The Interplay Between form and Meaning in Language Change

1998 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 529-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Concepción Company Company
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Dative Case ◽  
History Of ◽  
Multiple Causation ◽  
Object Marking

The paper tries to show that in changes of multiple causation, meaning is a leading factor in determining the syntactic output. Although formal and semantic-pragmatic factors converge in a complementary way, they carry different weights: formal factors lay the seed for the innovative construction and the semantic-pragmatic ones act as the ultimate trigger of the change. A set of three multilevel changes in Spanish is examined; in all of them accusative and dative case-marking, in argument positions, compete for the object marking, and in all of them DAT-marking outranks the ACC one. The three changes may be characterized as a progressive grammaticalization of DAT-marking at the expense of ACC-marking, a tendency towards reinforcement of DAT objects in the history of Spanish.

Ambiguity avoidance as a factor in the rise of the English dative alternation

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Zehentner
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Cognitive Factors ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Dative Alternation ◽  
Cue Reliability ◽  
History Of ◽  
Potential Impact

Abstract This paper discusses the role of cognitive factors in language change; specifically, it investigates the potential impact of argument ambiguity avoidance on the emergence of one of the most well-studied syntactic alternations in English, viz. the dative alternation (We gave them cake vs We gave cake to them). Linking this development to other major changes in the history of English like the loss of case marking, I propose that morphological as well as semantic-pragmatic ambiguity between prototypical agents (subjects) and prototypical recipients (indirect objects) in ditransitive clauses plausibly gave a processing advantage to patterns with higher cue reliability such as prepositional marking, but also fixed clause-level (SVO) order. The main hypotheses are tested through a quantitative analysis of ditransitives in a corpus of Middle English, which (i) confirms that the spread of the PP-construction is impacted by argument ambiguity and (ii) demonstrates that this change reflects a complex restructuring of disambiguation strategies.

Multiple dative-marking grammaticalization

2001 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Concepción Company Company
Keyword(s):  
Special Kind ◽  
Grammatical Function ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Object Properties ◽  
Primary Object ◽  
History Of ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
Case Markings

The aim of this paper is to provide some diachronic evidence of how a language acquires primary object properties, and to shed some light on the disputable status of dative expressions (Dats) in two object constructions. Spanish having in its origin two object case-markings, one for the Acc-patient and one for the Dat-recipient, has been progressively acquiring only one object case-marking. This language would have been sliding from a DO–IO language toward a special kind of PO–SO language. This paper examines seven apparently unconnected syntactic changes, showing that a common deep pattern unifies them: a grammaticalization process which reinforces Dat object-marking as a prime argument in the history of Spanish. In various areas of the transitivity system, Dats usurped the grammatical function performed originally by the Acc. As a consequence, a fair distinction between DO and IO does not hold; there are primary object effects in this language.

scholarly journals Synchronic variation and loss of case

Diachronica ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred Weerman ◽  
Mike Olson ◽  
Robert Cloutier
Keyword(s):  
Formal Language ◽  
Language Change ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Dative Case ◽  
Present Participle

A bias towards formal texts obscures our view of language change and gives a misleading impression of actual developments if ‘changes from below’ are in conflict with ‘changes from above,’ resulting from norms that are visible in particular in formal language. A corpus of 17th-century Amsterdam texts with varying levels of formality is assembled to study the loss of genitive and dative case-marking in Dutch. These results are compared with the use of present participle constructions, which serve as an extra variable to gauge how formal a text is. We argue that nominal case-marking no longer existed in informal language in 17th-century Amsterdam and that the genitive became a feature of formal norms and was hence subject to pressures from above.

Differential Object Marking and the nature of dative Case in Basque varieties*

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ane Odria
Keyword(s):  
Exceptional Case ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Functional Head ◽  
Indirect Object ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Dative Case ◽  
Verbal Agreement ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
Secondary Predication ◽  
Ditransitive Constructions

This article analyzes the nature of Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Basque varieties. It demonstrates that, despite their identical dative morphology, DOM objects display a different syntax to goal indirect objects. Based on the licensing of depictive secondary predication and on the absolutive marking of non-human and indefinite objects, it argues that DOM objects are generated in a direct rather than indirect object configuration. Moreover, given the tight relation between case and agreement in ditransitive constructions and the possibility to check Case in Exceptional Case Marking (ECM) contexts, it proposes that dative Case in DOM is structurally checked in an Agree relation against a functional head of the verbal agreement complex. The article thus identifies a different dative argument which has not been previously characterized in this manner: one that does not originate within an applicative or postpositional phrase and checks Case structurally.

Scales and Units

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn M. de Luna
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
The North ◽  
First Case ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
River Region ◽  
History Of ◽  
Alternative Approaches

This chapter uses two case studies to explore how historians study language movement and change through comparative historical linguistics. The first case study stands as a short chapter in the larger history of the expansion of Bantu languages across eastern, central, and southern Africa. It focuses on the expansion of proto-Kafue, ca. 950–1250, from a linguistic homeland in the middle Kafue River region to lands beyond the Lukanga swamps to the north and the Zambezi River to the south. This expansion was made possible by a dramatic reconfiguration of ties of kinship. The second case study explores linguistic evidence for ridicule along the Lozi-Botatwe frontier in the mid- to late 19th century. Significantly, the units and scales of language movement and change in precolonial periods rendered visible through comparative historical linguistics bring to our attention alternative approaches to language change and movement in contemporary Africa.

Der deutsche Dativ genealogisch und diachron

2021 ◽  
Vol 143 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-111
Author(s):  
Michail L. Kotin
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Multiple Functions ◽  
The Third ◽  
Dative Case ◽  
Common Base ◽  
The Subject

Abstract The German dative case from genealogic and diachronic perspective. A language-change study about the third case. The dative case belongs to the so-called syncretistic cases, i. e., it encodes multiple functions inherited from the Indo-European cases locative, instrumental, ablative and dative. The paper aims to show the emergence of diverse case functions formally encoded by the dative case from a common base which is assumed to have the locative semantics. The decisive point was, according to the hypothesis, the development of the directional function towards the object or away from it. The addressee dative arose as a result of a specific reanalysis of movement semantics. The so-called dative of subject emerged from reanalysis of the subject-related experiencer function.

Typology and diachrony of converbs in Indo-Aryan

Diachronica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Stroński ◽  
Leonid Kulikov
Keyword(s):  
Recent Discussion ◽  
Verbal System ◽  
Holistic View ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Role And Reference Grammar ◽  
Reference Grammar ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
The One

Abstract Non-finite forms constitute an important component of the verbal system of Indo-Aryan (IA) languages. On the one hand, some of them, such as e.g., converbs, have already received proper attention in historical linguistics and typological literature, with regard to Old Indo-Aryan (OIA), Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA) and New Indo-Aryan (NIA) (cf. Tikkanen 1987; Peterson 1998; Subbarao 2012 among others). Other forms, such as participles, have usually been analysed in the wider context of reorganisation of a finite verbal system which led to alignment change (for recent discussion see Dahl and Stroński 2016). On the other hand, adverbial participles or infinitives have so far been under-studied (cf. Sigorski 2005), particularly within early NIA. This period in the history of IA languages witnessed several important morphosyntactic developments and still requires in-depth study, particularly due to the lack of well-edited corpora. The aim of the present paper is to partly fill this gap by highlighting major trends in the development of constructions based on various non-finite forms in early NIA. We focus on main argument marking in converbal chain constructions and its interplay with the animacy hierarchy. We demonstrate a relative stability of differential case marking (DCM), focusing mainly on conditions on differential subject marking (DSM) and differential object marking (DOM). In addition, we compare converbal chain constructions with participial absolute constructions (AC). Finally, in order to give a holistic view of converbal constructions, we verify the type of linking instantiated by them, focusing on three scopal parameters in converbal constructions (Tense, Illocutionary Force and Negation) and using the apparatus of Role and Reference Grammar and Multivariate Analysis.

scholarly journals Comparative variationism for the study of language change: five centuries of competition amongst Spanish deontic periphrases

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Luis Blas Arroyo
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
Common Factor ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Auxiliary Verbs ◽  
Complementary Distribution ◽  
Modal Verb ◽  
History Of

AbstractBased on a corpus composed entirely of texts close to the pole of communicative immediacy, mainly private letters from the sixteenth, eighteenth and twentieth centuries (c. 1960), this paper analyses the results of a variationist study on the historical evolution undergone by the Spanish modal periphrases with three distinct auxiliary verbs (haber, tener, deber). Using the heuristic tools of the comparative method, the data show that variation has been constrained by a handful of common factor groups over almost five centuries. Nonetheless, with the odd exception, these factors have conditioned each verb in a different way. Moreover, the sense of this variation changes as time goes by, with especially relevant reorganisation in the first part of the twentieth century. Furthermore, there is a notable association between these constraints and the degree of markedness and the frequency of the conditioning contexts, giving support to a usage-based approach to language change in which cognitive processes such as entrenchment play a decisive role. These data also allow a particular profile to be traced for each modal verb in the history of Spanish, in which tener and haber finally undergo a complementary distribution, whereas deber follows a different pattern. After several centuries of stagnation, tener becomes the star in the deontic firmament of spontaneous communication, diffusing abruptly as a change from below in the twentieth century, and replacing haber, which had been the unmarked variant for centuries.

Sources of auxiliation in the perfects of Europe

2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 599-644 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bridget Drinka
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Peripheral Areas ◽  
Explanatory Mechanism ◽  
Scribal Tradition

This paper explores the complex role of language contact in the development of be and have auxiliation in the periphrastic perfects of Europe. Beginning with the influence of Ancient Greek on Latin, it traces the spread of the category across western Europe and identifies the Carolingian scribal tradition as largely responsible for extending the use of the be perfect alongside the have perfect across Charlemagne’s realm. Outside that territory, by contrast, in “peripheral” areas like Iberia, Southern Italy, and England, have came to be used as the only perfect auxiliary. Within the innovating core area, a further innovation began in Paris in the 12th century and spread to contiguous areas in France, Southern Germany, and northern Italy: the semantic shift in the perfects from anterior to preterital meaning. What can be concluded from these three successive instances of diffusion in the history of the perfect is that contact should be regarded as one of the essential “multiple sources” of innovation, and as a fundamental explanatory mechanism for language change.

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