First, they can be onomatopoetic and imitate the cry or call of the bird in question – a feature that accounts for their cross-linguistic similarity. Second, they can undergo ad hoc mimetic reshaping or become lexically contaminated based on phonetic similarity with other ornithonyms or words with which they are associated culturally. Third and last, they can be borrowed internally or externally. However, despite these comparative pitfalls (i.e., that some phonetically similar forms in a language family are not cognates), the analysis shows that our understanding of ornithological nomenclature can be enhanced by considering elements of ornithology, mythology, ethnographic knowledge, sayings, and puns pertaining to birds.

The paper proposes a novel structural analysis of Hittite determinate relative clauses on the basis of a corpus study considering a wider and fuller array of Hittite data than ever before. In Hittite, relative wh-phrases attest a wide range of linear positions: first/initial, clause-second, immediately preverbal or even postverbal. We build upon the current assumption that wh-pronouns are clitics and thus their placement is determined by the syntax-prosody interface. As for the syntactic component, we argue against the in situ construal of wh-elements. Instead, we propose that what linearly appears to be clause-second, preverbal or postverbal position of the wh-pronoun is structurally associated with Spec, FinP. The prosodic component is provided by the standardly acknowledged prosodic inversion, but the prosodic domain for the placement of wh-clitics is not clausal (CP), it is rather to be identified with a smaller domain within CP, namely, FinP. We also provide the first ever systematic treatment of split wh-phrases which are highly problematic for existing approaches but are fully accounted for by our analysis.