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.
References
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2006a. Serial verb constructions in typological perspective. In Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald & R. M. W. Dixon (eds.), Serial verb constructions: A cross-linguistic typology, 1–87. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2006b. Serial verb constructions in Tariana. In Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald & R. M. W. Dixon (eds.), Serial verb constructions: A cross-linguistic typology, 178–201. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Anttila, Raimo & Sheila Embleton. 1989. The iconic index: From sound change to rhyming slang. Diachronica 6(2). 155–180.10.1075/cilt.110.10antSearch in Google Scholar
Balles, Irene. 2008. Principles of syntactic reconstruction and “morphology as paleosyntax”: The case of some Indo-European secondary verbal formations. In Gisella Ferraresi & Maria Goldbach (eds.), Principles of syntactic reconstruction (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 302), 161–186. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.302.08balSearch in Google Scholar
Barðdal, Jóhanna. 2013. Construction-based historical-comparative reconstruction. In Thomas Hoffmann & Graeme Trousdale (eds.), The Oxford handbook of construction grammar, 438–457. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195396683.013.0024Search in Google Scholar
Barðdal, Jóhanna. 2015. Syntax and syntactic reconstruction. In Claire Bowern & Bethwyn Evans (eds.), The Routledge handbook of historical linguistics, 343–373. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9781315794013.ch15Search in Google Scholar
Barðdal, Jóhanna & Thomas Smitherman. 2013. The quest for cognates: A reconstruction of oblique subject constructions in Proto-Indo-European. Language Dynamics and Change 3(1). 28–67.10.1163/22105832-13030101Search in Google Scholar
Barðdal, Jóhanna & Thórhallur Eythórsson. 2012a. “Hungering and lusting for women and fleshly delicacies”: Reconstructing grammatical relations for Proto-Germanic. Transactions of the Philological Society 110(3). 363–393.10.1111/j.1467-968X.2012.01318.xSearch in Google Scholar
Barðdal, Jóhanna & Thórhallur Eythórsson. 2012b. Reconstructing syntax: Construction grammar and the comparative method. In Hans C. Boas & Ivan A. Sag (eds.), Sign-based construction grammar, 257–308. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Search in Google Scholar
Barðdal, Jóhanna & Thórhallur Eythórsson. 2020. How to identify cognates in syntax: Taking Watkins’ legacy one step further. In Jóhanna Barðdal, Spike Gildea & Eugenio Luján (eds.), Reconstructing syntax, 197–238. Leiden: Brill.10.1163/9789004392007_006Search in Google Scholar
Barðdal, Jóhanna, Elena Smirnova, Lotte Sommerer & Spike Gildea (eds.). 2015. Diachronic construction grammar (Constructional Approaches to Language 18). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/cal.18Search in Google Scholar
Barðdal, Jóhanna, Spike Gildea & Eugenio Luján (eds.). 2020. Reconstructing syntax. Leiden: Brill.10.1163/9789004392007Search in Google Scholar
Barðdal, Jóhanna, Thomas Smitherman, Valgerður Bjarnadóttir, Serena Danesi, Gard B. Jenset & Barbara McGillivray. 2012. Reconstructing constructional semantics: The dative subject construction in Old Norse-Icelandic, Latin, Ancient Greek, Old Russian and Old Lithuanian. Studies in Language 36(3). 511–547. https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.36.3.03bar.Search in Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan & Marilyn Ford. 2010. Predicting syntax: Processing dative constructions in American and Australian varieties of English. Language 86(1). 168–213.10.1353/lan.0.0189Search in Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 1985a. Diagrammatic iconicity in stem-inflection relations. In John Haiman (ed.), Iconicity in syntax: Proceedings of a symposium on iconicity in syntax, Stanford, June 24-6, 1983 (Typological Studies in Language 6), 11–47. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.6.03bybSearch in Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 1985b. Morphology: A study of the relation between meaning and form. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.9Search in Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 2006. From usage to grammar: The mind’s response to repetition. Language 82(4). 711–733.10.1353/lan.2006.0186Search in Google Scholar
Campbell, Lyle & Alice C. Harris. 2002. Syntactic reconstruction and demythologizing “Myths and the prehistory of grammars”. Journal of Linguistics 38(3). 599–618. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226702001706.Search in Google Scholar
Chafe, Wallace. 1976. Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view. In Charles N. Li (ed.), Subject and topic, 25–56. New York: Academic Press.Search in Google Scholar
Clark, Ross. 2011. Birds. In Malcolm Ross, Andrew Pawley & Osmond Meredith (eds.), The lexicon of Proto Oceanic: The culture and environment of ancestral Oceanic society, vol. 4: Animals, 271–370. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Search in Google Scholar
Contini-Morava, Ellen. 1983. Ranking of participants in Kinyarwanda: The limitations of arbitrariness in language. Anthropological Linguistics 25(4). 425–435.Search in Google Scholar
Cristofaro, Sonia. 2017. Implicational universals and dependencies. In Nicholas J. Enfield (ed.), Dependencies in language: On the causal ontology of linguistic systems (Studies in Diversity Linguistics), 9–23. Berlin: Language Science Press.Search in Google Scholar
Croft, William. 2008. On iconicity of distance. Cognitive Linguistics 19(1). 49–57. https://doi.org/10.1515/COG.2008.003.Search in Google Scholar
Daniels, Don. 2014. Complex coordination in diachrony: Two Sogeram case studies. Diachronica 31(3). 379–406.10.1075/dia.31.3.03danSearch in Google Scholar
Daniels, Don. 2015. A reconstruction of Proto-Sogeram: Phonology, lexicon, and morphosyntax. Santa Barbara: University of California Ph.D. dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Daniels, Don. 2016. Magɨ: An undocumented language of Papua New Guinea. Oceanic Linguistics 55(1). 199–224.10.1353/ol.2016.0004Search in Google Scholar
Daniels, Don. 2017a. A method for mitigating the problem of borrowing in syntactic reconstruction. Studies in Language 41(3). 577–614.10.1075/sl.41.3.02danSearch in Google Scholar
Daniels, Don. 2017b. Gants is a Sogeram language. Language and Linguistics in Melanesia 35. 82–93.Search in Google Scholar
Daniels, Don. 2018. Papuan languages collection. Archival collection, 960 items. Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC). http://catalog.paradisec.org.au/collections/DD1.Search in Google Scholar
Daniels, Don. 2019. Using phonotactics to reconstruct degrammaticalization: The origin of the Sirva pronoun be. Diachronica 36(1). 1–36.10.1075/dia.18015.danSearch in Google Scholar
Daniels, Don. 2020. Grammatical reconstruction: The Sogeram languages of New Guinea. Berlin & Boston: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110616217Search in Google Scholar
Daniels, Don, Danielle Barth & Wolfgang Barth. 2019. Subgrouping the Sogeram languages: A critical appraisal of historical glottometry. Journal of Historical Linguistics 9(1). 92–127. https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.17011.dan.Search in Google Scholar
Daniels, Don & Joseph D. Brooks. 2019. The history of *=a: Contact and reconstruction in northeast New Guinea. Journal of Language Contact 12(3). 533–568. https://doi.org/10.1163/19552629-01203001.Search in Google Scholar
DeLancey, Scott. 1985. The analysis–synthesis–lexis cline in Tibeto-Burman: A case study in motivated change. In John Haiman (ed.), Iconicity in syntax: Proceedings of a symposium on iconicity in syntax, Stanford, June 24-6, 1983 (Typological Studies in Language 6), 367–389. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.6.18delSearch in Google Scholar
DeLancey, Scott. 1991. Event construal and case role assignment. In Laurel A. Sutton, Christopher Johnson & Ruth Shields (eds.), Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on The Grammar of Event Structure, 338–353.10.3765/bls.v17i0.1610Search in Google Scholar
DeLancey, Scott. 2000. The universal basis of case. Logos and Language 1(2). 1–15.Search in Google Scholar
Dunn, Michael, Tonya Kim Dewey, Carlee Arnett, Thórhallur Eythórsson & Jóhanna Barðdal. 2017. Dative sickness: A phylogenetic analysis of argument structure evolution in Germanic. Language 93(1). e1–e22. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2017.0012.Search in Google Scholar
Fedden, Sebastian. 2012. Switch reference and temporal reference in Mian. In Volker Gast & Holger Diessel (eds.), Clause linkage in cross-linguistic perspective: Data-driven approaches to cross-clausal syntax, 393–413. Berlin & Boston: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110280692.393Search in Google Scholar
Foley, William A. 2018. The morphosyntactic typology of Papuan languages. In Bill Palmer (ed.), The languages and linguistics of the New Guinea area: A comprehensive guide, 895–937. Berlin & Boston: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110295252-008Search in Google Scholar
Foley, William A. & Mike Olson. 1985. Clausehood and verb serialization. In Johanna Nichols & Anthony C. Woodbury (eds.), Grammar inside and outside the clause, 17–60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Frishberg, Nancy. 1975. Arbitrariness and iconicity: Historical change in American Sign Language. Language 51(3). 696–719. https://doi.org/10.2307/412894.Search in Google Scholar
Gildea, Spike. 1998. On reconstructing grammar: Comparative Cariban morphosyntax (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics 18). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Gildea, Spike. 2000. On the genesis of the verb phrase in Cariban languages: Diversity through reanalysis. In Spike Gildea (ed.), Reconstructing grammar: Comparative linguistics and grammaticalization (Typological Studies in Language 43), 65–105. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.43.04gilSearch in Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1991. Isomorphism in the grammatical code: Cognitive and biological considerations. Studies in Language 15(1). 85–114. https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.15.1.04giv.Search in Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 2003. Constructions: A new theoretical approach to language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7(5). 219–224. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00080-9.Search in Google Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966. Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. In Joseph H. Greenberg (ed.), Universals of language, 2nd edn., 73–113. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Haiman, John. 1978. Conditionals are topics. Language 54(3). 564–589. https://doi.org/10.2307/412787.Search in Google Scholar
Haiman, John. 1980. The iconicity of grammar: Isomorphism and motivation. Language 56(3). 515–540. https://doi.org/10.2307/414448.Search in Google Scholar
Haiman, John. 1983. Iconic and economic motivation. Language 59(4). 781–819. https://doi.org/10.2307/413373.Search in Google Scholar
Haiman, John (ed.). 1985. Iconicity in syntax: Proceedings of a symposium on iconicity in syntax, Stanford, June 24-6, 1983 (Typological Studies in Language 6). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.6Search in Google Scholar
Haiman, John. 2008. In defence of iconicity. Cognitive Linguistics 19(1). 35–48. https://doi.org/10.1515/COG.2008.002.Search in Google Scholar
Harris, Kyle. n.d. Nend texts. Electronic files, Pioneer Bible Translators.Search in Google Scholar
Harris, Kyle. 1990. Nend grammar essentials. In John R. Roberts (ed.), Two grammatical studies (Data Papers on Papua New Guinea Languages 37), 73–156. Ukarumpa: Summer Institute of Linguistics.Search in Google Scholar
Harrison, Shelly P. 2003. On the limits of the comparative method. In Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda (eds.), The handbook of historical linguistics, 213–243. Oxford: Blackwell.10.1002/9780470756393.ch2Search in Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 1993. The diachronic externalization of inflection. Linguistics 31. 279–309.10.1515/ling.1993.31.2.279Search in Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2008. Frequency vs. iconicity in explaining grammatical asymmetries. Cognitive Linguistics 19(1). 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1515/COG.2008.001.Search in Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2016. The serial verb construction: Comparative concept and cross-linguistic generalizations. Language and Linguistics 17(3). 291–319. https://doi.org/10.1177/2397002215626895.Search in Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Thomas & Graeme Trousdale. 2013. Construction grammar: Introduction. In Thomas Hoffmann & Graeme Trousdale (eds.), The Oxford handbook of construction grammar, 1–12. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195396683.013.0001Search in Google Scholar
Itkonen, Esa. 1994. Iconicity, analogy, and universal grammar. Journal of Pragmatics 22(1). 37–53. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(94)90055-8.Search in Google Scholar
Johnson, Cynthia A., Peter Alexander Kerkhof, Leonid Kulikov, Esther Le Mair & Jóhanna Barðdal. 2019. Argument structure, conceptual metaphor and semantic change: How to succeed in Indo-European without really trying. Diachronica 36(4). 463–508. https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.00014.bar.Search in Google Scholar
Koch, Harold. 2015. Morphological reconstruction. In Claire Bowern & Bethwyn Evans (eds.), The Routledge handbook of historical linguistics, 286–307. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9781315794013.ch12Search in Google Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus, and the mental representations of discourse referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511620607Search in Google Scholar
Lightfoot, David W. 2002. Myths and the prehistory of grammars. Journal of Linguistics 38(1). 113–136.10.1017/S0022226701001268Search in Google Scholar
Mithun, Marianne. 1989. Historical linguistics and linguistic theory: Reducing the arbitrary and constraining explanation. In Kira Hall, Michael Meacham & Richard Shapiro (eds.), Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on Theoretical Issues in Language Reconstruction, 391–408.10.3765/bls.v15i0.1749Search in Google Scholar
Mithun, Marianne. 2000. The reordering of morphemes. In Spike Gildea (ed.), Reconstructing grammar: Comparative linguistics and grammaticalization (Typological Studies in Language 43), 231–258. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.43.09mitSearch in Google Scholar
Mithun, Marianne. 2003. Functional perspectives on syntactic change. In Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda (eds.), The handbook of historical linguistics, 552–572. Oxford: Blackwell.10.1002/9780470756393.ch17Search in Google Scholar
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 1992. Iconicity and generative grammar. Language 68(4). 756–796. https://doi.org/10.2307/416852.Search in Google Scholar
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 1998. Language form and language function. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Norde, Muriel. 2009. Degrammaticalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199207923.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Pawley, Andrew. 1995. C. L. Voorhoeve and the Trans New Guinea Phylum hypothesis. In Connie Baak, Mary Bakker & Dick van der Meij (eds.), Tales from a concave world: Liber amicorum Bert Voorhoeve, 83–123. Leiden: Leiden University.Search in Google Scholar
Pawley, Andrew. 1998. The Trans New Guinea Phylum hypothesis: A reassessment. In Jelle Miedema, Odé Cecilia, A Rien & C. Dam (eds.), Perspectives on the Bird’s Head of Irian Jaya, Indonesia: Proceedings of the conference, Leiden, Amsterdam, 13–17 October 1997, 655–690. Rodopi.Search in Google Scholar
Pawley, Andrew. 2005. The chequered career of the Trans New Guinea hypothesis: Recent research and its implications. In Andrew Pawley, Robert Attenborough, Jack Golson & Robin Hide (eds.), Papuan pasts: Cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples, 67–107. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Search in Google Scholar
Pawley, Andrew & Harald Hammarström. 2018. The Trans New Guinea family. In Bill Palmer (ed.), The languages and linguistics of the New Guinea area: A comprehensive guide, 21–195. Berlin & Boston: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110295252-002Search in Google Scholar
Peirce, Charles S. 1955. Philosophical writings of Peirce. Justus Buchler (ed.). New York: Dover.Search in Google Scholar
Roberts, John R. 1997. Switch-reference in Papua New Guinea: A preliminary survey. In Andrew Pawley (ed.), Papers in Papuan linguistics no. 3 (Pacific Linguistics A 87), 101–241. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Search in Google Scholar
Ross, Malcolm. 1995. The great Papuan pronoun hunt: Recalibrating our sights. In Connie Baak, Mary Bakker & Dick van der Meij (eds.), Tales from a concave world: Liber amicorum Bert Voorhoeve, 139–168. Leiden: Department of Languages and Cultures of South-East Asia and Oceania, Leiden University.Search in Google Scholar
Ross, Malcolm. 2005. Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages. In Andrew Pawley, Robert Attenborough, Jack Golson & Robin Hide (eds.), Papuan pasts: Cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples, 15–65. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Search in Google Scholar
Ross, Malcolm. 2015. The argument indexing of Early Austronesian verbs: A reconstructional myth? In Dag T. T. Haug (ed.), Historical linguistics 2013: Selected papers from the 21st International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Oslo, Amsterdam, 5–9 August 2013, 257–279. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.334.14rosSearch in Google Scholar
San Roque, Lila, Lauren Gawne, Darja Hoenigman, Julia Colleen Miller, Alan Rumsey, Stef Spronck, Alice Carroll & Nicholas Evans. 2012. Getting the story straight: Language fieldwork using a narrative problem-solving task. Language Documentation & Conservation 6. 135–174.Search in Google Scholar
Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1959. Course in general linguistics. Charles Bally & Sechehaye Albert (eds.), translated by Wade Baskin. New York: Philosophical Library.10.2307/538001Search in Google Scholar
Seržant, Ilja A. 2015. An approach to syntactic reconstruction. In Carlotta Viti (ed.), Perspectives on historical syntax, 117–154. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/slcs.169.05serSearch in Google Scholar
Sweeney, Mike. n.d. Mum texts. Electronic files, Pioneer Bible Translators.Search in Google Scholar
Thompson, Sandra A. & Yuka Koide. 1987. Iconicity and ‘indirect objects’ in English. Journal of Pragmatics 11(3). 399–406. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(87)90139-1.Search in Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Graeme Trousdale. 2013. Constructionalization and constructional changes (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics 6). Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199679898.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Vázquez-González, Juan G. & Jóhanna Barðdal. 2019. Reconstructing the ditransitive construction for Proto-Germanic: Gothic, Old English and Old Norse-Icelandic. Folia Linguistica Historica 40(2). 555–620.10.1515/flih-2019-0021Search in Google Scholar
Vries, Lourens de. 1997. The rise of switch-reference in the Awyu languages of Irian Jaya. In Jadranka Gvozdanović (ed.), Language change and functional explanations (Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 98), 89–108. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110813753.89Search in Google Scholar
Vries, Lourens de. 2010. From clause conjoining to clause chaining in Dumut languages of New Guinea. Studies in Language 34(2). 327–349. https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.34.2.04vri.Search in Google Scholar
Wade, Martha. n.d. Apalɨ texts. Electronic files, Pioneer Bible Translators.Search in Google Scholar
Wade, Martha. 1989. A survey of the grammatical structures and semantic functions of the Apalɨ (Emerum) language. Ms, Pioneer Bible Translators.Search in Google Scholar
Wade, Martha. 1993. Language convergence or divergence: The case of the Apalɨ (Emerum) language. Language and Linguistics in Melanesia 24(1). 73–93.Search in Google Scholar
Wade, Martha. 1997. Switch reference and control in Apalɨ. Language and Linguistics in Melanesia 28(1). 1–16.Search in Google Scholar
Walkden, George. 2013. The correspondence problem in syntactic reconstruction. Diachronica 30(1). 95–122. https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.30.1.04wal.Search in Google Scholar
Walkden, George. 2014. Syntactic reconstruction and Proto-Germanic (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics 12). Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198712299.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Willis, David. 2011. Reconstructing last week’s weather: Syntactic reconstruction and Brythonic free relatives. Journal of Linguistics 47(2). 407–446. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226710000381.Search in Google Scholar
Z’graggen, John A. 1975. The Madang-Adelbert Range subphylum. In Stephen A. Wurm (ed.), Papuan languages and the New Guinea linguistic scene (Pacific Linguistics C 38), 569–612. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.Search in Google Scholar
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston