On the interplay between forces of erosion and forces of repair in language change A case study
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Chantal Melis
The primary goal of this paper is to gain a better understanding of how languages are able to maintain certain fundamental oppositions, while undergoing multiple, diverse, and constant processes of change. Assuming that some oppositions do come under threat in the course of time, we infer that they do not disappear from the language due to the reactions that occur in the form of new changes that help to strengthen or reestablish the endangered oppositions. These changes enable the system to recover its balance. In order to test our hypothesis, we analyze the evolution of the two core object categories of Spanish (direct object and indirect object), which today continue to stand in opposition in spite of a rampant phenomenon of Differential Object Marking (DOM) characterized by its erosive effects on the direct vs. indirect object contrast. This scenario will be accounted for by focusing on the occurrence of repairing kinds of changes. Our ultimate aim is to provide new insight into the driving forces behind language change.
© 2009 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
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- Franck Floricic, ed.: La négation dans les langues romanes (Linguisticæ investigationes: Supplementa 26)
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- H. Christophe Wolfart, ed.: Papers of the Thirty-Eighth Algonquian Conference
Articles in the same Issue
- Inflectional classifiers in Weining Ahmao: Mirror of the history of a people
- The historical development of [g] and [b] in a regional German dialect
- More on the idiosyncrasy of Dan Michel's Ayenbite of Inwit: Behove as a (modal) verb of necessity
- On the interplay between forces of erosion and forces of repair in language change A case study
- Constructional change in Old and Middle English Copular Constructions and its impact on the lexicon
- The rise of ergativity in Hindi: Assessing the role of grammaticalization
- Tigrinya, an “African-Semitic” language
- Bjarke Frellesvig & John Whitman eds.: Proto-Japanese. (Series IV, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, Volume 294)
- Franck Floricic, ed.: La négation dans les langues romanes (Linguisticæ investigationes: Supplementa 26)
- Ives Goddard: The Autobiography of a Meskwaki Woman. A New Edition and Translation
- H. Christophe Wolfart, ed.: Papers of the Thirty-Eighth Algonquian Conference
