Abstract
Slavic and Baltic show a curious way of overt definiteness marking by means of a specific type of adjective inflection. It arose when the adjective merged with a definiteness marker of pronominal origin. This paper aims at a comprehensive explanation of the rise of the definite adjective morphology in the former branch. First of all, it is argued that contrary to what has been claimed, there is no need to posit loss of trapped morphology to plausibly account for the definite adjective inflection. It can be explained by a series of well-established processes, i.e., sound change, reanalysis, and analogy. An interplay of these processes led to an increase in the phonological fusion of the adjective and the definiteness marker and ultimately resulted in their merger. In discussing the involved changes and in identifying factors that may have motivated them, the paper contributes to the general study of how new inflectional morphology emerges from the coalescence of two formerly independent elements.
Funding source: Swiss National Science Foundation
Award Identifier / Grant number: P1ZHP1_187851
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Andreas Hölzl, Florian Sommer, James Joshua Pennington, Rafał Szeptyński and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Moreover, I am indebted to Maria Napoli and the members of the editorial board of Folia Linguistica Historica for their helpful suggestions for improvement. Any remaining errors or omissions are my own.
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Research funding: Parts of this article have been elaborated during a research stay at the Department of Linguistics, University of Zagreb, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) (grant no. P1ZHP1_187851) which is gratefully acknowledged.
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© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Trapped morphology and the rise of the Slavic definite adjective inflection: a reexamination
- Reevaluating the etymology of Latin reflexives
- Verbs of motion and intermediate source domains of modality: the understudied case of Italian occorrere ‘to be necessary, to be needed’
- Aspectual marking from a typologically uncommon origin: a quantitative account of the development of hamē(w) in Middle Persian
- Rethinking the *-s suffix in Old Chinese: with new evidence from Situ Rgyalrong
- The status of /w/ in Old High German
- When internal reconstruction goes further: proposing the vowel system of Pre-Khroskyabs through examining bound state apophony
- A new sound change for Guarani(an): glottal prothesis, internal classification, and the explanation of synchronic irregularities
- Patterns of individual variation and change in Golden Age Spanish. An analysis of three linguistic variables in a corpus of private correspondence
- Book Reviews
- Jorge Vega Vilanova: Past Participle Agreement. A study on the grammaticalization of formal features
- Lilo Moessner: The history of the present English subjunctive: a corpus-based study of mood and modality
- Serenella Baggio and Pietro Taravacci (eds): Lingue naturali, lingue inventate. Atti della Giornata di Studi (Trento, 29 novembre 2019)
- Program Review
- IE7.com. Reconstructing Greek inscriptions with Ithaca
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Trapped morphology and the rise of the Slavic definite adjective inflection: a reexamination
- Reevaluating the etymology of Latin reflexives
- Verbs of motion and intermediate source domains of modality: the understudied case of Italian occorrere ‘to be necessary, to be needed’
- Aspectual marking from a typologically uncommon origin: a quantitative account of the development of hamē(w) in Middle Persian
- Rethinking the *-s suffix in Old Chinese: with new evidence from Situ Rgyalrong
- The status of /w/ in Old High German
- When internal reconstruction goes further: proposing the vowel system of Pre-Khroskyabs through examining bound state apophony
- A new sound change for Guarani(an): glottal prothesis, internal classification, and the explanation of synchronic irregularities
- Patterns of individual variation and change in Golden Age Spanish. An analysis of three linguistic variables in a corpus of private correspondence
- Book Reviews
- Jorge Vega Vilanova: Past Participle Agreement. A study on the grammaticalization of formal features
- Lilo Moessner: The history of the present English subjunctive: a corpus-based study of mood and modality
- Serenella Baggio and Pietro Taravacci (eds): Lingue naturali, lingue inventate. Atti della Giornata di Studi (Trento, 29 novembre 2019)
- Program Review
- IE7.com. Reconstructing Greek inscriptions with Ithaca