Of travels and travails: The role of semantic typology, argument structure constructions, and language contact in semantic change

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-94
Author(s):  
Judith Huber
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Motion Verbs ◽  
Semantic Change ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Motion Constructions ◽  
Semantic Typology

Abstract This paper is an investigation into the role of argument structure constructions as catalysts or blockers of lexical semantic change. It presents a case study of the divergent semantic development of French travailler ‘work’ and English travel ‘journey’ from their shared earlier meaning ‘labour, toil’. This divergence is shown to not be random: It can be explained as a product of the different intransitive motion constructions (IMCs) and different communicative habits in these two languages. Consequently, the development of travailler ‘journey’ in the Anglo-Norman dialect of French can be understood as the result of contact influence of Middle English. By pointing to similar instances in which verbs meaning ‘labour, toil’ have acquired a polysemous ‘motion’ sense in languages with an IMC that can coerce non-motion verbs into contextual motion readings, the paper argues that this is most probably a regular semantic trajectory in satellite-framing, manner-conflating languages.

Talking about MOTION in Middle English

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Huber
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The Other ◽  
Motion Verbs ◽  
Text Type ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Contact Situation ◽  
Analysis Of Motion

Chapter 6 begins with an overview of the language contact situation with (Anglo-) French and Latin, resulting in large-scale borrowing in the Middle English period. The analysis of 465 Middle English verbs used to express intransitive motion shows that there are far more French/Latin loans in the path verbs than in the other motion verbs. The range of (new) manner of motion verbs testifies to the manner salience of Middle English: caused motion verbs are also found in intransitive motion meanings, as are French loans which do not have motion uses in continental French. Their motion uses in Anglo-Norman are discussed in terms of contact influence of Middle English. The analysis of motion expression in different texts yields a picture similar to the situation in Old English, with path typically expressed in satellites, and neutral as well as manner of motion verbs being most frequent, depending on text type.

From Language Contact to Language Variation

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimo Cerruti
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Italian Region ◽  
The North ◽  
North Western ◽  
Insight Into

This paper falls within the line of research dealing with the role of intralinguistic variation in contact-induced language change. Two constructions are compared in terms of their respective degrees of grammaticalization: the progressive periphrasis ese lì c/a+Verb, which is widespread in some Northern Italo-Romance dialects, and the corresponding Italian construction essere lì che/a+Verb. The study focuses on the presence of such constructions in Turin, the capital of the north-western Italian region of Piedmont, in which the former periphrasis is less grammaticalized than the latter. It contends that the grammaticalization process of essere lì che/a+Verb was triggered by the contact between Piedmontese dialect and Italian, whereas the pace of grammaticalization of this periphrasis is affected by the contact between different varieties of Italian. The paper points out that the case study may provide insight into more general issues concerning not only the interplay of contact and variation in language change but also the role of sociolinguistic factors in shaping contact-induced grammaticalization phenomena.

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.

Alignment change in Chukotkan

Diachronica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-261
Author(s):  
Jessica Kantarovich
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Substrate Effects ◽  
Approaches To Studying ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Internal Change ◽  
Historical Accounts

Abstract This paper examines current approaches to studying alignment change and the role of language contact in the spread of ergativity, using the Chukotkan languages as a case study. Chukotkan is exceptional in that there does not appear to be a single reanalysis pathway that can account for the development of ergative case. Rather, the system appears to be the product of several changes that operated in different domains. This paper provides an alternative to an earlier account that claims that Chukotkan ergativity developed due to Yupik substrate effects, which is not supported by the historical accounts of the contact between these groups. This explanation is consistent with a problematic tendency of treating ergativity as a special phenomenon, even though ergative alignment regularly arises via internal change. Instead, I propose that the loss of split ergative case marking occurred due to the reanalysis of a passive participle, which was motivated by the tendency to encode animacy distinctions in these languages.

The role of language contact in semantic change: Ser and estar – a response to Geeslin and Guijarro-Fuentes

2008 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-382
Author(s):  
CAROL A. KLEE
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Semantic Change ◽  
Linguistic Change ◽  
Linguistic Feature ◽  
Contact Linguistics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Linguistic Patterns ◽  
Differences Of Opinion ◽  
Ser And Estar

The role of language contact in linguistic change remains a polemic issue in the field of contact linguistics. Many researchers (Weinreich, 1953; Lefebvre, 1985; Prince, 1988; Silva-Corvalán, 1994; King, 2000; Sankoff, 2002; Labov, 2007) believe that there are limits on the types of linguistic patterns that can be transmitted across languages, while others (Thomason and Kaufman, 1988, p. 14) deem that “any linguistic feature can be transferred from any language to any other language”. Regardless of the differences of opinion on this issue, there is widespread recognition that the social context, including such features as the size and characteristics of the bilingual groups, the attitudes toward the languages spoken, and the intensity and duration of language contact, play an important role in determining the linguistic outcomes of language contact.

An Ecological Account of the Emergence and Evolution of English

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salikoko S. Mufwene
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
English Language ◽  
Ecological Model ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
The World ◽  
Population Structures ◽  
History Of

What follows is a contact-based account of the emergence of English. Though the role of language contact in the development of World Englishes is often addressed as a coda within History of the English Language (HEL) courses, this chapter presents an alternative story, highlighting contact situations in Old English, Middle English, and Early Modern English. The creolist perspective offered here suggests that History of English instructors should look closer at the received doctrine of HEL and consider whether an ecological model should not be used to make sense of the story of Englishes. A periodized history of colonization and of the ensuing population structures that influence language contact appears to explain a great deal about the differential evolution of English in various parts of the world, including what distinguishes colonial English dialects from their creole counterparts.

scholarly journals Verb-based vs. schema-based constructions and their variability: On the Spanish transitive directed-motion construction in a contrastive perspective

Linguistics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Directed Motion ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Core Components ◽  
Verbal Meaning

AbstractIn comparison to English, Spanish constructions of argument structure are highly verb-constrained (e.g., Goldberg, Adele E. 2006.Constructions at work: The nature of generalization in language. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Narasimhan, Bhuvana. 2003. Motion events and the lexicon: A case study of Hindi.Lingua113(2). 123–160):Pedro bajó/*bailó a la playa‘Pedro went down/danced to the beach’. In some cases, the dominant role of the verbal meaning combines with a mismatching construction (e.g., an intransitive verb in a transitive construction:Pedro bajó las escaleras‘Pedro went down the stairs’). To account for this evidence from a usage-based point of view, this study examines the Spanish transitive directed-motion construction combining verb lexeme analysis with collexeme corpus analysis (Stefanowitsch, Anatol & Stefan Th. Gries. 2003. Collostructions: Investigating the interaction beween words and constructions.International Journal of Corpus Linguistics8(2). 209–243). The analysis shows that in spite of frequent verb-construction mismatches, core components of the verbal meaning correlate closely with the usage of the verb in the transitive construction. The same patterns were not observed in comparable English constructions. Conceptualized in a constructionist framework, this study suggests that verb framing and learned constructional patterns have different roles in the encoding of argument structure in the two languages. This contrastive analysis has a broader application: to other construction types, to other semantic domains, and to other languages. It is argued that compared to the typological distinction between Verb-framed and Satellite-framed languages (Talmy, Leonard. 2000.Toward a cognitive semantics, vol. 1 and 2. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), the proposed framework is better suited to account for the crosslinguistic differences and the intra-linguistic variation.

On the role of language contact in the reorganization of grammar: A case study on two Modern Greek contact-induced varieties

2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitra Melissaropoulou
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Compatibility Factor

AbstractThis paper offers further insights on the role of language contact in the reorganization of grammar based on data from two Modern Greek contact-induced dialects: Italiot varieties in contact with both the local Romance varieties and Standard Italian, and Cappadocian, in contact with Turkish. A contrastive investigation reveals interesting correlations and particularities in the reorganization of inflection of the examined systems. Acknowledging that simplification is not triggered solely by contact, we claim that the attested phenomena can be accounted for as temporary complexifications that head toward and ultimately result in simplification within the paradigmatic relations. The amount and type of complexity diverge significantly depending on the (in)compatibility factor among the systems in contact. Furthermore, in terms of loss, addition and replacement of features, our data show that, although replacement and loss are the most prevalent strategies used at the level of morphology, addition is also very likely to occur when structural incompatibility is involved.

The role of dialect in mother tongue retention of Slovene Canadians: a case study

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nada Šabec ◽  
Mihaela Koletnik
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Attitudes ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
General Linguistic ◽  
Historical Profile ◽  
Rapid Shift

AbstractThis article addresses the issue of mother tongue retention in the Slovene Canadian community of Vancouver. A brief social and historical profile of the community is followed by a description of the general linguistic situation, based on the data collected through questionnaires and participant observation. The results show substantial intergenerational variation in terms of the immigrants’ language use and language attitudes and point in the direction of a relatively rapid shift from Slovene to English, but not to the weakening of their sense of ethnic identity.The focus then shifts to the linguistic aspects of Slovene-English language contact themselves. In addition to interference phenomena in the immigrants’ language such as borrowing from English and Slovene-English code switching, special attention is paid to the presence of dialect or standard features in their mother tongue. Lexis in particular is interesting as it shows traces of other languages. Next, we try to identify the most significant factors which affect the immigrants’ choice between Slovene and English in various contexts as well as their use of either dialect or standard in Slovene.

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