Systematization and the origin of rules

2002 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 573-593 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Haiman
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Sound Change ◽  
Considerable Extent ◽  
Design Features ◽  
Complementary Distribution ◽  
The World ◽  
Functional Analog ◽  
Constituent Order ◽  
Focus Marking ◽  
Germanic Languages

One of the design features of language is its systematicity: to a considerable extent, the rules of grammar relate not to the world outside, but only to other rules. They exist in autonomy from external motivations. Subject-verb inversion in the Germanic languages as a marker of interrogatives is a well-known example of such an externally unmotivated rule. The notion of systematization implies a process whereby such rules have evolved from pre-systematic externally motivated origins. In this particular case: Greenberg’s constituent order universal #11 proposed that only those languages with sentence-initial interrogative words will ever allow subject-verb inversion in questions. There is, however, an obvious functional basis for fronting question words: Jespersen’s principle of actuality. Moreover, of the languages which front question words, many demarcate focussed from presupposed material by a focus-marking flag. In other languages, it may be that the verb itself may function as such a flag, that is, subject-verb inversion may be the functional analog of a demarcative focus marker. The best evidence for the functional unity of focus marking and subject-verb inversion is their complementary distribution, sometimes within the same language. The genuine systematicity of subject-verb inversion may then be the outcome of functional external motivations, and a series of analogical steps. More generally, it may be that other aspects of the autonomization or emancipation of language can be explained by reference to processes that are attested in observed language change. Analogy leads to systematization (and possibly even to recursiveness), as ritualization leads to displacement, and its linguistic aspects (sound change and grammaticalization) lead to arbitrariness, discreteness, and double articulation.

scholarly journals Comparative variationism for the study of language change: five centuries of competition amongst Spanish deontic periphrases

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Luis Blas Arroyo
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
Common Factor ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Auxiliary Verbs ◽  
Complementary Distribution ◽  
Modal Verb ◽  
History Of

AbstractBased on a corpus composed entirely of texts close to the pole of communicative immediacy, mainly private letters from the sixteenth, eighteenth and twentieth centuries (c. 1960), this paper analyses the results of a variationist study on the historical evolution undergone by the Spanish modal periphrases with three distinct auxiliary verbs (haber, tener, deber). Using the heuristic tools of the comparative method, the data show that variation has been constrained by a handful of common factor groups over almost five centuries. Nonetheless, with the odd exception, these factors have conditioned each verb in a different way. Moreover, the sense of this variation changes as time goes by, with especially relevant reorganisation in the first part of the twentieth century. Furthermore, there is a notable association between these constraints and the degree of markedness and the frequency of the conditioning contexts, giving support to a usage-based approach to language change in which cognitive processes such as entrenchment play a decisive role. These data also allow a particular profile to be traced for each modal verb in the history of Spanish, in which tener and haber finally undergo a complementary distribution, whereas deber follows a different pattern. After several centuries of stagnation, tener becomes the star in the deontic firmament of spontaneous communication, diffusing abruptly as a change from below in the twentieth century, and replacing haber, which had been the unmarked variant for centuries.

scholarly journals An experimental study of the role of social factors in language change: The case of loanword adaptations

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shiri Lev-Ari ◽  
Sharon Peperkamp
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Sound Change ◽  
Experimental Setting ◽  
Experimental Paradigm ◽  
Semantic Domain ◽  
The Creation

AbstractThere is great variation in whether foreign sounds in loanwords are adapted or retained. Importantly, the retention of foreign sounds can lead to a sound change in the language. We propose that social factors influence the likelihood of loanword sound adaptation, and use this case to introduce a novel experimental paradigm for studying language change that captures the role of social factors. Specifically, we show that the relative prestige of the donor language in the loanword’s semantic domain influences the rate of sound adaptation. We further show that speakers adapt to the performance of their ‘community', and that this adaptation leads to the creation of a norm. The results of this study are thus the first to show an effect of social factors on loanword sound adaptation in an experimental setting. Moreover, they open up a new domain of experimentally studying language change in a manner that integrates social factors.

scholarly journals Diachronic Study of Phonological Changes in Tiv Language

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Terfa Aor ◽  
Torkuma Tyonande Damkor
Keyword(s):  
Research Design ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Sound Change ◽  
Language Analysis ◽  
Sound Changes ◽  
Diachronic Study ◽  
Language Growth ◽  
Observation Method ◽  
Phonological Change

All levels of language analysis are prone to changes in their phonology, morphology, graphology, lexis, semantics and syntax over the years. Tiv language is not an exception to this claim. This study investigates various aspects of phonological or sound changes in Tiv language. This paper therefore classifies sound changes in Tiv; states causes of sound changes in Tiv and explores implications of sound changes. The research design used in this paper is purposive sampling of relevant data. The instrument used in this paper is the observation method in which the author selected words that showed epenthesis, deletion and substitution. It has been noted that the use of archaic spellings in the Modern Tiv literatures shows their ancientness. Phonological change is not a deviation but a sign of language growth and changes in spellings result in changes in sounds. The author recommends that scholars should write papers or critical works on lexical/morphological, syntactic, semantic, graphological changes in Tiv language. Students should write projects, dissertations and theses on language change and diachronic linguistics. This study introduces Tiv historical linguistics and diachronic phonology which serve as catalysts for the study of Tiv language. The understanding of Tiv sound change provides students with a much better understanding of Tiv phonological system in general, of how Tiv phonology works and how the phonemes fit together

TITANIC - The Design History, Forensic Analysis of the Sinking, and Aftermath

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Forrest Roddy
Keyword(s):  
Forensic Analysis ◽  
Design History ◽  
Design Features ◽  
Paper Briefly ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
White Star

After more than one hundred years the Titanic is still probably the most remembered ship in the world. This paper briefly discusses the history of the Titanic from why the White Star Line decided to build the Olympic class ships through the recently signed treaty protecting the ship. It is shown that many of the design features of the ship were far ahead of the rest of the industry but that some compromises were against the naval architect’s desires. A number of myths concerning the ship are dispelled. The circumstances leading up to the collision with the iceberg and the sinking of the ship are examined followed by an analysis of the sinking; the discovery of the ship; and finally after almost thirty-five years, a treaty to protect the ship.

Project Amazon: An Open Class 60 Sailboat for Single-Handed Round-the-World Racing

2000 ◽  
Vol 37 (02) ◽  
pp. 65-78
Author(s):  
Eric W. Sponberg
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Fiber ◽  
Design Features ◽  
Naval Architecture ◽  
Free Standing ◽  
Detail Design ◽  
The World ◽  
Open Class ◽  
First Time

Project Amazon is a custom-designed Open Class 60 sailboat that began development in 1992. Detail design took place in 1995–96, and construction occurred in 1996–97. Project Amazon is an aluminum cat-ketch with two carbon fiber, free-standing, rotating wingmasts, an aluminum asymmetrical swinging keel, and twin carbon fiber, daggerboard-style rudders. Followers of the Around Alone and Vendée Globe single-handed, around-the-world races and developments of Open Class 60 sailboats may find these features unusual because collectively they do not fit mainstream racing sailboat design. None of Project Amazon's design features is totally new to sailboat naval architecture. These ideas have all been tried before, and all have been successful. But this is probably the first time that so many innovations have been combined into a single major racing sailboat design.

Statement from the Editors

2004 ◽  
pp. 1-2
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
The United States ◽  
Considerable Extent ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
American Jewry ◽  
The World ◽  
Jewish Historian

To launch a new annual into a world which seems over-saturated with academic journals would seem a foolhardy and even superfluous undertaking. Yet we believe that Polin is a unique venture and we are convinced that it has a weighty task to fulfil. Polish Jewry was one of the largest and most important Jewish communities in the world. By the late seventeenth century, nearly three-quarters of the world's Jews lived within the borders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Polish Jewry provided the basis for the religious tradition of much of the Jewish world, and the territories of the former Polish states were also the source for those movements - Zionism, Socialism, as well as Orthodox ones - which were to transform the Jewish world in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As late as 1939, Poland still contained the second-largest Jewish community in the world, while the largest, that in the United States, derived to a considerable extent from the Polish lands. It was the great Jewish historian Salo Baron who described American Jewry as 'a bridge built by Polish Jews'....

In Search of Oppositions: South East Asia in Focus

1997 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 578-597
Author(s):  
Eva‐Lotta E. Hedman
Keyword(s):  
Considerable Extent ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Tropical Africa ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Lower Case ◽  
The World ◽  
Regime Transitions

ANY INVESTIGATION OF POLITICAL OPPOSITIONS IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC must necessarily begin, if not end, with the obvious. First of all, there is the evident weakness of political oppositions in much of this part of the world today — whether we focus on the commonly capitalized ‘Opposition’ denoting ‘a political party opposing, and serving as a check on, the party in power’ (Webster's, italics added), or on the more variegated lower case ‘alternative oppositions’ often associated with so-called ‘non-governmental organizations’ of some sort or another. To a considerable extent, therefore, this question involves the compounded difficulty of not merely explaining the careers and conditions of manifest political groupings and their respective trajectories but also, significantly, of retrieving the historical traces, lived experiences and collective memories of oppositions displaced — whether by means of incorporation or of exclusion. Secondly, despite its remarkable recent rise in political, financial and academic discourse, ‘the Asia-Pacific’ remains a highly elusive — and eminently elastic — conception in terms of historical, economic and cultural content. Significantly, for the present discussion, no ‘wave’ of regime transitions comparable to those witnessed in other regions — Southern Europe, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Tropical Africa — can be discerned across the countries encompassed within ‘the Asia-Pacific’.

On the hierarchy of naturalness principles in inflectional morphology

1993 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max W. Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Sound Change ◽  
Inflectional Morphology ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Human Psychology ◽  
Prague School

1. This article proposes a criticism and elaboration of the theory of Natural Morphology as it relates to inflection and to inflectional change. The theoretical framework I start from is that set out at length in Mayerthaler (1981/1988), Wurzel (1984/1989), Dressler (1987) and Kilani-Schoch (1988). The concept of naturalness involved here combines Prague School notions of markedness (see Andersen, 1989) with more recent typological approaches and a semiotic framework which derives from the work of C. S. Peirce. The goal of naturalness theories in historical linguistics is to identify some constraints on language change (for example, on sound change, analogy and grammaticalization) which are, broadly speaking, functionally motivated, that is, motivated by the nature of human psychology or of human communication. Naturalness theories offer an approach to explanation of Weinreich, Labov & Herzog's (1968; 102, 186) actuation problem. Among other things, Natural Morphology proposes explanatory principles and constraints for analogy.

scholarly journals Reassessing the semantic history of OE brēad / ME brēd

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
SARA M. PONS-SANZ
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Considerable Extent ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
Semantic History ◽  
Germanic Languages

Our etymological understanding of PDE bread has been influenced, to a considerable extent, by Otto Jespersen's comment that ‘An Englishman cannot thrive or be ill or die without Scandinavian words; they are to the language what bread and eggs are to the daily fare.’ This article analyses the evidence behind the possibility that PDE bread might represent a Norse-derived semantic loan, i.e. that OE brēad acquired the meaning ‘bread’, which was more frequently expressed by OE hlāf, because of the influence of its Viking Age Norse cognate (cp. OIc brauð ‘bread’). On the basis of an in-depth study of the attestations of OE brēad and hlāf and their early Middle English reflexes, as well as the use of their cognates in various Germanic languages, the article challenges the traditional view that OE brēad originally meant ‘piece, morsel of bread’ and concludes that Norse influence is not needed in order to account for the semantic history of PDE bread.

scholarly journals THE ROLE OF IS IN THE ACQUISITION OF FINITENESS BY ADULT TURKISH LEARNERS OF DUTCH

2009 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ineke van de Craats
Keyword(s):  
Universal Grammar ◽  
First Language ◽  
Production Data ◽  
Inflectional Morphology ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
The World ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Minimalist Theory ◽  
By Products

This article deals with the interlanguage of adult second language (L2) learners acquiring finiteness. Due to the inaccessibility of bound inflectional morphology, learners use free morphology to mark a syntactic relationship as well as person and number features separately from the thematic verb, expressed by a pattern like the man is go. Results from longitudinally collected production data of Turkish learners of Dutch are reported and present evidence for the claim that (a) verb movement and production of inflectional morphology develop separately in various developmental steps and (b) finite forms in nonfinite contexts (and vice versa) are by-products of this development. Moreover, all is-patterns in different Germanic languages can be explained by the application of minimalist theory of verb movement and recent views on morphology. Is-patterns that correspond neither to the first language nor to the L2—a poverty-of-the-stimulus problem—turn out to be possible in other languages of the world and are constrained by Universal Grammar.

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