Abstract
Practitioners of syntactic reconstruction have not acknowledged that arbitrariness and iconicity influence syntactic change, and that they therefore need to be incorporated into methods of reconstruction. I argue that iconicity creates a directional tendency in syntactic change, privileging structures that are more iconic. I propose a method for incorporating this fact into methods of syntactic reconstruction. I demonstrate the application of this method on two pieces of reconstructed syntax: orientation serial verb constructions and left-peripheral topics. Both case studies are from Proto-Sogeram, the ancestor to ten languages of Papua New Guinea. A third, briefer case study concerns Proto-Carib.
Funding source: University of California, Santa Barbara
Funding source: Pacific Rim Research Program
Funding source: NSF
Award Identifier / Grant number: 1264157
Funding source: ELDP
Award Identifier / Grant number: IGS0221
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Spike Gildea, Marianne Mithun, three anonymous reviewers, and the FoLH editorial team for helpful feedback on this paper. A version of this research was also presented at the 24th International Conference on Historical Linguistics in Canberra, Australia, and I am grateful to the audience there for additional feedback. Fieldwork on the Sogeram languages was supported by a U.S. Department of Education Javits Fellowship, the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, the UCSB Department of Linguistics, the UC Pacific Rim Research Program, NSF Grant BCS-1264157, and ELDP Grant IGS0221.
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