Asymmetries in overt marking and directionality in semantic change

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Urban
Keyword(s):  
Early Stage ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Semantic Change ◽  
Morphological Complexity ◽  
Semantic Development ◽  
Basic Vocabulary ◽  
Globally Distributed

This article is a contribution to the long standing issue of identifying directionality in semantic change. Drawing on evidence from a sample of morphologically complex terms in basic vocabulary for 149 globally distributed languages, it is argued that cross-linguistically preferred synchronic relationships of word-formation provide clues to likely directions of diachronic semantic developments. The hypothesis is tested against diachronic data from Indo-Aryan languages, and, in spite of a number of counterexamples, a correlation is found. In addition, it is shown how these data can be applied to semantic reconstruction, and a scenario of semantic change which involves morphological complexity in an early stage of semantic development is sketched.

Adjectival Suffixes: From Latin to Romance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franz Rainer
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Change Processes ◽  
Semantic Change ◽  
Semantic Categories ◽  
European Languages

All languages seem to have nouns and verbs, while the dimension of the class of adjectives varies considerably cross-linguistically. In some languages, verbs or, to a lesser extent, nouns take over the functions that adjectives fulfill in Indo-European languages. Like other such languages, Latin and the Romance languages have a rich category of adjectives, with a well-developed inventory of patterns of word formation that can be used to enrich it. There are about 100 patterns in Romance standard languages. The semantic categories expressed by adjectival derivation in Latin have remained remarkably stable in Romance, despite important changes at the level of single patterns. To some extent, this stability is certainly due to the profound process of relatinization that especially the Romance standard languages have undergone over the last 1,000 years; however, we may assume that it also reflects the cognitive importance of the semantic categories involved. Losses were mainly due to phonological attrition (Latin unstressed suffixes were generally doomed) and to the fact that many derived adjectives became nouns via ellipsis, thereby often reducing the stock of adjectives. At the same time, new adjectival patterns arose as a consequence of language contact and through semantic change, processes of noun–adjective conversion, and the transformation of evaluative suffixes into ethnic suffixes. Overall, the inventory of adjectival patterns of word formation is richer in present-day Romance languages than it was in Latin.

scholarly journals Investigating the Semantic Development of Modal Markers: The Role of Context

Clotho ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-53
Author(s):  
Tomaž Potočnik ◽  
Matej Hriberšek
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Epistemic Modality ◽  
Semantic Change ◽  
Semantic Development ◽  
Modal Verb ◽  
Deontic Modality ◽  
Do So

The article tackles the problem of studying diachronic semantic changes of modal markers in Latin. It proposes to do so by using context as a proxy for tracing the development of otherwise unchanging forms. In the first part, the main theoretical positions in modality studies are presented, especially the notions of deontic modality, epistemic modality, and pathways of modality. In the second part, Heine’s model for studying the role of context in language change is presented and applied to the modal verb licet. In the case study of licet, an attempt is made to identify the so-called switch context which co-creates the conditions necessary for the semantic change.

scholarly journals The Use of Japanese Loanwords in Culinary Content on Instagram

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-76
Author(s):  
Linna Meilia Rasiban ◽  
Amalia Rahmayanti ◽  
Renariah Renariah ◽  
Dedi Sutedi
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Compound Word ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Semantic Change ◽  
Structure Changes ◽  
Japanese Learners ◽  
Descriptive Qualitative

The purpose of this study is to examine the phenomenon of Japanese loanwords (gairaigo) used in culinary content on Instagram, and to describe the analytical framework of those meaning and formation. This study used descriptive qualitative method with data sources from 8 Instagram accounts of culinary content. This data in this study including 74 postings and 115 data of loanwords use from the Instagram accounts. The results from this study showed that lexical and word-formation structure that form the Japanese loanwords mostly were the compound word form (fukugougo) because many cuisine terms used two or more words. The results also showed that many of Japanese loanwords in culinary content are using derivative forms and acronyms. It is suggested that teachers and Japanese learners should be aware of these structure changes and semantic change in Japanese loanwords, which can help Japanese learners to understand the meaning of loanwords in Japanese.

scholarly journals Этимологическое гнездо *ber- в праславянском языке: Реконструкция, словообразование, семантика

2021 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Наталия [Nataliia] Вячеславовна [Viacheslavovna] Пятаева [Piataeva]
Keyword(s):  
General Practice ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Slavic Language ◽  
Semantic Description ◽  
European Origin ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Semantic Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
Root Group ◽  
Roman Alphabet

The Etymological Nest *ber- in the Proto-Slavic Language: Reconstruction, Word-Formation, SemanticsThe article presents a multidimensional (phonetic, etymological, derivational, morphological and semantic) description of the etymological nest (EN) *ber- ‘take’, reconstructed for the Proto-Slavic period in the history of the Russian and other Slavic languages. The root *ber-, around which the EN was formed, belongs to ancient Slavic roots and has Indo-European origin, which led to the natural phonetic variants reflecting the Proto-Slavic and Indo-European alternations: *ber- // *bor- // *bьr- // *bir-.At the Proto-Slavic level, 137 units with the root *ber- are reconstructed, organized in the EN in accordance with the relations of word-formation pro­ductivity and semantic motivation of lexemes as part of word-formation pairs, chains and paradigms: (1) the nucleus of the nest is the etymon *bherəmņ // *bherəmen ‘carry, burden’, reconstructed for the Proto-Indo-European lan­guage, which served as the basis for three Proto-Slavic innovations *bermę ‘burden; armful, bundle; fetus; *berdja ‘pregnant; foal (about animals)’; *bьrati *berǫ ‘take, take away, grab, pluck; receive, borrow, accept; enter into a mar­riage union’; (2) in accordance with a general practice adopted in etymological dictionaries, reconstructed lexemes are marked with an asterisk (*) and are represented in the Roman alphabet for the Proto-Indo-European and Proto- Slavic preliterate periods, and in Cyrillic for the period between the eleventh and the seventeenth centuries; (3) at the first stage of derivation, derivatives are arranged in the following order: verbs, verbal names, participles, prefixed verbs, composites; within these groups, words are arranged alphabetically; (4) the phonetic variants of a lexeme are separated with a double slash (//); (5) meanings are given in single quotation marks. The reconstruction of the EN *ber- and the semantic development of its main lexemes are given in two diagrams at the end of the article.A review of the material indicates that (1) the old Indo-European mean­ing ‘carry, load’ moved to the periphery of the EN *ber-, continuing to exist exclusively in the formations associated with the stem *bermę, and partly with *berdja; (2) a new meaning ‘take’ (*bьrati) became the most relevant for the semantic development of the EN *ber- in Late Slavic; its connection with the original ‘carry’ is seen in the fact that they correlate with adjacent sequen­tial actions aimed at the attached object: ‘take’ what? – ‘object to be attached’ → ‘carry’ what? – ‘attached object’; (3) the new Proto-Slavic meaning ‘take’ (*bьrati), inherent in EN *ber-, determined the synonymy of this root group with the EN *em- (*jęti, *jьmati ‘take’). Gniazdo etymologiczne *ber- w języku prasłowiańskim. Rekonstrukcja, słowotwórstwo, semantyka W artykule przedstawiono wielowymiarowy opis gniazda etymologicz­nego *ber- ‘brać’ (w aspekcie fonetycznym, etymologicznym, derywacyjnym, morfologicznym i semantycznym), zrekonstruowanego dla okresu prasłowiań­skiego w historii języka rosyjskiego i innych języków słowiańskich. Rdzeń *ber-, wokół którego powstało gniazdo etymologiczne, należy do pierwotnych rdzeni słowiańskich i ma pochodzenie indoeuropejskie, co oznaczało rozwój naturalnych wariantów fonetycznych, odzwierciedlających oboczności pra­słowiańskie i indoeuropejskie: *ber- // *bor- // *bьr- // *bir-.Na poziomie prasłowiańskim zrekonstruowano 137 jednostek z rdzeniem *ber-, które zorganizowano w ramach gniazda zgodnie z relacjami produktywno­ści słowotwórczej i motywacji semantycznej leksemów w ramach par, łańcuchów i paradygmatów słowotwórczych: 1) jądrem gniazda jest zrekonstruowany dla języka praindoeuropejskiego etymon *bherəmņ // *bherəmen ‘nieść, brzemię’, który posłużył za podstawę dla trzech prasłowiańskich innowacji *bermę ‘brzemię; naręcze, tobołek; płód’; *berdja ‘brzemienna (o zwierzętach); źrebię’; *bьrati *berǫ ‘brać, zabrać, chwycić, wyrwać; otrzymać, pożyczyć, przyjąć; zawrzeć małżeństwo’; 2) zgodnie z powszechną praktyką przyjętą w słowni­kach etymologicznych zrekonstruowane leksemy są oznaczone gwiazdką (*) i zapisane w alfabecie łacińskim dla praindoeuropejskich i prasłowiańskich okresów przedpiśmiennych oraz cyrylicą dla okresu od XI do XVII wieku; 3) na pierwszym etapie derywacji derywaty są ułożone w następującej kolejności: czasowniki, rzeczowniki odczasownikowe, imiesłowy, czasowniki przedrost­kowe, złożenia; w tych grupach słowa są ułożone alfabetycznie; 4) warianty fonetyczne leksemu są oddzielone podwójnym ukośnikiem (//); 5) znaczenia podano w pojedynczych cudzysłowach. Rekonstrukcję gniazda etymologicz­nego *ber- i rozwój semantyczny jego głównych leksemów przedstawiono na dwóch wykresach na końcu artykułu.Przegląd materiału wskazuje, że 1) dawne indoeuropejskie znaczenie ‘nieść, brzemię’ przeszło na obrzeża gniazda etymologicznego *ber- i utrzymało się nadal wyłącznie w formacjach związanych z rdzeniem *bermę i częściowo *berdja; 2) nowe znaczenie: ‘brać’ (*bьrati) stało się najbardziej istotne dla semantycznego rozwoju gniazda *ber- w okresie późnosłowiańskim; związek tego znaczenia z pierwotnym ‘nieść’ przejawia się w fakcie korelacji pomiędzy nimi w sekwencji działań na umocowany obiekt: ‘brać’ co? – ‘obiekt do umo­cowania’ → ‘nieść’ co? – ‘umocowany obiekt’; 3) nowe prasłowiańskie znaczenie ‘brać’ (*bьrati), nieodłącznie związane z gniazdem *ber-, określiło synonimię tej grupy rdzeniowej z gniazdem *em- (*jęti, *jьmati ‘brać’).

CORONASPEAK-2020: WORD-FORMATION ASPECT

2021 ◽  
pp. 119-130
Author(s):  
O. Ye. Tkachuk-Miroshnychenko
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Linguistic Community ◽  
Semantic Change ◽  
Forming Process ◽  
New Words ◽  
Part Of Speech ◽  
Constant Change ◽  
Speech Classification

The article presents a first assessment of the word-stock of “coronaspeak”-2020 — a new language of the Covid-19 pandemic. The English vocabulary is subjected to constant change due to various extralinguistic factors. The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in the ‘explosion’ of new words. As of today, “coronaspeak” has over 1,000 words with more units appearing each day. The scale of the expansion is unprecedented, which requires reaction of the linguistic community. The article raises the issue of the classification of the “coronaspeak” word-stock. It argues that facilitated by media and social networks new words are changing their status of nonce words to neologisms, which makes the classification untimely and premature. The word-building analysis of 200 new words of “coronaspeak” allows to conclude that the creation of the new “coronavirus” word-stock applies the structural patterns specific for the English language. These various patterns include semantic change in denotation, derivation, compounding, blending, shortening, The analysis of the “coranaspeak” word-stock has demonstrated that the semantic changes in denotation, in particular the extension and the narrowing of a meaning, are scarce, and, hence, non-productive. Affixation, as a word-forming process, has proved semi-productive with the predominantly noun-forming suffixes. Among a limited number of shortenings we have observed final (apocope) and initial (apheresis) clippings, combined with affixation, by adding the suffix — y. Compounding and blending have proved to be highly productive. According to the part of speech classification, most “coronaspeak” compounds and blends are nouns. Of special interest are a group of “coronapuns”, which have demonstrated pragmatic potential.

Rasmus Kristian Rasks Konzeption Einer Welthilfssprache

1989 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-326
Author(s):  
Heribert Rück ◽  
Alicja Sakaguchi
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
International Communication ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
Comparative Linguistics ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Basic Vocabulary ◽  
Grammatical Structures

Summary Apart from his numerous works in comparative linguistics, Rasmus Kristian Rask (1787–1832) is also the author of a manuscript in which he sets forth in detail his conception of a universal auxiliary language. Written during 1819–1820, this 72-page treatise, entitled Optegnelser til en Pasigraphie, has been neglected by linguistic research up to the present, in part because it remained in manuscript form. Rask’s draft of a planned language is divided into three sections: (1) The grammatical system and basic vocabulary; (2) numerous examples of word-formation, morphology etc. and (3) samples of texts. Rask deplores the waste of energy resulting from the multiplicity of languages in international communication. In his opinion, many intellectual achievements are lost or cannot be further developed owing to lack of exchange facilities. Instead of having to learn words and structures, people should be placed in a position to tackle the subject matter. The practical aim of linguistic studies should therefore be the creation of an international means of communication to be used in the field of science as well as in every-day life. Important postulates of such a conception would be: improved learnability by means of simplification of grammatical structures, consistency in word-formation and easy articulation for people of different language communities. To conform to these aims, Rask decided to create a system mainly on the basis of romance languages, i.e., Latin, Spanish, French and Portugese, complemented by Greek and English. Rask’s essay presents a hitherto unknown type of planned language, commonly described as ‘naturalistic’. Whereas other aposterioric systems like Esperanto give priority to regularity and logic and are therefore called ‘autonomous’, Rask tries to remain faithful to the results of historical evolution. In that respect, Rask’s project resembles Otto Jespersen’s ‘Novial’, which was to be conceived a century later.

scholarly journals Decompositional Representation of Morphological Complexity: Multivariate fMRI Evidence from Italian

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (12) ◽  
pp. 1878-1896 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Carota ◽  
Mirjana Bozic ◽  
William Marslen-Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Multivariate Analyses ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Neural Systems ◽  
Semantic Transparency ◽  
Lexical Competition ◽  
Morphological Complexity ◽  
Word Forms ◽  
Cohort Competition ◽  
Complex Forms

Derivational morphology is a cross-linguistically dominant mechanism for word formation, combining existing words with derivational affixes to create new word forms. However, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the representation and processing of such forms remain unclear. Recent cross-linguistic neuroimaging research suggests that derived words are stored and accessed as whole forms, without engaging the left-hemisphere perisylvian network associated with combinatorial processing of syntactically and inflectionally complex forms. Using fMRI with a “simple listening” no-task procedure, we reexamine these suggestions in the context of the root-based combinatorially rich Italian lexicon to clarify the role of semantic transparency (between the derived form and its stem) and affix productivity in determining whether derived forms are decompositionally represented and which neural systems are involved. Combined univariate and multivariate analyses reveal a key role for semantic transparency, modulated by affix productivity. Opaque forms show strong cohort competition effects, especially for words with nonproductive suffixes (ventura, “destiny”). The bilateral frontotemporal activity associated with these effects indicates that opaque derived words are processed as whole forms in the bihemispheric language system. Semantically transparent words with productive affixes (libreria, “bookshop”) showed no effects of lexical competition, suggesting morphologically structured co-representation of these derived forms and their stems, whereas transparent forms with nonproductive affixes (pineta, pine forest) show intermediate effects. Further multivariate analyses of the transparent derived forms revealed affix productivity effects selectively involving left inferior frontal regions, suggesting that the combinatorial and decompositional processes triggered by such forms can vary significantly across languages.

scholarly journals Strategies adopted by Aphanizomenon flos-aquae in response to phosphorus deficiency and their role on growth

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoyan Chen ◽  
Iva Dolinova ◽  
Alena Sevcu ◽  
Tomasz Jurczak ◽  
Piotr Frankiewicz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Early Stage ◽  
Phosphorus Deficiency ◽  
Photochemical Efficiency ◽  
Sustainable Growth ◽  
P Deficiency ◽  
P Content ◽  
Freshwater Bodies ◽  
P Utilization ◽  
Vigorous Growth ◽  
Globally Distributed

Abstract Background: The N2-fixing cyanobacterium, Aphanizomenon flos-aquae is a globally distributed bloom causing species that degrades water quality of freshwater and ocean worldwide. Overcoming phosphorus (P) deficiency is one of the ecological advantages for bloom forming cyanobacteria. It remains unclear to what extent can A. flos-aquae alleviate P deficiency by regulating P using strategies.Results: Based on in situ observations of extracellular alkaline phosphatase (APase) in A. flos-aquae via enzyme-labeled fluorescence in freshwater bodies in China, Poland and Czechia, we further investigated responses of isolated A. flos-aquae to different P supplies (sufficient inorganic P (Pi) as +DIP, α-glycerophosphate and β-glycerophosphate as +DOPα and +DOPβ, P-free condition as -P). The significantly negative relationships between percentage of APase producing cells and soluble reactive P concentration in fields and cultures respectively suggested that the excretion of APase was regulated by ambient Pi supply. Suffering from extreme P deficiency in the -P treatments, A. flos-aquae showed the highest APase activity reaching a vigorous growth at the early stage, which might also benefit from the formation of polyphosphate body (PPB) and the decrease of cellular P content. In the +DOP treatments, the coordination of dissolved organic P (DOP) mineralization and continuous utilization and formation of PPB might contribute to a maintenance but not reproduction of A. flos-aquae when relying on DOP, since the highest cell density reached only 13.38% of that in +DIP treatments while photochemical efficiency was comparable during the whole experiment. Luxury uptake of phosphate as PPB in the +DIP treatments was consistent to the canonical view of polyphosphate as P storage. Conclusion: A. flos-aquae could achieve an instantaneous growth in response to P deficiency with the coordination of P utilization strategies, while only a long-term sustainable growth could be maintained under DOP condition. Persistent and active reproduction could only be achieved in high Pi supply, which implying that an effective consequence can be expected for combating the bloom of A. flos-aquae when controlling P supply.

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