This article deals with compounding in Greek, a language with an attested history of about 3,500 years. It shows that, through the centuries, Greek compounding has preserved its considerable productivity and most of its structural patterns, while it has also been enriched with the emergence of a new pattern of verbal compounds filling an existing gap. It is argued that changes have occurred in accordance with the dominant properties of Greek morphology, particularly compounding, which is largely stem-based and right-headed. As a result, the grammar of Greek compounding has become more optimal, in the sense that structures deviating from these properties have been restricted or nearly eliminated, and regularity has increased through the reduction of unnecessary variation. Moreover, the emergence of a compound marker rendered Modern Greek compounds particularly distinct from other word formations and their structure turned more systematic. The article also provides an explanation for the existence of an apparent counterexample of left-headed compounds in a number of Modern Greek varieties, which has been interpreted as the result of contact with Romance. Evidence for claims and proposals is drawn from all stages of the Greek language, ranging from Mycenaean to Modern Greek.
In a situation when two or more grammaticalization targets in one language are phonologically identical but functionally distinct, neither polygrammaticalization nor accidental syncretism can be ruled out, especially if we are dealing with a language without historical attestations. In the present paper, I present a detailed account of the coexistence of two homophonous grammatical markers in Rutul (< Lezgic < Nakh-Daghestanian), an underdescribed language of the Caucasus with a poorly known history. By taking into account the language-internal behavior of the markers, dialectal variation, similar developments in closely related languages and wider cross-linguistic parallels, I argue that the two ga-morphemes go back to constructions involving different lexical items and present the two different scenarios underlying their development. In particular, I suggest that the temporal ga and its variants originate from the noun ga(h) ‘time’, a Persian loan which also became the source of temporal markers in some other Lezgic languages. I also put forward a hypothesis that the indefiniteness marker ga comes from the verb ‘want’, a cross-linguistically common source for free-choice indefinite pronouns.
According to the principle of invariance of linguistic complexity, every language shows a similar degree of complexity, although it may be distributed across different levels and structures. However, it is difficult to give empirical substance to this principle because it is not easy to say what complexity is and how it should be measured. In addition, a diachronic trade-off has been suggested, for instance between morphology and syntax, whereby previous morphological complexity may be discharged in favor of greater syntactic complexification. Furthermore, language contact has been observed to start simplification processes leading to allegedly less complex languages, such as pidgins and creoles. In this paper, it will be suggested that morphologization should be considered as the response in terms of complexity reduction to changes that render morphonological alternations opaque. A case study will be discussed in support, drawn from Titsch, a variety of Walser German spoken in the highly multilingual context of the linguistic island of Gressoney.
There are now a variety of models available for describing morphology. Some are more static, simply laying out structure, while others are more dynamic, proposing sequences of operations by which structures might be derived. Different models might be useful for different purposes, different constructions, and different languages. But we can go beyond description toward explanation of the structures that exist by incorporating the diachronic dimension, examining the kinds of processes by which morphological structures develop over time in individual languages, then extracting general principles. Much of what we find synchronically might seem unmotivated until it is recognized that morphology reflects the crystallization of sequences of individual developments, each motivated at an earlier point in time. Such an approach is illustrated here with the development of tense morphology in languages of the Iroquoian family, indigenous to eastern North America.
A number of inflectional forms both in standard and dialectal Basque are characterized by multiple exponence or pleonastic morphology. Doubly or multiply marked morphological constructions compete at times with their singleton counterparts. Multiple exponence, which has had a significant presence throughout the history of Basque, develops out of various diachronic sources and through different processes, and these are the main concern of this paper. Some inflectional pleonasms appear to emerge simply as a side effect of changes like analogical extension and externalization of inflection. In other cases, however, it can be argued that multiple exponence, especially when it relies on reinforcement, is itself the target of change. The different innovations that give rise to multiple exponence in Basque are classified and discussed here, as a prior step to accounting for the deeper factors that may motivate the relative commonness of pleonastic morphology in the Basque grammar. In this part of the study, I lean on notions like morphological awareness and fluidity of inflection, which may arguably explain at least some of the peculiarities of multiple exponence as it is found in Basque, although they can at the same time be of wider relevance. Finally, I focus on sporadic cases of declining pleonastic morphology, paying special heed again to the diachronic processes that underlie them.
