Published by De Gruyter Mouton

Volume 46 Issue 2

October 2012

Issue of Folia Linguistica

Contents
Journal Overview

Publicly Available October 31, 2012

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Page range: i-vi

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October 31, 2012

Introduction: The pace of grammaticalization in a typological perspective

Anne Carlier, Walter De Mulder, Béatrice Lamiroy

Page range: 287-302

October 31, 2012

The pace of grammaticalization and the evolution of prepositional systems: Data from Romance

Benjamin Fagard, Alexandru Mardale

Page range: 303-340

Abstract

It is generally assumed that grammaticalization is a major process in linguistic change. It is also assumed that grammaticalization does not affect homogeneously all linguistic categories, or even all languages: it has been said, for instance, that some languages are further down most grammaticalization clines than others and, thus, appear to be more grammaticalized than others. In this paper, we illustrate the uneven pace of grammaticalization in Romance by analysing a specific area of language, viz. simple and complex prepositions. Our goal is to establish a list of prepositions which are in actual use in five present-day Romance languages (to wit, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish). In order to do so, we check the validity of existing lists against written and spoken corpora, and evaluate the degree of grammaticalization of each morpheme or construction, on the basis of (mainly) morpho-syntactic criteria. Additionally, and most importantly, a corpus-based approach makes it possible to observe these items’ frequency. The result offers a clear picture of the degree of grammaticalization of prepositions in present-day Romance, showing that French seems indeed to be the most grammaticalized Romance language, followed by Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian.

October 31, 2012

Grammaticalisation and the internal logic of the indefinite article

Michael Herslund

Page range: 341-358

Abstract

The West-European languages all develop an indefinite article by a grammaticalisation process of the numeral ‘one’. The article describes the different outcomes of this process by distinguishing different patterns resulting from the interpretation of the numeral as a quantifier, a classifier or both. The different patterns are examined in their connection and interaction with both the lexical make-up of nouns (homogenous vs. heterogenous nouns) and the category of number (singular, plural and collective) in Germanic and Romance languages. Three different systems are identified: a quantifier system in Germanic, a qualifier system in Modern French and a mixed system in Old French and Spanish.

October 31, 2012

Grammaticalization and innovation in the encoding of motion events

Claudio Iacobini

Page range: 359-386

Abstract

The way in which major Romance languages prefer to encode motion events corresponds, in Talmy’s terminology, to the Verb-framed type. Latin is classified as a Satellite-framed language, and hence the diachronic transition from Latin to Romance involves a typological change. This change has been reconstructed by Herslund (2005) as a chain of processes ordered on a three-stage evolutionary scale, from a low to a high level of grammaticalization. Current Romance languages are located at different positions on this scale, French being the only one to have reached the third stage. The article discusses Herslund’s proposal on the ordering of Romance languages, arguing that both cross-linguistic comparisons of motion typology and the reasons for typological change should be considered at the level of particular linguistic constructions or that of particular event types, rather than as part of the language as a whole.

October 31, 2012

Word order in French, Spanish and Italian:A grammaticalization account

Karen Lahousse, Béatrice Lamiroy

Page range: 387-416

Abstract

This article provides a comparative analysis of word order in Spanish, French and Italian. We first consider word order in general, and show that Spanish has all types of word order except SOV (i.e. SVO, VOS, OSV, VSO and OVS), while Italian lacks SOV and VSO, and French lacks SOV, VSO and OVS. Taking a constructional view on grammaticalization and language change, we argue that the different word order patterns can be accounted for in terms of grammaticalization. We provide evidence for a continuum from Spanish → Italian → French, Spanish being the least grammaticalized, and French the most grammaticalized language. In the second part of the article we provide further evidence for our claim by focusing on the distribution of a particular type of word order shared by all three languages, VOS, where the subject is typically narrowly focused. VOS occurs in four discourse contexts in Spanish and Italian, but it is subject to additional restrictions in Italian. In French it appears only in one of the four discourse contexts of Spanish and Italian. Our hypothesis is that this is a case of progressive grammaticalization with respect to the interface between grammatical structure (the VOS word order) and information structure. Independent evidence for our claim comes from the distribution of clefts in Romance, which are a functional variant of VOS. This phenomenon, which developed in Romance as an innovative mechanism used to narrowly focus a constituent, shows the reversed pattern as the one observed for VOS: it is most developed in French, least in Spanish while it is progressing in modern Italian.

October 31, 2012

Degrees of grammaticalization in three Romance languages: A comparative analysis of existential constructions

Machteld Meulleman

Page range: 417-452

Abstract

Grammaticalization is generally assumed to be a gradual process and languages are thought to be grammaticalized to different degrees. For Romance languages, it has often been claimed that French is far more grammaticalized than Spanish, and that Italian occupies an intermediate position between these two. The aim of this study is to investigate to what extent this claim applies to existential constructions. In present-day French, Italian and Spanish, the most frequent existentials are il y a , c’è and hay respectively, all three being highly grammaticalized expressions. My analysis of these constructions will be based on the six parameters of grammaticalization as defined by Lehmann (1985, 1995), looking at instances drawn from a large newspaper corpus. The discussion will suggest that, as expected, French existential constructions display several signs of a highly advanced grammaticalization process which their Spanish and Italian counterparts lack. Moreover, it will be shown that the existential construction is least grammaticalized in Italian.

October 31, 2012

The evolution of negation in French and Italian: Similarities and differences

Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen, Jacqueline Visconti

Page range: 453-482

Abstract

This article examines similarities and differences in the evolution of both standard clause negation and n-word negation in French and Italian. The two languages differ saliently in the extent to which standard negation features postverbal markers. We suggest that a convergence of phonetic, prosodic, morphosyntactic, and pragmatic changes in the evolution of French may explain why the grammaticalization of the postverbal marker is significantly more advanced in that language. Two types of n-word negation must be considered: (i) those where the n-word occurs postverbally, and (ii) those where an n-word is positioned preverbally. In the former type, French allows deletion of the preverbal marker, whereas Italian does so to a much lesser extent. In the second type, French allows (indeed, normatively demands) insertion of a second preverbal negative marker, whereas Italian does not. We suggest that this is attributable to the respective positive vs negative etymologies of the n-words. In type (i) constructions, this etymological difference appears to make Italian a negative-concord language from the outset. In contrast, negative concord in Modern French has, to a large extent, developed gradually out of what was originally a reinforcement of standard negation by positive items with scalar properties. Our analysis suggests that the pace and form of grammaticalization cannot be attributed to any single cause, but is rather the result of a confluence of formal and functional factors.

October 31, 2012

Gradualness and pace in grammaticalization: The case of adversative connectives

Anna Giacalone Ramat, Caterina Mauri

Page range: 483-512

Abstract

In this article we illustrate some cases of parallel diachronic changes in the domain of interclausal adversative connectives, in which Romance languages develop roughly the same function from the same Latin lexical source through similar paths, but at different time rates. This study supports the idea that regularities in semantic change can be effectively captured if a model in stages is adopted, which allows to observe micro-changes correlated to different types of context and to different frequencies of occurrence of the items at issue. In the cases under exam, French seems to follow a faster pace, being ahead of other Romance languages, and at the same time it shows a tendency toward innovation. In the search for explanations for the different behaviors of French, Italian and Spanish, we discuss some hypotheses, calling into question the role of external factors possibly involved in the development of adversative connectives.

October 31, 2012

Stages of grammaticalization of causative verbs and constructions in Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian

Augusto Soares Da Silva

Page range: 513-552

Abstract

The article shows that analytic causative constructions are more grammaticalized in French and Italian than in Spanish and Portuguese, both in meaning (semantic bleaching of the verb ‘to make’) and in synthesis (structural event integration). It is pointed out, moreover, that Italian fare + infinitive is semantically and structurally more grammaticalized than French faire + infinitive, and that the emergence of the inflected infinitive in the clausal complements of causative and perception verbs in Portuguese has made the Portuguese causative constructions less integrated, and thus less grammaticalized, than the Spanish ones. The conclusion of this study is that there exists a decreasing continuum of grammaticalization of causative constructions in Romance languages, that starts with Italian and goes on to French, Spanish and Portuguese, in that order.

October 31, 2012

A comparative study of word order in Old Romance

Ioanna Sitaridou

Page range: 553-604

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to discuss word-order phenomena in Old French, Old Spanish, Old Portuguese, and Old Occitan from a comparative perspective. In particular, the following are examined: (i) the empirical evidence in order to assess the theoretical arguments for and against a verbsecond analysis of the Old Romance languages; (ii) verb movement in Old Romance; and (iii) whether the changes in the word-order patterns in the history of the Romance languages can be captured as yet another instance of grammaticalisation. By means of a uniform methodology and statistical analysis of novel data, it is claimed that: ( a ) Old Romance does not possess a Germanic V2; ( b ) there is variation in terms of word order among Old Romance languages, which is shown to be linked to the individual history of the languages; ( c ) V2 order is mostly an epiphenomenon of the discourse mechanisms and the nature of the left functional field in these languages.

October 31, 2012

Possessives and grammaticalization in Romance

Marleen Van Peteghem

Page range: 605-634

Abstract

As is well known, the possessive paradigms of French, Italian, Spanish and Romanian contain three types of possessive: adjectives, determiners and pronouns. Comparing with the Latin system, from which all Romance possessive systems derive, two tendencies prevail: possessive pronouns tend to be eliminated, and possessive adjectives change into determiners or become defictive adjectives with a restricted distribution. However, the possessive system of each of these four languages appears to be different. The aim of the article is to examine the extent to which these differences are the result of different degrees of grammaticalization. We show that the possessive system in French is in the lead in terms of grammaticalization in that neither of its two paradigms any longer displays adjectival properties. The least grammaticalized system is the Italian, while Spanish and Romanian occupy intermediate positions: Spanish combines the French system of clitic forms with the Italian system of strong forms. As for Romanian, the dependence of the possessive form on the definite article or its substitute AL shows that it is more grammaticalized than the Italian possessive system.

October 31, 2012

Acknowledgements

Page range: 635-636

October 31, 2012

Conference report

Bert Cornillie

Page range: 637-642

October 31, 2012

Index to volume 46

Page range: 643-644

About this journal

Objective
Folia Linguistica and Folia Linguistica Historica are the peer-reviewed journals of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE). Each volume consists of two issues of Folia Linguistica, one issue of Folia Linguistica Historica, and one Special Issue. Folia Linguistica is devoted to empirically based linguistic topics and covers all non-historical areas in the traditional disciplines of general linguistics. The journal welcomes work from various theoretical perspectives, but contributions should be directed towards a general linguistic audience, in other words the argument should be understandable to linguists with other theoretical backgrounds. The domain of interest of Folia Linguistica includes sociological, discoursal, computational and psychological aspects of language and linguistic theory. Other areas of central concern are grammaticalization, language typology, and variation within and across languages. Folia Linguistica Historica is exclusively devoted to empirically based diachronic linguistics of all language families (including both historical and comparative linguistics).

Topics
Folia Linguistica

non-historical areas in general linguistics
grammaticalization
language typology
language variation
language varieties
sociological, discoursal, computational and psychological aspects of language and linguistic theory

Folia Linguistica Historica

diachronic linguistics (including both historical and comparative linguistics)
linguistic reconstruction (both internal and external) and language phylogeny
computational approaches to linguistic variation and change

Article formats
Research articles, Review articles, Book reviews, Miscellanea (reports and discussion notes)