Published by De Gruyter Mouton

Volume 48 Issue Historica-vol-35

Issue of Folia Linguistica

Contents
Journal Overview

Publicly Available October 22, 2014

Masthead

Page range: i-iv

Download PDF

October 22, 2014

Graphophonology and anachronic phonology Notes on episodes in the history of pseudo-phonology

John M. Anderson

Page range: 1-54

Abstract

In the present essay some of what have been the more influential conceptions of phonology are examined in the light of what I see as ‘intrusions’ into its domain, starting with a strand of orthographic influence. I am concerned with the extent to which various ‘phonological’ proposals might be described as ‘graphophonological’ rather than strictly phonological. This examination also reveals the interaction of the graphophonological impulse with the impact of other considerations that are not proper to synchronic phonology. Most pertinent here is the more familiarly controversial formulation as synchronic generalizations of what are substitutes for the diachronic regularities reflected in morphophonological alternations: what I call ‘anachronic’ phonology, associated, for the most part, with the conflation of morphophonology and phonology; another instance of ‘pseudo-phonology’. Scrutinized here are particularly proposals concerning sound structure associated with the classical littera, with the (‘taxonomic’) phoneme, and with the morphophoneme (or ‘systematic phoneme’). Finally, after an evaluation of an overtly graphophonological proposal, the orthographic rather than phonological value of ‘CVCV’ phonology is explored in relation to the inadequacies of the Linear B syllabary.

October 22, 2014

The voicing of intervocalic stops in Old Tuscan and probabilistic sound change

Stefano Canalis

Page range: 55-100

Abstract

The article examines the dual outcome of Latin intervocalic /p t k/ in Old Tuscan. While these stops remain voiceless in most of the Tuscan lexicon, a significant number of words are voiced. The prevailing opinion is that preservation of voicelessness is the native outcome, and that the words displaying voicing were borrowed from Romance languages in which intervocalic voicing was systematic. However, a number of facts militate against this hypothesis, including the presence of voicing in Tuscan words that are unattested or maintain a voiceless stop in the supposed donor languages. The results of a corpus-based analysis of an Old Tuscan lexicon show that the distribution of the voiced outcomes is phonologically conditioned (contra the borrowing hypothesis), as they are more likely if the stop was velar, next to low(er) vowels, next to stress and if followed by a liquid consonant. These results are also an example of sound change with clear and fine-grained phonological conditioning but a non-systematic outcome; irregularity was probably caused by the allophonic nature of Old Tuscan voicing and by its interaction with another lenition process.

October 22, 2014

On saying two things at once The historical semantics and pragmatics of Old English emotion words

Javier E. Díaz-Vera

Page range: 101-134

Abstract

The article analyzes some aspects of the literal and figurative conceptualizations of shame in Old English. Through the reconstruction and fine-grained analysis of the whole set of literal, metonymic and metaphoric expressions of shame recorded in a corpus of Old English texts, I show here that the embodiment model for the conceptualization of this emotion was not used in Old English until the arrival of Christianity and the new moral standards it brought. The slow but progressive introduction of embodied metonymies and metaphors in Old English is, I will argue here, a direct consequence of the adaptation of patristic texts into the vernacular. The pressure to spread the Christian concept of shame, where this emotion is presented as an internal and subjective experience, and the need to substitute the old, honour-based model favoured the emergence and evolution of new figurative expressions of shame, based on its physiological effects on the experiencer.

October 22, 2014

Third-person singular zero in the Norfolk dialect A re-assessment

Chris Joby

Page range: 135-172

Abstract

I use the results of my own research into the language use of the immigrant (or ‘Stranger’) communities in early modern Norwich to evaluate Peter Trudgill’s thesis that it was language contact in Norwich between the Strangers and the local English inhabitants that led to the emergence of third-person singular present tense zero (he go rather than he goes). I present evidence that third-person singular zero was already in use in Norwich and elsewhere in Norfolk by the time when Dutch- and French-speaking immigrants arrived in Norwich. The question then arises as to whether language contact did in fact play any role in establishing zero-marking as the norm in the Norfolk dialect, a process which was complete by about 1700. I argue is that if language contact did play a role in the success of zeromarking, it would have been in a manner different to that described by Trudgill.

October 22, 2014

Relative productivity potentials of Dutch verbal inflection patterns

Remco Knooihuizen, Oscar Strik

Page range: 173-200

Abstract

Diachronic change regarding the Germanic verb shows a tendency away from strong and towards weak inflection, although the change is not unidirectional. Three production and acceptability experiments on nonce and existing verbs in Dutch unveil a clear hierarchy in potential productivity of inflection patterns. Weak inflection has the highest potential productivity; within strong inflection, Classes I, II and III outrank the others. Speakers also regularly employ a productoriented schema based on the vowels /o/ and /ɔ/, as well as, although to a lesser extent, on /i/ and /ɪ/. We relate these findings to synchronic factors and to diachronic change.

October 22, 2014

On Middle English she, sho: A refurbished narrative

Margaret Laing, Roger Lass

Page range: 201-240

Abstract

We offer a radical reinterpretation of the first step in the development of OE [h] in hēo towards PDE [ʃ] in she. This solves outstanding difficulties in accounting for the vocalism in ME [ʃe:], precursor of PDE [ʃi:]. The background is the etymology of she created for the Corpus of Narrative Etymologies, and its accompanying Corpus of Changes. The database for CoNE is The Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, with 36 different spellings for she across 71 texts. First, we present the OE etymology of she, tracking the changes that gave rise to all the attested OE variants. Second, using Britton’s (1991) paper as a starting point, we give a new explanation for initial [hj], allowing a straightforward account for all three attested ME vocalisms: [e:], [o:] and [ø:]. Third, we unpack the changes underlying the complex of variants attested in LAEME.

October 22, 2014

Out of the spatial domain ‘Out’-intensifiers in the history of English

Belén Méndez-Naya

Page range: 241-274

Abstract

The article discusses a set of English intensifying adverbs which originate in the spatial domain and share the basic meaning ‘out’: outly, throughout(ly), twert-out, outright and utterly. Most of them developed degree readings in the Middle English period. The semantic associations of the meaning ‘out’, issuing from the container schema (boundedness and negative evaluation), determine the nature and distribution of ‘out’-intensifiers as maximizers with negative semantic prosodies. Syntactically, the adverbs evolve from spatial adjuncts to degree adjuncts and finally to degree modifiers of adjectives, adverbs, and other heads. Their development is viewed as a case of grammaticalization, displaying typical characteristics such as acquisition of more abstract meanings (spatial > degree), persistence, the workings of pragmatic inferencing, subjectification, scope reduction and renewal within the paradigm of maximizers.

October 22, 2014

On the syntax and semantics of the past perfect participle and gerundive in early New Indo Arian Evidence from Eastern Pahari

Krzysztof Stroński

Page range: 275-306

Abstract

The article discusses the earliest attestations of participial tenses in early Eastern Pahari and the obligative pattern based on the gerundive. The data consist of a collection of inscriptions from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries found in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, inscriptions found in western Nepal, and early Western Pahari inscriptions found in the Chamba state of Himachal Pradesh in India. Despite the highly formulaic and repetitive language of these inscriptions, they constitute some of the earliest attestations of constructions which gave rise to contemporary ergative and obligative patterns. The two types of construction are dealt with against the background of the emerging postpositional system. The case-marking of the main arguments is analyzed and compared with other contemporary New Indo Aryan languages, and verbal forms based on the -ta participle as well as conjunctive participles that appear in the texts are investigated with regard to their control properties. The agreement patterns had already started to diverge in the earliest stages of NIA, and we can observe the transitional phase of a language in which alignment is far from stable.

October 22, 2014

The correlation between motion event encoding and path verb lexicon size in the Indo-European language family

Annemarie Verkerk

Page range: 307-358

Abstract

There have been opposing views on the possibility of a relationship between motion event encoding and the size of the path verb lexicon. Özçalışkan (2004) has proposed that verb-framed and satellite-framed languages should approximately have the same number of path verbs, whereas a review of some of the literature suggests that verb-framed languages typically have a bigger path verb lexicon than satelliteframed languages. In this article I demonstrate that evidence for this correlation can be found through phylogenetic comparative analysis of parallel corpus data from twenty Indo-European languages.

October 22, 2014

Book Reviews

Anthony P. Grant, John Hewson, Klaus Hofmann, Terttu Nevalainen

Page range: 359-396

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)