Head, Heart, or Hands: How Do Employees Respond to a Radical Global Language Change over Time?

The focus of this chapter is on how languages move and change over time and space. The perceptions of historical linguists have been shaped by what they were observing. During the flowering of comparative linguistics, from the late 19th into the 20th century, the dominant view was that in earlier times when people moved, their languages moved with them, often over long distances, sometimes fast, and that language change was largely internal. That changed in the second half of the 20th century. We now recognize that in recent centuries and millennia, most movements of communities and individuals have been local and shorter. Constant contact between communities resulted in features flowing across language boundaries, especially in crowded and long-settled locations such as most of Central and West Africa. Although communities did mix and people did cross borders, it became clear that language and linguistic features could also move without communities moving.

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French negation, the Superset Principle, and Feature Conservation

Cycles in Language Change ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198824961.003.0011 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 199-227

Author(s):

Karen De Clercq

Keyword(s):

Internal Structure ◽

Language Change ◽

Natural Consequence ◽

Negative Concord ◽

Double Negation ◽

Change Over Time ◽

Syntactic Movement ◽

Sentential Negation ◽

Lexical Items ◽

Over Time

This chapter provides a nanosyntactic account of negation in French, modelling the change from le bon usage French (BUF) to colloquial French (CF). It is argued that language change is driven by Feature Conservation: the lexical items involved in the expression of sentential negation may change over time, but the features needed remain stable. Furthermore, it is argued that the change from BUF to CF is economy-driven, resulting in bigger lexically stored trees, less spell-out-driven movements and a maximal operationalization of the Superset Principle. In addition, the account shows how negative concord and double negation can be explained as a natural consequence of the interplay of the internal structure of lexical trees and the Superset Principle. Finally, the chapter adds to theoretical discussions within nanosyntax by presenting how the interaction between syntactic movement and spell-out-driven movement may be conceived of.

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What's mine is yours: Stable variation and language change in Ancient Egyptian possessive constructions

The Canadian Journal of Linguistics / La revue canadienne de linguistique ◽

10.1017/cnj.2017.35 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 62 (4) ◽

pp. 639-660

Author(s):

Shayna Gardiner

Keyword(s):

Language Change ◽

Multivariate Analyses ◽

Continuous Variable ◽

Change Over Time ◽

Factors Affecting ◽

Ancient Egyptian ◽

Possessive Constructions ◽

Stable Variation ◽

Over Time

AbstractVariation is described as two or more variants competing for finite resources. In this model, two outcomes are possible: language change or specialization. Specialization can be broken down further: specialization for different functions, and partial specialization – stable variation. In this paper, I analyze the differences between stable variation and language change using the two variables present in Ancient Egyptian possessive constructions. Observing four Egyptian possessive variants, split into two groups with two variants each – clitic possessor variants and full nominal possessor variants – for a total of 2251 tokens, I compare factors affecting variant choice in each possessive group. Results of distributional and multivariate analyses indicate that a) change over time occurs in clitic possession, while stable variation occurs with noun variants; and b) different kinds of factors govern the two sets: the continuous variable phrase complexity affects variant choice in nominal possession, but does not affect the clitic variants.

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Gender and language change in Old Norse sentential negatives

Language Variation and Change ◽

10.1017/s0954394515000125 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 27 (3) ◽

pp. 349-375 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Tam Blaxter

Keyword(s):

Language Change ◽

Old Norse ◽

Prose Fiction ◽

Female Characters ◽

Change Over Time ◽

Consistent Finding ◽

Historical Societies ◽

Sentential Negation ◽

Over Time

AbstractOne consistent finding across sociolinguistic studies is the tendency for female speakers to lead in ongoing change. Different explanations have been proposed for this and a key method of testing these explanations is to identify whether the pattern occurs in the languages of a wider range of societies than have been studied thus far. Historical societies are relatively understudied in this regard, but undertaking variationist research into gender in historical varieties presents many challenges. One way to overcome these is to examine variation internal to fiction data. This paper presents an analysis of the effect of gender on the adverb selected for sentential negation in Old Norse prose fiction. It finds that female characters lead consistently in this change over time. In doing so, it demonstrates the feasibility of using fiction data when examining the effect of gender in historical varieties such as Old Norse.

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Collocative Integrity and Our Many Varied Subjects: What the Metric of Alignment between Classification Scheme and Indexer Tells Us About Langridge’s Theory of Indexing

NASKO ◽

10.7152/nasko.v4i1.14660 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 196 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Joseph T. Tennis

Keyword(s):

Language Change ◽

Classification Scheme ◽

Conceptual Models ◽

Complex Relationship ◽

Change Over Time ◽

Classification Schemes ◽

The One ◽

The Universe ◽

Over Time

<p>As the universe of knowledge and subjects change over time, indexing languages like classification schemes, accommodate that change by restructuring. Restructuring indexing languages affects indexer and cataloguer work. Subjects may split or lump together. They may disappear only to reappear later. And new subjects may emerge that were assumed to be already present, but not clearly articulated (Miksa, 1998). In this context we have the complex relationship between the indexing language, the text being described, and the already described collection (Tennis, 2007). It is possible to imagine indexers placing a document into an outdated class, because it is the one they have already used for their collection. However, doing this erases the semantics in the present indexing language. Given this range of choice in the context of indexing language change, the question arises, what does this look like in practice? How often does this occur? Further, what does this phenomenon tell us about subjects in indexing languages? Does the practice we observe in the reaction to indexing language change provide us evidence of conceptual models of subjects and subject creation? If it is incomplete, but gets us close, what evidence do we still require?</p>

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