Evidentiality in Selibu

Selibu is a Mandarin-Khams Tibetan mixed language with about 900 native speakers in northwest Yunnan, People’s Republic of China. As a Form-Semantics mixed language, it derives most of its lexicon and grammatical morphemes from Southwest Mandarin and borrows its morphosyntactic and semantic structure from Alangu Tibetan. This article examines the contact-induced emergence of a five-category complex evidential system in Selibu with a detailed comparison with its source system in the model language, Alangu Tibetan. Our discussion focuses on the hybrid features of Selibu evidentiality in both forms and functions and also on its structural formation, which does not represent a Form-Semantics mixed type in this particular domain.

Weaving together the diverse threads of category change

This paper investigates category changes among imperative particles in Ancient Greek. Using diachronic evidence from the category change of the imperative ἀμέλει (amélei ‘don’t worry’ > ‘of course’) and similar imperative particles, ἄγε (áge), ἴθι (íthi), φέρε (fére), εἰπέ μοι (eipé moi) and ἰδού (idoú), this paper investigates the diachronic interdependence of intersubjectification, grammaticalization and language change in general. It does this in four ways. First, I show that intersubjectification can take place without subjectification (pace Traugott 2003: 134). Second, I detail the intersubjectification of ἀμέλει with changes in the cognitive domain (no practical > no epistemic worries), the pragmatic domain (responsively resolving > independently assuming resolved worries) and contextual conditions (creating intersubjective alignment > assuming it). Third, I tease apart the various diachronic origins of changes which have affected ἀμέλει. Finally, using contrastive evidence from parallel category changes of Ancient Greek imperative particles, I argue that whereas the imperative particles can be variously affected by structural grammaticalization changes, they all display signs of context change (as shown by illocutionary extensions to occurrence with declarative and interrogative illocutions). Thus, the diverse threads of category change can be woven together by tracing the contexts of change as well as the diachronic processes shaping them.

Bidirectionality between modal and conditional constructions in Mandarin Chinese

This paper proposes that modal constructions can develop into conditional constructions in Mandarin Chinese and vice versa. Therefore, bidirectionality exists between these kinds of constructions diachronically. While bidirectionality is an apparent violation of unidirectionality, both directions of change are shown to be regular cases of procedural constructionalization, enabled by the fact that modal and conditional constructions can perform identical indirect speech acts (i.e., they are performatively equivalent) and instances of one may be morphosyntactically categorized as the other in Chinese (i.e., they are morphosyntactically vague). A crosslinguistically generalizable prediction is then proposed: bidirectionality is possible if instances of two constructions are performatively equivalent and morphosyntactically vague with respect to each other in certain contexts.

Pathways to split ergativity

This paper reassesses the rise of ergative alignment in Anatolian and Indo-Aryan, two branches of the Indo-European linguistic family. Both of these branches acquire split-ergative morphosyntax in the course of their history but via different grammaticalization paths and with different results. In the Anatolian language Hittite, a denominative derivational suffix develops into an ergative case marker, which is restricted to so-called neuter nouns. In Indo-Aryan, on the other hand, a new ergative category with anterior aspectual semantics emerges in Middle Indo-Aryan originating from a P-oriented resultative construction in Old Indo-Aryan.

Typology and diachrony of converbs in Indo-Aryan

Non-finite forms constitute an important component of the verbal system of Indo-Aryan (IA) languages. On the one hand, some of them, such as e.g., converbs, have already received proper attention in historical linguistics and typological literature, with regard to Old Indo-Aryan (OIA), Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA) and New Indo-Aryan (NIA) (cf. Tikkanen 1987; Peterson 1998; Subbarao 2012 among others). Other forms, such as participles, have usually been analysed in the wider context of reorganisation of a finite verbal system which led to alignment change (for recent discussion see Dahl and Stroński 2016). On the other hand, adverbial participles or infinitives have so far been under-studied (cf. Sigorski 2005), particularly within early NIA. This period in the history of IA languages witnessed several important morphosyntactic developments and still requires in-depth study, particularly due to the lack of well-edited corpora. The aim of the present paper is to partly fill this gap by highlighting major trends in the development of constructions based on various non-finite forms in early NIA. We focus on main argument marking in converbal chain constructions and its interplay with the animacy hierarchy. We demonstrate a relative stability of differential case marking (DCM), focusing mainly on conditions on differential subject marking (DSM) and differential object marking (DOM). In addition, we compare converbal chain constructions with participial absolute constructions (AC). Finally, in order to give a holistic view of converbal constructions, we verify the type of linking instantiated by them, focusing on three scopal parameters in converbal constructions (Tense, Illocutionary Force and Negation) and using the apparatus of Role and Reference Grammar and Multivariate Analysis.

Two types of alignment change in nominalizations

This paper investigates two instances of alignment change, both of which resulted from reanalysis of a nominalized embedded clause type, in which the external argument was marked with genitive case and the internal argument was focused. We show that a subject marked with genitive case in the early development of Austronesian languages became ergative-marked when object relative clauses in cleft constructions were reanalyzed as transitive root clauses. In contrast to this, the genitive case in Old Japanese nominalized clauses, marking an external argument, was extended to mark all subjects. This occurred after adnominal clauses were reanalyzed as root clauses. Japanese underwent one more step in order for genitive to be reanalyzed as nominative: the reanalysis of impersonal psych transitive constructions as intransitives. With these two case studies of Austronesian and Japanese, we show that reanalysis of nominalization goes in either direction, ergative or accusative, depending on the syntactic conditions involved in the reanalysis.