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

LIN 617: Hodge, Jespersen, Sapir, the Linguistic Cycle, and more. 18 November 2013. What is Historical Linguistics?. What: Typical (phonological) change Why: due to language acquisition or external influence Methods : CM, IR, OED, DOE, etc

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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 18 November 2013

  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. Transparency and AS How to go from: NP1 V NP2 > NP2 V NP1 Lightfoot or light verbs?

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