Abstract Assimilatory processes are generally understood to rely on sequential structure: a target element adopts features of a preceding or following element. While signed languages arguably show less sequential structure than spoken languages, there are several areas of the grammar of signed languages where sequential structure is evident and the conditions for assimilatory processes are available. Previous work has explored coarticulatory effects in sign production and has identified assimilation in contexts of multimorphemic compounds. This paper extends the investigation of diachronic assimilation to sign-internal assimilation within monomorphemic signs. We present case studies of diachronic assimilation using historical documentation of American Sign Language as well as comparative data from across the so-called French sign language family. We argue that although opportunities for sequentially structured assimilation in signed languages may be significantly fewer than in spoken languages, nevertheless many of the same kinds of assimilatory processes can be seen in diachronic changes to signs.
Abstract This paper addresses the question to what extent the large influx of French verbs effected structural changes in the expression of resultativity in earlier English. Early French and English use distinctly different lexicalization patterns to encode motion and change-of-state events. In terms of Talmy’s (2000) typology, early English is a typical satellite-framing language, encoding Result outside the verb in a satellite, while French is a verb-framing language, encoding Result in the verb. A comprehensive corpus study of the lexical semantics of verbs occurring in the Penn Parsed Corpora of Historical English reveals that French verbs establish a novel way of expressing Result: transitive state-incorporating verbs are introduced in Middle English and witness a consistent diachronic increase after that. Complementary distribution effects with satellite-framing constructions suggest that these verbs are copied with their featural properties in the mental lexicon, which we interpret in terms of Ramchand’s (2008) First Phase Syntax.
This paper addresses the question to what extent the large influx of French verbs effected structural changes in the expression of resultativity in earlier English. Early French and English use distinctly different lexicalization patterns to encode motion and change-of-state events. In terms of Talmy's (2000) typology, early English is a typical satellite-framing language, encoding Result outside the verb in a satellite, while French is a verb-framing language, encoding Result in the verb. A comprehensive corpus study of the lexical semantics of verbs occurring in the Penn Parsed Corpora of Historical English reveals that French verbs establish a novel way of expressing Result: transitive state-incorporating verbs are introduced in Middle English and witness a consistent diachronic increase after that. Complementary distribution effects with satellite-framing constructions suggest that these verbs are copied with their featural properties in the mental lexicon, which we interpret in terms of Ramchand's (2008) First Phase Syntax.
This article investigates the effectiveness of sigmoid trajectories (S-curves) for statistically modelling language change. In diachronic linguistics, it is customary to fit a sigmoid regression line through data, on the assumption that such a curve fits the ideal language change. A coefficient with an associated p-value significantly different from zero is taken as evidence for the presence of a change. Here, we take the inverse perspective: given a known change, how well can the S-curve predict the actual data? We look at 15 well-known changes in Late Modern Dutch, in a genre-balanced corpus. For each change we built four different models: one model based on all the data and three partly blinded models, where either the beginning, middle or end of the S-curve is omitted. We check how well the S-curve can predict or reconstruct the unknown data, i.e. the blinded parts of the S-curve. We investigate in which cases (the type of change, the part of the data that is omitted, etc.) it is easier or harder to reconstruct the missing data.
The study of language change in American Sign Language (ASL) has been constrained by a limited historical record. Here we present five case studies that demonstrate how applying a broad set of historical methods, together with the consultation of underutilized sources of sign data, can shed new light on ASL in the 19th century. These case studies cover aspects of two subsystems of ASL, (i) the fingerspelling alphabet and (ii) the numeral system, as well as (iii) the etymologies of selected initialized signs, (iv) the innovation of superordinate terms, and (v) phonological variation in the mano cornuta, or horns, handshape. We argue that these case studies reveal two broad drivers of change in the history of ASL. Bottom-up changes, often driven by biomechanical or perceptual factors, originated within the ASL signing community, likely without signers' conscious awareness. Top-down, or prescriptive, changes were effective in the early years of ASL, when the signing community was small and still tightly linked to schools for the deaf where these changes were instituted and where they first spread.
We examine tonal and non-tonal features involved in the diachronic emergence of a future tense category in Emai, an Edoid language of southern Nigeria. The extant tense system in Emai incorporates values for both temporal distance and the temporal units past, present, and future. We concentrate on linguistic coding of the future and its associated expressions. Initially, we review the set of markers for futurity in the West Benue Congo branch of Benue Congo, including the Edoid languages. Forms in neither align with Emai future coding, which is conveyed by tonal and segmental co-exponents. The Emai future pattern is consistent with the coding of present tense, although not past, which relies exclusively on tone. Moreover, the future does not exhibit tonal polarity reflective of temporal distance (proximal/distal); its proximal form does not correlate with a distinct temporal adverb; and the negative future, unlike past and present, corresponds to temporal interpretations that neutralize temporal distance rather than tense. To account for these restrictions, we propose that future is a relatively recent addition to the tense profile in Emai and that its segmental exponent emerged from contact-induced grammaticalization realized under multi-generational and asymmetrical bilingualism with Yoruba. Under this circumstance a combination of grammaticalization and tonal reanalysis allowed Emai future l(sic) with high tone to emerge from Yoruba deictic motion verb l(sic) 'go, move away from deictic center' with mid tone.
By the late Middle Ages, a part of South Slavic, including Macedonian and Bulgarian, had lost nominal case inflection, leading to the disappearance of the old Slavic differential object marking (DOM) system. In the 19th century, some southern Macedonian dialects developed a new DOM system based on the preposition na 'on, to'. This study explores the evolution of this DOM system by comparing Southern Macedonian texts from two periods - the mid-19th century and mid-20th century. The main factors conditioning DOM include animacy (humanness), definiteness, and the lexical class of the verb. We observe a general increase in the na-marking and a shift from optionality toward automatization. In early texts, the na-marking sporadically occurs with pronouns and definite human-referring nouns. In later texts, pronouns and human proper names are almost always marked, whereas marking of definite human-referring common nouns remains optional, albeit with increasing frequency over time. We also report negative evidence for other factors frequently mentioned in typological works on DOM, such as the disambiguating function of case within the global discourse context. Notably, this factor does not emerge as significant in Macedonian.
William (Bill) Labov, pioneering scholar of language change, died on December 17, 2024. His MA and PhD theses in the mid 1960s revolutionized the field of language variation and change, and he spent the subsequent 60 years building on that foundation. This is a memoriam written by one of his final PhD students. This piece has two aims. The first is to invite you, the reader, into the feeling of being in Bill’s orbit. My hope is that by the end of it, you feel the same sort of love for him that many of us do. And the second is to convince you of my main thesis: that what is now understood as Bill’s genius could not have taken place without his preexisting love of humanity.
This paper deals with the historical development of the syllable-onset clusters /kl gl pl bl fl/ in Romance languages and dialects and with their articulatory and/or perceptual motivations. Several diachronic pathways are identified which depart from articulatory unstable [Cʎ] sequences, most distinctively lateral vocalization (e.g., [kʎ] > [kj]) and obstruent lenition (e.g., [kʎ] > [çʎ]). Most sound changes are attributed to articulatory variation insofar as they require adjustments in constriction degree and location. In a few cases the replacement of one consonantal sound by another appears to have been induced by acoustic-perceptual equivalence, as for example the substitution of [θ] by [f] in Franco-Provençal and of palatalized labial stops by palatal stops in southern Italy. Of special interest is the one-to-many derivation problem by which a given phonetic outcome may be achieved through more than one pathway as exemplified by the two phonetic developments /kl/ > [kʎ] > [kj] > [c] > [tʃ] > [ʃ] and /kl/ > [kʎ] > [çʎ] > [çj] > [ʃj] > [ʃ].
This paper describes and analyses a historical alternation in what contemporary Mapudungun has developed as a set of transitive roots ending in [Cɨm], where C can represent a labial stop, a retroflex affricate or a velar stop. These forms are historically related to a causativisation process formed with a root ending in what is now a fricative plus the now-unproductive suffix [-ɨm]. An example of this pattern today is the adjective [laf] ‘(adj) flat’ vis-à-vis the transitive verb [lapɨm-] ‘to stretch (out)’. This paper posits that the word-internal stop consonant preceding [ɨm] is the unaffected remnant of an ancestral fricativisation process that targeted final stops in older Mapudungun. By presenting evidence from the historical record, the trajectory of these linguistic patterns is analysed in relation to the theoretical assumptions of the Life Cycle of Phonological Processes. This work contributes to theoretical questions about what is possible in language change as well as to the internal reconstruction of this language isolate.
The complex tone inventories of Kra-Dai languages derive in part from earlier segmental codas via transphonologization. Comparative Austro-Tai research has identified systematic correspondences between Kra-Dai tones and Austronesian codas, but significant gaps remain: the segmental origins of tone categories *B and *C remain disputed, divergent tonal patterns among Kam-Sui languages lack explanation, and the chronology of transphonologization remains unclear.Building on Sagart's (2019) Austro-Tai model, we propose (1) that some Kam-Sui languages underwent a chain shift from Proto-Kra-Dai codas *-chi and *-h to *-h and *-?, paralleling Tai developments, as a contact-induced effect, and (2) that Tai evidence suggests Proto-Austro-Tai *-R persisted as a rhotic coda into the Proto-Tai stage. These findings imply an extended chronology of gradual transphonologization spanning centuries, enhancing our understanding of tonogenesis as long-running, areally co-influencing processes in East and Southeast Asian languages while strengthening empirical support for the Austro-Tai hypothesis.
This paper is concerned with tonogenesis in creole languages, focusing on the Gulf of Guinea Creoles (GGCs), where the interaction between the European (stress) and African (tone) origins has led to the emergence of a tone system. Two key factors were identified as crucial for this tonogenesis process: (i) the historical influence of Portuguese’s liquid coda via the Proto-Creole of the Gulf of Guinea (PGG) and (ii) the adaptation of part of the lexicon as not having a H tone, mainly in African-origin nouns and ideophones, and in verbs. Furthermore, I propose that PGG was already a tone language with a culminative and non-obligatory *H tone. The data demonstrate a unique interaction between tone, stress, and syllabic and moraic structures, in which both strata were crucial for the emerging system. Thus, this paper contributes to a broader understanding of tonogenesis in contact situations.
This paper describes and analyses a historical alternation in what contemporary Mapudungun has developed as a set of transitive roots ending in [Cim], where C can represent a labial stop, a retroflex affricate or a velar stop. These forms are historically related to a causativisation process formed with a root ending in what is now a fricative plus the now-unproductive suffix [-im]. An example of this pattern today is the adjective [laf] '(adj) flat' vis-a-vis the transitive verb [lapim-] 'to stretch (out)'. This paper posits that the word-internal stop consonant preceding [im] is the unaffected remnant of an ancestral fricativisation process that targeted final stops in older Mapudungun. By presenting evidence from the historical record, the trajectory of these linguistic patterns is analysed in relation to the theoretical assumptions of the Life Cycle of Phonological Processes. This work contributes to theoretical questions about what is possible in language change as well as to the internal reconstruction of this language isolate.
The development of the English auxiliary do is a well-studied phenomenon, but there is no agreement on its source (see Denison 1993: Chapter 10). It has been suggested in the literature that a mono-causal account cannot satisfactorily capture the development (e.g., Fischer et al. 2017; Van der Auwera & Genee 2002), but no worked out alternative has been provided. In this article, we focus on the pre-innovation Old English stage and explore what properties of the verb itself and the verbal system of which it formed a part conspired to lead to the innovation. On the basis of this we propose a multiple source account in which both primary sources - uses of Old English don that form the building blocks of the innovative use - and secondary sources - properties of the language system that facilitated the development - play a crucial role. We also argue that our account expands the inventory of types of multiple source explanations (cf. De Smet et al. 2015).
This paper illustrates that in-depth descriptive work of closely related varieties of Dinka, a Nilotic tone language with an unusually complex suprasegmental system, provides solutions to previously unanswered questions about historical tone change. Using data from six dialects, I show the directions and mechanisms of tone splits and mergers. In-depth descriptive work combined with comparison allows innovation and novel discoveries from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives. These are also powerful tools for historical tonology and may ultimately shed light on the origins of tonal phenomena with previously opaque historical perspectives.
This article discusses the rise of new tones in Baltic and Slavic languages. It draws attention to the underlying mechanisms in the rise of these new tones and adduces typological parallels for some of the sound changes involved. It is argued that two processes played a crucial role in tonogenesis in Baltic and Slavic: stress retraction and reanalysis of an earlier phonation contrast as a tonal contrast. Tone renewal as a result of stress retractions in a number of South Slavic dialects is argued to have resulted from language contact.
This paper deals with the historical development of the syllable-onset clusters /kl gl pl bl fl/ in Romance languages and dialects and with their articulatory and/or perceptual motivations. Several diachronic pathways are identified which depart from articulatory unstable [C lambda] sequences, most distinctively lateral vocalization (e.g., [k lambda] > [kj]) and obstruent lenition (e.g., [k lambda] > [c lambda]). Most sound changes are attributed to articulatory variation insofar as they require adjustments in constriction degree and location. In a few cases the replacement of one consonantal sound by another appears to have been induced by acoustic-perceptual equivalence, as for example the substitution of [theta] by [f] in Franco-Proven & ccedil;al and of palatalized labial stops by palatal stops in southern Italy. Of special interest is the one-to-many derivation problem by which a given phonetic outcome may be achieved through more than one pathway as exemplified by the two phonetic developments /kl/ > [k lambda] > [kj] > [c] > [t lambda] > [lambda] and /kl/ > [k lambda] > [c lambda] > [cj] > [integral j] > [integral].
This article presents the Database of Tonogenetic Events (DTE), which describes 259 tonogenetic events from 104 genealogically and geographically diverse language varieties. The DTE allows us to identify the main types of reported tonogenesis triggering contexts, the types of resultant tones, and their effects on pitch. We illustrate the usefulness of the database with case studies addressing (i) the frequency of different types of tonogenesis, (ii) the diachronic pathways linking phonological triggering context and resultant tone, and (iii) areal trends. We also discuss the shortcomings of the database with respect to the diachronic typological study of tone.
Many word forms from different classes in Central Pame (cent2145, Otomanguean) allow two synonymous forms, one containing a prefix with the vowel /a/ and another one with /u/ (e.g. wa-ttsau?similar to wu-ttsau? '(s)he feels'). I conduct historical corpus research and elicitation to throw light on the diachronic origin and contemporary profile of this unusual phenomenon. Evidence suggests that it started as a sound change /a/ > /u/ between bilabial consonants. However, paradigmatic pressures have largely dismantled the original distribution of allomorphy synchronically, generalizing free variation (i.e. overabundance). In addition, other phonological and morphosyntactic cues have emerged for the probabilistic prediction of these allomorphies. The case provides an extraordinary window into the cognitive underpinnings of sound change, allomorphy, and the paradigm in a highly-inflecting and understudied language.
