Portuguese Relative Clauses in Synchrony and Diachrony

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriana Cardoso
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Language Variation And Change ◽  
Comparative Syntax ◽  
European Portuguese ◽  
History Of ◽  
Restrictive Relatives

This book sheds light on language variation and change from a generative syntactic perspective, based on a case study of relative clauses in Portuguese and other languages. Concretely, it offers a comparative account of three linguistic phenomena documented in the synchrony and diachrony of Portuguese: remnant-internal relativization, extraposition of restrictive relatives, and appositive relativization. The research methodology adopted involves comparative syntax, both in the diachronic and the synchronic dimensions: Contemporary European Portuguese is systematically compared with earlier stages of Portuguese; moreover, Portuguese is compared with other languages, in particular Latin, English, Dutch, and Italian. The book provides new perspectives on the syntax of relativization. From a theoretical perspective, it shows that competing analyses need not be either false or true universally, but can be instrumental in explaining language variation (both diachronically and synchronically). As for the variation found in the synchronic and diachronic dimensions, it is proposed that languages (and different stages of the same language) might vary according to whether they allow relativization to be derived from specifying coordination. Moreover, the book reports a series of changes that took place in the history of Portuguese after the sixteenth century, which reduced the patterns of nominal discontinuity available in the language.

Between Homonymy and Polysemy: The Origins and Career of the English Form Dialect in the Sixteenth Century

2016 ◽  
Vol 134 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Raf Van Rooy ◽  
John Considine
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
English Word ◽  
Detailed Case ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
History Of

AbstractThe emergence of the form dialect in early modern English is often mentioned in histories of the language, but important as it is, the evidence for it has never been analyzed as a whole, and its treatment in the revised OED entry for dialect leaves room for modifications. This article presents and re-evaluates the evidence for dialect in sixteenth-century English sources. It demonstrates that there were two homonyms with this form, one a shortening of English dialectics and one a borrowing from post-classical Latin dialectus, from its Greek etymon διάλεκτος, and, less often, from French dialecte. After treating dialect ‘dialectics’ briefly, it explores the known attestations of dialect ‘kind of language’, showing the range of senses in which this word could be used, and the ways in which it can be shown to have spread from one user of English to another, beginning with one clearly defined expatriate learned circle in the 1560s, entering more general learned use in the 1570s and 1580s, and becoming a fully naturalized literary English word in the 1590s. The paper therefore offers a detailed case-study of the naturalization of a learned word in early modern English and also contributes to the history of the conceptualization of language variation in sixteenth-century England.

scholarly journals VISUALIZING GERMANNESS THROUGH COSTUMES IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
FREDERICK G. CROFTS
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scholarly Discourse ◽  
Material Exchange

ABSTRACT Examining the understudied collection of costume images from Heidelberg Calvinist, lawyer, and church councillor Marcus zum Lamm's (1544–1606) ‘treasury’ of images, the Thesaurus Picturarum, this article intervenes in the historiography on sixteenth-century German national imaginaries, emphasizing the import of costume books and manuscript alba for national self-fashioning. By bringing late sixteenth-century ethnographic costume image collections into scholarly discourse on the variegated ways of conceiving and visualizing Germany and Germanness over the century, this article sheds new light on a complex narrative of continuity and change in the history of German nationhood and identity. Using zum Lamm's images as a case-study, this article stresses the importance of incorporating costume image collections into a nexus of patriotic genres, including works of topographical-historical, natural philosophical, ethnographic, cartographic, cosmographic, and genealogical interest. Furthermore, it calls for historians working on sixteenth-century costume books and alba to look deeper into the meanings of such images and collections in the specific contexts of their production; networks of knowledge and material exchange; and – in the German context – the political landscape of territorialization, confessionalization, and dynastic ambition in the Holy Roman Empire between the Peace of Augsburg and the Thirty Years War (1555–1618).

Usage, media, and grammaticalization

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-83
Author(s):  
Liang Tao
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Chinese Text ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Language Variation And Change ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Rhetorical Question ◽  
Beijing Mandarin ◽  
Grammatical Change ◽  
The Impact

Abstract This report presents a case study on a current grammatical change in a rhetorical question 不是…吗 (isn’t it the case…?) and its spreading from spoken Beijing Mandarin to Mandarin Chinese in general. The study addresses three interrelated issues that concern the development and spreading of this new pattern: (1) usage-based language variation and change in spoken Beijing Mandarin; (2) Socio-cultural factors that may have promoted the adaptation of the new pattern in Mandarin Chinese; and (3) the impact of media, which may enhance the rapid spreading of the pattern in China. The report offers another instance of usage as the main driving force leading to language variation and grammaticalization.

scholarly journals THE LUTHERAN IDENTITY OF JOSQUIN’SMISSA PANGE LINGUA: RENAISSANCE OF A RENAISSANCE MASS

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 193-249
Author(s):  
Alanna Ropchock Tierno
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Catholic Identity ◽  
Additional Layer ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pange Lingua ◽  
Printed Sources

In sixteenth-century Germany, both Catholics and Lutherans circulated and performed Josquin’sMissa Pange lingua, even though its model, the hymnPange lingua, was associated with Eucharistic practices that were exclusively Catholic. This source-based study reveals how Lutherans selected theMissa Pange linguafor performance over other available masses and adapted it for their liturgical and pedagogical needs. Two printed sources of the mass offer perspectives on how Lutherans might have negotiated the polemical rituals and theology associated with theMissa Pange linguaalongside an aesthetic interest in the work. The intention of this study is not to de-emphasise the connection between theMissa Pange linguaand its borrowed melody or the initial Catholic identity of the mass. Rather, the Lutheran identity of theMissa Pange linguaprovides an additional layer to the early reception history of this work and a case study of the Lutheran appropriation of Catholic music.

When Language Fails

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Yang
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Language Variation And Change ◽  
Numerical Studies ◽  
Tolerance Principle

The theory predicts complete lexicalization when the number of exceptions to a rule exceeds the threshold, which leads to morphological gaps: without a productive rule, you only know the derived form if you hear it otherwise ineffability arises. Detailed numerical studies for gaps in Russian, English, Spanish, and Polish. The Tolerance Principle also directly bears on language variation and change, in that it provides/predicts the conditions under which language change is actuated. As a case study, the theory explains why—and when—the so-called dative sickness, and other instances of case substitution, took place in Icelandic in the 19th centuries.

‘Y Ganrif Fawr’? Piety, Literature and Patronage in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Wales

2012 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 107-123
Author(s):  
Katharine K. Olson
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Native Culture ◽  
Manuscript Tradition ◽  
Lay Piety ◽  
History Of ◽  
Welsh Literature ◽  
Medieval Ireland

This essay offers a reconsideration of the idea of ‘The Great Century’ of Welsh literature (1435–1535) and related assumptions of periodization for understanding the development of lay piety and literature in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Wales. It focuses on the origins of these ideas in (and their debt to) modern Welsh nationalist and Protestant and Catholic confessional thought, and their significance for the interpretation of Welsh literature and history. In addition, it questions their accuracy and usefulness in the light of contemporary patterns of manuscript production, patronage and devotional content of Welsh books of poetry and prose produced by the laity during and after this ‘golden age’ of literature. Despite the existence of over a hundred printed works in Welsh by 1660, the vernacular manuscript tradition remained robust; indeed, ‘native culture for the most part continued to be transmitted as it had been transmitted for centuries, orally or in manuscript’ until the eighteenth century. Bardic poetry’s value as a fundamental source for the history of medieval Ireland and Wales has been rightly acknowledged. However, more generally, Welsh manuscripts of both poetry and prose must be seen as a crucial historical source. They tell us much about contemporary views, interests and priorities, and offer a significant window onto the devotional world of medieval and early modern Welsh men and women. Drawing on recent work on Welsh literature, this paper explores the production and patronage of such books and the dynamics of cultural and religious change. Utilizing National Library of Wales Llanstephan MS 117D as a case study, it also examines their significance and implications for broader trends in lay piety and the nature of religious change in Wales.

scholarly journals The influence of suburban development and metropolitan fragmentation on language variation and change: Evidence from Greater St. Louis

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-97
Author(s):  
Daniel Duncan
Keyword(s):  
Metropolitan Area ◽  
Metropolitan Areas ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Language Variation And Change ◽  
Northern Cities Shift ◽  
Northern Cities ◽  
Suburban Development ◽  
Metropolitan Fragmentation

AbstractThe distances between urban and suburban spaces, while small in Euclidean terms, have a rather large social reality. This paper calls attention to two reasons for this—suburban development and metropolitan fragmentation—and situates these phenomena within the context of sociological and historical thought about metropolitan areas. I test their role in linguistic variation through a case study of three Northern Cities Shift features (raised trap, fronted lot, and lowered thought) in English of the St. Louis metropolitan area. I show that these features diffused throughout the region in three different ways. Additionally, phonological conditioning of lot-fronting differs between urban and suburban speakers, and retreat from urban dialect features is led in the suburbs. These findings highlight the need to consider the geography of metropolitan areas more deeply in studies of language variation and change in metropolitan areas, as similarity across a metropolitan area should not be assumed a priori.

Elementos diferenciales en el español atlántico

Revue Romane ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Teresa Cáceres-Lorenzo
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Canary Islands ◽  
Numerical Data ◽  
Quantitative Methodology ◽  
Spanish Atlantic ◽  
Show Evidence ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common

In the Canary Islands, the Spanish Atlantic regional lexicon shows resemblance to the lexicon from Andalusia and west mainland Spain. This shared vocabulary is a result of the common history of these varieties since the sixteenth century. This research aims at finding Spanish Atlantic common vocabulary, a superdialect understood as encompassing the Spanish of Spain and America, from which we have no numerical data. Canarian Spanish shows many common Hispanic voices from all the different areas and becomes a case study. The research is designed with a quantitative methodology applied to a corpus formed by different dialect dictionaries. The results show evidence of a Koine in several stages through the analysis of shared voices and the verification that Andalusian Spanish has not been the only means of dissemination.

The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar

2013 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Current Work ◽  
Language Variation And Change ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of Construction ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theoretical Foundations

This handbook presents a comprehensive account of current work on Construction Grammar, its theoretical foundations, and its applications to and relationship with other kinds of linguistic enquiry. This volume is divided into five sections. The first section highlights the fundamental assumptions shared by all constructionist approaches; the second describes the particular frameworks in which the notion of constructions plays a central role; the third illustrates how constructionist approaches can be used for the analysis of all types of (morpho)syntactic phenomena from the lexicon?syntax cline; the fourth discusses the psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic underpinnings of Construction Grammar; and the final section considers the relation of Construction Grammar to language variation and change. The handbook also traces the history of Construction Grammar and explains its distinction from Chomskyan Mainstream Generative Grammar.

Extraposition of restrictive relative clauses

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriana Cardoso
Keyword(s):  
Structural Analysis ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Theoretical Point ◽  
Prepositional Phrases ◽  
European Portuguese ◽  
Restrictive Relative Clauses ◽  
Restrictive Relatives ◽  
Definiteness Effect

Chapter 3 deals with the extraposition of restrictive relative clauses. It demonstrates that different languages and different stages of the same language may differ with respect to the three main properties of extraposition: definiteness effect; extraposition from pre-verbal positions; and extraposition from prepositional phrases. The main descriptive findings are: (1) that earlier stages of Portuguese contrast sharply with Contemporary European Portuguese with respect to the extraposition of restrictive relative clauses; and (2) the extraposition of restrictive relatives in earlier stages of Portuguese is, to a large extent, Germanic-like, unlike Contemporary European Portuguese. From a theoretical point of view, it is argued that the same structural analysis cannot alone derive the contrasting properties of restrictive relative clause extraposition. To account for the variation found in the diachronic and cross-linguistic dimensions, it is claimed that the extraposition of restrictive relatives might involve two different structures: specifying coordination plus ellipsis and VP-internal stranding.

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