diachronic development
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2022 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-191
Author(s):  
Stefan Schnell ◽  
Nils Norman Schiborr

Corpus-based studies have become increasingly common in linguistic typology over recent years, amounting to the emergence of a new field that we call corpus-based typology. The core idea of corpus-based typology is to take languages as populations of utterances and to systematically investigate text production across languages in this sense. From a usage-based perspective, investigations of variation and preferences of use are at the core of understanding the distribution of conventionalized structures and their diachronic development across languages. Specific findings of corpus-based typological studies pertain to universals of text production, for example, in prosodic partitioning; to cognitive biases constraining diverse patterns of use, for example, in constituent order; and to correlations of diverse patterns of use with language-specific structures and conventions. We also consider remaining challenges for corpus-based typology, in particular the development of crosslinguistically more representative corpora that include spoken (or signed) texts, and its vast potential in the future.


2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja Von Schöneman

This article examines the diachronic development of Shiʿi exegetic discourse on the sentence Khalaqakum min nafs wāḥida wa-khalaqa minhā zawjahā (“created you from a single soul and created its mate from it”) in the Quranic verse 4:1, customarily read as describing the creation of the first couple, Adam and Eve. Applying feminist discourse analysis and focusing on the Arabic-language commentaries of twelve premodern Imāmī exegetes from the third/ninth to the eleventh/seventeenth century, my study reveals that the medieval commentary material both accumulated and transformed along a hermeneutical trajectory comprising three distinctive discursive stages. The first stage established the lore on Eve’s creation in dismissive terms, and the second strengthened these misogynous views to make the potential substance of Eve’s creation even more negligible. This concept was further expanded in the third discursive stage, in which the weak woman, inclined toward the material and the corporal, was seen as created to provide service and entertainment for the man. Her creation was thus used to justify gender hierarchy, even the seclusion of women.


2021 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 656-666
Author(s):  
Radek Čech ◽  
Ján Mačutek ◽  
Pavel Kosek

Abstract The paper focuses on dynamics of changes of several linguistic and text properties in diachronic development of Czech. Specifically, we analyze the proportion of identical word-forms (types), the average type length, text length, the proportion of hapax legomena, the moving average type-token ratio, and entropy. For the analysis, seven translations of the Gospel of Matthew from the 14th to the 21st century were used. The study reveals some differences in dynamics of changes of particular properties.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-176
Author(s):  
Elena Smirnova

Abstract This work-in-progress paper reports the first results of a study dedicated to the investigation of the cognitive status of the sentence bracket construction in German. The project aims at a comprehensive corpus analysis of diachronic data from the Early New High German period (ENHG, 1350–1650). The study focuses on the syntactic structures of German main clauses and is guided by two general research questions. First, on the conceptual level, it addresses the question of whether the sentence bracket construction can be considered a construction in its own right. Second, the paper deals with the issue of the diachronic source(s) of the sentence bracket construction. Based on ENHG corpus data, it examines the role of grammaticalization of verbal auxiliaries in the development of the bracket construction. On a more general level, the objective of the paper is to encourage the discussion on the cognitive status of syntactic phenomena which often escape a straightforward modelling in cognitive and constructionist terms, as they do not seem to bear a particular dedicated semantic and/or functional value.


Author(s):  
Jiajun Chen

Abstract The paper focusses on the language-internal and -external motivations for the development of Chinese sentence-final particle bucheng. This particle, from an initial state as a negative verb string, developed into a sentence-final particle through intermediate adverbial stages, and was recruited to interpersonal functions in final position by the sixteenth century. Key motivating factors are identified for the expansion of its functional range, with particular attention to the development of the Written Vernacular in Early Modern Chinese and to interactional echoic contexts that contribute to the right-ward movement and thence the rise of the particle. Exploration of the diachronic development of bucheng not only expands the known inventory of morphosyntactic processes and linguistic contexts that give rise to pragmatic devices clause-finally but also yields a better understanding of the right-ward movement of lexemes towards clause-/utterance-final position.


2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-268
Author(s):  
Chinfa LIEN

Abstract Drawing on the data in early Southern Min play scripts, this paper explores temporal expressions—in particular temporal adverbials—which bear on the issues of their grammatical categories and syntactic placement. Considerable space is devoted to clarifying two kinds of distinctions of temporal adverbials on the strength of attested examples. A distinction is made between deictic temporal adverbials and determiner phrase-derived temporal adverbials. Similarly, durative adverbials are shown to behave differently from punctual adverbials. Finally, I argue that the metonymic semantic shift of deictic temporal adverbials denoting tomorrow and yesterday/the day before yesterday is grounded in the constraint of proximity to the deictic center of today in connection with the backdrop of diachronic development.


Author(s):  
James M. Stratton

Abstract While many studies have employed variationist methods to examine longitudinal changes in the English intensifier system, to date, no variationist studies have tackled the intensifier system of Old English. By providing a critical view of this system at an earlier stage in the history of the English language, the present study adds to the long tradition of scholarship on intensifiers while providing new insight into their diachronic development. Despite its antiquity, several parallels can be drawn with the intensifier system at later stages in the language. Both internal and external factors are found to constrain this system, with predicative adjectives favoring intensification over attributive adjectives, prose texts having higher intensification rates than verse texts, Latin-based texts having higher intensification rates than vernacular texts, and the rate of intensification increasing over time. The quantitative analysis of the Old English system also increases the time depth necessary for a more detailed reflection on the diachronic recycling, replacement, and renewal of intensifiers. Language contact and borrowing are also postulated as driving forces of innovation and replacement in earlier stages of the English language.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Yonatan Adler

Abstract Approximately thirty tefillin cases were discovered in the Judean Desert. The publishers of these finds distinguished between single-compartment cases, which they identified as “arm-tefillin,” and four-compartment cases, which they identified as “head-tefillin.” Here I present a further typological distinction between two subtypes among the four-compartment tefillin cases: (1) the “simple-type,” in which a single line of stitching separates the compartments from one another, and (2) the “split-type,” in which the compartments are separated by incisions in the leather and each compartment is stitched closed individually. It seems likely that some kind of ritual issue is at stake, and an allusion to these two types as competing halakhic practices may be found in the tannaitic literature—with the rabbis ultimately rejecting the “split-type.” The Judean Desert finds may represent a synchronic debate between competing groups, a diachronic development, or perhaps practices followed contemporaneously by members of one and the same group.


2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-78
Author(s):  
Ankelien Schippers ◽  
Jack Hoeksema

Abstract In this article, we present corpus data from Dutch and English on long-distance movement and discuss its diachronic development in Dutch, English and German. Long-distance movement is the displacement phenomenon characterized by the appearance of a part of a dependent clause in a higher clause (e.g. What crimes did the FBI discover he had committed?). It has played a central role within generative grammar over the past few decades. The picture that emerges is that long-distance movement appears to be currently most productive in English and least productive in German, whereas Dutch occupies an in-between position. As we will argue, the productivity of long-distance movement is strongly tied to the availability of functional alternatives. German has at least three of such alternatives that are fully productive, whereas Dutch has one particularly productive one. The alternative constructions do not involve long-distance movement: the dependency between the constituent in the matrix clause and the position in the embedded clause where it is interpreted is formed indirectly, in the semantics, and not via syntactic movement. In English, long-distance movement is most productive when the complementizer is deleted. This is not just the case for subject movement but also for non-subject movement. Special attention is paid to the so-called that-trace effect and its alleged absence in German and Dutch. The general conclusion is that long-distance movement is possible in all languages under consideration, but more restricted than commonly assumed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 107 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-59
Author(s):  
Theresa Schweden

In rural speech communities, when speakers refer to persons, their family of origin is omnipresent, not only by passing on the name of the family patriarch, but also in the serialization of surname and first name and in the grammatical structures of reference forms (der Müller Peter, s Müllers Peter). This paper portrays the diachronic development of reference forms and elaborates on their preservation in synchronic reference systems. Furthermore, it explores a referent’s linguistic categorization into social groups and shows that different grammatical structures foreground certain distinctions, which can also overlap. In rural villages, inofficial house names, derived from the patriarch’s first name or profession, are still in use. When an individual marries into another house, the reference to this person can change accordingly.


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