LIN 617:Hodge, Jespersen, Sapir,

the Linguistic Cycle, and more

April 2015

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

Early Migrations

MtDNA and Migrations

Pre-Lg > Proto-Lg

Argument structure

Demonstratives

Merge

Function words < grammaticalization

GrammaticalizationH&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.

Then: OE > Modern English

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

Main changesDemonstratives > articles

V > Aux

Loss of Case

Loss of verb endings

Loss of ge- > more phrasal verbs

EMOD:

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):

Other possibilities (morphosyntax vs argument hood):

(2) a. phrase > word/head >clitic > affix > 0

b. adjunct > argument >(argument) > agreement > 0

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 ...)

Chinese

bei ‘cover’ liao > le ‘finish’

gei ‘give’ lai > le ‘come’

mei ‘die ba/jiang ‘hold’

shi D>T

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

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)

Synthetic (Hodge sM) is:

Dependent marking

or

Head marking

Dryer’s map on Case

Analytic (Hodge Sm) is:

• Word order

• prepositions rather than case

VO and OV

Macro and micro-cycles

A Macro-Cycle

syntheticanalytic

Macroparameters à la Baker 2001

• Synthetic-analytic

• Head-dependent

• Argument Structure

• Possibly head-parameter

Sapir (1921: 128)

“the terms [analytic and synthetic] are more useful in defining certain drifts than as absolute counters”.

Some Micro-CyclesNegative (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

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?

The Linguistic Cycle, e.g. the Negative Cycle

HPP

XP

Spec X'

na wiht X YP

not > n’t …

Late Merge

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.

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

Rosetta

Stone

Hieroglyphic

Demotic

Greek

Ptolomis and Kleopatra

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)

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)

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.’

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.

vd Gabelentz 1901

immer gilt das Gleiche: die Entwicklungsliniekrümmt sich zurück nach der Seite derIsolation, nicht in die alte Bahn, sondern in eineannähernd parallele. Darum vergleiche ich sieder 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).

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.

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).

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

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?

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.

The Copula and DP Cycles(1) dani (hu) ha-more Hebrew

Dani he the-teacher

‘Dani is the teacher.’

 

(2) hu malax 'al jisra'el Hebrew

‘He ruled over Israel.’

(Katz 1996: 86)

Synthetic-analytic CycleGreenberg, Hodge, Schwegler, Haselow, Szmrecsanyi, and others.

Issues: calculation word+morph/word

Clitics

Pronouns

Derivational

unmarked

HL (at ASU)

Workshop ...

Possibly workshop on analytic-synthetic