Volume 52, Issue s39-s2 - Historica

This study shows that Old English conjunct clauses, i.e. main declarative clauses introduced by the coordinating conjunctions and and ac , resemble non-conjunct main clauses as far as the V-2 rule is concerned. Most importantly, this study reveals that the mechanism of SV inversion observed in OE conjunct clauses works according to all the principles defined for non-conjunct main clauses. The only difference, driven by the main discourse function of conjunct clauses, is that the clause-initial element in these clauses is usually the subject. However, if the subject is preceded by some other fronted constituent (e.g. an object, a complement, an adverb or a prepositional phrase), SV inversion is typical with nominal subjects, while personal pronoun subjects are only inverted if the clause-initial constituent belongs to a limited set of adverbs, i.e. þa and þonne (‘then’). In this way, this study reveals that the difference between Old English conjunct and non-conjunct main clauses is not as clear-cut as has traditionally been suggested.

This article aims to give a semantic study of the reflexes of one specific tense/aspect form, namely the so-called *-a-B-a construction, in a cluster of about 40-odd Kikongo language varieties spoken in a wide area around the mouth of the Congo River in Central Africa. We first present a detailed analysis of the multiple uses of these cognate constructions at sentence level, in order to arrive at a formal and semantic reconstruction for the most recent common ancestor of the Kikongo Language Cluster, namely Proto-Kikongo. The analysis departs from the overall aspectual meaning of the linguistic expression in which the tense-aspect construction is used. Therefore, we also take into consideration the contribution of different aspectual tiers, such as lexical and grammatical aspect, adverbials and taxis constructions. Through the discussion of the multiple uses of the -a-B-a construction, we argue that its overall meaning is complex, combining both temporal and aspectual semantics. It is furthermore shown that a lexical-aspect distinction between states-of-affairs with transitional versus non-transitional temporal structure is crucial in order to understand the various uses of the -a-B-a construction. Methodologically, the formal and semantic reconstruction to Proto-Kikongo are based on a thorough comparison of a multitude of existing data sources, some of which several centuries old, as well as original fieldwork. This bottom-up approach has rarely been pursued over the past half century in Bantu grammatical reconstructions.

The paper critically reviews a recent volume on Diachronic Construction Grammar . It is argued that a more convincing case for the diachronic construction grammar approach could have been made by more explicitly comparing it to other approaches to historical linguistics, and that a number of central notions, such as “constructionalization”, are not applied consistently throughout the volume. In addition, an analysis of the constructionalization of English be going to presented in the volume is examined and shown not to be supported by the Early Modern English data.

The ubiquitous and characteristic pair of Choctaw grammatical words hosh and h o appear to have evolved from an older form, the pair hocha and hona . There are very few if any modern instances of the latter pair. But the manuscript of the Choctaw council meetings from 1826–1828, whose author was Peter Perkins Pitchlynn, shows that the older pair was common if not dominant in that era. This article illustrates the parallel usage of those forms with modern speech and the phonological processes that account for modern forms. Pitchlynn’s Council Notes manuscript, which is one of the earliest significant Choctaw texts, contemporaneous legal documents from the mid-nineteenth century, and other writings of that era, specifically hymns, show the decreasing distribution of hocha and hona and their replacement with hosh/h o .

Style constitutes an essential component for the non-referential indexicality of speakers’ sociolinguistic behaviour in interpersonal communication. Historical Sociolinguistics applies tenets and findings of present-day research to the interpretation of linguistic material from the past, but without giving intra-speaker variation the same relevance as to inter-speaker variation. The aim of this paper is to show results obtained from the investigation of style-shifting processes in late medieval England by applying contemporary models of Audience Design to diaphasic variation from historical corpora of written correspondence. The study is carried out through the analysis of the use of the orthographic variable (TH) by male members of the Paston family from the Paston Letters corpus when addressing recipients from different social ranks. The data show both addressee and referee-based accommodation patterns in the communicative practice of medieval individuals. In addition to tracing language variation and change in speech communities, private letters may also shed light onto the motivations and mechanisms for intra-speaker variation in individuals and their stylistic choices in past societies.

The subjunctive mood is not built with the same morpheme in Middle Persian as in Contemporary Persian. In Middle Persian it is marked with the suffix -ā- and with the prefix be- in Contemporary Persian. Based on a corpus of eleven texts, this article will demonstrate how the Middle Persian subjunctive disappeared and how a new subjunctive form was created in New Persian. Contrary to common belief, we will see that this modal opposition indicative/subjunctive does not exist during the intermediate stages, i.e. Early New Persian (10th–11th c.) and Classical Persian (12th–19th c.). Therefore, the first value of rhematicity of the prefix be- will be analyzed in order to explain its reuse as a modal marking, certainly with an intermediate step of perfectivity, as well as the dialectal variants in New Persian. Since this same exact evolution of disappearance and modal recreation is seen in other languages not related neither genetically nor geographically to each other, the Persian modal evolution may shed light on the reason for the reuse of an ancient present as a modal form.

In many Present-Day Germanic languages, reflexes of Proto-Germanic * nu have developed pragmatic and grammatical uses: in such uses, the earlier, lexical meaning of the word (“now”, “presently”) has been weakened or lost while new meanings have appeared. Pragmatic (especially connective) uses of nu have been identified in several ancient Germanic languages, but in such corpora, it can be difficult to distinguish between a genuine discourse marker and mere pragmatic inferences based on the lexical meaning of a given word. Such is certainly the case for Old Saxon, where nu seems to be used as a discourse marker in some cases, but where it is hard to determine whether such uses ever truly supplant nu ’s temporal meaning. This paper systematically examines nu ’s patterns of co-occurrence to determine whether nu is showing any sign of having undergone semantic bleaching. Examination of the data shows no evidence of semantic bleaching. There is a very strong connection between nu and markers referring to the moment of utterance or the situation of utterance more generally. Conversely, there are no cases of co-occurrence with markers whose meaning is strictly incompatible with nu ’s lexical meaning and few instances of co-occurrence with markers expressing distance (temporal or otherwise) from the situation of utterance. Some patterns hint at the possibility of pragmatic uses of nu having already started to conventionalize to a limited extent, but such uses seem to have co-existed with nu ’s temporal meaning without ever supplanting it.

In line with the traditional pronouncement that the weak (definite) forms of adjectives in Germanic follow the definite determiner, the Gothic weak-only adjective sama ‘the same’ (no indefinite form * sams , with the strong inflection -s , occurs) is determined ( sa sama ‘the same’) in the majority of its attestations. However, contrary to the traditional description, occasionally it also occurs on its own, without a determiner. An examination of the syntactic distribution of the adjective and a comparison of the Gothic translation of the Bible with the Greek and Latin texts uncover a double semantic nature of sama . Specifically, when determined, sama conveys a definite/particularising force of ‘the same’. In the absence of the determiner, however, it conveys the semantic value of ‘one; of one kind’. The results of this investigation contribute to our understanding of the conditions that govern the distribution of strong vs. weak adjective inflections in early Germanic. In particular, they confirm the contention that the occurrence of the weak form of the adjective is not simply a matter of whether or not a definite determiner precedes it. Instead, the definite value of the adjective inflection is realised cumulatively (periphrastically), via the co-occurrence of the definite determiner and the weak adjective inflection.