Volume 43, Issue Historica-vol-30

In most East and Southeast Asian isolating languages, the classifier is realized as a unique undeclinable morpheme. Weining Ahmao, a Miao-Yao language spoken in Western Guizhou (P. R. of China), happens to decline its 48 classifiers in 12 basic forms, each displaying a complex cluster of meanings which can be broken down into three to four parameters: Size/Importance [Augmentative, Medial, Diminutive], Definiteness [Definite, Indefinite] and Number [Singular, Plural]. Moreover, gender registers are attached to the parameter of Size/Importance. In addition to their function as noun categorization devices, the Ahmao classifiers exhibit a rare instance of social deixis whereby they disclose the gender and age of the speaker. A classifier in the Augmentative form is typically employed by men (in addition to conveying an idea of greatness); the Medial form is typically used by women (and communicating a notion of medium size); the Diminutive version of a classifier correlates with speakers of lower social status, typically children (as well as attaching a sense of reduced size). This idiosyncratic system can be reconstructed diachronically. The size distinctions in the classifiers came into existence through morphological reanalysis of two size affixes. The feature of definiteness was established through the influence of the Ahmao numeral for ‘one’. The Ahmao gender roles appear to be linked to a long and proven history of harsh oppression by local landlords in Southwest China in the 18th–20th centuries. The Ahmao classifier system is adequately accounted for by Chen's notion of self-politeness within Brown and Levinson's theory of strategic politeness.

In a German dialect spoken in a rural region of Lorraine the reflexes of Middle High German (MHG) [g b] are the corresponding fricatives ([j β]) in intervocalic position, but MHG [g b] surface in the same dialect as [g b] before [ɘl], e.g. MHG le [ g ] en > le [ j ] en ‘to lay’ vs. MHG ke [ g ] el > Ke [ g ] el ‘cone’. We argue that the spirantization of MHG [b g] requires the spreading of [+continuant] from a vowel. Since the sound change also went into effect after liquids (i.e. [l r]), we hold that [l r] at this stage were also [+continuant]. Examples like Kegel are argued to require that MHG [b g] first spirantized and then occlusivized to [b g]. Since the latter process was triggered by [l] only, we take this as evidence that [l] (but not [r]) at that stage in the language was [–continuant]. The analysis supports the cross-linguistic (synchronic) evidence that [l] can be [+continuant] in some languages and [–continuant] in others (Mielke Phonology 22: 169–203, 2005). We argue that language change involved a reanalysis of the [+continuant] [l] in MHG as [–continuant]. Our treatment will also be argued to support the claim that sound change is minimal in the sense that it only changes one feature (Picard Folia Linguistica Historica 20: 63–77, 1999).

Dan Michel's Ayenbite of Inwit (fl 1340), a (Kentish) Middle English translation of a French treatise, shows interesting idiosyncratic features in the areas of orthography and lexis (cf. Scahill, “Dan Michel: Fossil or innovator?”, John Benjamins, 2002, for example). From a syntactic perspective, a preliminary overview of the text reveals that Dan Michel has a strong preference for the verb of necessity bihoven (>PDE behove , see MED s.v. bihoven ), itself a relatively marginal verb in the period, rather than for higher frequency verbs such as thurven (< OE þurfan , see Bosworth & Toller), dominant in Old English, and neden (>PDE need ), incipiently gaining ground in Middle English (see Loureiro-Porto, The semantic predecessors of need in the history of English (c750-1710), Blackwell, 2009 for a recent corpus-based study of this). Such a preference for behove , however, is not found in any other Kentish text considered in the present article, which suggests that it is not a dialectal feature. The use of behove as a verb of necessity in Ayenbite of Inwit will be studied in this paper, looking at whether in addition to its unusually high frequency it also behaves in an idiosyncratic way from a semantic-syntactic point of view. The ultimate aim will be to discover reasons behind the exceptionally frequent use of this particular verb of necessity at the expense of other such verbs available in the language. I will pay close attention to its syntactic function and semantic connotations, in an attempt to ascertain whether the translator's choice is to some degree determined by intralinguistic factors. This study will also compare Ayenbite of Inwit to an older version of the same text, The Book of Vices and Virtues ( c. 1450), in order to establish whether this specific text-type requires the occurrence of behove . The conclusions will show that neither the linguistic context nor the text-type play any role in the author's exclusive selection of behove . Rather, his preference for behove as a semantic-syntactic substitute of thurven and need is a characteristic of his own idiolect, which brings it close to other Germanic languages in which cognates of behove are the main necessity verbs (Dutch, for example). At the same time, the conclusions drawn suggest that the features of behove in Ayenbite of Inwit might be interpreted as indicative of an incipient grammaticalization of this verb.

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.

Applying the framework of Radical Construction Grammar to diachronic phenomena, the present paper examines Copular Constructions in Old and Middle English, with special attention to the loss of the Copula weorðan ‘become’. First we reconstruct the extension of the OE Verbs is , beon , weorðan and becuman to various types of Copular Constructions. We further argue that schematic Copular Constructions emerge in overlapping usage areas resulting from these developments, in which abstraction is made of the Copulas' particular aspectual semantics. These schematic Copular Constructions in turn undergo some changes themselves. In Middle English a Passive Construction developed out of an original Copula Construction involving Adjectival Participles. However, the constructional profile of weorðan comprised an association between Participial and Adjectival Subject Complements much stronger than in other copulas, and this conflicted with this development, with the archaisization of weorðan as a result. This process of archaisization was further strengthened by the takeover of Weak Verbs in - ian (type ealdian ‘become old’) by new copulas like becuman . In general, we show how diachronic construction grammar might account for the loss of a function word otherwise difficult to account for.

This article investigates the origins and development of the ergative patterning in Hindi. Following traditional Indo-Aryan scholarship, two evolutions are discerned: (i) the reanalysis of a passive as an ergative construction, and (ii) the development of an ergative case marker ne . Three different hypotheses have been postulated in the literature to account for the latter change, two of which suggest a grammaticalization path: the first argues for a case marker as a possible source, the second points towards a lexical source. The third hypothesis maintains that language contact is involved in the change. We scrutinize all three hypotheses and conclude that the ne -clitic is borrowed from Old Rajasthani and introduced in analogy to other clitics, which were already in use as reinforcers of existing case functions. We argue furthermore that the rise of the ergative marker can only be adequately explained in relation to the constructional change in (i). Drawing on the traditional account which traces the origins of the ergative construction back to a former passive construction through reanalysis, we argue that it was actually this constructional reanalysis that allowed the introduction of an ergative marker in the language.

In a brief contribution of only one-and-a-half pages J. Fellman recently (in vol. 26 of this journal) made some statements concerning Tigrinya which need some modifications. Since the majority of this journal's readers may not be too familiar with Ethio-Semitic it might be helpful to comment briefly on some of the points he raised. Tigrinya, as the third largest modern Semitic language (a fact not mentioned by Fellman), is in speakers only outnumbered by Arabic and Amharic. Seen from this perspective Tigrinya must surely warrant more attention in future than it has hitherto received by scholars of Semitic and African studies.