Volume 2008, Issue 16

This paper examines the evolution of aspectual formations in Insular Celtic. It is argued that the emergence of these formations and their unusual morphosyntactic structure have been determined by internal systemic factors. It is also suggested that the manner in which these formations developed is of importance for our understanding of the processes involved in the emergence of grammatical subsystems in general. It is demonstrated that the Celtic aspectual system evolves in a manner reminiscent of the concept of developmental stratification and, significantly, that it evolves in a remarkably coherent and ordered fashion. The inexorable and structured nature of this evolution would seem to provide evidence for the claim that there may exist within languages a certain teleological impulse; in other words, that rather than being simply random, language change is in some fundamental and meaningful sense goal-directed.

The Romanian Online Dialect Atlas (RODA) provides a digitized version of an extensive hard-copy atlas of the Crişana region of Romania (Stan & Uritescu, Noul Atlas lingvistic român. Crişana Vol. I, 1996, Stan & Uritescu, Noul Atlas lingvistic român. Crişana Vol. II, 2003). The set of tools we are now developing permits us to access data on a range of questions that would have been difficult to answer otherwise, and to visualize the results with dynamically generated maps.

The paper examines the semantic change, i.e. subjectification of place deictic elements in German dialects. Starting from a description of (dialectal) language change, the theory of area progression is applied to two case-studies of subjectification: on the one hand, it is to be demonstrated that speakers tend to neutralize the (dynamic) perspectives ‹turned towards the speaker› and ‹turned away from the speaker› by generalizing formations with her - (and thus abolishing formations with hin -) in the northern (and increasingly in the southern) part of the research area. On the other hand, the static dimensions of distance hier vs. da/dort are increasingly neutralized in favour of dort/da in a large area of the respective western German dialects. Both processes will be subsequently explained with the speaker's striving for subjectification which, in the first case, manifests itself directly in the greater emphasis on the speaker's origo, whereas objects being in the speaker's field of vision constitute the basis for the direction of the neutrallization in the latter case. The origo is thus emphasized indirectly. Finally, the data will be taken to develop a theory of dialectal language change based on distributional generalizations.

This article discusses a type of prepositional construction that is highly characteristic for a group of East Franconian dialects, located in the south-eastern part of Germany. The construction expresses local relations and contrasts with the standard German construction as well as with the regional standard of this area. Based on spontaneous spoken dialect material, the article reveals an ongoing process of change: among young adults today not only the standard variant but also occasional hybrid formations are used as replacements for the original, the latter functioning as membership-markers to this dialectal community.

This paper deals with the language used in Latvian settlements in Siberia. It is based on the author's observations and on data gathered during three ethnolinguistic expeditions to Lejas Bulana, in the Krasnoyarsk District, in 1991 and 2004, as well as to Timofejevka, in the Novosibirsk District, in 2006. An analysis was carried out to assess the extent of the Latvian language in these areas, which are separated from their ethnic territory. The study focussed on the language skills of different generations, depending on their education, religious identity and amount of communication with Latvia. The situation is better in Lejas Bulana, where in recent years teachers have been coming from Latvia. However, this community is losing its young generation to big cities, where their exposure to Latvian culture is lost, and thus little by little they begin to forget the Latvian language