This study explores ways in which formulaicity affects the diachronic linguistic analysis of historical text corpora. We show that the massive presence of formulaic language in an early medieval Latin charter corpus limits the diachronic conclusions that can be drawn from lexically determined corpus-linguistic measures. Focusing on diachronic productivity metrics, we suggest a way to mitigate the formula bias by means of adjustment coefficients calculated on the overall productivity rate of the entire vocabulary within the same diachronically successive subcorpora across which the productivity change of the linguistic constructions under examination is measured. We test our method on a set of Latin constructions which are known to be emergent, stable, or recessive, that is, shrinking over time, in the early Middle Ages. Our comparisons suggest that the diachronic profiles based on adjusted values, especially the adjusted neologism-based productivity , reflect the expected trends of the constructions better than unadjusted profiles.
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.
It is widely accepted that Middle Chinese Division II, a syllable category in Middle Chinese, originates from the Old Chinese medial *-r-, yet its reconstruction remains debated. Existing proposals assign Division II a palatal, velar, or r-colored feature or segment. Building on Gong (2018), this study integrates comprehensive evidence to identify Division II as characterized by an additional vowel quality that exhibits vowel lowering, a-fronting, and slight e-backing effects, and is compatible with the low front vowel, uvulars, and retroflexes.A systematic evaluation demonstrates that Division II is best interpreted as palato-pharyngealization, a type of pharyngealization observed in Northeast Caucasian languages. We reconstruct three (palato-)pharyngealized vowels [(sic)] as Division-II vowels for the Qieyun (sic)(sic) system, deriving from a pre-Qieyun medial *-(sic)-, itself the outcome of decoronalization of the Old Chinese medial *-r- before fusing with the following vowel. We further outline the full development of Division II from Old Chinese to Mandarin.
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.
