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LIN 617: Hodge, Jespersen, Sapir, the Linguistic Cycle, and more

Explore Historical Linguistics and the Linguistic Cycle through the lens of phonological change influenced by language acquisition and external factors. Learn about key methodologies and interdisciplinary connections with genetics and migrations. Examine the process of grammaticalization and its impact on argument structure evolution. Discover examples of grammaticalization in English and the concept of the Linguistic Cycle from scholars like Hodge, Jespersen, and Sapir. Delve into the linguistic development cycles in Egyptian language history from Old to Coptic. Understand the Negative Cycle and the macro and micro-cycles impacting language evolution.

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LIN 617: Hodge, Jespersen, Sapir, the Linguistic Cycle, and more

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  1. LIN 617:Hodge, Jespersen, Sapir, the Linguistic Cycle, and more April 2015

  2. What is Historical Linguistics? What: Typical (phonological) change Why: due to language acquisition or external influence Methods: CM, IR, OED, DOE, etc Interdisciplinary: genetics, language families, migrations Greenberg, Cavalli-Sforza, Bickerton

  3. Early Migrations

  4. MtDNA and Migrations

  5. Pre-Lg > Proto-Lg Argument structure Demonstratives Merge Function words < grammaticalization

  6. Grammaticalization H&Tr: Grmmz is the “process whereby lexical items and constructions come in certain linguistic contexts to serve grammatical functions, and, once grammaticalized, continue to develop new grammatical functions”. (2003: xv) EvG: Grmmz is reanalysis by the language learner of lexical items in a more economical way.

  7. Then: OE > Modern English

  8. Ormulum 1200, lines 3494 >(both B and O from wiki)

  9. Main changes Demonstratives > articles V > Aux Loss of Case Loss of verb endings Loss of ge- > more phrasal verbs EMOD:

  10. Grammaticalization is unidirectional on the cline in (1). (1) lexical phrase/word > grammatical item > clitic > affix > zero Andersen (2008: 15) points out that this clines contains semantic change (lexical > grammatical), morphological (word > clitic > affix), and phonological change (especially in the later stages):

  11. Other possibilities (morphosyntax vs argument hood): (2) a. phrase > word/head > clitic > affix > 0 b. adjunct > argument > (argument) > agreement > 0

  12. Examples of grammaticalization in English On, from P to ASP VP Adverbials > TP/CP Adverbials Like, from P > C (like I said) Negative objects to negative markers Modals: v > ASP > T To: P > ASP > M > C PP > C (for him to do that ...)

  13. Chinese bei ‘cover’liao > le ‘finish’ gei‘give’lai > le ‘come’ mei‘dieba/jiang ‘hold’ shiD>T

  14. V>AUX P>AUX P>C go motion > future to direction>mood for location>time>cause have possession>perfect on location>aspect after location>time

  15. The Linguistic Cycle - Hodge (1970: 3): Old Egyptian morphological complexity (synthetic stage) turned into Middle Egyptian syntactic structures (analytic stage) and then back into morphological complexity in Coptic. - “today’s morphology is yesterday's syntax“ (Givón 1971)

  16. Synthetic (Hodge sM) is: Dependent marking or Head marking

  17. Dryer’s map on Case

  18. Analytic (Hodge Sm) is: • Word order • prepositions rather than case

  19. VO and OV

  20. Macro and micro-cycles A Macro-Cycle synthetic analytic

  21. Macroparameters à la Baker 2001 • Synthetic-analytic • Head-dependent • Argument Structure • Possibly head-parameter

  22. Sapir (1921: 128) “the terms [analytic and synthetic] are more useful in defining certain drifts than as absolute counters”.

  23. Some Micro-Cycles Negative (neg): neg indefinite/adverb > neg particle > (neg particle) Definiteness demonstrative > article > class marker Agreement emphatic > pronoun > agreement Auxiliary V/A/P > M > T > C Clausal pronoun > complementizer PP/Adv > Topic > C

  24. Negative Cycle in English a. no/ne early Old English b. ne (na wiht/not) after 900, esp S c. (ne) not after 1350 d. not > -not/-n’t after 1400 How renewed?

  25. The Linguistic Cycle, e.g. the Negative Cycle HPP XP Spec X' na wihtX YP not> n’t … Late Merge

  26. Hodge, Jespersen, and Sapir focus on macrocycles, though they do not use that term. Heine, Claudi & Hünnemeyer (1991: 246) argue that there is “more justification to apply the notion of a linguistics cycle to individual linguistic developments” rather than to changes from analytic to synthetic and back to analytic.

  27. History of Egyptian Old Egyptian: 3000 BCE – 2000 BCE Middle Egyptian: 2000-1300 BCE Late Egyptian: 1300 BCE – 700 BCE Demotic Egyptian: 600 BCE – 400 CE Coptic: 300 -1300 CE

  28. Rosetta Stone Hieroglyphic Demotic Greek

  29. Ptolomis and Kleopatra

  30. Older to later Egyptian (1) rmc `the man’ snt `a sister’ (2) pʔ rmt wʕ(t) sn(t) (3) p-romə wə-sonə (adapted from Loprieno)

  31. Old Egyptian … Coptic (1) scm-f n-k listen.prosp-3MS to-2MS `May he listen to you.’ (2) mare-f-so:tem əro-k OPT-3MS-listen to-2MS `May he listen to you.’ (Loprieno 2001: 1743)

  32. Early > Late > Coptic (1) jw scm-n-j xrw indeed hear-PRET-1S voice (2) jr-j-stm wʕ xrw do-1S-hearing a-voice (3) a-i-setm-wə-xrou PRET-1S-hear-a-voice `I heard a voice.’

  33. Spiral or Cycle: Spiral is another term for cycle (see von der Gabelentz 1901: 256; Hagège 1993: 147); it emphasizes the unidirectionality of the changes: languages do not reverse earlier change but may end up in a stage typologically similar to an earlier one. Jespersen (1922: chapter 21.9) uses spirals when he criticizes the concept of cyclical change.

  34. vd Gabelentz 1901 immer gilt das Gleiche: die Entwicklungslinie krümmt sich zurück nach der Seite der Isolation, nicht in die alte Bahn, sondern in eine annähernd parallele. Darum vergleiche ich sie der Spirale. "always the same: the development curves back towards isolation, not in the old way, but in a parallel fashion. That's why I compare them to spirals" (my translation, EvG).

  35. Criticisms Not precise Jespersen Newmeyer (2006) notes that some grammaticalizations from noun/verb to affix can take as little as 1000 years, and wonders how there can be anything left to grammaticalize if this is the right scenario.

  36. Hopper & Traugott (2003: 124) The cyclical model is “extremely problematic because it suggests that a stage of a language can exist when it is difficult or even impossible to express some concept” (p. 124).

  37. Unidirectional and overlap • always something around to express, for instance, negation or the subject. • usually not the same element, e.g. ne > not • if the same element, this is due to layering

  38. Sapir (1921) on drift P. 150: “a current of its own making”. Even if there is no split into dialects, languages drift. P. 154: what is drift/change? P. 155: “The linguistic drift has direction”. e.g. who did you see?

  39. Sapir, 158 ff. Loss: • who/whom are “psychologically related to when, what, etc. • the only one to show Case in its group Scale of hesitation (162) Three drifts: loss of Case, fixing of WO, invariable word.

  40. The Copula and DP Cycles (1) dani (hu) ha-more Hebrew Danihe the-teacher ‘Dani is the teacher.’ (2) humalax 'al jisra'elHebrew ‘He ruled over Israel.’ (Katz 1996: 86)

  41. Synthetic-analytic Cycle Greenberg, Hodge, Schwegler, Haselow, Szmrecsanyi, and others. Issues: calculation word+morph/word Clitics Pronouns Derivational unmarked

  42. HL (at ASU) Workshop ... Possibly workshop on analytic-synthetic

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