"The collected articles in this volume address an array of cutting-edge issues in the field of historical linguistics, including new theoretical approaches and innovative methodologies for studying language through a diachronic lens. The articles focus on the following themes: I. Case & Argument Structure, II. Alignment & Diathesis, III. Patterns, Paradigms, & Restructuring, IV. Grammaticalization & Construction Grammar, V. Corpus Linguistics & Morphosyntax, VI. Languages in Contact. Papers reflect a wide range of perspectives, and focus on issues and data from an array of languages and language families, from new analyses of case and argument structure in Ancient Greek to phonological evidence for language contact in Vietnamese, from patterns of convergence in Neo-Aramaic to the development of the ergative in Basque. The volume contributes substantially to the debate surrounding core issues of language change: the role of the individual speaker, the nature of paths of grammaticalization, the role of contact, the interface of diachrony and synchrony, and many other issues. It should be useful to any reader hoping to gain insight into the nature of language change"--.

• HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS 2017
• Editorial page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Table of contents
• Foreword & Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I. Case & argument structure
• Strategies for aligning syntactic roles and case marking with semantic properties: The case of the accusative of respect in ancient Greek
  • 1. The unsettled question of the accusative of respect in ancient Greek
  • 2. A case marker for inalienable possession
    • 2.1 Accusative of respect and inalienable possession: Key questions
  • 3. The function and distribution of the accusative of respect: Research questions
  • 4. A strategy for aligning syntactic roles and case marking with animacy
    • 4.1 Accusative of respect and double accusative
    • 4.2 The noteworthy exception of kin terms
    • 4.3 The strange case of an accusative depending on a passive and the lack of double nominative in Homer
  • 5. A case marker for undergoer arguments
    • 5.1 A restriction on telic predicates
  • 6. Conclusions
  • References
  • Texts and translations
• Criteria for subjecthood and non-canonical subjects in Classical Greek
  • 1. Non-canonical subjects in Classical Greek
  • 2. A case study: The dative argument of dokéō
  • 3. Reflexivization
  • 4. Interclausal coreference with finite clauses
  • 5. Interclausal coreference with participial clauses
  • 6. Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Abbreviations
  • References
• Parallel syncretism in early Indo-European
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. How the core and oblique cases became distinct in early IE
    • 2.1 How the core and oblique stems became more phonologically distinct
  • 3. Other proposed influences leading to oblique-oblique mergers
    • 3.1 Syntactic and semantic grouping
    • 3.2 Existing syncretism of the ablative
  • 4. Examples of case mergers
  • 5. Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Abbreviations
  • References
• Dative possessor in ditransitive Spanish predication, in diachronic perspective
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Possessive Dative in Latin
  • 3. The Ditransitive Construction in Spanish
  • 4. Possessive Dative: Diachronic data
  • 5. Summary/Concluding remarks
  • Abbreviations
  • References
    • a. Corpus
    • b. Bibliography
• ‘Liking’ constructions in Spanish: The role of frequency and syntactic stimulus in constructional change
  • 1. Previous accounts of argument structure change in Spanish psychological verbs
  • 2. Data collection and methodology
  • 3. A survey of liking verbs and constructions in the history of Spanish (13th–17th c.)
  • 4. Stimuli of ‘liking’ constructions: An analysis of their syntactic properties
    • 4.1 A diachronic account of clausal complementation in Spanish
    • 4.2 ‘Liking’ constructions in Spanish and their subcategorization properties
  • 5. Conclusion
  • Abbreviations
  • References
  • Appendix 1. Corpus of Spanish texts (13th to 17th centuries)
• Part II. Alignment & Diathesis
• The actualization of new voice patterns in Romance: Persistence in diversity
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Voice in the transition to Romance
    • 2.1 Restructuring of the voice system and changes in the referential domain of se in Late Latin
    • 2.2 Equivalences among voice forms and changes in argument linking / marking
    • 2.3 Changes in the referential domain of se
  • 3. Steps in the auxiliarization of lexical verbs in the transition to Romance: Fieri and facere
    • 3.1 Fieri ‘become’ as a voice marker
    • 3.2 Latin antecedents of facere ‘do, make’ passive
    • 3.3 Grammaticalization paths in the rise of passive periphrases in Late Latin
  • 4. Auxiliaries and voice in Old Italo-Romance
    • 4.1 *Fire ‘become’+ pp
    • 4.2 Faker ‘make / do’+PP
  • 5. The reanalysis of se as a voice modulator in early (Italo-)Romance and old Logudorese Sardinian
    • 5.1 Old Venetian
    • 5.2 Old Lombard
    • 5.3 Old Florentine
    • 5.4 Old Neapolitan
    • 5.5 Old Logudorese Sardinian
    • 5.6 Summary
    • 5.7 The origin of impersonal / indefinite se in Italo-Romance
  • 6. Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Abbreviations
  • References
  • Old Italian sources
• Ergative from passive in Proto-Basque
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Verbal morphology of Basque
  • 3. History of the research on the Basque finite verb
  • 4. The present
  • 5. The past and the irrealis
  • 6. Split ergativity in Basque
  • 7. Several additional features that the ergative from passive hypothesis can explain
  • 8. Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Abbreviations
  • References
• Part III. Patterns, paradigms, & restructuring
• Synchrony, diachrony, and indexicality
  • 1. Synchrony, diachrony and history
  • 2. Word and Paradigm morphology
  • 3. Morphology for communication
  • 4. Morphology by itself?
  • 5. Indexes in morphology
    • 5.1 Phonological indexes
    • 5.2 Stem-class indexes
    • 5.3 Gramcat indexes
    • 5.4 Lexcat indexes
  • 6. The importance of morphological indexes
    • 6.1 Signs with zero exponenda
    • 6.2 Signs with zero expression
    • 6.3 Cumulative exponence
  • 7. History and typology
  • Abbreviations
  • References
  • Appendix. Some terminology and definitions
• Ablaut pattern extension as partial regularization strategy in German and Luxembourgish
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Two case studies
    • 2.1 Paradigm leveling, pattern extension, and regularizations
    • 2.2 German
    • 2.3 Luxembourgish
  • 3. Crux of the matter
  • Abbreviations
  • References
• Remotivating inflectional classes: An unexpected effect of grammaticalization
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Grammaticalization as an adaptive change
    • 2.1 Grammaticalization and the complexity mismatch
    • 2.2 Grammaticalization and decategorialization
  • 3. The complexity mismatch in Walser German
    • 3.1 Conservative and innovative features in the Titsch verbal complex
    • 3.2 Remodeling the complexity mismatch
  • 4. Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Abbreviations
  • Bibliography
• From noun to quantifier: Pseudo-partitives and language change
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Background
    • 2.1 Pseudo-partitives
    • 2.2 N1 and characteristics of DPCs
  • 3. Data and method
  • 4. Results
    • 4.1 Occurrences of the DPC
    • 4.2 Singular/plural morphology
  • 5. A collective: Pair
    • 5.1 Pair: Morphology and syntax
    • 5.2 Semantic development of pair
  • 6. Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Sources
  • References
• Part IV. Grammaticalization & construction grammar
• Old French si, grammaticalisation, and the interconnectedness of change
  • 1. Introduction and Background
    • 1.1 Old French and syntactic change
    • 1.2 Background on Old French
  • 2. Previous approaches to the syntax of si
  • 3. A new approach
    • 3.1 Latin and the Strasbourg Oaths
    • 3.2 Evidence for diachronic change
  • 4. Towards a grammaticalisation pathway for si
  • 5. Consequences
  • Abbreviations
  • Bibliography
• The rise of the analytic Perfect aspect in the West Iranian languages
  • 1. Old Iranian Tense /Aspect/Mood system
  • 2. The rise of analytic aspectual formations during the Middle Persian period
  • 3. New Iranian
    • 3.1 Early New Persian
    • 3.2 The analytic Perfect in -Vg in Kurdish, Balochi and ‘conjectural’ mode in Tajik
    • 3.3 New Persian
    • 3.4 Sequencing of morphemes expressing tense and person/number
  • 4. Evidential (‘non-witnessed’) subsystem
  • 5. Typological parallels
  • 6. Conclusions
  • Abbreviations
  • References
• On the grammaticalization of the -(v)ši- resultative in North Slavic
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Issues of the descent and grammaticalization of the -(v)ši- resultatives
  • 3. Evidence from written discourse
    • 3.1 Old Church Slavonic evidence
    • 3.2 Later medieval evidence
  • 4. Evidence from spoken discourse
    • 4.1 Annalistic texts
    • 4.2 Charters and beyond
    • 4.3 Dialects
  • 5. Discussion
  • 6. Conclusions
  • Abbreviations
  • References
• Atomizing linguistic change: A radical view
  • 1. Levels of explanation
  • 2. A gap in explanation
  • 3. Origin of variants
  • 4. The pragmatics of innovation
  • 5. Semantic consequences
  • 6. Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
• Part V. Corpus linguistics & morphosyntax
• The rich get richer: Preferential attachment and the diachrony of light verbs in Old Swedish
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Background
    • 2.1 Terminology
    • 2.2 Historical trends and the frequency of LVCs
    • 2.3 Possible explanations for historical trends among LVCs
  • 3. Methodology
    • 3.1 Corpus
    • 3.2 Selection of LVCs
    • 3.3 Data collection procedure
    • 3.4 Statistical analysis of LVC frequency and diversity
  • 4. Results
  • 6. Discussion
  • 6. Summary and conclusion
  • Abbreviations
  • References
  • Appendix. Old Swedish Sources
    • Early Old Swedish (ca. 1225–1375)
    • Later Old Swedish (1375–1526)
• Expletives in Icelandic: A corpus study
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Background
    • 2.1 Three types of það
    • 2.2 Position of expletive það
    • 2.3 Historical context
  • 3. Corpus study
    • 3.1 Methodology
    • 3.2 Cataphoric það
    • 3.3 Expletive það in impersonal constructions
    • 3.4 Expletive það in presentational constructions
  • 4. Discussion
    • 4.1 A contact-induced change?
    • 4.2 A closer look at distribution
  • 5. Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Abbreviations
  • References
• Part VI. Languages in contact
• Contact and change in Neo-Aramaic dialects
  • 1. The Neo-Aramaic dialects
  • 2. Constraints on change
    • 2.1 Constraint on lexical transfer
    • 2.2 Size of community and geographical location
    • 2.3 Potential homophony
    • 2.4 Change inhibited by contact
  • 3. Systemic motivations for contact-induced change
    • 3.1 Elimination of homophony
    • 3.2 Enrichment of resources
  • 4. Partial convergence
    • 4.1 Perfect construction
    • 4.2 Copula
    • 4.3 Word order
  • 5. Imitation of morphology
  • 6. Reflection of change in contact language
  • 7. Summary
  • Abbreviations
  • References
• Copying of argument structure: A gap in borrowing scales and a new approach to model contact-induced change
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Borrowing hierarchies and the place of verbs
  • 3. Historical language contact and the copying of verbs
  • 4. The copying of verbs and integration conflicts
  • 5. Integrated and non-integrated verbs copied from Old French to Middle English
  • 6. Towards a new approach
  • 7. Concluding remarks
  • Abbreviations
  • References
• Contact-induced change and the phonemicization of the vowel /ɑ/ in Quảng Nam Vietnamese
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. The Quảng Nam vowel /ɑ/
  • 3. Quảng Nam: The land and the people
  • 4. The Hà Tĩnh /ɑ/: Migration as a source of the emergence of the Quảng Nam /ɑ/
  • 4. The Hà Tĩnh /ɑ/: Migration as a source of the emergence of the Quảng Nam /ɑ/
    • 4.1 Hến dialect
    • 4.2 Kẻ Chay dialect
    • 4.3 Variations of /ɑ/
  • 5. Phonemicization of /ɑ/ in the Quảng Nam
    • 5.1 Split of /a/
    • 5.2 Cluster reduction and feature preservation
  • 6. Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
  • Appendix. Rhyming words in Hà Tĩnh
• The future marker in Palestinian Arabic: Internal or external motivation for language change?
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Background information
    • 2.1 The Arabic language
    • 2.2 Socio-historical, linguistic, and demographic situation in the Gaza City context
    • 2.2 Socio-historical, linguistic, and demographic situation in the Gaza City context
    • 2.3 Morphology of the Arabic verb
  • 3. Contact and language change
    • 3.1 The code-copying framework and the dialect contact situation in Gaza City
    • 3.1 The code-copying framework and the dialect contact situation in Gaza City
  • 4. Study design
    • 4.1 Recruiting participants, interview, data collection
  • 5. Findings: Future time reference within and outside the verbal paradigm in PA
  • 5. Findings: Future time reference within and outside the verbal paradigm in PA
  • 6. Dialect contact and language change in PA
    • 6.1 Development of future markers in PA
    • 6.2 Discussion
    • 6.3 Extra-linguistic factors
  • 7. Conclusion
  • Abbreviations
  • References
• Neuters to none: A diachronic perspective on loanword gender in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Noun gender in BCS
  • 3. BCS loanwords and gender
    • 3.1 Corpus 1
    • 3.2 Corpus 2
    • 3.3 Corpus 3
    • 3.4 Summary
  • 4. Comparison across time and space
    • 4.1 South Slavic
    • 4.2 Outside Slavic
    • 4.3 Summary
  • 5. Formalization
  • 6. Conclusions
  • References
• Index
• Languages & language families