1. Introduction 2. A methodology for syntactic reconstruction 3. Verb position in early Germanic main clauses 4. The wh-system of early Germanic 5. Null arguments in early Germanic 6. Conclusion References

Syntactic reconstruction and Proto-Germanic

The rise of Dative Substitution in the history of Icelandic: A diachronic construction grammar account

This article takes issue with the two dichotomies of structural vs. lexical case and thematic vs. idiosyncratic case, on the basis of their predictions on: (a) synchronic productivity, (b) language change, and (c) language acquisition. It is shown here that these predictions are not borne out in Icelandic. In fact, productivity data from Icelandic suggest that accusative objects to new verbs are assigned lexically and not structurally. Another problem is presented by different changes in case marking in the history of the Germanic languages, changes that can only be captured by two complementary approaches to structural case, which in turn severely undermines the general explanatory power of this concept. It turns out, moreover, that the case preservation property of lexical case, as opposed to structural case, in passives and raising-to-object constructions, is a construction-specific property, not generalizable to the language as a whole. An alternative approach is sketched in terms of a usage-based Construction Grammar where all case marking of core arguments in Icelandic is regarded as lexical, i.e. word-bound, and modeled in terms of lexicality–schematicity hierarchies which capture verb-specific idiosyncrasies, higher-level generalizations, as well as the default status effect found for the Nom-Acc Construction.

Lexical vs. structural case: a false dichotomy

The original case system found in Sanskrit (Old Indo-Aryan) was lost in Middle Indo-Aryan and then reinvented in most of the modern New Indo-Aryan (NIA) languages. This paper suggests that: (1) a large factor in the redevelopment of the NIA case systems is the expression of systematic semantic contrasts; (2) the precise distribution of the newly innovated case markers can only be understood by taking their original spatial semantics into account and how this originally spatial semantics came to be used primarily for marking the core participants of a sentence (e.g., agents, patients, experiencers, recipients). Furthermore, given that case markers were not innovated all at once, but successively, we suggest a model in which already existing case markers block or compete with newer ones, thus giving rise to differing particular instantiations of one and the same originally spatial postposition across closely related languages.

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The redevelopment of Indo-Aryan case systems from a lexical semantic perspective

We report on the rapid birth of a new language in Australia, Gurindji Kriol, from the admixture of Gurindji and Kriol. This study is the first investigation of contact-induced change within a single speaker population that uses multiple variants. It also represents an innovative modification of the Wright-Fisher population genetics model to investigate temporal change in linguistic data. We track changes in lexicon and grammar over three generations of Gurindji people, using data from seventy-eight speakers coded for their use of Gurindji, Kriol, and innovative variants across 120 variables (with 292 variants). We show that the adoption of variants into Gurindji Kriol was not random, but biased toward Kriol variants and innovations. This bias is not explained by simplification, as is often claimed for contact-induced change. There is no preferential adoption of less complex variants, and, in fact, complex Kriol variants are more likely to be adopted over simpler Gurindji variants.*

Birth of a contact language did not favor simplification

1. List of contributors 2. Introduction: The role of semantic, pragmatic and discourse factors in the development of case (by Barddal, Johanna) 3. Part I. Semantically and aspectually motivated synchronic case variation 4. Case variation in Gothic absolute constructions (by Dewey, Tonya Kim) 5. Some semantic and pragmatic aspects of object alternation in Early Vedic (by Dahl, Eystein) 6. Part II. Discourse motivated subject marking 7. The case of the shifty ergative marker: A pragmatic shift in the ergative marker of one Australian mixed language (by Meakins, Felicity) 8. How useful is case morphology? The loss of the Old French two-case system within a theory of Preferred Argument structure (by Detges, Ulrich) 9. Part III. Reduction or expansion of case marker distribution 10. The development of case in Germanic (by Barddal, Johanna) 11. A usage-based approach to change: Old Russian possessive constructions (by Eckhoff, Hanne Martine) 12. Lacking in Latvian: Case variation from a cognitive and constructional perspective (by Berg-Olsen, Sturla) 13. Verb classes and dative objects in Insular Scandinavian (by Jonsson, Johannes Gisli) 14. Transitive adjectives in Japanese (by Caluianu, Daniela) 15. Part IV. Case syncretism motivated by syntax, semantics or language contact 16. Patterns of development, patterns of syncretism of relational morphology in the Bodic languages (by Noonan, Michael) 17. The evolution of local cases and their grammatical equivalent in Greek and Latin (by Luraghi, Silvia) 18. Argument structure and alignment variations and changes in Late Latin (by Cennamo, Michela) 19. Case loss in Texas German: The influence of semantic and pragmatic factors (by Boas, Hans C.) 20. Part V. Case splits motivated by pragmatics, metonymy and subjectification 21. Semantic role to new information in Meithei (by Chelliah, Shobhana L.) 22. From less personal to more personal: Subjectification of ni-marked NPs in Japanese discourse (by Sadler, Misumi) 23. Author index 24. Subject index

Introduction: The role of semantic, pragmatic and discourse factors in the development of case

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Jóhanna Barðdal

Papers

Introduction: The role of semantic, pragmatic and discourse factors in the development of case

The role of semantic, pragmatic, and discourse factors in the development of case