Showing papers in "Transactions of the Philological Society in 2014"
TL;DR: In this paper, the personal agreement system of the Ngyaltsu variety of Zbu rGyalrong is described, the first such description for this rarely documented Sino-Tibetan language.
Abstract: In this paper, the personal agreement system of the Ngyaltsu variety of Zbu rGyalrong is described, the first such description for this rarely documented Sino-Tibetan language. The agreement pattern is characterised by a direct-inverse system, analysed in detail using the conceptual apparatus from. The system is then compared with those of three neighbouring rGyalrong languages: Eastern rGyalrong, Japhug and Tshobdun, where it is suggested, especially from the behaviour of closed-syllable stems in Eastern rGyalrong, that the person suffixes across rGyalrong are internally structured, the 1sg suffix having a particularly close relationship with the stem.
29 citations
TL;DR: This paper employed a new empirical approach to an enduring controversy concerning the development of imperfective vs. perfective verbs in Slavic, using two different statistical models to sort Old Church Slavonic data from the PROIEL corpus and compare the results to distributions of verb forms in modern Russian.
Abstract: We employ a new empirical approach to an enduring controversy concerning the development of a system of imperfective vs. perfective verbs in Slavic. While scholars once claimed that this is an ancient inherited system, dating from the prehistoric era, most now believe that the Slavic aspect-pair system is an innovation. Different opinions concerning the date of this innovation range from the time of the earliest Slavic texts to the late middle ages. We use two different statistical models to sort Old Church Slavonic data from the PROIEL corpus and compare the results to distributions of verb forms in modern Russian. This comparison shows that there are indeed differences among verbs in Old Church Slavonic that suggest a division into imperfective vs. perfective verbs, although this division is clearly not identical to the division found in modern Russian.
24 citations
Abstract: A recent paper on the prehistory of the Tibetan verbal system by Guillaume Jacques (2012), in keeping with many previous authorities, presents Tibetan verbs as occurring in pairs, with a voiced intransitive and a voice-alternating transitive member. However, as noticed by Uray, Tibetan verbs occur in triplets with no relationship between voicing and transitivity.
20 citations
TL;DR: The authors demonstrate the value of The Proceedings of the Old Bailey (1674-1913) as a linguistic resource, via a discussion of pragmatic studies undertaken by Archer, Cecconi and Traugott.
Abstract: This paper demonstrates the value of The Proceedings of the Old Bailey (1674–1913) as a linguistic resource, via a discussion of pragmatic studies undertaken by Archer, Cecconi and Traugott. The field of historical pragmatics is also delineated, as practised by these linguists. The paper argues that, as well as telling us important things about Old Bailey discursive practices of old, and the language used, the studies offer a means of advancing pragmatic theory – in respect to grammaticalization and facework – and pragmatic methodology – in respect to the viability of using corpus-linguistic techniques to locate pragmatic phenomena.
15 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the difference between languages with definite determiners and those without determiners have been the object of much research, focusing mainly on Old Norse, where possible they also discuss Common Norse and Northwest Germanic (both of which are attested exclusively in runic inscriptions).
Abstract: The differences between languages with definite determiners and those without definite determiners have been the object of much research. Recently, Boskovic (2005, 2008, 2009, 2010) has uncovered a number of one- and two-way syntactic generalizations which serve to set these two typological groups apart. He accounts for the contrasts observed by proposing that languages with definite determiners (‘DP’ languages) have a DP layer, while determiner-less languages (‘NP’ languages) lack this DP projection altogether. Since the Old Germanic languages did not have fully grammaticalized definite articles, a reasonable hypothesis to explore might be that they were NP languages in Boskovic’s sense. In this paper we explore this hypothesis, focusing mainly on Old Norse; where possible we also discuss Old Norse’s historical predecessors Common Norse and Northwest Germanic (both of which are attested exclusively in runic inscriptions). The specific NP properties considered in this paper are (A) the absence of a fully grammaticalized definite article, (B) syntactic discontinuities and free word order, (C) the absence of double adnominal genitives with transitive deverbal nouns, (D) the absence of clitic doubling and (E) the presence of radical pro drop. The paper’s approach is guided by basic generative assumptions, but its focus is descriptive rather than theoretical.
14 citations
TL;DR: This article revisited a construction that is rare in historical data, namely the combination of being with an infinitive, as in They being to arrive early that afternoon, all necessary preparations had been made.
Abstract: This paper revisits a construction that is rare in historical data, namely the combination of being with an infinitive, as in They being to arrive early that afternoon, all necessary preparations had been made. In early and late Modern English, the BE TO construction had a fuller paradigm than it does in Present Day English, where it is (almost) exclusively used in tensed forms. The focus in this paper is on part of the paradigm of the BE TO construction, i.e., instances with a present participle form of be. Relevant neighbouring constructions are being Ving and having to V, but the construction also needs to be discussed against the background of developments in the system of auxiliaries and future time expressions (Denison 1993; Warner 1993; Nesselhauf 2006, 2010). On the basis of evidence from historical text databases and corpora, this paper provides the first detailed description of the syntactic contexts, functions and distribution of the being to V construction. In a next step, corpus data are used to discuss possible reasons (i.e., system dependency, paradigmatic attrition, competition and distributional fragmentation) for its apparent demise. The study thus contributes to the still somewhat underexplored area of syntactic loss.
12 citations
TL;DR: This article argued that quidem can be characterized as a weak adverb (in the sense of Cardinaletti & Starke 1999), and that it is the middle member of a tripartite paradigm with strong equidem and clitic -quidem as the two other members.
Abstract: The present paper deals with the (morpho)syntax and the interpretation of the Latin particle quidem. At the morphosyntactic level, it will be argued that quidem can be characterized as a weak adverb (in the sense of Cardinaletti & Starke 1999), and that it is the middle member of a tripartite paradigm with strong equidem and clitic -quidem as the two other members. As to the syntax of quidem, it is contended that the particle always takes scope over an entire proposition, and that it never induces constituent focus. It will be shown that the element to the left of quidem can be a focus, a topic or a discourse neutral constituent, and that the pragmatic status of this element is never affected by the presence of quidem. Finally, two claims are made about the interpretation of quidem. First, it is proposed that quidem is a marker of affirmative polarity, rather than a modal adverb. Second, in accordance with many previous accounts that consider quidem to be a focus particle, quidem will be characterized as a marker of emphatic affirmative polarity, which emphasizes that the state affairs expressed by a given proposition does indeed hold. Under this view, quidem can be considered a marker of VERUM focus (in the sense of Hohle 1992).
10 citations
TL;DR: The origin of the *-ō- suffix is traced back to inherited perfects of the type 3sg. as mentioned in this paper, with subsequent reanalysis of the root vowel *-oda- as a suffix.
Abstract: Oscan and Umbrian have a future perfect suffix -us-/–ur–. Although various sources for this suffix have been suggested, none satisfactorily explain its origin. This article evaluates these previous attempts and makes a new proposal: the Oscan and Umbrian future perfect can be identified as a perfect suffix *-ō- plus the future suffix *-s-. The perfect suffix *-ō-, although not directly attested in Oscan and Umbrian, is found in the related language South Picene. The origin of the *-ō- suffix is traced back to inherited perfects of the type 3sg. *Ce-CoH-e, e.g. *de-doh3-e ‘gave’ > *dedō → Umbrian teřust ‘(s)he will have given’, with subsequent reanalysis of the root vowel *-ō- as a suffix. A parallel for this development is found in Gaulish.
10 citations
TL;DR: The Zulu locative has traditionally been classed as an adverb or as a nominal in certain contexts, such as Swahili, where the locative is treated as a form of noun as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The Zulu locative has traditionally been classed as an adverb, or as a nominal in certain contexts. In other Bantu languages, like Swahili, the locative is treated as a form of noun. This paper presents a description of the locative in terms of the theory of Distributed Morphology. It proposes that the Zulu locative can best be viewed as a case of the nominal. The paper also examines two phonological alternations associated with the locative, namely vowel lowering and palatalization. Traditionally, these have been seen as phonologically conditioned, but it is argued that they are both morphologically conditioned.
7 citations
TL;DR: The authors presented a semantic-pragmatic analysis and comparison of the be V-ing construction and the emergent progressive aspect markers (PAM) be in the middle, midst, process or act of Ving.
Abstract: This article presents a semantic-pragmatic analysis and comparison of the be V-ing construction and the emergent progressive aspect markers (PAM) be in the middle, midst, process or act of V-ing. On the basis of data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English, I first argue that the PAMs be in the middle, midst, process or act of V-ing show striking similarities with semi-auxiliary be V-ing. Both progressive constructions pattern with the same range of predicate classes, namely predominantly atelic actions and telic accomplishments. Not only is there overlap in their lexical-collocational preferences, the emergent PAMs and be V-ing also impose the same grammatical reading on the sentence: they represent or “actualize” the situations expressed by the following V-ing as unbounded and durative, regardless of whether these aspectual properties are already inherent in the predicates or not. Second, I address the question in which respect the emergence of the be in NP of V-ing aspectualizer construction causes reorganization within the paradigm of progressive aspect. The difference between be V-ing and the PAMs lies in the expanded uses of the former and the specialization of the latter into expressions of continuousness, with the exception of be in the process of V-ing. This particular construction seems to have developed into an aspectual marker of imminence, meaning that it refers to the preparatory phase leading up to the action. In most instances of be in the middle, midst and act of V-ing, however, the PAMs indicate that a situation is taking place without interruption at the temporal zero point. Be V-ing does not really display this preference for continuousness, as it takes on as often other shades of progressivity, for instance implied iterativity or habituality, and non-aspectual functions such as prospectivity and subjective meanings. I claim that it is exactly this functional indeterminacy of the be V-ing form that probably triggered the development of the PAM as a construction reinforcing one specific feature of progressivity, namely pure continuousness.
6 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a detailed descriptive and comparative study of this specific kind of vowel harmony and the phonological contexts in which it is triggered is presented. But this study is limited to the Kwilu District of DR Congo, where the Bantu B80 languages are spoken.
Abstract: Umlaut is a rather uncommon sound change in Bantu. However, it is prolific in a number of closely related Bantu languages spoken in the Kwilu District of DR Congo, also known as the ‘Bantu B80’ languages. This shared phonological innovation is not only diagnostic of the genealogical unity of this language cluster, but variation in the way it is realized is also significant for their internal classification. In some languages, umlaut leads to an increase in phonemes through the creation of a new set of rounded front vowels. In others, umlaut triggers vowel change without impact on the number of vowel qualities. This paper presents a detailed descriptive and comparative study of this specific kind of vowel harmony and the phonological contexts in which it is triggered.
TL;DR: The authors discuss the most controversial and widely studied part of the ǫgvedic Sanskrit clause, the clause-initial string, and argue that clisis must be defined in primarily syntactic rather than prosodic terms.
Abstract: I discuss the most controversial and widely studied part of the Ṛgvedic Sanskrit clause, the clause-initial string. I focus in particular on a few sets of words — relative pronouns, demonstrative pronouns and preverbs — arguing that their treatment in previous analyses requires revision. This is because they can be, in some contexts, clitics. I argue that clisis must be defined in primarily syntactic rather than prosodic terms: Ṛgvedic clitics all share certain syntactic properties, but they do not all necessarily share any single prosodic property (such as lack of lexical accent). I subsequently examine the consequences of this reanalysis of pronouns and preverbs in the clause-initial string for syntactic accounts of Ṛgvedic word order.
TL;DR: In this article, the present/past dichotomy of the Germanic verbal system was supplemented by the development of periphrastic forms such as the perfect and pluperfect.
Abstract: In Old English, the present/past dichotomy of the Germanic verbal system was supplemented by the development of periphrastic forms such as the perfect and pluperfect. However, the inflected past tense continued to be used beside these newer forms to express similar temporal content. The research presented here aims to provide accurate quantitative data on the distribution within Old English texts both of the periphrastic forms and of semantically comparable preterites. Upon analysis, these data reveal a substantial degree of synchronic variation among Old English texts in their use of these grammatical categories, with no observable diachronic trends. The evidence does not suggest that this variation is grammatically motivated; it is hypothesised that the preterite and the periphrastic forms differed in their perceived stylistic value, although the exact details of such a difference may no longer be recoverable.
TL;DR: In this paper, the distribution of variant forms of the Old English prepositions by, for and between has been analyzed using variable positioning of their object personal pronouns, and it was shown that by and for each have two prosodically conditioned allomorphs; one that is phonologically dependent on its object and another that is not.
Abstract: This paper attempts to systematise the distribution of variant forms of the Old English prepositions by, for and between. Using evidence from the variable positioning of their object personal pronouns, I argue that by and for each have two prosodically conditioned allomorphs; one that is phonologically dependent on its object (like French de ‘of’ as in Jean a beaucoup d'argent ‘John has lots of money’) and another that is not. Patterns in the distribution of variant forms of between have previously been noted but remain partially unexplained. I offer a novel analysis of the tendency for personal pronouns to occur to the left rather than the right of betweonum and of the tendency to use that particular variant of between when its complement is a personal pronoun.
TL;DR: In this article, the reconstruction of the Indo-European verbal derivational category that is conventionally called "statives" can be illustrated by Lat. sen-ē-re "to be old" or tac-ēre ‘to be silent’.
Abstract: The paper addresses the reconstruction of the Indo-European verbal derivational category that is conventionally called ‘ē-statives’ can be illustrated by Lat. sen-ē-re ‘to be old’ or tac-ē-re ‘to be silent’. Its empirical contribution consists in tracing the Old Indicreflexes of ‘ē-statives’, which have not been systematically investigated up to now. The analysis of the new data is conducive to the conclusion that that the Indo-European stative suffix *-eh1-ie/o- was originally typical of denominative verbs belonging to the Caland System. Its subsequent spread to primary verbs was implemented indifferent ways in individual ancient Indo-European languages, and therefore need not be projected into Proto-Indo-European.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the historical unconditioned merger of palatal /c/ and postalveolar /ʃ/ into alveolopalatal /ɕ/ in certain varieties of Central German.
Abstract: The present study investigates the historical unconditioned merger of palatal /c/ (< Middle High German /x/) and postalveolar /ʃ/ into alveolopalatal /ɕ/ in certain varieties of Central German. It will be shown that the phonemicization of the alveolopalatal was the final stage in a gradual reduction of segmental markedness. Thus, /c/ and /ʃ/ are argued to be featurally complex segments, while /ɕ/ is featurally simplex. Independent support for the proposed analysis can be found in the concomitant reduction of markedness in the vowel system of the dialects in question. The present study sheds light on the factors involved in explaining context-free phonological change and the historical source of the alveolopalatal /ɕ/.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe data relating to a case of morphosyntactic variation and change in French: verbal agreement patterns with the noun majorite "majority" and discuss the implications of these findings for the definition of collective nouns in French.
Abstract: This article is concerned with the description of data relating to a case of morphosyntactic variation and change in French: verbal agreement patterns with the noun majorite ‘majority’. Quantitative analysis of apparent-time data from cloze (‘gap-fill’) tests suggests that plural agreement with this noun is increasing; data from a diachronic corpus study confirm that this is the case. A number of factors are found to constrain this variation and change, including most importantly the presence and number of a post-modifying noun phrase (e.g. la majorite des hommes). The implications of these findings for the definition of collective nouns in French are discussed.