Competing Models of Linguistic Change: Evolution and Beyond (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory)

Competing Models of Linguistic Change

AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE General Editor E.F.K. KOERNER (Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung, Berlin) Series IV – CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY Advisory Editorial Board Lyle Campbell (Salt Lake City); Sheila Embleton (Toronto) Brian D. Joseph (Columbus, Ohio); John E. Joseph (Edinburgh) Manfred Krifka (Berlin); E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.) Joseph C. Salmons (Madison, Wis.); Hans-Jürgen Sasse (Köln)

Volume 279

Ole Nedergaard Thomsen (ed.) Competing Models of Linguistic Change. Evolution and beyond.

Competing Models of Linguistic Change Evolution and beyond

Edited by

Ole Nedergaard Thomsen Roskilde University

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA

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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American ­National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data   Competing models of linguistic change : evolution and beyond / edited by Ole Nedergaard Thomsen.    p.   cm. -- (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV, Current issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763 ; v. 279)  Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Linguistic change. P142.C66  2006 417/.7--dc22 2006049278 ISBN 90 272 4794 3 (Hb; alk. paper) © 2006 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 36224 • 1020 ME Amsterdam • The Netherlands John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA

CONTENTS

Introduction Ole Nedergaard Thomsen I:

……………………………………………..1

General considerations of language change

The non-linear nature of diachronic change Michael Fortescue ...………………………………………………….17 Explanations, or...?—Some metatheoretical reflections on a prevalent tradition within historical linguistics Brit Mæhlum ………………………………………………………….33 Quantifying the functional load of phonemic oppositions, distinctive features, and suprasegmentals Dinoj Surendran & Partha Niyogi …………………………………...43 II: The concept of ‘evolution’ as an explanatory model of language change: Pro et contra Synchrony, diachrony, and evolution Henning Andersen ……………………………………………………59 The relevance of an evolutionary model to historical linguistics William Croft …………………………………………………………91 III: Functional factors in ‘evolution’: Functional motivation of selection Grammaticalization of indirect object cross-reference in Spanish as a case of drift Silvia Becerra Bascuñán ……………………………………………133 The role of functional factors in language change: An evolutionary approach Guido Seiler ...………………………………………………………163

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CONTENTS

Computational modelling of prototypicality in language change: Neutralization to schwa, default logic, and the history of the German noun Miguel Vázquez-Larruscaín .………………………………………..183 IV: Cognitive perspectives on semantico-syntactic change: Mental Grammar, Cognitive Grammar, and Dynamic Syntax From propositional syntax in Old Russian to situational syntax in Modern Russian Per Durst-Andersen …………………………………………………211 Construal operations in semantic change: The case of abstract nouns Lena Ekberg …………………………………………………………235 Clitic placement in Old and Modern Spanish: A dynamic account Miriam Bouzouita & Ruth Kempson .……………………………….253 V: Grammaticalization studies: Content and evolution Grammaticalisation as content reanalysis: The modal character of the Danish s-passive Lars Heltoft ………………………………………………………….269 Aspect and animacy in the history of Russian: Developing the idea of parallel grammaticalization Jens Nørgård-Sørensen ……………………………………………..289 VI: Integrating theories of language and language change Towards an integrated functional-pragmatic theory of language and language change. In commemoration of Eugenio Coseriu (1921-2002) Ole Nedergaard Thomsen …………………………………………...307 Index

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Contributors

……...………………………………………………………343

INTRODUCTION The present volume, Competing Models of Linguistic Change. Evolution and beyond, is essentially a selection from the contributions to Section 4, “Different models of linguistic change”, of The 16th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, held at the University of Copenhagen, 11–15 August 1 2003 (ICHL 2003). The section was centered around the competitive plenary papers by Henning Andersen and William Croft, respectively, on linguistic change as ‘evolution’, and the title of this volume has accordingly been chosen to reflect this theme and the discussion of the two competing stances on the viability of applying to phenomena of linguistic change — phenomena of a humanistic nature (involving freedom and creativity) — a theory of evolution originating from the natural sciences (dealing with chance and necessity). Of course, right from the beginning of modern (historical) linguistics, in the 19th century (cf. August Schleicher 1863; Diderichsen 1966a [1958], 1966b [1959]; Keller 1988; Janda & Joseph 2003), there has been an interest in (metaphorical or real) biological parallels to linguistic change — cf., trivially, the Stammbaum model of the Neogrammarians, with the parallel between linguistic reconstruction of a protolanguage and the Darwinian biological reconstruction of the ‘origin of species’. But only with the explicit and exact proposals by William Croft (2000) has it become possible to truly advance with an evolutionary model of language change, not as a natural phenomenon, but within a domain-neutral model of a ‘generalized analysis of selection’ (Hull 1988, 2001). However, an oppositional contention, at least going as far back as Coseriu (1952, 1957), and eloquently formulated by Henning Andersen (this volume), takes it that cultural phenomena could not possibly be handled (observed, described, and ‘explained’, i.e., understood) in the same way as natural phenomena, that is, that a (cultural) ‘memetics’2 could not be con1

A selection of papers from the general program has been published as volume 257 of the present series, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (cf. Fortescue, Skafte Jensen, Mogensen & Schøsler, eds. 2005). 2 We are talking about the theory of ‘memes’, roughly “memory patterns”; from Greek mimeme “something imitated”, cf. mimesis “imitation”; and/or mneme “memory”.

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ceived of as dealing with the same type of phenomenon as (biological) genetics, however generally understood.3 While I was organizing the section on models of linguistic change, I received the sad news of the death in October 2002 of the aforementioned great functional-structural and historical linguist Eugenio Coseriu (1921–2002). Given his still utmost relevant theory of linguistic change, which dates back to (at least) the mid fifties of the previous century (Coseriu 1952, 1957), I felt an obligation to commemorate his extraordinary genius. Therefore, I asked Henning Andersen, as an expert on Coseriu, and also already an invited keynote lecturer for the conference, to offer a commemorational sketch of Coseriu’s theory, as a preliminary to the section on ‘different models’. The outline was felicitously delivered, but regrettably it could not be included in the volume. However, fortunately, the commemoration of Coseriu is present in a couple of the papers. I hope that, retrospectively, the importance of Coseriu’s seminal contributions to an integrated theory of language and language change will become more widely recognized, and even be used as a foundation. The section on ‘different models’ — apart from the plenary debate between Andersen and Croft on the (ir)relevance of the concept of evolution as an explanatory model — exemplified various different current trends in the theory of linguistic change, some of them represented in the present collec4 tion. The papers The papers that are represented in the volume have been arranged into groups, corresponding to underlying themes and motives. In the following I shall briefly sketch their contents and implications. More concretely, the volume has been composed as revolving around the central theme of the (ir-) relevance of the concept of evolution as an explanatory model of linguistic change: The central, plenary papers (see Section 1.2) have been placed most 1.

Cf. Coseriu (1974 [1957]: 154n.7): “[...] die kulturellen Objekte haben eine historische Entwicklung und keine ‘Evolution’ wie die Naturobjekte.” Cf. Coseriu (p. 246): “[...] Das System entwickelt sich nicht im Sinne einer ‘Evolution’, sondern wird durch die Sprecher in Übereinstimmung mit ihren Ausdrucksnotwendigkeiten geschaffen.” It should, however, not go unnoticed that even Coseriu and Andersen use “evolutionary” terms like ‘selection’ and ‘mutation’ in their theories, see Nedergaard Thomsen (this volume). 4 Some of them, unfortunately, could not, for various reasons, be included in the volume: (Radical) Construction Grammar, Minimalist Program (projecting functional categories), Lexical Diffusion, Punctuated Equilibrium (R.M.W. Dixon’s model), Usage-Based Models (the role of frequency), mathematical models, and the Comparative Method. 3

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prominently in section II of the volume, after a general onset section (I) (see Section 1.1). After the central section follow three sections (III–V, see Sections 1.3–1.5) more or less stemming from studies of ‘evolutionary’ changes, viz. III on functional factors, IV on cognitive factors, and V on grammaticalization. The volume is rounded off by a coda (VI, see Section 1.6) by the editor, going beyond the concept of evolution, and focusing on a functional-pragmatic understanding of language change — based on Coseriu’s Aristotelian and von Humboldtian conception of language as ‘process’ (creation; cf. Process philosophy, see Fortescue, this volume). General considerations of language change The first two contributions concern the understanding of language change on a general theoretical level, not being especially concerned with discussing language change as an evolutionary process, in the ‘naturalist’ sense. The third paper is methodological in nature, dealing with quantitative methods of observation and description (as necessary prerequisites for sound theoretical explanation). The second and third papers deal with the two structuralist notions, ‘push–pull’ chains and ‘functional load’, respectively. In the first paper, “The non-linear nature of diachronic change”, Michael Fortescue, on the most general (theoretical/philosophical) level proposes a Whiteheadian ‘Process’ theory of language and linguistic change (thus placing himself in the von Humboldtian–Coserian tradition). He distinguishes, as is only natural for a functionalist theory, between the language of the individual and that of the collective, the community of speakers. The language of the community of speakers, for instance English, “is only an abstraction from the varieties of linguistic behavior of communities of English speakers” (p. 18n.2). The relation between the (functional) language(s) of the individuals and the (historical) language of the speech community is one of ‘emergence’. Change goes on in the community, but is driven by the single (innovative) speech acts of the individual speakers. That is, change is an ‘invisible hand’ process, in Keller’s (e.g., 1988) use of Adam Smith’s notion — and the historical language a phenomenon of the ‘third kind’. It is argued that gradual change spreading between individuals is in fact compatible with saccade-like changes in the shared system. Fortescue proposes a concept of ‘virtual occasions’ on the level of the speech community to handle the holistic, non-linear nature of linguistic change. Brit Mæhlum, in her paper “Explanations, or ...? Some metatheoretical reflections on a prevalent tradition within historical linguistics”, discusses — and rejects — proposals for explanations of linguistic change by way of system-internal factors (exemplified in her paper by ‘pull/push-chains’ in the 1.1

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evolution of the Norwegian vowel system). She concludes that a language is not and could not be a self-regulating, “cybernetic” system, but is rather a potential of individual speakers: it is not a structure sui generis, with immanent /autonomous factors “explaining” language change, nor can change be explained by psychological factors of optimality with respect to the psychological “implementation” of the language in the minds/brains of the single speakers; and lastly, change (towards symmetry) cannot be “explained” in an instrumentalist way, seeing symmetry and simplicity as desiderata of science itself (cf. the hocus pocus branch of American structural linguistics) — and not as properties of languages (psychologically “implemented” or not). Regarding these proposals, why would a non-optimal system arise in the first place?, she asks. She opts for a (re-)introduction onto the scene of historical linguistics of the language users themselves and the socio-cultural phenomena they participate in as explanantia (cf. Joseph 1992), a trend she sees growing still stronger in current historical linguistics in recent years (exemplified by Andersen, Anttila, Shapiro, and Keller, but also, albeit to a lesser degree, Croft, whose theory is based on concepts from the ‘exact’ sciences). By seeing language change as a socio-cultural phenomenon, originating with the individual speaker-listeners, Mæhlum places herself in the Coserian tradition (and sociolinguistics). Dinoj Surendran & Partha Niyogi, in the third contribution, “Quantifying the functional load of phonemic oppositions, distinctive features, and suprasegmentals”, outline a general method for providing quantitative data on the degree to which a language ‘relies on’ different sorts of linguistic features — this reliance is the functional load (or, yield) of the given features. The proposed (computational–mathematical) method can be used as a tool in historical linguistics in general when basing itself on corpus investigations (the ‘particular’ level in investigations of language change). Specifically, it can be used in an attempt to answer the Prague school question, (to which degree) are important, entrenched features less prone to change (e.g., merge) than less important ones? Eventually, an answer to this question will be crucial to an understanding (and explanation) of (the functioning of) language. 1.2 The concept of ‘evolution’ as an explanatory model of language change: Pro et contra As stated above, it has (once again) become fashionable in linguistics to conceive of language change in terms of the biological conception of evolution, even if in a generalized format, as in Croft’s (2000) theory, Theory of Utterance Selection, which is an application and development of the evolutionary biologist David Hull’s (1988, 2001) general theory for evolutionary

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phenomena of any kind, termed Generalized Analysis of Selection. Trivially, when construing language change — and other kinds of cultural change as well — as comparable to biological evolution, it is evident that we have at our disposal some specific ‘functional’ concepts (in the artificial intelligence sense of ‘functional’) that are illuminating for an understanding of the phenomenon. Centrally, we have as interacting organism, or ‘interactor’, a single, historical individual natural language user possessing a set of linguistic universals (i.e., his language ‘faculty’, allowing for possible typological variation) and a specific manifestation of it, his specific language (i.e., his communicative competence, grammar) — a specific set of ‘rules’ (norms, conventions) which makes it possible for him to speak with other, at least to some extent similar natural language users. That is, the interactor is not “alone”: a normal interaction requires at least two interactors. The interactors are inter-communicatively related and constitute speech communities, a speech community being a specific population of interactors held together by their ability and habit of, on one level, communicating with and understanding one another via a linguistic convention, and, on another, meta-level, of transmitting this conventional praxis of communicating. The transmission can be under-stood as ‘replication’. The entity being replicated — the so-called ‘replicator’ — is then the linguistic convention (a rule, form, etc.). Crucially, replication is not always identical with ‘copying’ (in the sense of identity between original and copy) in that oftentimes ‘altered replication’ occurs whereby linguistic variation is generated — the natural language users make ‘innovations’, i.e., create variant replicators. The different variants “compete” in the ‘environment’ for ‘selection’ by the interactors, i.e., for ‘differential replication’ (linguistic ‘propagation’). In this way, ‘lineages’ of conventions are generated. Each natural language user on the one hand produces and receives a finite extensional set, or corpus, of actual utterances, of usage that includes ungrammatical utterances, performance errors, etc. — that is, the ‘corpus’ is a historical entity. On the other hand, his competence potentially ‘generates’ an infinite intensional set of (potential) ‘grammatical’ expressions. The ‘language’ is the corpus of the actual utterances of the speech community (in a given historical time segment). This corpus manifests the linguistic conventions of the speech community — the historical community grammar (the union set of individual speakers’ grammars). A part of this corpus forms the input, in language acquisition, to the ‘abduction’ by the individual of his individual grammar (Andersen 1973), a process whose premises are the language universals as well as utterance contexts. The corpus of present and past, realized, community grammars is an extensional set manifested in accordance with the language universals of the single individual speakers. The language universals, on

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the other hand, ‘generate’ an intensional set of (potential) languages (including never actualized languages, and languages which may be actualized in the future, e.g. new creoles or new daughter languages of existing languages). The two contributions within this section, the one by Henning Andersen and the one by William Croft, both deal with the (biological or generalized) conception of ‘evolution’ as an explanatorily relevant framework for understanding language change, the former rejecting its relevance, the latter defining and defending it. This is the central competing issue of the volume. Andersen — in his contribution “Synchrony, diachrony, and evolution” — alluding to the titles of the central master piece of Coseriu (1957) and his seminal paper Coseriu (1968) — rejects like Coseriu himself the blind application to linguistic matters of models imported from other disciplines, especially the natural sciences, because each subject matter requires its own theory: language, being a cultural phenomenon (characterized by creativity and freedom), cannot be explained by a theory developed to explain the evolution of living species (this kind of ‘evolution’ being characterized by chance and necessity). Andersen draws upon the important distinction, introduced into historical linguistics by Coseriu (1957), of the historical/particular level (actuality), the empirical/general level (potentiality), and the theoreticl/rational level (conceptual necessity) — a distinction similar to that of the three kinds of adequacy of Chomskyan linguistics, viz. observational, descriptive, and explanatory adequacy. On the historical level, a language (speaker’s competence) is, in the synchronic dimension, a ‘practice of speaking’ (manifested in speech acts), and, in the diachronic dimension, a ‘tradition of speaking’ (manifested in transmissional links backwards and forwards in time); on this level the language historian describes actual linguistic changes. On the general level the historical linguist studies generalized change schemas (e.g. grammaticalization) and laws of change. Both the historical and the general level concern the how of language change, whereas the rational level is devoted to the why of language change, which is investigated by the theoretician of historical linguistics. Andersen stresses that linguistic change is ‘Lamarckian’, whereas biological evolution is, of course, ‘Darwinian’. Language change is governed by reanalysis (abduction) — a (fallible, but rational) logical inference, evolution by replication — a blind, irrational chance mechanism. Grammar formation is a creative activity (cf. Coseriu’s emphasis on creativity in his theory of language and language change), an example of the ‘over-performance’ of the human mind, as Andersen succinctly puts it. Only linguistic ‘evolution’ (change) is subject to the process of adaptation (found in neologisms and extensions): the interactor may create variant replicators that will fit the environment better (the motivation) and thus will get differentially replicated

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(i.e., adopted). Thus, crucially, innovation and adoption may be purposeful activities. Croft, for his part, in “The relevance of an evolutionary model to historical linguistics”, emphasizes that his evolutionary model of linguistic change, Theory of Utterance Selection (Croft 2000), is an instantiation of the general — and generalized — model of ‘evolution’, Generalized Analysis of Selection (GAS), mentioned above. This implies that ‘functions’ (in the AI sense of domain-neutral concepts) are utilized, that is, concepts not bound to biology — or any other discipline for that matter. It is a crucial feature of GAS that each element in it must have an instantiation in a given domain of the phenomenal world for ‘evolution’ (to be said) to exist there — and for the theory to explain it. ‘Evolution’ concerns the (temporal) relation (of copying, or ‘replication’) between a succession of originals and replicates, such that in a sequential chain the former member is the original, and the latter member is the replicate (copy). The replicate then comes to function as original, and so on and so forth. The generalized function of subject of replication — of being replicated (original/copy) — is ‘replicator’, in language: tokens of linguistic structure in utterances (‘linguemes’). It is essential that replication is (necessarily) not a truthful process — identical replication is only the limiting case. Rather, one has to recognize, on a first level, ‘altered replication’ and, on the second level, ‘differential replication’, where copies different from the originals may be produced and selected, and passed on. Evolution, then, is a twostep process, with two kinds and levels of replication, viz., firstly, as fundamental basis of evolution, the level of ‘altered replication’ where variation in a population is produced, and, secondly, as the second source of evolution, the level of ‘differential replication’, or (especially, natural) ‘selection’, where some variants (replicates) become less frequent whereas others gain in frequency, owing to ‘environmental interaction’. The subjects of interactions, or ‘interactors’, are normally organisms. Organisms form a species, i.e. a ‘population’, contracted by interbreeding (‘intercourse’) and productive isolation from other species. Interbreeding produces new organisms (interactors) and new replicators. A population of interactors is a historical entity (a token, not a type), bounded in time and space by the split of an ancestral population and a split of an offspring generation. Croft applies this general theory of selection, GAS, in an explanation of language change. He only recognizes real, historical entities (tokens), viz. community languages, e.g., Hungarian, and the psychologically real (“functional”) languages (grammars) of the language users. The linguistic instantiation of GAS is his Theory of Utterance Selection, TUS, mentioned above. TUS has the welcome result, says Croft, of avoiding false analogies and teleological mechanisms — Croft in this

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way crucially diverging from the Coseriu–Andersen teleological theories. However, like Coseriu, Croft also wants his model to be an integrated framework for language and language change (the former he terms Radical Construction Grammar). And, likewise like Coseriu (and Jakobson), he stresses the theoretical necessity of explaining when change is absent (identical replication), not only when it is present (altered and differential replication): absence of change is conceived of as the obligation felt by the speaker to behave in conformity with convention (which solves a crucial coordination problem). The basis for the existence of linguistic ‘evolution’ is, firstly, the essential characteristic of any language, viz. innovation: the production of 5 variation, and, secondly, its propagation through the population of interactors. According to Croft, variation is functional (in the sense of making replicators fit the communicative environment better), whereas propagation is social — the linguistic instantiation of GAS thus being different from the biological one, and from Coseriu’s and Andersen’s contention, namely that the same factors are operative in innovation as well as in propagation (selection). This controversy is relevant for the next two papers. 1.3 Functional factors in ‘evolution’: Functional motivation of selection The next two papers, contributions 6 and 7, by Silvia Becerra Bascuñán and Guido Seiler, respectively, investigate the role of functional factors in linguistic ‘evolution’, the former with respect to the long-term kind termed ‘drift’ (since Sapir 1921), a theme prominent in the writings of Coseriu (Coseriu 1957, 1968) and Andersen (see the references in Andersen, this volume), the latter with respect to Croft’s theory as summarized above. Silvia Becerra Bascuñán, in her paper “Grammaticalization of indirect object cross-reference in Spanish as a case of drift”, on the basis of an extensive empirical corpus investigation of the development of cross-reference and head marking of indirect object in the grammar of Spanish, confirms the existence of the phenomenon of Drift, and of the specific theory proposed by Andersen (see the references to Andersen, this vol.), whereby drift has structure and direction. More specifically, Spanish has generalized (reanalyzed) its inherited type — Latin’s cross-reference and head marking of subject arguments — to also covering the primary grammatical relations of direct and, especially, indirect object. The evolution of cross-reference of the indirect object, i.e., the grammaticalization of the atonic dative pronouns as head 5

A feature also heavily focused upon by Coseriu, e.g., in his abstractive process from variance to invariance, from Speech to Norm, to System, to Type, to Universals (Coseriu 1952, 1957, 1968, 1974).

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markers of indirect object, is an almost one thousand year long process of actualization of the reanalysis (generalization), which is now, at the beginning of the 21st century, almost at its end — ‘full’ grammaticalization. The investigation of 20th century Spanish shows that the evolution is more advanced in the unmarked categories of the ‘architecture’ of the ‘historical language’: it is more advanced in the lower strata and younger generations of the population, more advanced in the more conversational, informal speech styles, and more advanced with prototypical main clauses with referential direct objects and personal, human, or animate IOs in foregrounded, empathetic functions. Her specific finding is that the instigating forces in the global evolution were local markedness shifts whereby marked categories (e.g., emphasis and empathy) came to be ‘inflated’, or ‘de-valued’. That is, there were external, pragmatic (functional) motivations behind the internal, long-term structural development. Guido Seiler, in his contribution on Prepositional Dative Marking variation in Upper German, “The role of functional factors in language change: An evolutionary approach”, pleas for the relevance of functional factors in the conception of variant selection and propagation (i.e., adoption and diffusion) —at variance with Croft’s contention, mentioned above, that propagation, or spread through communicative networks, is conditioned solely by sociolinguistic factors, not by factors of code efficiency. Seiler specifically demonstrates that innovative variants are adopted in a speaker’s functional grammar owing to their functional values — they compete for adoption, and get adopted if they are better ‘fit’ — by being better adapted. Seiler introduces the important notion of implementation for the integration of a variant in the individual’s functional language and its changing status therein. Thus, in addition to the spreading of a variant inter-individually (social propagation, in the environment of the speech community), there is its intra-individual implementation, that is, its adoption in the functional language of the individual speaker, it’s evolving systematic arrangements with other elements of the functional language. Some variants, which have been ‘implemented’ in response to functional factors, may become obligatory and thus lose their functional motivation (as was also seen in Becerra Bascuñán’s study on grammaticalization, mentioned above, where the head markers of indirect object at some time in their evolution were selected owing to their indexation of empathy, which value was lost later). In chapter 8, by Miguel Vázquez-Larruscaín, entitled “Computational modeling of prototypicality in language change: Neutralization to schwa, default logic, and the history of the German noun”, the evolution of the German noun paradigms is investigated. The development is understood as a ‘drift’

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towards morphological prototypicality, the target. In the case of German, syntactic gender and prosodic type are the crucial determinants in the evolution of the declensional system, the initial stage being represented by a rather arbitrary system. The view is that morphology and phonology are integrated components of a grammar (as would be expected in a functional–structural theory). 1.4 Cognitive perspectives on semantico–syntactic change: Mental Grammar, Cognitive Grammar, and Dynamic Syntax The next three contributions are ‘cognitive’ in nature, however stemming from three radically different conceptions of ‘cognitive’ linguistics, viz. Mental Grammar, Cognitive Grammar, and Dynamic Syntax. Contribution 9 by Per Durst-Andersen, “From propositional syntax in Old Russian to situational syntax in Modern Russian”, is written within his framework of Mental Grammar (see the references in his contribution), which is, in fact, in the vein of the functional structuralism of Coseriu, Jakobson, and Andersen. Durst-Andersen defends a theory whereby the semantic contents of 6 lexical and grammatical categories and constructions are dual (unitary) cognitive structures, involving on the one hand a — perceptual — ‘image’ side, referring to (‘picturing’) the/a ‘world’, and a — conceptual — ‘idea’ side, representing the conceptualization or description of it: each content side of a linguistic entity is thus an ‘image-idea pair’, as he terms it. Accordingly, the content of a common noun, for instance, is a cognitive entity, which pairs a ‘prototypicalized’ figure (cf. ‘image’) and a prototypicalized description of it (‘idea’). Lexical-typologically, a language is either image-centered, as French, or idea-centered, as Danish — they specify either the image or the idea, respectively, in naming the nominal concept. Also verbs are image-idea pairs, i.e., they name verbal contents, which in the image dimension represent a figure–ground relationship — termed ‘ground situation’, and in the idea dimension its description — called a ‘ground proposition’; ‘ground’ in both contexts suggesting lexical, i.e., potential (basic) meaning. Sentential-syntactic structure — on its content side — is then either situation-centered, as in Modern Russian, or proposition-centered, as in Old Russian. The paper investi6

Notice that Durst-Andersen subscribes to the Aristotelian–von Humboldtian–Coserian– Jakobsonian conception of meaning as unitary, cf. Coseriu (1971:219–220): “Ein einheitlicher einzelsprachlicher Inhalt ist nicht etwa eine sekundär gewonnene Synthese von Bezeichnungsmöglichkeiten, sondern, umgekehrt, etwas intuitiv Primäres und sprachlich Unmittelbares [...] so ist die Konstruktion mit X nicht etwa die algebraische Summe von “Instrument”, “Stoff”, “Begleitung” usw., sondern sie entspricht einer primären und viel allgemieneren Funktion, die dann verschiedene Anwendungsmöglichkeiten zuläßt.”

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gates the development from Old Russian’s proposition-based syntax to Modern Russian’s situation-based syntax, a change in syntactization strategy. The emergence of the grammatical category of verbal aspect (situational) has been crucial for this development of situational syntax. (Modern) Russian is thus ‘super-typologically’ coherent: it is ‘reality-based’, both in its construal of the verbal categories (word classes and their functional categories/operators) and in its content syntax. Representing quite another conception of cognitive linguistics, Lena Ekberg in the 10th contribution to the present volume, “Construal operations in semantic change: The case of abstract nouns” gives a (Langackerian) Cognitive Grammar account of the development of abstract nouns in Swedish. She demonstrates how diverse construal operations on the underlying semantic representation of a lexical expression may generate semantic variation, either polysemy or contextual meaning variation, and this variation may lead to change. Thus change is engendered by the individual cognitive subject/speaker, but is present virtually in the underlying schematic structures and the construal operations themselves. In contribution 11 by Miriam Bouzouita & Ruth Kempson, “Clitic placement in Old and Modern Spanish: A dynamic account”, the development of clitic placement from Old Spanish to Modern Spanish is studied, with the aim of understanding or explaining, within the model of Dynamic Syntax — a dynamic model of syntax which is integrated with language use (processing), not only the synchronies of Old and Modern Spanish, but also the diachronic changes that took place between the two states. The changes are shown to be formal consequences of progressive lexical simplification, where the indirect object is taking the lead as against the direct object (by having fewer restrictions). Grammaticalization studies: Content, typology, and evolutive change The next two contributions deal with aspects of grammaticalization and grammaticalization theory. They both stress the semantic foundation of grammaticalization and typology (cf. also Heltoft, Nørgård-Sørensen & Schøsler 2005). By proposing a conception of ‘parallel grammaticalization’ based on a semantic conception of linguistic type, they could, in fact, be classified as belonging within the functional structuralist camp, prominently represented by Coseriu (cf. his principle of semanticity and his concept of the linguistic type as a functional level of relations of coherence of the grammatical systems). Lars Heltoft, in “Grammaticalisation as content reanalysis: The modal character of the Danish s-passive”, makes a case for semantics as the crucial basis of grammaticalization, showing that the grammaticalization of a 1.5

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grammatical category, in this case passive in Danish, may involve, rather than semantic bleaching (the traditional conception of grammaticalization as a reduction phenomenon), the addition of polysemy, which may be reanalyzed as an instance of a different grammatical category, in this case mood. His specific contribution within this field of research is his explanation of the reanalysis in the history of Danish of the synthetic s-passive voice as additionally coding a ‘subjective’ mood — indicating that the evidential source of the proposition is not the speaker himself, but another intention or consciousness (the analytic, periphrastic blive-passive then involving ‘objective’ mood, indicating the speaker as source). This is evidently an example of a type-conforming grammaticalization, ‘parallel’ with the grammaticalization of the Danish subject as a modal and categorical subject (cf. Heltoft 2001) — both grammaticalizations actualize the ‘supertype’ of Danish as explicitly coding the interpersonal dimension (factors of the speaker and the addressee). In the 13th contribution, “Aspect and animacy in the history of Russian: Developing the idea of parallel grammaticalization”, Jens Nørgård-Sørensen, basing his investigation on Durst-Andersen’s theory of contentive ‘supertypology’ (for references, see Durst-Andersen, this volume), stresses the need to focus on semantically-based linguistic types in historical linguistics. More specifically, he proposes a theory of what he terms parallel grammaticalization, whereby the development of a nominal category in a language, in the present case animacy in Russian, may go in tandem with the development of a verbal category, in this case aspect in Rusian (the determinant category), owing to a common general, or abstract, motivating principle, to the effect that there has to be a correlation (homology, congruity) between the two major grammatical subsystems, the nominal and the verbal. Nørgård-Sørensen shows that Modern Russian’s aspect-based linguistic type developed out of an original type based on the aktionsart distinction between ‘action’ (as an indivisible whole) and ‘non-action’: A distinction was introduced (in the late 14th century) within (telic) actions between an ‘activity’ part and a ‘state’ part, giving rise to activity-profiling imperfective aspect and resultant state-profiling perfective aspect. The introduction of this verbal distinction was paralleled by the (presumably) simultaneous reanalysis of nouns as belonging to either the animate (cf. actor/activity in the verbal subsystem) or the inanimate (cf. nonactor/state) class, in the same way as simplex verbs (denoting non-actions) belong to either the activity or the state subclasses. 1.5 Integrating theories of language and language change The last contribution to the volume, “Towards an integrated functional– pragmatic theory of language and language change: In commemoration of Eu-

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genio Coseriu (1921–2002)”, by Ole Nedergaard Thomsen, concerns a further development of Eugenio Coseriu’s ‘Process’ (’ ε ν έ ργ ε ι α) theory of language and language change (1952, 1957, 1988 [1982]), and inspired by suggestions in Andersen (1989). It represents an attempt to understand (explain) language change (and acquisition) as socio-psychological ‘creation’, as constituted by meta-communicative speech acts by single individual speaker-listeners, establishing in dialogue — for each other — as perlocutionary out-come traditions of speaking, that is, dia-lects — ever-emergent linguistic conventions. Language and linguistic change are thus part-and-parcel of communication. The theory proposed is strictly deducible from speech act theory (primarily that of Searle’s) and legal philosophy (primarily the theory of directives and norms of the Danish philosopher of jurisprudence and language, Alf Ross, cf., e.g., Ross 1968). The unitary model is based on a sociopsychological conception of legislation, rather than the ‘naturalist’ model of evolution discussed in this volume. Concluding remarks It is my hope that the present volume will inspire further — however, collaborative, rather than competitive — work in the direction of an interdisciplinary and integrative (historical) linguistics that sees language in its proper perspective, as an intersection, or unity, between nature and culture, and individual mind and society, and that takes variation and change as the basic conditions of language as practice and tradition. In the words of Jakobson (1973: 52), 2.

The genetic code, the primary manifestation of life, and, on the other hand, language (the universal endowment of humanity) and its momentous leap from genetics to civilization, are the two fundamental stores of information transmitted from ancestry to progeny, the molecular heredity and the verbal legacy as a necessary prerequisite of cultural tradition.

Coseriu (1988 [1982]:149) gave a — to my mind — succinct formulation of the relation between nature and culture with respect to language: A language [...] does not exist as an object or an organism, and thus it does not have an organic continuity independent of the consciousness of its speakers. A language is an historically given “technique” of speaking: it exists only as a tradition [i.e. culture] of the ability to speak [i.e. nature], that is, as a traditional technical knowledge, or as a “competence” which has been handed down by and to the individual members of language communities. Thus, what is interpreted as “linguistic change” is not a process of change in language products [...] but rather the creation of language traditions, the historical objectivization of what has been

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produced in speech; that is to say, nothing other than language as it is being created.

Roskilde, June 2006

Ole Nedergaard Thomsen REFERENCES

Andersen, Henning. 1973. “Abductive and deductive change”. Language 49.765–793. Andersen, Henning. 1989. “Understanding linguistic innovations”. Language Change: Contributions to the study of its causes ed. by Leiv Egil Breivik & Ernst Håkon Jahr, 5–25. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Coseriu, Eugenio. 1952. Sistema, norma y habla (con un resumen en alemán). Montevideo: Universidad de la Republica, Faculdad de Humanidades y Sciencias. (Reprinted in Teoría del lenguaje y lingüística general: Cinco estudios, 11–113. Madrid: Gredos, 3 rd rev. and corr. ed. 1973.) Coseriu, Eugenio. 1957. Sincronía, diacronía e historia: El problema del cambio lingüístico. Montevideo: Universidad de la Republica, Faculdad de Humanidades y Sciencias. (1974 [1957]. Synchronie, Diachronie und Geschichte: Das Problem des Sprachwandels, translated by Helga Sohre. Munich: Fink.) Coseriu, Eugenio. 1968. “Sincronía, diacronía y tipología”. Actas del XI Congreso Internacional de Lingüística y Filología Romanicas, Madrid 1965, vol. 1, 269–281. (German translation: “Synchronie, Diachronie und Typologie“. Energeia und Ergon. Sprachliche Variation — Sprachgeschichte — Sprachtypologie ed. by Jörn Albrecht, Jens Lüdtke & Harald Thun, vol. I:173–184. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1988.) Coseriu, Eugenio. 1971. Sprache, Strukturen und Funktionen: XII Aufsätze. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Coseriu, Eugenio. 1974. “Les universaux linguistiques (et les autres)”. Proceedings of the 11th International Congress of Linguists ed. by Luigi Heilmann, vol. I:43–73. Bologna: Societa editrice Il Mulino. (Spanish translation: “Los universales del lenguaje (y los otros)”. Gramática, semantica, universales: Estudios de lingüística funcional, 148–205. Madrid: Gredos, 1978.) Coseriu, Eugenio. 1982. “Linguistic change does not exist”. UCLA Conference on Causality and Linguistic Change, Los Angeles, May 1982. (Repr. in: Energeia und Ergon. Sprachliche Variation — Sprachgeschichte — Sprachtypologie ed. by Jörn Albrect, Jens Lüdtke & Harald Thun, vol. I:147–157. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1988.) Croft, William. 2000. Explaining Language Change: An evolutionary approach. London & New York: Longman.

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Diderichsen, Paul. [1958] 1966a. “Udvikling og Struktur i Sprogvidenskaben”. Helhed og Struktur ed. by Paul Diderichsen, 276–307. Copenhagen: G.E.C. Gad. Diderichsen, Paul. [1959] 1966b. “Darwin og Sprogvidenskaben”. Helhed og Struktur ed. by Paul Diderichsen, 326–339. Copenhagen: G.E.C. Gad. Fortescue, Michael, Eva Skafte Jensen, Jens Erik Mogensen & Lene Schøsler, eds. 2005. Historical Linguistics 2003: Selected papers from the 16th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Copenhagen, 11–15 August 2003. (= Current Issues of Linguistic Theory, 257.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Heltoft, Lars. 2001. “Recasting Danish subjects. Case system, word order and subject development”. Grammatical Relations in Change ed. by Jan Terje Faarlund, 170–204. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Heltoft, Lars, Jens Nørgård-Sørensen & Lene Schøsler, eds. 2005. Grammatikalisering og struktur. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Hull, David L. 1988. Science as a Process: An evolutionary account of the social and conceptual development of science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hull, David L. 2001. Science and Selection: Essays on biological evolution and the philosophy of science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jakobson, Roman. 1973. Main Trends in the Science of Language. London: Allen & Unwin. Janda, Richard D. & Brian D. Joseph. 2003. “On language, change, and language change — Or, Of history, linguistics, and historical linguistics”. The Handbook of Historical Linguistics ed. by Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda, 3–180. Oxford & Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. Joseph, Brian D. 1992. “Diachronic explanation: Putting speakers back into the picture”. Explanation in Historical Linguistics ed. by Garry W. Davis & Gregory K. Iverson, 123–144. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Keller, Rudi. 1988. “Zu einem evolutionären Sprachbegriff”. Energeia und Ergon. Vol. II: Das sprachteoretische Denken Eugenio Coserius in der Diskussion ed. by Harald Thun, 143–158. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Ross, Alf. 1968. Directives and Norms. London: Routledge. Schleicher, August. 1863. Die Darwinsche Theorie und die Sprachwissenschaft: Offenes Sendschreiben an Herrn Dr. Ernst Häckel, a.o. Professor der Zoologie und Director des zoologischen Museums an der Universität Jena. Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 31 pp., 1 table (2nd and 3rd ed., 1873; repr. in Nova Acta Leopoldina N.F. 42, No.218, 377/378-393 [1975].) Schleicher, August. 1869 [1863]. Darwinism Tested by the Science of Language. Transl. from the German, with preface and additional notes, by Alexander V.W. Bikkers. London: J. C. Hotten, 69 pp., 1 table. (Repr. in Linguistics and Evolutionary Theory: Three essays by August Schleicher, Ernst Haeckel, and Wilhelm Bleek ed. by E.F.K. Koerner, 1–71. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1983.)

THE NON-LINEAR NATURE OF DIACHRONIC CHANGE MICHAEL FORTESCUE University of Copenhagen The Whiteheadian framework The ‘Process’ view of language that I have presented in Fortescue (2001) not only concerns the level of the individual speaker/hearer, it also concerns that of the community of speakers. It is here that the various forms of diachronic change characterizing languages through time, such as phonetic weakening and strengthening, semantic expansions or contractions, grammaticalization, markedness shift and general drift, are manifest. I shall argue in the following that such processes are inherently non-linear in the same way that they are on the individual cognitive level. There are other commonalities between the two levels as well as differences: diachronic change can also be analysed in terms of ‘prehensions’, ‘eternal objects’, and even (understood rightly) ‘subjective aims’, without opting for an outright teleological view of the evolution of languages.1. The most important difference is precisely that the 1.

1

For those who find the term ‘eternal object’ difficult to swallow (and there are many!), I suggest replacing it with figura in the Hjelmslevian sense. They are only ‘eternal’ in the sense of being repeatable and therefore communicable. ‘New’ eternal objects are emerging all the time from actual occasions of communication, only some of which are repeated and maintained long enough — and by a stable and sizeable enough portion of a speech community — to become absorbed as conventionalized elements in the complex eternal object that constitutes the individual human language concerned. As regards the term ‘prehension’, this can be replaced if you wish by ‘reaction to’. Here, in a nutshell is the essence of Whitehead’s philosophy of ‘organism’: the basic elements in it are self-organizing ‘actual occasions’, which each ‘enjoy’ one quantum of time. These ‘drops of experience’ come together from the data of their immediate past, then ‘perish’ at once to become objective data for subsequent occasions. They consist of processes of ‘concrescence’, whereby the inherited data are grasped by ‘prehensions’ (or ‘feelings’) and successively integrated according to a ‘subjective aim’. This aim is partly determined by the occasion’s perspective on relevant ‘ eternal objects’ (‘forms of definiteness’) and partly by the nature of the data itself. It strives towards the ‘satisfaction’ of the occasion (the achievement of maximal unity and intensity of integration of its prehensions) and grows more differentiated and explicit as the concrescence proceeds. I list in the Appendix

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prehensions relevant to the higher level have little to do with the teleological purposes of the individual speaker/hearer. The ‘subjects’ of such prehensions must be whole communities of speakers; they are collective and thus only indirectly reflect the communicative intentions of individual speakers. There is from a Whiteheadian perspective no problem in speaking of the collective ‘conceptual’ prehension by a community of speakers of the complex eternal object defining the language that its speakers have in common, nor of the collective ‘physical’ prehension by a community of socio-historical variation, i.e. those sociolinguistic, dialectal, contact-induced, and language-external cultural factors manifest in the linguistic productions of both influential and peripheral members from its own ranks that have a bearing on diachronic 2 change. ‘Prehension of’ does not presuppose individual ‘consciousness of’. Communities — as nexūs — display their own patterns of change, related to the processes within individual speaker/hearers in a way similar to the way the teleological linguistic behaviour of the individual is in turn related to the collective behaviour of neurons at a still lower level — that is, in a 3 relationship of emergence. At the interface between the collective and the individual nexus levels — where language acquisition is played out — there is a continual interplay back and forth, as every new speaker learns to apply the eternal objects maintained at the collective level (extractable from input-incontext) to his or her own communicative needs, meeting and adapting to ever new social circumstances. As is well known, variation in the details of this ‘match’ helps fuel diachronic change at the collective level. More specifically, one might suggest that the ubiquitous asymmetry of ‘markedness’ displayed by languages and by their diachronic pathways of change indirectly reflects the the types of eternal object and prehensions relevant (as I see it) to discussions of language. 2 It is misleading, however, to talk in this context of the ‘evolution’ of individual languages (thus harking back to the romantic notion of the language as organism). Although, as Croft has shown, one can indeed argue for a certain analogy with Darwinian evolution (Croft 2000), there is no selection process involved between eternal objects (languages) as such, only between societies (communities) in which they find ingression. ‘English’ is only an abstraction from the varieties of linguistic behaviour of communities of English speakers. One may talk metaphorically of selection amongst token utterances in the manner of Croft, but this mixes society levels — that of token exchanges between individuals and that of the abstracted types that make up the shared object ‘English’ at the community level. 3 From the point of view of the individual neuron one might say (to stretch the analogy a bit) that overall changes in its environment are also of an inscrutable ‘hidden hand’ nature vis-à-vis its own internal ‘subjective aim’ (namely to fire when the necessary input conditions are met). Processes occur within nexū s that in turn constrain their realization. Nexūs are not themselves fixed and repeatable (only the eternal objects defining their structure are that), but their levels (types) must be distinct in terms of the relationship of their constituent occasions to each other and to the relevant eternal objects — including types of subjective aim.

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prehensions of individual speaker/hearers, where every positive prehension — for instance of a word — is associated with a negative one heightening its contrast with ‘what it is not’. This may in turn reflect the organization of cortical networks of neural columns with their alternating layers of excitation and inhibition (cf. Calvin 1996). The basic unit of process, the ‘concrescence’ (made up of successive prehensions), is the same at all levels, although the levels themselves cannot be reduced from higher to lower or vice versa.4 I shall return below to the question I have sidestepped here as to whether the natural unit of such higher-level concrescences is simply a higher level ‘actual occasion’ or something else. What might it mean to say that diachronic linguistic processes are essentially non-linear, just as mental processes in the minds of individual speakers are? It would surely mean that the ‘input’ to such processes is by necessity multiple and to some degree indeterminate, though the output (the change) is determinate and of a single, known type. This is of course the way historical linguists often envisage linguistic change: the idea of multiple factors mutually enhancing or inhibiting each other and of the general non-predictability of individual linguistic change (despite widespread tendencies and drifts) is not at all unorthodox today. However, just as ‘Pattern’ and ‘Process’ are all too often confused in synchronic analyses, there is often a confusion between the Pattern and the Process side of diachronic change such that regular, stepwise changes in a language system as such are assumed to be linked directly to similar changes in individual speakers in the community concerned. This caveat does not mask a reversion to a Saussurian exaggeration of the mutual independence of synchrony and diachrony — on the contrary, Pattern is obviously the result of Process and Process is constrained by Pattern. Specifically as regards the question of the non-linearity of diachronic change, I would simply go further than most historical linguists (though no further than 5 emergentists like Hopper ) and claim that all linguistic changes have multiple 4

Note that in the higher (‘intellectual’) kinds of prehension that typify the individual speaker/hearer further superimposed levels of societal embedding may be drawn upon or absorbed, heightening the contrast still further (compare Andersen 2001:47 on the hierarchical relationship manifest in diachrony between different kinds of opposition on the scale exclusive > inclusive > contrary > contradictory > converse). ‘Actualization’ of a new linguistic pattern in diachrony can in general be equated with the emergence (by ‘conceptual reversion’) of new combinations of eternal objects within the overall complex eternal object (e.g. ‘English’) that finds ingression in the community of its users. 5 Hopper has recently applied his conception of emergentism — originally applied to the pathways of grammaticalization — to the origin of lexical items, whereby continual erosion of form is balanced by processes of renewal ‘in response to the collective needs of discourse’. A specific example he provides (Hopper 1990:153) is that of the ‘demorphologization’ of class

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causes, although only one — or even none — may appear immediately relevant (e.g., a simple unconditioned change regarded as the result of a purely chance ‘mutation’ of norm). By this I do not mean just that it is whole (sub)systems that change (as in the manner of system-internal pull- or pushchains), but that any change in system is going to be linked — however indirectly — to multiple causes within the community of speakers in which it comes to be accepted. The ‘actualization’ of such a unitary system change is typically ‘messy’ as regards its extension in time and space as the innovation spreads through the community. In good Whiteheadian fashion, I am suggesting here a ‘both/and’ perspective on diachronic change, one that links the systematic, step-wise shift from one system stage to the next to the ‘chaotic’ diffusion of the innovation through a community of individual speakers. This latter process is itself largely ‘indeterminate’, both as regards the distribution of an innovation in the community of speakers and as regards the overlapping registers and preferences and habits that cause the change to actualize to a variable degree in the usage of individual speakers. In fact the very notion of a community of speakers is problematic and indeterminate ‘around the edges’ — one need think only of the phenomenon of bilingualism and the ‘belonging’ of one and the same individual to distinct or overlapping communities. Yet diachronic change does in hindsight appear to display a high degree of regularity and ‘motivation’. How is this to be reconciled with the truism (as it is seen today) that all diachronic change emerges from a ‘pool’ of synchronic variation? The integration into the common language code of the community of some of the potential contrasts within that variation involves piecemeal and largely unconscious processes of diffusion and gradual ‘codification’. Such consensual (if tacit) codification — however unstable through time — must continually result for the language to be passed on from generation to generation. That ‘what is passed on’ is subject to disturbances to purely ‘internal’ genetic inheritance prefixes in the Australian language Olgolo, where these items — originally articles — have been absorbed into the lexical substance of the nouns to which they attach to compensate (to some degree) for the loss of initial consonants in that language, thus restoring more normal CV syllable phonotactics and, in the process, gradually losing their distinct semantic function. The causes of such ‘hidden hand’ developments can be said to be by necessity multiple, since neither the phonological erosion of initial consonants nor the attachment of classificatory prefixes on their own is a sufficient cause of the change — only their conjunction (within the overall ‘type’ of the language concerned) can be said to be that. One could also mention Bates & MacWhinney’s (1987) competition model: for them grammaticalization is an adaptive process, the on-going result of continual competition between rival factors and the emergence of ‘new’ solutions whereby expressability may be increased through the compacting and automaticization of old ones.

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caused by contact with other communities of speakers is also a commonplace — convergence between neighbouring languages may arise through the primary mechanism of bilingualism, considerably complicating historical reconstruction. But is it always necessary to resort to convergence to explain ‘obscured’ reconstruction situations? Might the inherent grain of ‘chaos’ in all diachronic processes based on the social utilization of a fluctuating pool of variation — including partial changes checked and/or abandoned — not be sufficient to render reconstruction indeterminate beyond a certain time depth without invoking community-external input at all? Yet certain specific changes (rather than others) occur again and again, independently across the world’s languages, given analogous starting points, and related languages may display (to some degree) predictable internal ‘drift’ reflecting their common origins as they split into dialects and then separate languages. How can these two aspects — on the one hand the unpredictable ‘chaotic’ side of diachrony and on the other its predictable, generalizable side — both be accommodated within one framework and related in turn to cognitive processes within individual speakers? Examples of non-linear diachronic change Before sketching a Whiteheadian answer to these far-reaching questions, let me dwell for a while on some specific examples of diachronic change that appear to entail non-linear processes, for example vowel harmony in Uralic and Paleosiberian languages. Perhaps the most problematical area for reconstruction in the Uralic family is the nature of its vowel correspondences (cf. Abondolo 1998:16ff., especially as regards the controversial issue of vowel quantity in the proto-language), and a recent book (Marcantonio 2002) has in fact claimed that the persisting problems in this area demand that the whole 6 notion of the unity of this assumed family should be reassessed. Palatal vowel harmony characterizes the whole family (though a few modern languages have lost it again), and it is assigned by Janhunen (1982:26) to the proto-language. This has complicated the task of reconstruction (it often not being possible to determine the original quality of the second syllable of stems), but it is widely accepted that the direction of assimilation-at-a-distance involved here has generally been progressive, that is that the harmony of the whole word, front or back, has always been determined primarily by the vowel of the first syllable of the stem. On top of this, ‘vertical’ high/low harmony was apparently 2.

6

She prefers a model of waves of innovation spreading across the whole Uralic — and neighbouring — areas to a traditional Stammbaum one. The source of individual innovations could have been either internal or external to the family. Most Uralicists, it is probably true to say, regard this viewpoint as overstated, the great time depth involved being the major source of the difficulty of reconstruction rather.

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involved at the proto-stage as regards the choice of (a reduced array of) second or third syllable vowels, and at least one full-scale circular shift involving the whole vowel system is known to have affected the Permic languages in particular, seriously disturbing the original vowel harmony situation there. Regressive rather than progressive assimilation has also been adduced to explain specific correlations en route between proto-Uralic and the various lower branches of the family, for instance the change of proto-Uralic */u/ to protoSamoyedic // before a second syllable //, of proto-Ugric */i/ to proto-ObUgric /o/ before second syllable /å/, and of proto-Finno-Permic */i/ to protoPermic /e/ in open syllables before second syllable /ä/ (Sammallahti 1988). In Estonian central // probably arose this way too, namely from mid vowel /e/ (short or long) before a back vowel (except when in absolute initial position), as in mk < *meekka “sword”, vras < *veeras “foreign”, vrkk < *verkko “net”, and prn < *perna “spleen”. It may well be that this factor — regressive assimilation — has been underestimated in reconstructing the vowel system of proto-Uralic (PU) itself. Thus the illabial back and/or low vowel */ï/ reconstructed by Janhunen (for which Rédei (1988) has */a/ rather) seems to be required by certain Ob-Ugric and Samoyedic correlates with Finno-Permic /a/, but may actually represent the result of regressive assimilation (as in hypothetical *appï “father (-in-law)” corresponding to proto-Samoyedic pand hence reconstructed by Janhunen as *ïppï). This direction of development is in fact the most likely on typological grounds, going as it does from an unmarked segment (/a/) to a marked one (/ï/) in a specific marked environment (rather like umlaut in Germanic).7 In the vowel harmony system of Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages, observe, the assimilation goes both ways quite consistently (though the system is not of the same ‘palatal’ sort), i.e. is bidirectional, and bidirectional adjustment of sequences of stem syllables may also have been involved in the early prehistory of Uralic. Bergsland’s reconstruction of proto-Eskimo-Aleut, which recognized patterns of assimilation — both progressive and regressive — of certain successive vowel pairs in Aleut compared with Eskimo, solved a particularly recalcitrant problem of reconstruction in a language family that does not even display regular vowel harmony (Bergsland 1986:28ff.). Thus, for instance, the sequence */u/ plus /a/ often goes to /a/ plus /a/, as in tana-X “land” < *nuna. In 7

Marcantonio concurs — she also points out (2002:97f.) that only one of Janhunen’s sets actually covers all Ob-Ugric and Sammoyedic and that there are reflections of both vowels in dialect forms in all these languages (Hungarian goes mainly with Finno-Permic rather). Note also that Sammallahti (following Janhunen) does not have any PU stems reconstructed with initial /a/ (or /å/) at all.

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effect, any vowel in Aleut can correspond to any vowel in Eskimo (although one-to-one full vowel correspondences probably dominate statistically). The precise conditioning factors are by no means clear, yet the reconstruction of the proto-system (which was much like that of conservative Eskimo languages today) is not in doubt and is generally accepted by Eskimologists. I have not mentioned contributing external factors yet, but these may well have been important in producing the overall picture of Uralic vowel correspondences. Turkic incursions from the south along the Ob and Yeniseian valleys, for example, may have left traces in the phonology as well as in the 8 lexicon of the Ob-Ugric and Samoyedic branches of the family. Purely internal convergence between these two branches of Uralic appears to have further complicated the picture, with innovations diffusing across the border between them. It can be argued that such contact phenomena resulting ultimately in convergence always proceed in a non-linear/chaotic manner. This would at all events appear to be the case in Australia, where the mesh-like relationship amongst all its native languages has prompted a radical departure from the traditional Stammbaum family tree picture of language relations on the part of Dixon (1997). His ‘punctuated equilibrium’ model of alternating convergence and ‘punctuation’ episodes completely undermines attempts to reconstruct unitary proto-languages. The results are not only unpredictable but also unravelable beyond a certain time depth. More recently this model has been applied to Indo-European by Renfrew (1999), who sees a convergence episode in the Balkans intermediate to the spread of agriculture into Europe from Asia Minor and the formation of the individual Indo-European families (which involved more local convergence processes via language shift in peripheral areas of the continent). Thomason & Kaufman (1988) have shown in their case studies of the historical interaction between English and French and between Russian and Uralic just how complex the results of such interaction can be.9 I have argued myself for a mesh-like situation in Mesolithic Siberia (Fortescue 1998). Often 8

In fact the hypothetical */a/ > /ï/ change affecting especially Samoyedic and Ob-Ugric mentioned above could have had such a source outside the family, perhaps in Turkic, where the same alternation is found today in certain dialects adjacent to Uralic. 9 According to Thomason & Kaufman (1988) language shift must take place relatively rapidly if it is to produce marked substratum effects (via imperfect learning), so at least some kinds of convergence episodes must — pace Dixon — be short-lived, and, conversely, I suspect, some punctuation episodes can continue undisturbed for a long time. This is indeed the conclusion of Watkins (2001). It is worth bearing this in mind when attempting to distinguish loans from common inherited lexicon — contrast for instance Germanic (including Scandinavian) loans in Balto-Finnish, which are perfectly integrated into Finnic phonology, with Koryak ones in Itelmen, where ‘new’ phonemes (or old ones in new distributions) occur, reflecting the relative recentness (and speed) of intense contact there.

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the diachronic changes relatable to such episodes of contact and convergence suggest multiple causes (a point emphasized by Thomason & Kaufman 1988: 57), internal as well as external, the two reinforcing each other, as in the case of Slavic palatalization, which seems to combine the natural tendency to phonetic palatalization of alveolars before front vowels with areal/substratum influence from neighbouring Uralic languages in which this trait is widespread.10 Even more complex causal scenarios have been suggested for some widespread areal phenomena, such as that of the diffusion of a whole set of parallel polysemic functions of one or more morphemes originally meaning “acquire” in South-East Asia to potentiality or manner complement constructions. Enfield (2001:280ff.) suggests that this might involve both genetic and areal factors, but also ‘conceptual naturalness’, for example by reflecting common grammaticalization pathways. All these factors may have conspired in extending the distribution of the morphemes concerned (and their calques). The point of all this is that the factors behind individual changes — both phonological and semantic, sociological and typological — are more often than not multiple. They may moreover affect larger units than individual phonemes or morphemes — for instance whole syllabic sequences in phonological changes, where the changing unit may well be disyllabic, a potential change in a single segment being coupled to the whole embedding syllable and its immediate context. In semantico-syntactic change whole constructions may be involved, that is depend both on the semantics of individual ingredient morphemes and on the broader morphosyntactic possibilities of the language (and/or a surrounding linguistic area). In other words, such changes reveal the essential non-linearity of diachronic processes. Types of prehension involved in diachronic change As I began by stating, it can be argued that some of the same basic processes as at the individual cognitive level are involved also in diachrony, namely physical and conceptual prehensions; only the ‘societal’ level is different here, namely the level of the community of speakers. Physical prehensions at this level would be external factors affecting the individual language, i.e. 3.

10

A purely language-internal phonological change can also have multiple causes — this I suspect is the case with, for example, the fact that the Mandarin negative morpheme ba- has a falling tone (if its tone is not lost entirely) before syllables with any tone except the falling (‘first’) tone, before which it becomes rising. This seems to combine the natural phonetic tendency for a neutral or unstressed syllable to rise somewhat preceding a relatively high pitch (or one starting high) with a factor of iconicity: the tone of the negative morpheme will always move in the opposite direction (or be followed by a change in direction) to that of the following verbal morpheme.

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25

historical, social and technological changes and conflicts, whereas conceptual prehensions would be internal ones of natural ‘drift’, the system aligning to universals (certain species of ‘eternal object’) that reflect — if only indirectly — the structure and teleology of human organisms. Communities do not, on the other hand, collectively recognize or imagine propositions and judgments of a higher order of complexity since these require the internal organization of individual speaker/hearers both to produce and to comprehend — they specifically require the ‘indicative’ prehension of logical subjects of propositions, and communities do not produce collective utterances about concrete nexūs (except perhaps via the projections of individual propagandists or demagogues). One may nevertheless question whether the unit of such processes is the concrescence of a single ‘actual occasion’, the concept lying at the core of the Whiteheadian framework — as regards the level of the individual self-organizing organism at least. Would an actual occasion at the level of the community display a ‘subjective aim’ for instance? If so, it would have to be — from from the perspective of the individual speaker — of the ‘hidden hand’ sort, much like the causal nexus behind the organized activity of ant colonies (see Keller 1999). Such an unconscious ‘subjective aim’ might in essence be no different from that of concrescences at any nexus level, i.e. be manifest as a general striving towards a state of maximal intensity of contrasts (‘balanced harmony’ as Whitehead calls it). This could be interpreted as the basic driving force behind ‘drift’, drawing language systems towards a state of maximal economy and expressiveness in the integration of the multiple strands of their historical input ‘data’ (and thus enabling optimal inter-communication amongst their constituent speakers); it may or may not be mediated by a constant pull towards ‘type’ (in the manner of Coseriu) or towards reduction of markedness in 11 the manner of Andersen (2001). Given the complexity and multiple compet11

Actually I would prefer to describe this in terms of the general ‘preparedness’ of a given language for a change of a certain type as opposed to another possible one, depending both on its prior history and on its relevant synchronic patterning. Stages in known grammaticalization routes — such as that leading from lexeme to adposition to case affix — may thus be “jumped over” or another turning altogether taken at a certain point in such a chain. Take for instance the fact that there is no sign in Mandarin Chinese of adpositions (from verbs) going further to case affixes since affixation as such is not a feature of Chinese — instead it appears to be developing applicative constructions (a head-marking pattern) with these morphemes, parallel with its common compound verb construction. Thus compare: (i)

tā gěi wo măi yibĕ n shū he give me buy one.CLASS book “He bought a book for me.”

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ing functionality of language this goal can never be fully or permanently reached but only endlessly strived after. One might even talk of the collective ‘subjective form’ of a macro-concrescence at this level; this further Whiteheadian term, referring to the ‘how’ of an actual occasion’s self-organization, would provide an overall cultural dimension to the evolution of the individual language in the manner of Humboldt. If one were to accept the reality of such macro-units, however, they would have to be acknowledged to be both more loosely and more abstractly organized than the actual occasion at the level of the individual organism. Note that Whitehead himself distinguished ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ grades of actual occasions according to the societies/nexūs in which they are embedded, but ‘higher’ refers here to a specific kind of (potentially conscious) complexity of organization, not to scale. The four kinds of actual occasion he mentions are: those in empty space, non-living occasions, living occasions, and conscious ones (Whitehead 1978: 177ff.). Communities 12 of speakers correspond to none of these. For Whitehead they are nexūs, not (ii)

wǒmài-gei tā sān běn I sell-give him three CLASS “I sold him three books.”

shū book

In Chukchi, on the other hand, a language making widespread use of incorporating structures and of case affixes both on nouns and on verbs (forming gerundives), certain verbal stems have gone directly to form new case affixes without traversing a stage of adpositions. Thus kopragt() “to the net”, from stem kupre- “net” plus jt- “go for” (plus an old dominant vowel harmony allative case marker - that only surfaces today in one dialect) — identical historically with “going for the net”. This is despite the fact that the language does have a few postpositions (following locative case-marked nominals). 12 The strictly ‘monadic’ or ‘quantumized’ interpretation of Whitehead’s philosophy as being based on only one kind of actual occasion operative on all levels of nexus (as assumed by Lucas 1989:160f.), is surely untenable. It is certainly inconsistent with a ‘wheels-withinwheels’ view of the complexity of biological and cognitive life — organisms consist after all of neurons and these of molecules composed of atoms, etc., each level typified by its own kinds, scales and speeds of concrescent processes, ranging from the minimal flash of the unstable atomic particle’s lifeline to — arguably — the single concrescent unfolding of the entire cosmos, all functioning ‘in parallel’ at any one moment in time. Nevertheless, it is easy to see why the later Whitehead (after the introduction of his ‘epochal’ theory of time in Process and Reality) might be interpreted this way, since he focussed largely on the individual organism (for similar reasons he is often accused — unjustly — of ‘panpsychism’). He stressed on the one hand that it is the organization of the nexus itself that determines the mode of unfolding of actual occasions at that level and, on the other, that there is a certain basic design to actual occasions at all levels (they all involve prehensions, subjective aims, satisfaction, etc.). But he also insisted that actual occasions have their ‘grades’ and differing internal structure (op. cit.:18f.). They differ in particular as regards the relationship between their ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ poles (bear in mind that the former concerns the prehension of — or reaction to — pure form/pattern, and has nothing to do with consciousness). One might

THE NON-LINEAR NATURE OF DIACHRONIC CHANGE

27

the actual occasions constituting them — he refers, for example, to the idealized nexus of ‘all speakers of Greek’, held together and defined by the unifying eternal object ‘Greek’. A hypothetical actual occasion on the level of the community of speakers would — as on any other level — have to be defined by multiple input and single output conditions (with no further external input occurring between the two), i.e. be defined in terms of a unitary change in the system. It would also have its own conceptual pole, where it prehends the complex eternal object of the language concerned, and a physical pole, namely the nexus of its constituent speakers. It is the shared eternal object that defines the nexus. Again as on the level of the individual speaker/hearer, such an actual occasion would fill an indeterminate duration in time. Any change in the system takes time to spread throughout the nexus, but the internal stages of a unitary concrescence towards its ‘satisfaction’ (the change in the system) could nevertheless be stated logically. A single phonological or semantic change may also interact with others, and polysemy is ubiquitous, as is dialectal and individual variation. Changes tend to spread through the nexus of speakers at varying rates, with a creative ‘cutting edge’ of innovation introduced by creative individuals or groups and not yet fully accepted (or encoded ‘emically’) by all members of the community. In fact, the precise delimitation of the speech community itself is, as I have claimed above, also to some degree indeterminate. If the resultant changes themselves can only be defined in terms of the system, i.e. the relevant eternal object, how can this Whiteheadian perspective on diachronic change be brought into line with diffusion and ‘wave theory’? The only way available is apparently to accept that the eternal object (e.g. some standard form of English) remains constant between one quantum leap and the next but that the nexus in which it finds ingression varies continuously over time as a wider and wider range of speakers adopts successive spreading changes. So while an actual occasion at the level of the individual speaker is determined by its physical pole conditions of input and the various subsidiary eternal objects drawn into its concrescence via prehensions at its conceptual pole, at the level of the community of speakers the unitary occasion would be determined by a single conceptual pole change associated with a varying extent of anchoring at its physical pole (the nexus of its speakers) as it works out its own ‘actualization’. But this contrasts both with smaller scale (e.g. neural or atomic) levels and with still broader scale physical world levels, since an actual occasion here would be at a higher level of abstraction than occasions on either the smaller or larger scales. It would only be ‘virtual’, the indirect result of the envisage the recurring distribution of this ‘ground plan’ of actual occasions across different grains or levels of reality as analogous with fractals (self-similarity ‘all the way down’).

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communicative activity of individual speakers. My conclusion is in fact that the notion ‘virtual (rather than actual) occasion’ is precisely what is needed to fill out the Whiteheadian scheme of things at this point and provide a conceptual handle on the holistic, non-linear 13 nature of language change. Crucially, it does not refer to self-organizing organisms, which is what the term ‘actual occasion’ on the level of living beings refers to, but to something more abstract (on the other hand, it does share something with Whitehead’s two lower grades of actual occasion listed above — ‘abstract’ should not be confused with ‘higher’ in this connection). Compare Coseriu’s term ‘virtual language’ (virtuelle Sprache) applying to the psychological aspects of language process (Coseriu 1975:82). This term is not quite the same as what I mean by ‘virtual occasion’ at the level of the community of speakers, since it also covers individual mental activity by a speaker, but it nevertheless points in the same direction.14 One may thus say that an eternal object like English changes through time via successive ‘virtual occasions’, consisting in turn of ‘virtual prehensions’ and ‘virtual subjective aims’. For the historical linguist (as pragmatic realist) such virtual processes are perfectly real. Since the prehensions concerned are both of the eternal object (Coseriu’s ‘System’) and of the nexus of speakers, this is quite compatible with Coseriu’s claim that diachronic change takes place via the ‘Norm’ of the society speaking the language rather than directly via its more abstract and idealized functional ‘System’ — in other words by individual speakers choosing from a pool of available synchronic variation just those variants that are given by society as most normative in that time and situation (or by their choosing to ignore them). One can regard ‘Norm’ as the interface between System and individual usage (habla/parole), and the notion of ‘virtual occasion’ precisely integrates the two levels. Norm is an ‘unstable state of equilibrium of the System’ (Coseriu 1975:97) and a change of Norm is usually gradual, spreading 13

One might consider the possibility also of still broader scale ‘virtual occasions’ beyond those defining individual diachronic changes. What, for instance, is the status of long-term changes like the alternating convergence and punctuation episodes described by Dixon? What of the changing relation of language systems to general ‘type(s)’? There is in principle no problem here within the Whiteheadian scheme of things since ‘eternal objects’ may refer to/find ingression in any scale of actuality. There are in theory eternal objects defining types of change at any level, from the microscopic to the macrocosmic. Eternal objects can be said to be hierarchically organized like Chinese boxes — the difficulty here is merely terminological, since this intrinsic ordering does not really belong to the eternal objects themselves (as Whitehead put it), but to the real world of nexūs of concrescent occasions they reflect. 14 For Coseriu langue in both its ‘social’ and its ‘individual’ aspects is ‘virtual’, in so far as it is purely ‘mental’ — as opposed to ‘impulses to speak’ and their realization in concrete speech acts and their enduring products.

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and overlapping. But from the point of view of System, change can still be step-wise; indeed it must be so since it is the eternal object of the System at any point in time that defines the extent of the community forming its physical basis. Diachronic change starts with change spreading among individual speakers but ends with a change to the eternal object itself. Multiple changes (often competing and criss-crossing) may be sweeping through the community of speakers and affecting in turn the complex layering of Norm, but the result to System (the ‘satisfaction’ of each successive virtual occasion) is a unitary adjustment of its constituent contrasts, either pertaining to single segments, to larger structural units, or to whole subsidiary systems. This may not be quite how Whitehead himself would have seen it, but recall that for him eternal objects are pure potentiality, emerging from actual occasions and their mutual relationships, so they represent already the locus of all ‘virtual’ reality. It is at all events on this abstract plane of eternal objects, of pure Pattern, that the link between the processes of individual cognition and those of diachronic change is to be found, namely in the concept of the ’virtual occasion’, abstracted from (but structurally reflecting) ‘actual occasions’ of individual linguistic activity. REFERENCES Abondolo, Daniel. 1998. The Uralic Languages. London: Routledge. Andersen, Henning, ed. 2001. Actualization: Linguistic change in progress. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Bates, Elizabeth & Brian MacWhinney. 1987. “A functionalist approach to the acquisition of grammar”. Functionalism in Linguistics ed. by René Dirven & Vilém Fried, 209–264. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Bergsland, Knut. 1986. “Comparative Eskimo-Aleut phonology and lexicon”. Journal de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 80.63–137. Calvin, William H. 1996. The Cerebral Code. Cambridge, Mass. & London: A Bradford Book (The MIT Press). Coseriu, Eugenio. 1975. Sprachtheorie und allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. (Orig. ed.: Teoría del lenguaje y lingüística general. Madrid: Gredos, 1962.) Croft, William. 2000. Explaining Language Change: An evolutionary approach. Harlow, Essex: Longman. Dixon, R.M.W. 1997. The Rise and Fall of Languages. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. Enfield, Nick J. 2001. “On genetic and areal linguistics in mainland South-East Asia: parallel polyfunctionality of ‘acquire’”. Areal Diffusion and Genetic Inheritance ed. by A.Y. Aikhenvald & R.M.W. Dixon, 255–290. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Fortescue, Michael. 1998. Language Relations across Bering Strait. London & New York: Cassell Academic. Fortescue, Michael. 2001. Pattern and Process: A Whiteheadian perspective on linguistics. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Hopper, Paul J.1990. “Where do words come from?”. Studies in Typology and Diachrony for Joseph H. Greenberg ed. by William Croft, Keith Denning & Suzanne Kemmer, 151–160. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Janhunen, Juha. 1982. “On the structure of Proto-Uralic”. Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen 44.23–42. Keller, Rudi. 1990. Sprachwandel: Von der unsichtbaren Hand in der Sprache. Tübingen: Francke. Lucas, George R. 1989. The Rehabilitation of Whitehead. Albany: State University of New York Press. Marcantonio, Angela. 2002. The Uralic Language Family. (= Publications of the Philological Society, 35). Oxford: Blackwell. Rédei, Karolj. 1988. Uralisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Renfrew, Colin. 1999. “Time depth, convergence theory, and innovation in Proto-Indo-European: ‘Old Europe’ as a PIE linguistic area”. The Journal of Indo-European Studies 27:3/4.257–293 Sammallahti, Pekka. 1988. “Historical phonology of the Uralic languages”. The Uralic Languages ed. by Denis Sinor, 478–535. Leiden & New York: Brill. Thomason, Sarah Grey & Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Watkins, Calvert. 2001. “An Indo-European linguistic area: ancient America”. Areal Diffusion and Genetic Inheritance ed. by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald & R.M.W. Dixon, 44–63. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Whitehead, Alfred North. 1978. Process and Reality: An essay in cosmology (corrected ed.). New York: The Free Press. (Original ed. New York: Macmillan, 1929.)

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APPENDIX Species of eternal object (‘figurae’) relevant to language as Pattern A. Concepts i. predicates (of activity, state, quality, etc.) ii. logical subject types B. Relational/structural patterns i. morphosyntactic ii. phonological iii. (co)referential iv. semantic C. Types of subjective form i. discourse modulation functions ii. epistemic stance iii. validatory attitudes D. Intentional types i. discourse acts ii. strategies (and patterns of inference) iii. behavioural norms iv. background communicative principles E. Nexus types i. contexts of situation ii. social/historical embedding iii. signs (word types, constructions, etc.) Types of prehension involved in language as Process 1. Physical 2. Conceptual 3. Hybrid 4. Indicative 5. Propositional 6. Intuitive judgments 7. Anticipatory

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EXPLANATIONS, OR ...? SOME METATHEORETICAL REFLECTIONS ON A PREVALENT TRADITION WITHIN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

BRIT MÆHLUM Universitetet i Trondheim Introduction This article’s point of departure is the so-called ‘Scandinavian vowel shift’, i.e. the qualitative changes that went on within the row of long, back vowels in the Norwegian and Swedish region after the Old Norse period. My real agenda however, is located within the area of philosophy of science. While referring to the more or less codified explanatory principles behind the Scandinavian sound change, I will analyse certain aspects of the dominant research strategies within historical linguistics: which are the prevalent explanations within this scientific tradition, and why have these principles become the authoritative ones? One of the essential questions is therefore, where did the scientific ideals derive from that have been so successful and influential within the discipline? And have these ideals been sufficient in giving us the answers we have been asking for, basically, why did the changes take place? Let us have a brief look at the changes that restructured the long, back vowels in the Norwegian and Swedish but not the Danish area in the post-Old Norse period; see Figure 1. 1.

FRONT

BACK

FRONT

CENTRE

BACK

/i:/

/y:/

/u:/ <ú>

/i:/

/y:/

/:/ <ú>

/u:/ <ó>

/e:/

/ø:/

/o:/ <ó>

/e:/

/ø:/

/:/ <á>

/æ:/

/æ:/

a: Old Norse long vowels

/o:/ <á>

b: Post-Old Norse long vowels

Figure 1: Post Old-Norse ‘vowel shift’.

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Figure 1 shows the vowel system before (a) and after (b) the ‘vowel shift’ had been working. We can see there was an internal movement affecting the back vowel qualities, with the result that some phonemes acquired a ”higher” quality, while one of them — the Old Norse <ú> — became more fronted and got into the new central position. The dominating and, to a certain extent, authoritative explanation of these changes over the last half century has been André Martinet’s (1952) principle of phonological ‘chain movements’. A chain movement refers to a situation where a series of sound changes takes place, each one influencing the next. Perhaps the most famous incident of such a process is ‘The Great Vowel Shift’ in English, which is often cited as a classic example of a chain movement. Regarding the Scandinavian vowel shift, there has been controversy as to whether the successive movement in the vowel qualities was a push-chain or a drag-chain process, respectively (see, e.g. Eliasson 1983; Torp 1982:55ff.). This concerns where in the chain the changes were initiated and the direction of the subsequent movements. In a push-chain the whole process is assumed to begin at the bottom or back end of the chain, and each sound then “pushes” its closest neighbour out of place. Conversely, in a drag-chain, the first movement is assumed to start at the top or front end of the chain, and empty slots are left in the chain, which other sounds move up to fill. The arguments in favour of one or the other of these principles related to the Scandinavian vowel shift are of little relevance for my purpose here. The important aspect in this context is the theoretical presuppositions underlying these modes of explanation. And within such a general frame, push-chain and drag-chain are virtually similar processes. I will return more specifically to the inner nature of chain movements later (see Section 3). Firstly, however, there are certain aspects of linguistic historiography and its relationship to the general history of science that I want to focus on. Within the frame of philosophy of science Within linguistics in general and in historical linguistics in particular, there has without doubt, been a strong tradition to analyse language as an autonomous structure. Language has been considered as a natural object, above all as a living organism, more or less analogous to different kinds of physical or biological structures. In short, it is the so-called “autonomous linguistics” (see e.g., Newmeyer 1986), which has possessed an indisputable hegemony within the linguistic field — as opposed to paradigms founded more explicitly within the humanities. The opposition between these two lines has also been characterised as a contrast between a ‘speaker-free’ versus a ‘speaker-centred’ linguistics (see Lass 1980:122). 2.

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Not surprisingly, it is within the general history of science we find the presuppositions for the hegemonic position of the autonomous, “speaker-free” tradition. Basically, this has to do with the internal relationship between natural sciences and humanities. A highly abbreviated version of this rather wellknown history shows how the exact natural sciences had the position as the guiding star in the scientific world at the beginning of the 19th century, the initial phase of modern humanities in the Western world. Thus, from the very beginning natural sciences held a position as the scientific ideal for the newly established disciplines within humanities — such as linguistics. Within this climate of opinion, it was not only legitimate, but rather a qualification of the “scientificness” of a new paradigm, to consider its own objects of inquiry as analogous with natural objects, inspired by practices within chemistry, geology, biology, comparative anatomy, mathematics (cf. Koerner 1995; Öhman 1994). Related to language, these analogies with natural sciences appeared to be particularly successful, because — to quote Roger Lass (1980:112): “[…] some aspects of language can be formally represented in such a way that it LOOKS LIKE an autonomous object (whether it ‘really is’ or not)”. This stock of ideas was promoted throughout the 19th century and had a prosperous period during most of the 20th century, too, sustained by an omnipresent positivism, or at least positivistic inspired ideals, which underpinned linguistics in general. According to such ideals, language can — or should be — treated as an objective and “unbiased” structure, something that in certain respects lives its own life, like a natural or organic being. If we then take a look at the types of explanations that have been prevalent within the field of historical linguistics throughout most of this period, they complete this picture in a neat way. As a consequence of the focus on language as a formal, natural, and objective system, there has been a strong inclination to look for various internal, autonomous forces that have influenced these natural systems, and thus brought about changes. The explanans (i.e. the explaining factor) has in other words been located in different internal linguistic domains. This means that the explanation of a linguistic change has been sought within language itself — as a capacity of an inherent property, a certain disposition, or an inner drift. This strong impact from natural sciences has in general had numerous consequences for the preferred explanations within historical linguistics — as, for example, the inclination to search for causal, predictable, and linear mechanisms behind the linguistic changes. There is no time here to go further into these topics, but a highly relevant perspective, however, is to highlight the strong continuity in these theoretical foundations, from the beginning of the

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1800’s and until today. Lightfoot (1999:254) has given the following characteristics of this ongoing practice: The classical view of science has dominated work on language change now for 200 years [...]. Many nineteenth-century scholars [...] believed that they had discovered laws of change [...]. Twentieth-century researchers have sought historical universals, diachronic continua, theories of change, theories of grammaticalization, and whatnot. In all cases, they were looking for straight-line explanations for changes, which would allow long-term predictions [...]. This desire for a longterm determinist theory, under which there are endogenous reasons for a language to change and to become better in some way, occurs even in recent generative work. (my emphases, B.M.)

Back to the chain movements — but still within a theoretical frame How do the chain movements fit into this scientific landscape? I would say, perfectly well. The explanatory power of the chain movement principle is first and foremost based on some kind of auto-mechanical principle within language itself; a successive row of changes carried through as a consequence of the inherent oppositions within the phonological system. The following is an application of the drag-chain model to the Scandinavian vowel shift, with focus on the explanatory mechanisms the principle of drag-chain seems to presuppose. Figure 2 gives an idea of how these movements may have been going on in the row of long back vowels, according to a conventional dragchain model. 3.

FRONT

[CENTRE]

/i:/

/y:/

/e:/

/ø:/

←

BACK

(3)

/u:/ <ú> ↑ (2)

/o:/ <ó> ↑ (1)

/æ:/

/:/ <á>

Figure 2: A representation of the drag-chain-principle.

The initial change, number (1) in the model, is assumed to have occurred when Old Norse <ú>, which at this time was a back vowel, takes a horizontal step forward in the system, where (in the Old Norse period) there was an empty

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— SOME METATHEORETICAL REFLECTIONS

37

slot. Thus the <ú> gets a new and central quality, viz. /:/. With this step, however, a new empty slot is created within the system; i.e. where the <ú> was before. This structural ”gap” is in the next round filled, when the <ó> moves one step upwards and adopts he former <ú>-qualities. Finally, the long <á>, which in Old Norse was a very low, rounded and back vowel, makes a corresponding movement into the gap of the former <ó>. And the whole transformation is eventually fulfilled, as a process of three successive stages. The essential aspect here is why these three changes are assumed to have happened at all — according to the logic of the drag-chain mechanisms. Here we have arrived at one of the crucial points connected to these explanations. The whole idea of drag-chain movements is based upon a principle where sound systems at certain points in history appear to have been asymmetrical or disharmonic in some way — reflected as holes in the systems, or so-called ‘structural gaps’. Such gaps are, however, rather quickly eliminated, due to mechanisms that have the function of re-establishing a maximum harmonic and symmetrical structure. And for the sake of clarity, a drag-chain process is supposed to have such a harmonising function. This way of explaining language change thus seems to be a paradigmatic example of a teleological explanation. The change is supposed to be purposeful or directional in a specific way, and explanans is found in the goal, i.e. telos, of the whole process. A number of controversial questions are actualised by teleological explanations in linguistics (see e.g., Vincent 1978; Lass 1980: 64ff.; Itkonen 1983:31–34; Eliasson 1983; and for a recent overview, Croft 2000:66 ff.). Here I will approach one of these questions: one of the basic dimensions of explanations like these is that they seem to ascribe to language a will of its own. The linguistic structure seems to possess control of its own future, an authority to be in command of its own fate. Accordingly, it may be a legitimate inference to characterise the mechanisms effectuating linguistic change as some kind of language-internal auto-mechanism. However, there are other ontological alternatives, too, and I will discuss a couple of them. Rather than locating the explaining mechanisms within the linguistic structure itself, it could be a plausible solution describing them as properties in the mental apparatus of the language users, a psychological or cognitive drift, helping to make language as good and beneficial as possible. Both these alternatives, however, the language-internal as well as the psychological, leave us with a number of annoying questions. The idea of inherent mechanisms like these is based on the assumption that these processes are general, in the sense of natural and universal, and thus relevant for any language. Regarding the supposed harmonising function of drag-chain processes, it is highly relevant then to ask why some languages come to that unhappy situ-

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ation in the first place, so that they diverge from such ideal harmonious structures. And how anomalous and asymmetrical must a situation become, before processes like drag-chain or push-chain mechanisms come into effect? And not least, how do we handle the irritating fact that not all languages in the world fulfil these prescribed harmonious orders? In addition to these annoying aspects, there is a troublesome therapeutic dimension underlying these types of explanations, as have been emphasised by a number of linguists (see, specifically, Lass 1980; but also Lightfoot 1999). With a drag-chain mechanism there is a hole in the system that is being repaired, i.e. treated with a special kind of curative therapy, whereas with a push-chain process there is a prophylactic arrangement going on to avoid unhappy mergers in the vowel system. Whether we locate these highly intelligent mechanisms within the linguistic system or within the mental capacity of the language users, the logical problems seem to be insuperable. There is, however, a third alternative in this ontological discussion. According to this viewpoint, the control and steering mechanisms in the chain movements have little or nothing to do with the object of inquiry itself, but rather with the person who is doing the analysis, i.e. the linguist. This means that the idea of harmonious structures may be seen as an epistemological and heuristic need in the scientist’s mind and psychology, more than characterising inherent properties of the object of study. In other words, this has to do with the meta-language and metaphors that we are using in our scientific practice. Within historical linguistics it is, paradoxically enough, the strongly positivistic oriented Roger Lass who has conducted some admirable inquiries about these “non-positivistic” topics. One of Lass’ claims is that what makes an explanation attractive and successful, is some criteria of simplicity, intelligibility, and not least aesthetics: I think that we often judge [...] the ‘explanatory’ power of a statement or model on the basis of the PLEASURE, of a very special kind, that it affords us [...]. This pleasure is essentially ‘architectonic’, the structure we impose on the chaos that confronts us is beautiful in some way, it makes things cohere that otherwise would not, and it gives us a sense of having transcended the primal disorder (Lass 1980:157).

What Lass focuses on here, is the risk we run as scientists in ascribing to our data certain patterns and qualities that may be regarded as natural properties. We are then in danger of ignoring the fact that these qualities may be, first and foremost, intellectual, heuristic constructions, helping us to make order out of a more or less chaotic reality. If we apply these ideas to the idea of drag chainprocesses, a number of questions become urgent: What are the independent

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data affirming that certain phonological structures are “symmetrical” or “harmonious”? Are such characteristics really naturally given qualities? And if they are, which are then the criteria for claiming that something has become “asymmetrical” or “disharmonious”? If we take a look at Figure 1 in the preceding (Section 1), is the post-Old Norse vowel system actually more harmonious than it was before the change? In my opinion it could just as well be the other way around; in several respects the structure of the Old Norse system looks more neat and symmetrical than it was after the changes. The Norwegian philosopher Dagfinn Føllesdal (cf. Føllesdal 1973) has discussed the vigorous inclination within science more generally to try to “put everything” into well-formed and harmonious patterns. It seems to be an “[…] incurable realistic tendency” in a simple theory, he says. “Whether we like it or not, we feel that a simple harmonious theory reflects an ontological order […]” (Føllesdal 1973:261). At the same time it is important to underline that such theories have considerable significance in scientific endeavour. The intrinsic danger turns up at the moment when the limits between theory and reality become diffuse or non-existent. Then the theory has attained a status analogous with reality, or it may even have displaced reality. I will not assert that it is such an ontological displacement that has taken place in connection with the chain movements, but it could be worthwhile to consider the possibility. Maybe push-chain and drag-chain processes first of all represent some mental “maps”, telling us theoretical, idealised “macro-stories” of linguistic change, but at the same time making us inclined to ignore all the “micro-stories” that constitute these narratives. The Swedish linguist Gun Widmark (1998) has characterised this dilemma in the following way, related to the phenomenon of chain movements: the crucial theoretical problem with these changes is what is happening during the process, on the way from one station to another. Linguists are used to neglecting more or less the trip itself, and focusing only on the beginning and the end, she says (Widmark 1998:95). Concluding remarks Concludingly, I will briefly comment on the explanatory power of models like the push-chain and the drag-chain models. Do mechanisms like these really give us an explanation of, for example, the Scandinavian vowel shift? In the light of the previous discussion, my answer here may be rather obvious. But let us for a moment take for granted the existence of the mechanisms that are supposed to be involved in the chain movements. Whether we localise these mechanisms within language itself or in the mental capacity of the language users, we are all the same confronted with a theoretical dilemma: interpreting a linguistic change with the label ‘chain movement’ is first and 4.

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foremost a description of the processes that may have been going on. As such, these depictions give us an account of a number of what and how questions connected to the process of change, but nothing about the why. Why was the whole process initiated in the first place; what kind of motives were at work? And why was the innovation in the second run transmitted and spread so that it actually became a real change? This is a criticism that has been put forward more generally against the autonomous tradition within historical linguistics (see, e.g., McMahon 1994:47): one has more or less neglected the actuation problem (why a change begins) as well as the implementation or transmission problem (how the change is spread). Instead, one has been satisfied with producing a set of elegant, descriptive, language-internal principles. And as a consequence of some kind of analytical contamination, these descriptions have been given the status of explanations. Within such an autonomous tradition, explanandum and explanans both seem to derive from the same internal linguistic domain. This is often considered a dubious practice in itself (see, e.g., Faarlund 1990:38–39; Keller 1994: 75–76). But it appears to be even more troublesome if one takes into consideration a fundamental comprehension shared among more and more linguists, namely the conviction that the motives behind language change are genuinely cultural phenomena. The consequence of this view is that linguistic change has to be considered as a historical process, located within a socio-cultural frame, and not as some kind of natural process subordinated to laws of nature. If this is accepted as a basic presupposition, it should also prevent us from regarding language as an autonomous entity. Language cannot be detached from its users or the situations in which they use it. On the contrary, linguists have to bring people back into the language — in order to understand why language is changing. This way of analysing linguistic change represents a genuinely critical alternative to what has been “mainstream” linguistics for the last two hundred years. In the last decades, however, this alternative way of practicing historical linguistics has been accentuated by an increasing number of scientists, represented by, for example, Michael Shapiro (1991), Henning Andersen (1973, 1989), Raimo Anttila (1993), and Rudi Keller (1994).1 A unifying char1

This list may be expanded by names like William Croft and Salikoko S. Mufwene and their contributions Explaining Language Change. An evolutionary approach (2000) and The Ecology of Language Evolution (2001), respectively. There is, however, a decisive difference between these two and Shapiro et al. in the preceding, for although both Croft and Mufwene have what I would call a sociolinguistics-like and humanistic approach in their way of handling language change, they at the same time use actively and very explicitly certain biological processes as both a device and a theoretical framework in their analyses. This may be looked upon

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acteristic of these somewhat differing approaches is their attention on language change as something that needs to be analysed within a historical, semiotic, 2 and thus hermeneutic context. The motives behind linguistic change have to be receded from language-internal, structural levels and instead situated within domains where the users of the language are focused. According to such an approach, it is not language itself that changes, but rather the language users who change their way of using it. The crucial factors enabling us to explain the phenomenon “language change” have, accordingly, to be localised to the social and intentional nature of human beings, and not to the language system as a genetic and biological entity. REFERENCES Andersen, Henning. 1973. “Abductive and deductive change”. Language 49. 765–793. Andersen, Henning. 1989. “Understanding linguistic innovations”. Language Change: Contributions to the study of its causes ed. by Leiv Egil Breivik & Ernst Håkon Jahr, 5–27. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Anttila, Raimo. 1993. “Change and Metatheory at the beginning of the 1990s: the primacy of history”. Historical Linguistics: Problems and perspectives ed. by Charles Jones, 42–73. London & New York: Longman. Croft, William. 2000. Explaining Language Change. An evolutionary approach. London & New York: Longman. Eliasson, Stig 1983. “Is sound change teleological? The case of the Central Scandinavian vowel shift ”. Manuscript. Føllesdal, Dagfinn. 1973. “Vitenskap og virkelighetsforståelse”. Kirke og kultur 78.258–272. Faarlund, Jan Terje. 1990. Syntactic Change: Toward a theory of historical syntax. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Itkonen, Esa. 1983. Causality in Linguistic Theory: A critical investigation into the philosophical and methodological foundations of ‘non-autonomous’ linguistics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Keller, Rudi. 1994. On Language Change: The invisible hand in language. London & New York: Routledge. Koerner, E.F. Konrad.1995. “The natural science impact on theory formation in 19th and 20th century linguistics”. Professing Linguistic Historiography ed. by E.F. Konrad Koerner, 47–76. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. as merely an analogical or metaphorical way of talking about some already developed theoretical constructs (cf. Croft 2001:11). But at the same time, it is hardly possible not to consider such an approach as an opportunistic way of legitimising one’s own research strategy — by appealing to certain established theories within the natural sciences, in this case evolutionary theory. 2 For a further discussion and analysis of these approaches, see Mæhlum (1999:154 –214).

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Lass, Roger. 1980. On Explaining Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lass, Roger. 1997. Historical Linguistics and Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lightfoot, David. 1999. The Development of Language: Acquisition, change and evolution. Oxford: Blackwell. Martinet, André. 1952. “Function, structure, and sound change”. Word 8.1–32. McMahon, April M.S. 1994. Understanding Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2001. The Ecology of Language Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mæhlum, Brit. 1999. Mellom Skylla og Kharybdis: Forklaringsbegrepet i historisk språkvitenskap. Oslo: Novus. Newmeyer, Frederick J. 1986. The Politics of Linguistics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Shapiro, Michael. 1991. The sense of Change: Language as history. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Torp, Arne. 1982. Norsk og nordisk før og nå. Oslo, Bergen & Tromsø: Universitetsforlaget. Vincent, Nigel. 1978. “Is sound change teleological?”. Recent Developments in Historical Phonology ed. by Jacek Ficiak, 409–430. The Hague: Mouton. Widmark, Gun. 1998. Stora vokaldansen. Om kvantitativa och kvalitativa förändringar i fornsvenskans vokalsystem. Uppsala: Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien för svensk folkkultur. Öhman, Sven. 1994. “Two hundred years of “scientificness” in linguistics”. Proceedings of the 14th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics and The 8th Conference of Nordic and General Linguistics, 16–21 August 1993 ed. by Jens Allwood & al., vol. 1, 17–30. (= Gothenburg Papers in Theoretical Linguistics, 69.) Göteborg: University of Göteborg.

QUANTIFYING THE FUNCTIONAL LOAD OF PHONEMIC OPPOSITIONS, DISTINCTIVE FEATURES, AND SUPRASEGMENTALS DINOJ SURENDRAN & PARTHA NIYOGI University of Chicago Introduction Languages convey information using several methods, and rely to different extents on different methods. The amount of reliance of a language on a method is termed the ‘functional load’ of the method in the language. The term goes back to early Prague School days (Mathesius 1929; Jakobson 1931; Trubetzkoy 1939), though then it was usually taken to refer only to the importance of phonemic contrasts, particularly binary oppositions. We recently described a general framework to find the functional load (FL) of phonemic oppositions, distinctive features, suprasegmentals, and other phonological contrasts (Surendran & Niyogi 2003). It is a generalization of previous work on quantifying functional load in linguistics (Hockett 1955; Greenberg 1959; Wang 1967) and automatic speech recognition (Carter 1987). While still an approximation, it has already produced results not obtainable with previous definitions of functional load. For instance, Surendran & Levow (2004) found that the functional load of tone in Mandarin is as high as that of vowels. This means it is at least as important to identify the tone of a Mandarin syllable, as it is to identify its vowels. King (1967) notes that Mathesius (1931:148) “regarded functional load as one part of a complete phonological description of a language along with the roster of phonemes, phonemic variants, distinctive features, and the rest.” We agree with this view. While we have an interest in any role functional load might have in sound change, our primary concern here is that a historical linguist who wants to investigate such a role has the computational tools to do so. The outline of this contribution is as follows. First, in Section 2, we give an example of how functional load values can be used to investigate a hypothesis regarding sound change. Then, in Sections 3 and 4, we describe a framework for functional load in increasing levels of generality, starting with the 1.

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limited form proposed by Hockett (1955). Several examples, both abstract and empirical, are provided. Example: Testing the Martinet Hypothesis in a Cantonese merger One factor determining whether phonemes x and y merge in a language is the perceptual distance between them. Another factor, suggested by Martinet (1933, also see Peeters 1992), is the functional load FL(x,y) of the x–y opposition, i.e. how much the language relies on telling apart x and y. Martinet hypothesized that a high FL(x,y) leads to a lower likelihood of a merger. The only computational investigation of this hypothesis thus far is that of King (1967), who found no evidence that it was true. Doubts have been raised to his methodology (Hockett 1967), and to his overly harsh conclusion that the hypothesis was false. However, while King’s work had limitations, it was done in a time of limited computing resources and was a major advance in talking about functional load qualitatively. Sadly, it was not followed up. A full test of the Martinet Hypothesis requires examples of mergers in different languages, with appropriate (pre-merger) corpora for each case. We only have one example, but this suffices for illustrative purposes. In the second half of the 20th century, n merged with l in Cantonese in word-initial position (Zee 1999). For such a recent merger, corpus data is available. We used a word-frequency list derived from CANCORP (Lee & al. 1996), a corpus of Cantonese adult–child speech, which has coded n and l as they would have occurred before the merger. It is not a large corpus, and its nature means that there is a higher percentage of shorter words than is normal. However, it is appropriate since mergers are most likely to occur as children learn a language. Leaving definitions for later, we obtained the value 0.00090 for FL(n,l), where the n–l opposition was only lost in word-initial position. Such a small number might tempt one to conclude that this is indeed an example of the loss of a contrast with low functional load. However, that would be premature, as the absolute value for the load of a contrast is meaningless by itself. It can only become meaningful when compared to loads of other contrasts. Table 1 (in Appendix A) shows the FL values for all binary consonantal oppositions in Cantonese, when the opposition was lost only in word-initial position. This gives a much better sense of how small or large FL(n,l) is. However, ‘much better’ does not mean ‘definite’, and linguistic knowledge is required to interpret the data. The key question is which of the 171 oppositions of Table 1 should be compared to the n–l opposition. Consider the following possibilities: 2.

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1. All 171 oppositions are comparable. Of these, 121 (74%) have a lower FL than the n–l opposition. Thus, the n–l opposition had a moderately high importance compared with consonantal oppositions. 2. On the other hand, several of those pairs seem irrelevant for the purpose of mergers. Perhaps only those pairs that are likely to merge should be considered. While it is not clear what ‘likely to merge’ means, let us suppose for argument’s sake that only consonants that have a place of articulation in common (consonants with secondary articulations have two places) can merge. In this case, only coronal consonants should be considered, namely h h n, l, t, t , s, ts, ts . Of the 21 binary coronal oppositions, 10 have a larger functional load than the n–l opposition, and 10 have a smaller functional load. Thus, the n–l opposition was of average importance compared to other coronal oppositions. 3. Yet a third point to bear in mind for interpretative purposes is that the phoneme that vanished in the n–l merger was n. Resorting to blatant anthropomorphism for a moment, if n had to disappear (in word-initial position), why did it have to merge with l rather than with some other consonant? In this case, only consider the 18 oppositions of the form n–x, where x is any consonant other than n. Of these, only FL(n,m)=0.00091 is higher than FL(n,l). Even when allowing for random variation in the FL values obtained, it is clear that the n–l opposition was very important compared to binary oppositions involving n and other consonants. There are, of course, other possible interpretations. The key point to note is that functional load values should be interpreted with respect to other functional load values, and the choice of ‘other’ makes a difference. The most conservative conclusion based on the above observations is that this is an example of the loss of a binary opposition with non-low functional load. More examples in other languages must be analyzed before we can make further generalizations. We hope we have at least whetted the reader’s appetite for functional load data. Defining the functional load of binary oppositions Binary oppositions of phonemes are the most intuitive kind of phonological contrast. As Meyerstein (1970) noted in his survey of functional load, this was the only type of contrast most linguists attempted to quantify. 3.

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Perhaps the most common definition of FL(x,y) — the functional load of the x–y opposition — is the number of minimal word pairs that are distinguished solely by the opposition. The major flaw with this definition is that it ignores word frequency. Besides, it is not generalizable to a form that takes into account syllable and word structure, or suprasegmentals. We shall say no more about it. Hockett’s definition The first definition of FL(x,y) that took word frequency into account was that of Hockett (1955). He did not actually perform any computations with this definition, although Wang (1967) did. The definition was based on the information theoretic methods introduced by Shannon (1951), and assumes that language is a sequence of phonemes whose entropy can be computed. This sequence is infinite, representing all possible utterances in the language. We can associate with a language/sequence L a positive real number H(L) representing how much information L transmits. Suppose x and y are phonemes in L. If they cannot be distinguished, then each occurrence of x or y in L can be replaced by the occurrence of a new (archi-)phoneme to get a new language Lxy. Then the functional load of the x–y opposition is as in (1): 3.1

(1)

FL(x,y) = [ H(L) – H(L xy) ] / H(L)

This can be interpreted as the fraction of information lost by L when the x–y opposition is lost. Computational details It is not possible to use (1) in practice. We now give the details of how it can be made usable, taking care to note the additional parameters that are required. To find the entropy H(L) of language/sequence L, we have to assume that L is generated by a stationary and ergodic stochastic process (Cover & Thomas, 1991). This assumption is not true, but is true enough for our purposes. We need it because the entropy of a sequence is a meaningless concept — one can only compute the entropy of a stationary and ergodic stochastic process. Therefore, we define H(L) to be the entropy of this process or, more precisely, the entropy of the process’s stationary distribution. Intuitively, this can be thought of as follows: suppose there are two native speakers of L in a room. When one speaks, i.e. produces a sequence of 3.2

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phonemes, the other one listens. Suppose the listener fails to understand a phoneme and has to guess its identity based on her knowledge of L. H(L) refers to the uncertainty in guessing; the higher it is, the harder it is to guess the phoneme, and the less redundant L is. Unfortunately, we will never have access to all possible utterances in L, only a finite subset of them. This means we must make more assumptions: that L is generated by a k-order Markov process, for some finite non-negative integer k. This means that the probability distribution on any phoneme of L depends on the k phonemes that occurred before it. In our speaker–listener analog above, this means that the only knowledge of L that the listener can use to guess the identity of a phoneme is the identity of the k phonemes preceding it and the distribution of (k + 1)-grams in L. An ngram simply refers to a sequence of n units, in this case phonemes. The uncertainty in guessing, with this limitation, is denoted by Hk (L), and decreases as k increases. A classic theorem of Shannon (1951) shows that H k(L) approaches H(L) as k becomes infinite. The finite subset of L that we have access to is called a corpus, S. This is a large, finite sequence of phonemes. As S could be any subset of L, we have to speak of H kS(L) instead of Hk(L). If Xk+1 is the set of all possible (k + 1)-grams and Dk+1 is the probability distribution on X k+1, so that each (k + 1)-gram x in X has probability p(x), then (2)

HkS (L) = [– x X p(x) log2 p(x) ] / (k + 1)

There are several ways of estimating Dk+1 from S. The simplest is based on unsmoothed counts of (k + 1)-grams in S. Suppose c(x) is the number of times that (k + 1)-gram x appears in S, and c(Xk+1) = xXk+1 c(x), then (3)

p(x) = c(x) / c(Xk+1)

To illustrate, suppose we have a toy language K with phonemes a, u and t. All we know about K is in a corpus S = “atuattatuatatautuaattuua”. If we assume K is generated by a 1-order Markov process, then X2 = {aa, at, au, ta, tt, tu, ua, ut, uu} and c(aa) = 1, c(at) = 6, c(au) = 1, c(ta) = 3, c(tt) = 2, c(tu) = 4, c(ua) = 4, c(ut) = 1, c(uu) = 1. The sum of these counts is c(X2) = 23. D2 is estimated from these counts: p(aa) =1/23, p(at) = 6/23, etc. Finally H1,S = (1/2) [ (1/23) log2 (23/1) + (6/23) log 2 (23/6) + … + (1/23) log2 (23/1) ] = 2.86 / 2 = 1.43. In other words, a computationally feasible version of (1) is (4): (4)

FLkS (x,y) = [ H kS (L) – HkS.xy (L xy) ] / HkS (L)

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S.xy is the corpus S with each occurrence of x or y replaced by that of a new phoneme. It represents Lxy in the same way that S represents L. FL kS(x,y) can no longer be interpreted as the fraction of information lost when the x–y opposition is lost, as such an interpretation would only be true if L was generated by a k-order Markov process. However, by comparing several values obtained with the same parameters, as we did with the Cantonese merger example of the previous section, we can interpret this value relatively. Returning to our toy example, suppose we want to know the functional load of the a–u opposition with the same k and S. We create a new corpus S.au with each a or u replaced by a new phoneme V. Then S.au = “VtVVttVtVVtVtVVtVVVttVVV”, c(Vt) = 7, c(VV) = 7, c(tt) = 2, c(tV) = 7, and eventually H1,S.au = (1/2) [ (7/23) log2 (23/7) + (7/23) log2 (23/7) + (2/23) log2 (23/2) + (7/23) log2 (23/7)] = 1.87/2 = 0.94. Then the functional load FL1,S(a,u) = (1.43 – 0.94) / 1.43 = 0.34. Robustness to k (Markov order) It would be nice to have some assurance that the values used for k and S in (4) make little difference to our interpretation of the values we get. Surprisingly, there has been no mention, let alone study, of this problem in the functional load literature. This may be because it is mathematically clear that different choices of k and S (e.g. different k for the same S) result in different FL values. However, there is a loophole. We have already said that FL values should be interpreted relative to other FL values. Once we accept this relativity, then preliminary experiments suggest that interpretations are often robust to different choices of k and S. For example, we computed the functional load of all consonantal oppositions in English with k=0 and k=3 using the ICSI subset of the Switchboard corpus (Godfrey & al. 1992; Greenberg 1996) of hand-transcribed spontaneous telephone conversations of US English speakers. Figure 1 (in Appendix B) shows how FL 0,Swbd(x,y) and FL3,Swbd(x,y) compare for all pairs of consonants x and y. The correlation is above 0.9 (p<<0.001), indicating that one is quite predictable from the other. This is surprising, since the k=0 model does not use any context at all, and is simply based on phoneme frequencies. 3.3

Generalizing to sequences of units other than phonemes The problems with modeling language as a sequence of phonemes are manifold. There is no way to account for prosody, tones, syllable structure, word structure, phoneme deletion/insertion, etc. 3.4

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Many of these problems can be fixed by modeling language as a sequence of discrete units of some type, such as phonemes, morphemes, syllables, or words. We shall call an arbitrary type T, and a unit of that type a Tunit. Much sophistication can go into the definition of a type: for example, a word can have several components representing its phonemic and prosodic (and even syntactic and semantic) structure. This permits the kind of hierarchical definition advocated by Rischel (1961) and implemented to a limited extent by Kuč era (1963). It also permits us to find the functional load of a much larger class of phonological contrasts than previously envisaged. It does not get around the problems of cohort-based language variability models pointed out by Wittgott & Chen (1993). Everything said in the definition above for phonemes can be said for Tunits. This means that there are now three parameters going into the definition of H and FL, and we must speak of HTkS(L) and FLTkS(x,y) instead of H(L) and FL(x,y). The formula in (1) is now that in (5): (5)

FLTkS(x,y) = [ H TkS (L) – HTkS.xy (L xy) ] / HTkS (L)

Table 2 (in Appendix A) shows the functional load of all binary consonantal oppositions in American English using the Switchboard corpus, with T = ‘syllable’ and k = 0. A syllable here is just a phoneme sequence. 3. 5 Robustness to corpus used It is a plain fact that the entropy of a language depends on the corpus used — it can even be used to distinguish between authors in the same language (Kontoyannis 1997). However, as functional load values are a ratio of entropies, and are to be interpreted relatively anyway, we can hope they will not be as corpus-dependent as raw entropy values. To test this, we computed the values in Table 2 with Baayen et al. (1995, henceforth CELEX), a very different source of corpus data. The correlation was 0.797 (p<<0.001), which is good, but not entirely satisfactory. However, the agreement is much better for binary oppositions of obstruents, the correlation being 0.892 (p<<0.001). There is an important subtlety hiding here, because syllables in CELEX are different from those in Switchboard. CELEX syllables have two parts instead of one. The first is the phonemic part as before, while the second is a stress part that can have one of the values <primary>, <secondary>, and . Thus the syllable (pirz,<primary>) would still be distinguishable from (parz,) when the a–i opposition was lost, but not from (parz,<primary>).

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This means that the 0.797 and 0.892 figures above were computed with the same k and different S and T. To make a comparison with the same k and T but different S, we redid the experiment with the stress values from CELEX ignored. Then the corresponding figures are 0.816 and 0.920 respectively. This agreement, especially for obstruents, is quite remarkable given the differences between the Switchboard and CELEX corpora. Switchboard has about 36,000 syllable tokens of 4,000 types, while CELEX is a word-frequency list derived from a corpus (Birmingham/COBUILD) with 24,000,000 syllable tokens of 11,000 types. Switchboard syllables are based on spontaneous speech of American English, and thus have far fewer consonant clusters than CELEX syllables, which are based on canonical pronunciations of British English. Frequency values for Switchboard are based on spoken language, while those from CELEX are derived mostly from written texts. This is very good news for historical linguists, as available corpora of historical languages represent written rather than spoken texts, and pronunciations are at best canonical ones. Defining the functional load of general phonological contrasts Suppose we are computing functional load values with parameters k, S and T, that is, assuming that the language in a corpus S is a sequence of T-units generated by a k-order Markov process. X=X1 is the set of all T-units. Let f:XY be any function on X. Y — the range of f — can be considered to be a set of units of a new type U. Then the functional load FL(f) of f is defined as in (6): 4.

(6)

FLTkS(f) = [ H TkS (L) – H Ukf(S) (f(L)) ] / H TkS (L)

The function f represents the loss of the contrast we wish to find the functional load of, and f(L) and f(S) represent the language L and corpus S after the loss of the contrast. For example, consider the only contrasts we have dealt with so far: the binary opposition of two phonemes p and q. If T = ‘phoneme’, then X is the set of phonemes, so that p,qX. We define Y to be X with p and q removed, and a new phoneme p’ added. If we define a function g:XY by g(p)=g(q)=p’, and g(x)=x for any x in X–{p,q}, then FLTkS(g) = FLTkS(p,q) as before. What if T is not a phoneme? Suppose T = ‘syllable’, where a syllable (x1…xb,s) has both a phoneme sequence and a stress component. We can define a function h on the set of syllables that takes such a syllable to (g(x1)…g(x b),s) where g is the function of the previous paragraph. Then FLTkS(h) = FL TkS(p,q).

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And if T is a ‘word’, where a word is a sequence of syllables of the form s1…sc , for some positive integer c, then the required function takes this to h(s 1)…h(s c). The generalization to draw here is that any function from phonemes to phonemes induces one from syllables to syllables, which in turn induces one from words to words. The functional load of a distinctive feature Phonemes can be described in terms of distinctive features (Jakobson & Halle 1956), which do not have to be binary. In the absence of a distinctive feature, certain phonemes would sound alike, and the function f should be defined so that such phonemes are ‘collapsed’ into a single phoneme. For example, without aspiration, a Mandarin speaker would be unable to distinguish between ts and tsh, p and ph, t and th, etc. The functional load of h aspiration is defined by FL(f), where f is a function defined by f(ts)=f(ts )=ts’, h h f(p)=f(p )=p’, f(t)=f(t )=t’, .., and f(x)=x if x is any consonant that is not part of an aspirated–unaspirated pair. Another example: without manner, an English speaker would be unable to tell apart b from m from w, or d from dh from n, etc. The functional load of place in English is defined by FL(f) where f(b)=f(m)=f(w)=b’, f(d)=f(dh)= f(n)=d’, f(t)=f(th)=t’, …, and f(x)=x for any other phoneme x. Functional load values for some distinctive features in Dutch, English, German, and Mandarin appear in Table 3 (in Appendix A). Place is more important than manner in all four languages. 4.1

The functional load of a suprasegmental feature By suprasegmentals, we refer primarily to stress and, in tonal languages, tone. The definition of these terms is by no means standard. Return to the situation where the types of units we are dealing with are syllables with both a phoneme sequence and stress component. Define a function f that takes a syllable (x1…xb,s) to (x 1…xb), i.e. ignores the value of its stress component. Then FL(f) is the functional load of stress. In some tonal languages, syllables can be assumed to have three components: phonemic, stress, and tone. Then the functional load of stress is FL(f), where f is a function that takes a syllable (x1…xb,s,t) to (x1…xb,t) and the functional load of tone is FL(g), where g is a function that takes a syllable (x1…xb,s,t) to (x1…xb,s). If words are modeled as sequences of syllables, then f and g above induce word-converting functions whose functional load is what we require. 4.2

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The functional load of a condition-dependent contrast This is best described with a couple of non-trivial examples. In the Cantonese merger example several pages ago, we computed the functional load of binary phonemic oppositions in word-initial position. No previous definition of functional load suggested how one might deal with conditional loss of contrasts. We modeled Cantonese as a sequence of words, with each word as a sequence s1…s c of syllables, and each syllable (p1…pb,t) as a sequence of phonemes with a tone. Note that c and b vary with word and syllable respectively. We then defined f so that it converted a word s 1…s c to g(s 1)… g(s c), where g converted a syllable (x1…xb,t) to (h(x1)x2… xb,t). When the binary opposition in question was of phonemes p and q, h was defined as h(p)=h(q)= p’ and h(x)=x for every other phoneme x. In other words, the p–q opposition was only lost when the first phoneme in a word was p or q. Recall that g would convert (x1…xb,t) to (h(p1)…h(pb),t) if f was supposed to represent the regular (everywhere) loss of the x–y opposition. For another example, suppose we represented English as a sequence of syllables and we wanted to represent vowel reduction. This is the loss of the distinction between vowels in unstressed syllables. Then we would define f so that it converted a syllable (x1…xb, s) to (g(x1)…g(xb), s) if s = ‘unstressed’ and to (x1…xb, s) otherwise. The function g converts x to x if it is a consonant and to V if it is a vowel. Then FL(f) is the functional load of being able to distinguish between vowels in unstressed syllables. 4.3

Summary We have outlined a method for providing quantitative data on how much a language relies on phonemic opposition, distinctive feature, or suprasegmental feature, even when the opposition/feature is lost only in certain conditions. Initial tests suggest it is reasonably robust, even with non-ideal representations of spoken language such as word-frequency lists with canonical pronunciations of words and frequencies from written texts. While it needs to be improved both statistically and linguistically, it can be used in its present state 1 as a tool at the intersection of historical and corpus linguistics. 5.

1

This contribution is meant to be a more accessible version of Surendran & Niyogi (2003). The reader seeking more computational details is referred there and to http://people.cs. uchicago.edu/~dinoj/research/fload.

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Acknowledgements We would like to thank Stephanie Stokes for pointing us to the Cantonese data and Bert Peeters for useful discussions on how functional load is viewed in the Martinet tradition. REFERENCES Baayen, R. Harald, Richard Piepenbrock & Leon Gulikers. 1995. The CELEX Lexical Database (Release 2) [CD-ROM]. Philadelphia, Penn.: Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania. (CELEX = The Dutch Centre for Lexical Information.) Carter, David M. 1987. “Information-theoretical analysis of phonetic dictionary access”. Computer Speech and Language 2.1–11. Cover, Thomas M. & Joy A. Thomas. 1991. Elements of Information Theory. New York: Wiley–Interscience. Godfrey, J.J., E.C. Holliman & J. McDaniel. 1992. “SWITCHBOARD: Telephone speech corpus for research and development”. ICASSP 1.517– 520. (= International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing.) Greenberg, Joseph H. 1959. “A method of measuring functional yield as applied to tone in African languages”. Georgetown University Monograph Series on Language and Linguistics 12.7–16. Greenberg, Steven. 1996. The Switchboard Transcription Project. (= Research Report, 24.) Large Vocabulary Continuous Speech Recognition Summer Research Workshop Technical Report. Baltimore, Md.: Center for Language and Speech Processing, Johns Hopkins University. Hockett, Charles F. 1955. A Manual of Phonology. (= International Journal of American Linguistics 21:4.) Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University. (Also in: Indiana University Publications in Anthropology and Linguistics. Memoir II. Baltimore, Md.: Waverly Press.) Hockett, Charles F. 1967. “The quantification of functional load”. Word 23. 320–339. Jakobson, Roman. 1931. “Prinzipien der historischen phonologie”. Travaux du Cercle linguistique de Prague 4.246–267. Jakobson, Roman & Morris Halle. 1956. Fundamentals of Language. The Hague: Mouton. King, Robert. 1967a. “A measure for functional load”. Studia Linguistica 21. 1–14. King, Robert. 1967b. “Functional load and sound change”. Language 43.831– 852. Kontoyannis, I. 1997. “The complexity and entropy of literary styles”. NSF Technical Report 97. Department of Statistics, Stanford University. (NSF = National Science Foundation.) (http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/ kontoyiannis 97complexity.html)

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Kučera, Henry. 1963. “Entropy, redundancy and functional load”. American Contributions to the 5th International Conference of Slavists, Sofia, September 1963, 191–219. The Hague: Mouton. Lee, T. H. T., C. H. Wong, C. S. Leung, P. Man, A. Cheung, K. Szeto & C. S. P. Wong. 1996. “The development of grammatical competence in Cantonese-speaking children”. Report of a project funded by Research Grants Council, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Martinet, André. 1933. “Remarques sur le système phonologique du francais”. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 34.191–202. Mathesius, Vilèm. 1929. “La structure phonologique du lexique du tchèque moderne”. Travaux du Cercle linguistique de Prague 1.67–84. Mathesius, Vilèm. 1931. “Zum Problem der Belastungs- und Kombinationsfähigkeit der Phoneme”. Travaux du Cercle linguistique de Prague 4.148– 152. Meyerstein, R. S. 1970. Functional Load: Descriptive limitations, alternatives of assessment and extensions of application. (= Janua Linguarum, Series Minor, 99.) The Hague: Mouton. Rischel, Jørgen. 1961. “On functional load in phonemics”. Statistical Methods in Linguistics 1.1–32. (= SMIL.) Peeters, Bert. 1992. Diachronie, Phonologie et Linguistique Fonctionnelle. (= Bibliothèque des Cahiers de l’Institut de Linguistique de Louvain, 64.) Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters. Shannon, Claude E. 1951. “Prediction and entropy of printed English”. Bell Systems Technical Journal 30.50–64. Surendran, Dinoj & Partha Niyogi. 2003. “Measuring the functional load of phonological contrasts”. Technical Report TR-2003-12, Department of Computer Science, University of Chicago. Surendran, Dinoj & Gina-Anne Levow. 2004. “The functional load of tone in Mandarin is as high as that of vowels”. Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2004, vol.1, 99–102. Nara, Japan. ISCA Archive (www.isca-speech.org/ archive/sp2004/ sp04_099.pdf) Trubetzkoy, Nicolas S. 1939. Grundzüge der Phonologie. (= Travaux du Cercle linguistique de Prague, 7.) Prague: Jednota Českých matematikůa fysiků. Wang, William S.-Y. 1967. “The measurement of functional load”. Phonetica 16.36–54. Wittgott, Margaret & Francine Chen. 1993. Computational Models of American Speech. (= CSLI Lecture Notes, 32.) Stanford, Calif.: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Zee, Eric. 1999. “Change and variation in the syllable-initial and syllable-final consonants in Hong Kong Cantonese”. Journal of Chinese Linguistics 27. 120–167.

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APPENDIX A l p h th kh p t 9 3 1 3 0

k 1

7

w ts tsh m h 0

3

5

9

ng kwh kw j

f s

3 2

2

1

0

0

4 n

6 4 3 7 37 70 37 38 24 44 14 8

9

3

0

5 14 l

1 1 2

3

5

2

2

2

6

1

1

0

0

2 ph

0 2

4

8

2

6

3

1 15 2 24

1

0

2

4 th

1

1

4

0

1

1

0

1 0

1

0

0

0

3 kh

7 25 10

7

4

6

9 2 19

1

0

3

3 p

5 36 5 15

1

0

1

7 t

83 27 12 17 17 8 20

2

0 11 33 k

6

1

0 12

21 11 17 4 22

1

0

2 25 ts

5 2 10 10

0

2

7 tsh

13

7 31 11

8 11

2 1

9 15 3

15

29 3

5 w

3

1

0

1

9 m

2 24

1

0

2

4 h

7

1

0

1

1 f

4

0

3 12 s

0

0

1 ng

0

1 kwh 1 kw

Table 1: The functional load of all binary consonantal oppositions (in word-initial position) in 2 Cantonese.

2

as computed with a word unigram model on the CANCORP corpus (Lee et al. 1996). All values shown should be multiplied by 0.0001

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DINOJ SURENDRAN & PARTHA NIYOGI

p b t d K g C J f v T D S

z S Z m n

N l

r

J h w

2 3 6 4 4 2 1 1 3 3 1 3 6

4 2 0 5 7

1 4

4

3 2 5

x

4 5 4 4 2 2 1 4 4 2 4 5

3 2 1 5 5

0 4

3

3 3 5

p

5 5 5 3 2 1 3 3 2 6 6

3 2 1 5 7

0 5

5

4 3 7

b

9 7 4 3 2 5 5 2 6 10 6 3 1 8 12 2 8

7

6 4 9

t

7 3 2 2 5 5 2 6 9

6 3 1 6 9

1 7

6

5 4 8

d

4 2 2 5 5 2 6 8

5 2 0 3 5

0 3

3

3 2 4

k

1 1 2 2 1 3 5

3 2 0 3 5

0 3

3

3 2 4

g

1 2 2 1 2 2

2 1 0 2 2

0 2

2

2 1 2

C

1 1 1 2 2

2 1 1 2 2

0 2

1

2 1 2

J

4 1 3 5

4 2 1 5 6

1 4

4

3 2 5

f

2 4 6

5 2 1 5 7

1 5

4

3 2 6

v

2 2

2 1 0 2 2

0 2

2

1 1 2

T

7

4 2 1 6 8

0 5

5

5 4 8

D

8 3 1 9 13 2 8

7

5 4 9

s

2 1 5 10 2 6

5

3 2 6

z

1 3 3

0 3

2

2 2 3

S

1 1

0 1

1

1 0 1

Z

11 1 7

7

4 4 8

m

3 12 10 6 5 11 n 1

1

0 0 1

N

9

4 3 9

l

4 3 8

r

4 5

j

4

h

Table 2: FL(x,y) for all pairs x, y of consonants in American English.

3

3

based on syllable unigram data from the ICSI subset of the Switchboard corpus. C and J are the un/voiced affricate ‘ch’ and ‘dzh’ respectively, T and D the un/voiced alveolar fricatives ‘th’ and ‘dh’, S and Z the un/voiced alveolar sibilants ‘sh’ and ‘zh’, N the velar nasal ‘ng’ and x the glottal stop. All values should be multiplied by 0.001.

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QUANTIFYING FUNCTIONAL LOAD

Place Manner Voicing Aspiration Nasality

Syll 67 27 30 15

Dutch Word 11 5 3 2

Syll 73 39 23 12

English Word 20 11 5 3

Syll 61 27 21 16

German Word 13 8 1 2

Mandarin Syll Word 65 14 34 6 17 8

3 3 4

Table 3: The functional load of some distinctive features in four languages.

4

based on unigram (k=0) counts of syllables and words. Data summarized from Surendran & Niyogi (2003). All values shown should be multiplied by 0.001.

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APPENDIX B

5

Figure 1: Comparing functional load values, and their logarithms .

5

obtained with k=0 and k=3 on the vertical and horizontal axes respectively, of American English from the ICSI subset of the Switchboard Corpus (Greenberg, 1996). The correlation of the FL values is 0.928 (p<<0.001) and of the log FL values is 0.945 (p<<0.001).

SYNCHRONY, DIACHRONY, AND EVOLUTION HENNING ANDERSEN University of California, Los Angeles In memory of Eugenio Coseriu (1921–2002) Preamble During the last few decades it has become fashionable in historical linguistics — and in some other human sciences — to look to the theory of evolution for a new explanatory framework.1 The aim of this paper is to show that there is no chance of explaining language change by the mechanisms of evolutionary theory. It is true that one can draw interesting parallels between the evolution of species and the histories of languages (and cultures). But the notion that the mechanisms of change of one could be used to explain change in the other, or that both might instantiate a single, more general model of development, is wrong. It is based on a failure to recognize the deep ontological differences between the evolution of living species and traditions of speaking (and other cultural practices).2 In the exposition that follows I will first show this in fairly concrete terms by offering a thumbnail sketch of the main varieties of linguistic change (Section 2) and then pointing up some of the fundamental differences between these and aspects of evolutionary theory (Section 3). In the following Section 4 I will put the key differences between the transmission of genotypes and the transmission of linguistic (and other cultural) traditions into a larger perspec0.

1

The title of this paper alludes to two publications of Eugenio Coseriu, the monograph Sincronía, diacronía e historia (1958) and the paper “Sincronía, diacronía y tipología” (1968). My title was formulated prior to Coseriu’s passing in October 2002. As will be apparent at several points below, some of the ideas central to the thinking of this eminent theoretician of historical linguistics are quite germane to the topic of this paper. 2 The very same point is argued with great eloquence from the evolutionist’s point of view by Gould (2002:722); see footnote 12.

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tive and show that they represent distinct categories of history — distinct in the sense that one cannot be reduced to the other. Introduction Evolutionary ideas in historical linguistics Since the nineteenth century, linguists have repeatedly tried to legitimize their endeavors by borrowing concepts, principles, or methods from other sciences, natural or formal (cf. Koerner 1989; Collinge 1995). Against such attempts to make linguistics ‘more scientific’ by borrowing from the ‘real’ sciences, it should be emphasized that there is only one way the practitioners of a discipline can make it truly scientific, namely, by developing a conceptual framework and methods of investigation that are appropriate to their object of inquiry. This is, of course, precisely what scholars in the natural and formal sciences have done and continue to do. On the whole, the mainstream of historical linguists has done so too. Admittedly our field has adopted, and traditionally uses, a variety of terms from the natural sciences, but these have generally been understood as the metaphors they are. We routinely speak of ‘phonological erosion’, but our students have no difficulty understanding that the meaning of erosion in this phrase is nothing like that of erosion in geology. They just as easily grasp that, for instance, socio-economic determinants of linguistic variation is just a piece of sociolinguistic jargon — in reality speakers’ usage is not literally determined by their income bracket. Some historical linguists (including myself) use such terms as adaptive innovations and evolutive change. But the use or acceptance of such terms has never been taken to imply a commitment to any particular theory of evolution, Lamarckian or Darwinist. However, in recent years there has been a flurry of works in the social sciences, including linguistics, specifically historical linguistics, which draw on developments in evolutionary theory — conceptually and terminologically — seemingly in a more serious way. On one hand, for instance, there have been attempts to develop a general epistemology for all the sciences, based on key concepts of (neo-Darwinist) evolutionary theory. From the 1950s on, Donald T. Campbell (in a quasibehaviorist vein) developed such a theory of the growth of science through Blind Mutations of ideas and the Selective Retention of the productive ones, what he called the “BMSR” theory — his point being not that scientific ideas develop the way species evolve, but rather that both kinds of development are manifestations of more general laws of growth (see the essays in Heyes & Hull 1999). After the publication of Richard Dawkins’s (1976) theory that ideas — which Dawkins gave the catchy label memes — proliferate in peoples’ minds, 1. 1.1

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in a way, like genes, Campbell’s colleague at Northwestern University David Hull (1988) worked out a more detailed theory of the development of ideas in the sciences, which made ripples in academic circles. On the other hand, Dawkins’s ‘meme theory’ received a very wide, positive reception (not least outside his field), and has been directly adopted by several scholars in the social sciences. There is, among social scientists, a widespread impression that the evolution of species is much better understood than, for example, cultural transmission (Shennan 2002:48). From such an impression one could draw the conclusion that we should redouble our efforts so that we can come to understand our subject matter just as well as evolutionary biologists appear to understand theirs. Instead, some social scientists have concluded that we would be more successful if we applied the principles of evolutionary theory in the human sciences, which is an obvious non-sequitur. Let me mention a few examples from historical linguistics. Roger Lass, as some will recall, struggled in vain in his monograph On Explaining Language Change (1980) to apply the teachings of the philosophers of natural science Hempel and Popper to historical linguistics. Now, in his latest book Historical Linguistics and Language Change (1997), he has found new inspiration in aspects of evolutionary theory. He has long felt that speakers are a major conceptual encumbrance for the linguistic theoretician. In 1980 (119–133 et passim) he debated with himself whether it is speakers that have languages, or languages that have speakers. Now he has concluded that speakers can safely be left out of the picture entirely, and that languages thus emancipated can be viewed as ‘quasi-species’ (1997:375). And William Croft (2000) has tried to blaze a new trail by “Explaining language change”, as his monograph is titled, with a framework borrowed from David Hull’s evolutionary epistemology, in which a language is defined as “a population of utterances”, and change is understood as a product of altered replication (the origin of variants) and differential replication (the generalization of some variants rather than others).3 3

In equating language history with the development of scientific ideas, Croft makes a remarkable conceptual leap. In the development of scientific ideas one can certainly recognize a gradual growth of understanding: as a variety of ideas are confronted with the realities of a field of investigation, only those ideas that fit the facts survive, and the totality of valid ideas gradually comes to comprise a systematic representation of the given field of study. This growth in complexity is superficially comparable to the gradual growth in complexity of living species. But neither in the ontogenesis nor in the phylogenesis of languages is there a comparable gradual growth, for a language is not a body of ideas whose validity is tested against reality. It is a repertory of signs with which any ideas can be advanced, “false,

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Croft’s theory is published in book form but still appears rather sketchy — not in the sense that the author has only sketched his ideas, but in the sense that his ideas seem somewhat sketchy in relation to the subject matters that an adequate theory of language change must try to tackle or at least define. It might be useful therefore to mention some of those things that have traditionally been recognized as essential explananda in historical linguistics. This will help show up the practical differences between the conceptual framework called for in historical linguistics and what an evolution-based approach has to offer. And with this background it will be clearer what are the essential differences between biological evolution and linguistic (or cultural) history. Historicism in evolutionary theory It is perhaps ironic that at the very time that some historical linguists have been busy copying evolutionary theory, students of the evolution of living species have been recognizing that their object of study includes unique, unrepeated chains of events that cannot be fully explained in general terms. The evolution of species is in fact a kind of history, a fact quite compatible with the traditional name of natural history (Nitecki & Nitecki 1992). As an example of this historicism, let me remind you of Stephen Jay Gould’s paper on the evolution of the horse (1991 [1987]; cf. 2002:905–908). The standard account, which has been repeated in textbooks, handbooks, and encyclopedias countless times during the twentieth century, depicts this as a rectilinear development from an inconspicuous, horse-like animal the size of a fox (“Eohippus”) through creatures of increasing size all the way to the magnificent wild and domesticated horse species of our times. For a language historian who appreciates the difference between diachronic correspondences and historical change (Joseph & Janda 2003:13) it is a pleasure to learn that this simple picture is far from the historical truth. First of all, the actual (pre-) historical development was not rectilinear. Secondly, the evolution of horses cannot even be captured by a Stammbaum. A cladogram representing their evolution would more nearly take the shape of a bush, with overlapping, closely related species. In such a representation, the species that have been the basis for the well-known rectilinear myth figure not even at major branching 1.2

inconsistent, imprecise, ugly, and unethical formulations as well as true, consistent, precise, beautiful, and ethical formulations” as Hjelmslev (1961:109–110) puts it in his comparison of languages and sciences. Languages differ essentially from sciences and other semiotic systems. For one thing, “a language is a semiotic into which all other semiotics can be translated—both all other languages, and all other semiotic structures” (Hjelmslev). For another, sciences are cumulative traditions, whereas languages essentially are homeostatic.

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points, but randomly between nodes and as endpoints of twigs (Gould 1991:76, 2002:905–908). 1.3 The hows and the why of change 1.3.1 The three levels of inquiry in evolutionary theory. The historicism of evolutionary theory makes it one of the historical sciences and thus makes it subject to one of the classic distinctions Coseriu introduced into historical linguistics (1974 [1958]:56). Coseriu distinguished three levels of inquiry in science, the historical, the general, and the rational level.4 On the historical level of inquiry — to stay with the evolution of the horse — we have the uniquely complicated evolution of several dozen lineages of Equus of which a number of stages from different lineages are known from the fossil record and the few extant species. Inquiry at this level seeks to describe the actual evolution of each of these species using observed and inferred data from paleontology and evidence from comparative anatomy, biogeography, embryology, and molecular biology (DNA). This is the level of inquiry the new historicism in biology is focusing on. On the general level, investigation seeks to establish the types of change species undergo — for these species, in particular, the morphological and behavioral changes having to do with the specialization of their diet and their life in the grasslands — the trend of increasing size, the loss of striping (in all but the zebra species), the evolution of teeth, gastro-intestinal tract, and hooves, of eye–hoof coordination, of flight and fight responses, and so on — which may have recurred in several of the taxa. Finally, on the level of rational explanation, the problem is posed why all such developments and extinctions of species occur, or, if you will, what is the nature of evolution. The answer to this question focuses on the chance errors in the transmission of genetic material, which give rise to new variants of heritable traits, and the different reproductive success of such variant traits in relation to given features of the environment — in Campbell’s succinct formula: blind mutations and selective retention (BMSR). 1.3.2 The three levels of inquiry in historical linguistics. In our field, the historical level is that of the language historian who investigates written texts, spoken texts, and/or any other sources available (toponymy, loanwords in other 4

Coseriu does not call these ‘levels’. I choose this word for the sake of simplicity of exposition. The three ‘levels’ correspond to the categories of actuality (actual history), possibility (what we know from experience), and necessity (what are the defining features).

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languages, etc.) in order to construct as full and detailed an account as possible of the actual history of a given tradition of speaking. In doing this the language historian draws on a body of knowledge of what commonly happens in the histories of languages. This fund of knowledge derives from inquiries on the general level, where generalizations are made on the basis of language histories. Here we establish the generalized scenarios that are played out in changes of all kinds, we identify types of change — lenition, grammaticalization, interparadigmatic leveling, scope change, and so on — and reduce these to schemas such as the Lenition Schema, the Grammaticalization Schema, and larger-scale trends such as Zipf’s Law. On this general level of inquiry, our experience with what is possible can be supplemented with empirical investigations of, say, language acquisition or language maintenance, which may shed light on the nature of kinds of innovation (e.g., Reanalysis), kinds of change (e.g., Lenition, Grammaticalization), or kinds of development (e.g., dialect convergence, language death), and so on. One might think of the difference between the historical and the general level of inquiry as essentially methodological, similar to the classic distinction between idiographic and nomothetic sciences (Rickert 1986). The language historian’s approach is predominantly idiographic, it is descriptive and interpretive, whereas the historical linguist’s approach is nomothetic, it moves from the particular to the general with the ultimate aim, perhaps, of establishing regular connections (however tenuous) between language states (or language types) and possible changes. Regardless of the terminology, the distinction between these two kinds of inquiry is undoubtedly real in practical terms: individual language historians and historical linguists alike know where they put most of their effort and understand that inquiry on each of the two levels is impossible without reference to the other. Finally, we have the third level of inquiry, which poses what Coseriu called “the rational problem of the changeability of languages”, where we ask the reason why languages change. Coseriu emphasized that this question is not answered in descriptions of actual changes, nor in generalizations over documented changes, which are ways of addressing the question How? Just as in evolutionary theory, we can expect that the reason for the changeability of languages can be stated in relatively simple terms and that it will inform, in the final analysis, both the work of the language historian and the historical linguist’s efforts to form generalizations about language changes. Let us look at these three levels of inquiry in some detail.

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The historical level The historical level of inquiry is the object level of historical linguistics, the level of observation at which language usage varies from situation to situation and from speaker to speaker as well as over time. For a variety of reasons students of diachronic linguistics often leave this object level unmentioned and unexplored, but since every change has its origin and is played out in usage, where speakers use variant elements differently, there is no doubt that in all interpretations of linguistic change, we have to recur, ultimately, to this level. 2.

Synchrony and diachrony In the synchronic perspective, on the historical level, the ‘language’ that changes is a ‘practice of speaking’. Such a practice is guided and evaluated by social norms that are part of the speakers’ competence, and which more or less strictly define their expectations of one another.5 In the diachronic perspective, the ‘language’ is a ‘tradition of speaking’. While language-as-practice is manifested in countless individual speech acts, occurring over time, language-astradition implies countless links of transmission, which connect each individual speaker’s competence and usage, in one direction, to the speakers from whose usage the individual’s competence has been acquired and adopted and, in the other direction, to the speakers whose competence has been inferred from or influenced by that individual’s usage. The historical dimension of both practices and traditions is obvious and undeniable. Clearly every living language serves as a tool of communication in the present, and at the same time it is a product of history. Its speakers have both expectations of contemporary usage and memories of past usage. We cannot do justice to the evident duality of such historical phenomena except by a combination of inquiries in the two perspectives, the synchronic and the diachronic. In the synchronic perspective, on this object level, language is investigated by descriptive and theoretical linguists, by psycholinguists, and by sociolinguists and dialectologists. The descriptive and theoretical linguists aim to determine the form of the competence of speakers. The psycholinguists study the way such a competence is used in encoding and decoding speech, and the way it is acquired by new speakers and deteriorates in aphasia. The socio2.1

5

The polysemy of the term norm makes it necessary to distinguish the appropriateness norms referred to in the text (descriptive norms) from the narrower correctness norms (prescriptive norms) typically dictated by schools, academies, or other authorities, and statistical norms, which capture the relative frequency of forms. Coseriu (1975 [1952]:46–48 et passim, 1974 [1958]) operates with yet another notion, historical norm (often, familiarity norm).

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linguists investigate synchronic variation with the aim of determining the extent of variation and identifying the social meanings and stylistic values attached to variants. Although they adopt a synchronic perspective, their findings may have significant diachronic implications. Synchronic variation, particularly but not only that indicating age group, may reflect the gradual spread of an innovation across a social dimension; that is, what is called apparent time may correspond to the actual chronology of a development (Guy 2003). In addition, differences in synchronic variation among members of a community may reflect the spread of an innovation through the community, that is, its gradual adoption along the lines of cohesion in such a network (Milroy & Milroy 1985, Milroy 1992). The dialectologists study language varieties in individual localities or describe variation across space. Although such investigations can be strictly synchronic, they can be made to yield information about the past, for spatial variation results from earlier divergent and convergent developments and is amenable to comparative analysis (Chambers & Trudgill 1998). In the diachronic perspective, on this object level, the language historian deals with texts of different date and comparative (sociolinguistic, dialectological) and other data, which yield chronological samples of traditions of speaking. Diachronic correspondences in such samples make it possible to infer changes, but even where there is an ample textual record, actual historical change events can rarely be studied in detail. There are never grounds for assuming that an attested practice of writing coincides precisely with a contemporary practice of speaking; texts typically reflect changes in spoken usage with some, often considerable, delay, and at best they reflect only a small segment of a community’s usage, most often that of an educated elite (Janda & Joseph 2003:15–20). It is occasionally possible to observe the varying usage of single individuals in writings produced at different times. Evidently such differences in an individual’s written usage may reflect ongoing change in ambient spoken usage, especially if they are found in non-literary texts (Rittel 1975:74; Skautrup 1968:60–64). Chronological variation in literary texts may reflect both the author’s usage and varieties of stylized usage and hence may pose considerable problems of interpretation (Busse 2001). Undoubtedly longitudinal studies of individual speakers’ written usage are potentially an important source for the language historian. Innovations, subchanges, and change scenarios At the most concrete level, in studies of individual writers’ usage, strictly speaking, we cannot observe linguistic change, for while an individual can 2.2

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modify his or her usage to suit own purposes or to conform to ambient usage, such modifications always involve variants — the introduction of new variants or alterations in the use of extant variants. Change in a tradition of speaking is necessarily the outcome of numerous innovations made over time by the collective of speakers that share the given tradition. An innovation made by an individual speaker can initiate a change. But it will lead to change only if it is adopted and used by a sufficient number of other speakers and is then acquired and used by new cohorts of speakers. Traditionally linguists conflate the notions of innovation and change and name different types of change by the kinds of initial innovation that give rise to them. But whether we speak of Analogy or Extension or Reanalysis, any such innovation can be generalized and eventuate in a change in a tradition of speaking only through cycles of other innovations. In order to acknowledge this essential fact, it is useful to recognize the different ‘stages’ in each type of change as subchanges, and the totality of such a set of subchanges, as a change 6 scenario (Andersen 2001d). If we define innovation as (a) the introduction by a speaker, into grammar or usage, of a new variant, or (b) the modification of an existing variation, then changes can be divided into three major types with distinct scenarios. The first two types — Neologisms and Extensions — comprise the following subchanges: (i) a primary grammar innovation is made and (ii) Actualized in usage, (iii) Adopted by other speakers and (iv) Actualized in their usage, and eventually (v) acquired by cohorts of new speakers and (vi) Actualized in their usage. For a change of either of these types to come about, then, requires cycles of innovations of types (iii)–(vi) typically eventually involving all members of a speech community. Changes of the third type — Reanalyses — consist of (v) a grammar innovation made in acquisition (Reanalysis), (vi) Actualized in usage, and followed by cycles of innovations of types (iii)–(vi), again eventually involving an entire speech community. The four kinds of grammar innovation involved in these three types of change — Neologisms, Extensions, Reanalyses, and Adoptions — are differently motivated. See Sections 2.3–2.7.

6

The subchanges that make up a change scenario evidently do not form an actual sequence — they are not chronological ‘stages’ — for the innovations made in speech acts by the members of a speech community are not synchronized. Still, although they overlap in time, one can view them as forming a logical sequence.

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Purposeful innovations: Neologisms and Extensions Linguistic innovations can be categorized from several points of view. Textbooks typically present phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic changes separately and use different terminology for each. Here and in the following sections the most general categorization will be given. In a more detailed presentation each type would be illustrated with examples from most or all levels of linguistic structure.7 Neologisms (e.g., Coinage or Borrowing; see further below) create new linguistic means. Extensions, by contrast, are applications of extant means in new usage. Note that since individual speakers differ in their command of their shared tradition of speaking, one person’s Extension may be experienced by another as a Neologism and vice versa. The language historian identifies and interprets innovations on the basis of the linguist’s knowledge of the given tradition, limited though it may be. There is a long tradition for distinguishing between intentional and unintentional innovations, and from this point of view Neologisms may be considered intentional, and Extensions, unintentional (see Stern 1931). But such a reference to intentionality is inappropriate for several reasons. For one thing, we rarely know much about the intentions of the speaker(s) that initiated or adopted past innovations. For another, there are evidently several kinds of intentionality. Experience tells us that Neologisms and Extensions can be created with premeditation — consider the Coining of new terminology or metaphoric Extensions in poetry. If Neologisms and Extensions are not premeditated, they can still be made deliberately. But even if an innovation is not made deliberately, but spontaneously and seemingly unwittingly, the speaker may still be able to rationalize it afterwards, that is, it may appear to have been made with unconscious intent. This fuzziness of the notion of intention speaks in favor of shifting our attention from the innovating speaker’s inscrutable state of mind to the purpose or purposes served by given innovations: all Neologisms and Extensions are purposeful. It has been suggested (Andersen 1974, 1980) that to characterize such purposes we can refer them to the well-known basic functions of language which Jakobson (1960) defined in relation to the constituent elements of every speech act, the referent, the speaker, the addressee, the message, the channel, 2.3

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Andersen (1974) demonstrates the essential homologies between types of change in phonology and Stern’s (1931) classic typology of lexical change. Andersen (1980) presents an essentially parallel typology of morphological changes. Andersen (1989) adopts a slightly different point of view in order to focus on the creation of new regularities in grammar. Andersen (2001b, d) thematicizes the role of Actualization in order to focus on the orderly, structured progression of Reanalysis changes in grammar.

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and the code. Neologisms and Extensions can easily be seen to serve the following purposes: (a) referential precision, (b) emotive expressiveness, (c) conative effectiveness, (d) aesthetic aptness, or (e) channel efficiency — or combinations of them. Innovations that are directed (solely) towards increasing (f) code conformity are Adoptions (see Section 2.7). Neologisms The traditionally recognized types, lexical Coinage, Nomination (Stern 1931), and Remedial (Therapeutic) innovation, and the syntactic “exploratory innovations” (Harris & Campbell 1995) mainly promote pragmatic or referential precision. Novel terms of endearment or invective serve (the speaker’s) emotive expressiveness. Innovated terms of politeness advance conative effectiveness (by engaging the addressee). Jocular formations and Euphemisms fulfill diverse aesthetic purposes. Ellipses, Clippings, and phonetic allegro variants increase channel efficiency by reducing redundancy. Some Neologisms introduce both a new content and expression (e.g., Nominations), some, only a new expression (e.g., Analogies; Stern 1931), and some, just a new phonological realization of an expression (e.g., Clippings) (Andersen 1974). Among Neologisms we traditionally recognize cases where an innovative element has been drawn from, or is based on, another tradition of speaking (sociolect, dialect, or language). These are Borrowings and Calques. While a Borrowing may introduce either a new content together with a corresponding expression or just a new expression, Calques use extant expressions singly or in new combinations. Borrowings and Calques perhaps typically are introduced to provide referential precision. But examples are known of Borrowed expressions that help to avoid homonymy (Remedial innovations), Borrowed terms of politeness (Conative innovations), jocular and euphemistic Borrowings (Aesthetic innovations), and so on. Borrowings and Calques are innovation types distinct from other types of bilingual innovation, Intrusion due to Interference and Transference (Section 2.5), Reanalysis (Section 2.6), and Adoption (Section 2.7). Despite their different origins, these are traditionally simply labeled ‘borrowings’ or ‘loan(word)s’. 2.4

Extension Extension can be defined as the application of extant linguistic means in new usage. In Extension, one or more individual speakers extend a received lexeme (metaphorically or metonymically) to a new referent (Substitution, Analogy, and (Regular) Transfer; Stern 1931), or a given syntactic frame to a 2.5

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new lexeme, or a rule of case marking or agreement to a new structure (Harris & Campbell 1995), or the application of a given morphophonemic rule to a new morphosyntactic environment, to name a few subtypes. For Extensions as for Neologisms it is appropriate to recognize, in addition to the usual monolingual change scenarios, bilingual scenarios, in which initial innovations arise when a speaker applies the means of one language (L1) in usage couched in another (L2 ). Where L1 is the speaker’s first language, we speak of L1 Interference in L2. Where L2 is the speaker’s first language, we speak of L1 Transference into L2. Interference innovations are the typical source of substratum Intrusions, and Transference innovations, of superstratum Intrusions. Where two traditions of speaking are joined in a tradition of Diglossia, both Interference and Transference changes may bring about a rapprochement and, with time, an eventual merging of the higher and lower codes (Bubenik 2001). In a tradition of community bilingualism or duallingualism, changes of these two types may over time result in a structural convergence of the given languages (Scollon & Scollon 1979). Reanalysis Among the traditional definitions of Reanalysis, the narrowest is Langacker’s (1977:58): “[…] change in the structure of an expression or class of expressions that does not involve any immediate or intrinsic modification of its surface manifestation.” It reflects many language historians’ exclusive concern with change. Timberlake’s (1977) understanding of Reanalysis is wider; he points up the practical equivalence of innovative and non-innovative analyses when one and the same usage allows of more than one construal, echoing the emphasis of Andersen (1973) on the fact that the competence of every new learner is abduced (Reanalysed) afresh from spoken usage (see further below). In this perspective, innovative and non-innovative Reanalyses may not only be equally likely alternatives at the time an innovation takes place. They are also equally important objects of study for the historical linguist, as argued by Andersen (1974, 1980). Innovative Reanalyses reveal the basic procedures of analysis speakers use: segmentation on all structural levels, assignment of content (or function) and syntactic properties to the constituents on each level of structure, and ranking of the identified elements in their respective paradigms. The results of Reanalysis can be classified in various ways. 8 In the present context it is useful to note five kinds of Reanalysis. 2.6

8

In some recent writings on change the term reanalysis is used about kinds of Adoption. See Section 2.7.

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First, (a) there are Reanalyses in which no innovation occurs, but new speakers analyse received elements of usage apparently identically to speakers from whose usage they acquire them. The overt result of such Reanalyses is a continuity of usage. Secondly, (b) — recalling the change scenarios of purposive innovations (Sections 2.3–2.5) — while Neologisms and Extensions may gain currency in a community by being widely Adopted, it is through Reanalysis that new cohorts of speakers integrate such newer elements with other received elements in their individual grammars of the given practice of speaking. Reanalyses in these scenarios are grammar innovations that may not occasion innovations in usage. Thirdly, (c) there are innovative Reanalyses which alter usage. These are often the sole interest of language historians. They are covert grammar innovations, inferred from received usage that allows of more than one analysis. Linguists who do not appreciate this point typically regard them as ‘misanalyses’. They are Actualized, sooner or later, directly as overt innovations in usage and/or indirectly in Neologisms and Extensions. Fourthly, (d) there are innovative Reanalyses that create regularities out of mere fluctuation in usage. Such Reanalyses can be the source of regular variation at all levels of language structure; most obviously they are the origin of the subphonemic regularities (allophonic variation) which are the source of sound change (Andersen 1989, 2002, 2003). Fifthly, (e) Reanalysis is the source of both the preservation and the innovation of values assigned to grammatical, stylistic, and social variables. It is these values that define the individual’s attitude to competing variants and, on a community scale, in the long run, eventually determine the outcomes of such competitions (Sapir 1921; Andersen 1990, 2001c, d, 2006b); see Sections 4.3 and 4.5. Some writers on language change have debated whether innovative Reanalyses of received patterns (points (c) and (e) above) are made by children or adults (Aitchison 1981:169–170; Croft 2000:46–49). Quite apart from the obvious fact that first-language acquisition typically continues throughout a speaker’s life, the ‘children vs. adults question’ is in part an empirical issue with several dimensions. For one thing, the age at which the acquisition of, say, the phonology, the morphology and morphosyntax, the sentence syntax, or the lexico-semantic system of a language is achieved largely depends on its type and complexity. For another, whether innovative Reanalyses in a tradition of speaking surface first in the usage of children, or of adolescents, or of adults likely depends on aspects of social structure. To mention just two obvious variables, it may be relevant who are the customary caretakers for children

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(slightly older children, parents, or grandparents), which varies from one culture to the next; and it may be relevant at what age children enter into adulthood (in their early teens, late teens, or twenties; at the time of initiation, of marriage, or of the birth of their first issue). Although in most cultures most cultural knowledge is imparted to children by their parents, with reference to language transmission it seems well-advised to abandon the ‘child vs. adult’ terminology in favor of functional terms. Andersen (1973 and later) speaks of “learners” and “their models”. In part, however, an understanding of innovations in Reanalysis is a theoretical issue. The fact that all Actualization of Reanalyses is gradual calls for an understanding of grammar that distinguishes ‘system’ and ‘norms’ (Coseriu 1975 [1952], 1974 [1958]; Andersen 1973; Timberlake 1977; García 1990). Andersen (2001d) suggests the terms base system and usage rules. Assuming such a distinction, a Reanalysis that introduces a ‘base-system’ innovation may be accompanied by an innovated ‘usage rule’ that enables the speaker to conform to received usage (possibly variably), so that the basesystem innovation is not reflected immediately (or fully) in new surface forms. As in the case of Neologisms and Extensions, it is important to recognize the role of Reanalysis in languages in contact. Where Reanalysis is based on closely similar traditions, as when dialects are in contact, the simpler of two patterns may often prove the more viable (or ‘dominant’; Andersen 1970). The result may be a gradual diffusion of the simpler pattern across space, not motivated by a prestige difference (Andersen 1988). Where different, but complex patterns are in contact, Reanalysis may produce a new pattern that is simpler than both. The result of such simplifications is Koinéization; cf. Jakobson (1971a [1929]:79). The simpler pattern may subsequently spread geographically without being propagated; cf. Andersen (1988). Adoption Adoption is the type of innovation by which speakers continually update their competence, assimilating new usage they encounter for passive or active use. When new usage motivates a speaker’s reconstrual of elements that are already part of his or her competence, this is tantamount to the Adoption of a new variant. Similarly when a speaker revaluates the relation between extant variants already in his or her competence in order to adjust to, or Adopt, ambient usage. Such revisions and revaluations are in principle distinct from Reanalysis. It has been argued that in the spread of Extensions and Reanalysis innovations in a community of speakers, it may be difficult or unnecessary to distinguish between the initial innovation and its subsequent Adoption by other 2.7

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speakers, for the Extension or new analysis that comes naturally to one speaker may be as natural to others. In such cases, in the words of Jakobson (1971a [1929]:108), “le rôle de l’initiateur individuel d’un phénomène consiste uniquement à ‘hâter la phylogénèse’ […] l’ontogénèse anticipe pour ainsi dire 9 la phylogénèse”. This is “spread without diffusion” (Andersen 1988). In the case of Neologisms, where novel expressions are introduced into usage, the distinction between primary innovation and subsequent Adoption may be clearer. Traditionally language historians explain such Adoptions by supposing the innovated element had greater social value (reflected more prestige).10 But the effort to speak like one’s fellow (to improve code conformity; cf. Section 2.3) does not necessarily depend on a difference in prestige. It can just as well be motivated by a sense of solidarity or, as Coseriu (1975 [1952]:73) points out, simply by a will to learn what the other knows (diffusion not motivated by prestige; Andersen 1988). Indeed, it may not be important in a historical account with what purpose a given innovation was Adopted. What is essential is that all Adoption is for use, active or passive. We know from experience that we make decisions to use or not to use expressions that are current around us. Coseriu (1975 [1952]:74) emphasizes this exercise of free will in the Adoption of new variants and recognizes that Adoption may be motivated by the new form’s utility, its cultural, social, aesthetic, or other functional value. To put it differently, an Adoption may be motivated by the same purpose that motivated the primary innovation or by some other purpose. Code conformity will result also if individual speakers’ Adoptions of a given innovation are motivated by other, different purposes.11 Adoption is first and foremost a subchange in Neologisms, Extensions, and Reanalyses, as described above. But when the bearers of a tradition of speaking are in contact with a variant of the same tradition, individual speakers may Adopt elements of the latter and thus introduce innovations into the usage of their own (variant) tradition (cf. Croft 2000:73). Over time such elements may become numerous in a community’s usage and may lead to a blurring of dialect boundaries and the emergence of compromise dialects that are transitional to the given adstratum (Chambers & Trudgill 1998). Both 9

“[…] the role of the individual innovator consists solely in ‘accelerating the phylogenesis’ […] the ontogenesis so to say runs ahead of the phylogenesis” [HA]. 10 Croft (2000:166–190) similarly considers Adoption motivated solely by “social forces”. 11 In the past Adoption has sometimes been viewed ‘simply’ as a kind of involuntary, i nstinctive imitation. Thus Brøndal (1917) speaks of Adoption by a community of speakers as “cascades of imitation”. More recently this old idea has been discussed by Labov (2001), who, like Brøndal, cites Tarde (1903 [1873]).

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outcomes yield characteristic isogloss configurations on dialect maps. By their effects these Adstratum Adoptions differ from Borrowings (Section 2.4) and Intrusions (Section 2.5). The general level: Change schemas and laws of change The three basic change scenarios outlined in Section 2.2 and the four types of innovation described in Sections 2.3–2.7, together with numerous subtypes, which have been passed over here, provide the elements needed for any account of historical events in a tradition of speaking. When we turn to form generalizations over change events, we find that the changes that commonly happen in the histories of languages can be studied at several levels of abstraction (Andersen 2006, Forthc.). In what you might call the ‘single element view’ we can examine individual content categories. In lexis, this amounts to ‘onomasiological etymology’, which traces the varying expressions for a single content (e.g., ‘animal’: OE deor ME beast EModE animal; ‘deer’: OE heorot ME, ModE deer). This provides one important angle for generalizing about common semantic shifts. In morphosyntax, we can similarly chart the varying ways of expressing given grammatical categories to gain similar insights, e.g., ‘future (3SG)’ Lat. cantā-bi-t LLat. cantā-re habe-t Fr. il chanter-a Fr. il - ‘have’, Fr. v- ≈allv-a chanter ‘he will sing’ (Pre-Lat. -b- ‘future’, Lat. habē ‘go’). Still in the single element view we can observe the patterns of development of individual expressions — ‘chronomorphs’, as Hodge (1970) dubbed them. In lexis, this is the traditional (semasiological) etymology, which traces the history of individual lexemes (expressions), e.g., OE deor ‘animal’  ME, ModE deer ‘deer’, ME bede ‘prayer’ ModE bead ‘globule, bead’. Here one contemporary focus of research is on the processes of initial Lexicalization. In morphosyntax one can chart such common developments as the definiteness cycle (Greenberg 1978) or the waxing and waning of categories of modal expressions, or the widespread examples of Grammaticalization; see the massive documentation in Heine & Kuteva (2002). These are summed up in Schemas that capture the development of tenses, moods, cases, adpositions, determiners, etc. and show their shared steps of development — paradigmatization, syntactic adjustment, and phonological reduction. Historical phonology correspondingly has its Lenition and Fortition Schemas (changes down vs. up the sonority scale), Diphthongizations and Monophthongizations (including Protheses, Epentheses, Paragoges, and their opposites), and so on. In the ‘subsystem view’ we can observe, for instance, the (often cyclical) elaboration and simplification of tense systems through the development of 3.

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auxiliaries, univerbation, and tense loss, then new compound tenses, morphologization, and on and on. In phonology, correspondingly, one can note such cyclical changes as the Germanic and High German consonant shifts or the broadly similar changes in ‘circular’ or ‘vertical’ vowel shifts. In the widest perspective, what one might call the ‘whole-language view’, historical linguists have identified the Linguistic Cycle (sometimes called the Morphological Cycle), in which entire language systems can be seen to vary cyclically from a predominantly analytic to a predominantly morphological to a predominantly analytic type, and so on. The cycle is documented from Early Egyptian to Coptic, and parts of it can be observed in the attested development of Chinese and perhaps of the Indo-European language family (Hodge 1970). This entire growing body of generalizations serves to solidify our knowledge of how languages commonly change. Its cross-linguistic comparative (contrastive) data are invaluable in the interpretation of individual language histories. More importantly, when properly analysed, these generalizations highlight the omnipresent conditions under which language patterns are transmitted. And they shed light in particular on the universal cognitive, and language particular structural, premisses for Neologisms and Extensions, and the analytic procedures speakers apply in Reanalysis. One remarkable feature of the change schemas is their determinate direction, which reflects the intrinsic asymmetry of all paradigmatic relations in grammar, categorical as well as variable (see Sections 4.4–4.5). But neither severally nor collectively do these generalizations tell us why languages change. The universal conditions under which language is transmitted explain how innovations arise, and how innovations may become generalized as changes in traditions of speaking. But the reason why languages change is an entirely different matter. Before finally addressing this issue it will be useful to contrast some of the aspects of language change with the evolution of living species. Why the mechanisms of evolution do not explain language change The sketches of the four major types of innovation presented in Section 2 are essential for a comparison of language change and evolution. Here they are again in brief outline. Neologisms and Extensions were presented together (Sections 2.3–2.5). They originate as purposeful grammar innovations, motivated by speakers’ communicative needs. They may be premeditated or deliberate or spontaneous and immediately Actualized in speech. Their difference: Neologisms introduce new linguistic means; Extensions put extant linguistic means to new uses. 4.

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Innovations of both kinds create new variants, whose fate is determined by subsequent Adoptions and Reanalyses. Reanalysis (Section 2.6) is the formation of new grammars on the basis of observed usage and inborn principles of analysis. The Reanalyses of individual elements and relations are perhaps mainly non-innovative, but some are innovative, and, when these are Actualized, they contribute new variants, or altered relations between variants, to spoken usage. When widely adopted and acquired by new speakers, they result in Reanalysis changes. Adoptions (Section 2.7) are pivotal to all change events in traditions of speaking. In the dynamic synchrony of practices of speaking, they serve to promote code conformity. They form the metadialogue (Andersen 1989; Nedergaard Thomsen 2006) through which members of a speech community negotiate the norms of their shared practice of speaking and implicitly decide the future fate of variant expressions. Isomorphisms vs. disanalogies There is an apparent similarity between the chance altered replication of genetic material that gives rise to new variants in evolution and the innovations in usage which Actualize Reanalysis innovations. And the process of natural selection in which genetic variants are retained or not depending on their fitness relative to a given environment seems analogous to the way new linguistic variants are Adopted for active or passive use. But these apparent parallels are skewed conceptually and are based in part on the use of terminology that has very different meanings in evolutionary theory and historical linguistics. Let us look at the most important differences. 4.1

Reanalysis vs. utterance recombination In Croft’s (2000:38) evolutionary approach to language change, a language is defined as a population of utterances, and speech production is described as a process of recombining received utterance parts into new utterances. The parallel with the recombination of DNA material is striking. At first glance, the simplicity of this parallel might seem to speak in favor of the “usage-based” theory of language and language change Croft advocates. But actually the utterance parts that are supposedly recombined are not only bits of expression with content, but also syntactic entities such as constructions and parts of constructions. In other words, this ostensibly usagebased account implies that speakers not only store utterances and utterance parts but also analyse them and integrate the analyses into a full-fledged grammar or linguistic system (Croft 2000:117–118, 230). 4.2

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The process by which this is achieved — the analysis of utterances and the formation of a grammatical competence — is Reanalysis (see Section 2.5). There is simply no “utterance replication” without prior Reanalysis. And there can be no adequate account of language history without due attention to both usage and grammar (Andersen 1973). Reanalysis vs. mutations The similarity between mutations and the grammar innovations that occur in Reanalysis has seemed obvious for generations (e.g., Jakobson 1971a [1931]), but the differences that separate them are considerable. First of all, the altered replications in genetic evolution are nothing but errors in the essentially mechanical process by which the chains of codons of which genes consist are transcribed. Some such errors may be corrected by equally mechanical processes of DNA repair. Of those that are not repaired, a small number may persist as variants (mutations) in viable organisms and be passed on to their offspring. In Reanalysis, by contrast, there are no chance copying errors, for Reanalysis does not involve copying, but abductive inference. To put it differently, whereas in genetic replication tokens of a genotype are directly transcribed as genotokens, in Reanalysis, tokens of a genotype (individual grammars) are inferred from phenotokens (utterances). Secondly, as far as one can tell, whenever an innovative Reanalysis occurs, it is recognizably rational. Even when innovation is the outcome of what a linguist would consider patently incomplete analysis of observable usage, it is rational. This is why continued investigation of Reanalysis changes holds promise, in the long run, of revealing the cognitive procedures speakers apply in the process of grammar formation. We can expect these to comprise both general principles for the analysis of utterances and principles of grammar building. The latter alone can explain the historical constitution of languages of distinct, more or less consistent types. Furthermore, there is evidently nothing in the replication of genetic material that corresponds to the imposition of values, on content and expression elements as well as syntactic relations, which takes place in the process of Reanalysis (Section 2.6, item (e)). This inomissible operation, which serves to organize elements of cognition and is fundamental not only to language, but to all parts of cultural systems, forms each speaker’s linguistic competence as a sui generis value system (Andersen 2001c, d, 2006b). Its results are reflected, in synchronic usage, in the greater extension of unmarked than of corresponding marked elements and relations. In diachrony it is reflected in the determinate direction of linguistic change (see Section 4.5). 4.3

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Adoption vs. natural selection The similarity between Adoption and natural selection is plain to see. Both are sorting processes by which variants that are useful (or beneficial) are preserved, and useless (or harmful) ones are eliminated. Now, in reference to linguistic change it is clearly legitimate to use the three-argument verb select, for in Adoptions and their Actualizations speakers literally select some variants over others. By contrast, in reference to evolution the verb select is a metaphor, for in natural selection there is never any agent purposefully producing an action of selecting something over something else. This fact is mostly veiled in discussions of natural selection. They predominantly use passives (X was selected for) or the deverbal derivatives selection and selective (as in Campbell’s “selective retention”; cf. Section 1), quite often in abstract formulations that cast an environment as subject of select for or natural selection as an agent (e.g., natural selection promotes adaptation to different environments). But the fact is that select is an anthropocentric metaphor in evolutionary theory. When this metaphoric term is transferred back into the human sphere, as it is when the evolutionary framework is applied to linguistic change, it recovers its literal meaning, which effectively blurs the distinction between the totally different kinds of event it denotes in reference to traditions of speaking and to evolution. One is a subchange (cf. Sections 2.2, 2.7), that is, a phase in change events composed of numerous purposeful acts by individual bearers of a tradition of speaking. The other is the result of the proliferation of a given genetic variant which has a trait that quite by chance is compatible with its environment and quite by chance more so than that of another variant (Mayr 1988:95). It is interesting to observe the awkwardness with which some anthropologists, after adopting the evolutionary framework, try to cope with the purposeful innovations in culture which have no counterpart in evolution. Boyd & Richerson (1985), for example, recognize Neologisms in culture and label them “guided variation”, sidestepping the question of who it is that ‘guides’ this kind of variation. They recognize the active role Adoptions play in cultural transmission and identify three types of Adoption, characterized not by their purpose, but by the presumed motivations of the adopters and strangely named “directly biased transmission” (motivated by utility), “indirectly biased transmission” (motivated by the apparent success of others), and “conformist transmission” (following the herd). Croft (2000) calls types of Neologism and Extension “altered replications” and alleges they are intentional. Since Croft believes teleology is “highly suspect” and “problematic” (2000:64–66), he characterizes them as “intentional, but non-teleological” — a contradiction in terms (cf. Gk. télos ‘the end or purpose of action’). 4.4

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Drift vs. directed evolution The term drift is used differently in evolutionary theory and historical linguistics. Evolutionists use it about a random statistical fluctuation of genetic variants (Moran 1993). In historical linguistics, the term has been invested with a different content since Sapir (1921:155) established that “linguistic drift has direction”. Furthermore, it has subsequently been observed that linguistic drift not only has direction, it has a structure which reflects the hierarchy of social, stylistic, and grammatical categories that condition the gradual progression of any given change (Andersen 1990, 2001d, 2006b).12 Directed evolution names a superficially similar phenomenon in evolution. But the two phenomena are a world apart. In directed evolution, either an environment that is stable in a certain regard forms the background for a succession of mutations in a species that make it fit that environment better. But the mutations are as accidental as any. Their apparent direction is provided by the compatibility of each resulting variant with the given feature of the environment, which is external to the variants, and which is entirely passive. Or the direction of evolution may be determined by the potential of an existing genotype. Although such developments are often said to be ‘directed’, nothing in fact directs them (where direct is a transitive action verb); they are more aptly called ‘directional’ (thus Mayr 1988:109); ‘directed evolution’ is a metaphor. Linguistic drift, by contrast, is “constituted by the unconscious selection on the part of the speakers of those individual variations that are cumulative in a special direction” (Sapir 1921:155). The basis for these unconscious selections is the asymmetrical values that are intrinsic to paradigms of variables as well as all other paradigms in a speaker’s competence. But although this system of involuntarily assigned values governs speakers’ unconsciously biased usage in synchrony and thus determines the direction of drift in diachrony, it operates at the pleasure of the bearers of any tradition of speaking. They have the freedom to override those values and modify any part of their competence — with Neologisms, Extensions, or Adoptions — whenever they deem their communicative purposes call for it. 4.5

Adaptation Finally, Neologisms and Extensions are missing from the supposed parallel between evolution and language history. They have no counterpart in evolution. In a general sense, both are adaptive, for in both these types of 4.6

12

Croft (2000:24, 42, 43, 60, 235) uses drift in the evolutionist sense and rejects the validity of the term’s technical meaning in historical linguistics.

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purposeful innovation speakers adapt their linguistic means to communicative tasks. Subsequently, through Adoptions and Reanalyses, innovations of these types may become integrated in a tradition of speaking. By contrast, modern evolutionary theory does not posit any events in which acquired traits become heritable. A fair comparison of traditions of speaking (and culture) with evolution must recognize that traditions are in fact Lamarckian.13 It is true that geneticists freely use the lexemes adapt to and adaptation, but in evolutionary theory these terms are conventional abbreviations for the events in which any blind mutation through natural selection leads to a better fit between variants of a species and their environment. A statement such as “Danish has adapted to the computer age” is short for the equivalent ‘Danishspeakers have innovated, adopted, and integrated into their tradition of speaking Coinages, Borrowings, and Extensions that fit the computer environment’. A seemingly parallel statement that “The giraffe has adapted to browsing in the trees of the savannah” has no equivalent explication with an agent subject and 14 an active action verb. It took evolutionists decades to get away from the once wide-spread, seemingly common-sensical, but wrong idea, first formulated as a principle of evolution by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, that acquired traits are heritable in living species. Since Darwin’s theory of natural selection carried the day (Limoges 1970) there has been no need for the term adaptation in evolutionary theory. It remains there as a piece of anthropocentric contraband. But it is indispensable in the human sciences. Their subject matter is traditions, which by nature are enriched and renewed with purposefully created innovations. Curiously, evolutionary scientists have never given up the term adaptation but instead have redefined it to exclude any purposeful action of evolv15 ing species. In applying the evolutionist framework to language change Croft (2000:39) acknowledges that adaptive innovations are purposive but then claims that this difference in causality between language and evolution is irrelevant, and that one “must abstract away from the causal mechanisms”. 13

“Human cultural change compares so poorly with Darwinian evolution primarily because our own customs and technologies do evolve in this vastly more rapid and flexible Lamarckian mode. Whatever we invent in one generation, we pass directly to the next by emulation and instruction” (Gould 2002:722). 14 Note the grammatical parallelism here between Danish and the giraffe, and recall Lass’s view that “languages are quasi-species” (Section 1.1). The exposition below (Section 5.2) will help clarify the distinction between languages and species, traditions and lineages. 15 ”[A]daptational sentences [i.e. which use adapt or its derivatives] simply express the conclusion that a given trait […] is the product of natural selection and thus favors the perpetuation of the genotype responsible for this trait” (Mayr 1988:46).

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This approach is hardly compatible with a serious intention of “Explaining language change”. See further Section 5. The universal level: on the changeability of languages The comparisons presented in the preceding pages show that it can be useful to look closely at the similarities and dissimilarities between evolution and language traditions. This is true as well when we proceed to Coseriu’s third level of inquiry and ask the reason why languages change. Here we can adopt either a narrow or a wide focus. The narrow focus must be on the central issue, the origin of new variants. The wider focus will encompass a general view of the modalities of change in evolution and language. 5.

On the origin of variants In the narrow focus, the mechanical replication of genetic material in evolution contrasts with the rational (abductive) process of Reanalysis in language traditions. Some may find the difference between the two processes of little importance (Croft 2000:39). But when it comes to understanding why languages change, this may be the crux. When new variants arise in the replication of genetic material the cause is always one and the same: transcription errors. Reanalysis is very different. It has long been recognized that the data from which grammars are inferred are typically partly imperfect and incomplete. Indeed, Reanalysis demonstrates speakers’ ability to go beyond what is directly given in the data at their disposal. They do this when they recapture received patterns, when they reinterpret received patterns, and when they invent regularities where none were observable before (cf. Section 2.6). Errors in genetic replication reveal a certain degree of imprecision in the mechanism of transcription. In Reanalysis we are witnesses not simply to the fallibility of abduction, but to a positively creative process of grammar formation. The real source of both non-innovative and innovative Reanalyses is the human ability to create new signs and form a grammar. Is the reason innovations arise in Reanalysis perhaps that our capacity for the creation of means of symbolization sometimes races ahead of the acquisition of our full linguistic inheritance? That we tend to hypothesize new (variant) symbols before we discover the existence or the full import of traditional ones? If so, then here is a sharp contrast between evolution and language history: while genetic copying errors result from an underperformance of the mechanisms of replication, the formation of grammar (and other cultural sys5.1

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tems) demonstrates an overperformance of human minds, a capacity for forming new symbols for immediate use that surpasses any need to acquire precisely all the details of extant patterns of usage. On the categories of history This creativity is evidently also what makes possible the types of linguistic innovation — Neologisms and Extensions — that have no counterpart in evolutionary theory (cf. Sections 2.3–2.5). In his effort to construe language history as a parallel to evolution, Croft (2000) is willing to lump all types of innovation together as “altered replications”. But in the wider focus on language history and evolution suggested above, the types of innovation that set language histories apart from evolution define traditions of speaking (and of culture) as one of three distinct categories of history. 1. The development of the anorganic world is the first of these. Leaving the rest of the Universe aside, the formation of the Earth exemplifies the simple interaction of natural laws and chance (Monod 1971). The result of this interaction is the continuous fluctuation of the physical environment throughout geological time, past and future, comprising changes in the Earth’s mantle and crust, movements of tectonic plates, vulcanism, earthquakes, repeated cycles of mountain formation, erosion, and deposition, weather, formation and melting of ice caps, and so on. 2. The evolution of the organic world is the second category of history. Here, since the chance formation of the first organic molecules in the primordial soup, chance and necessity have interacted to produce a continuous fluctuation of variant molecules, eventually forming organisms reproducing asexually and then sexually, and resulting in a remarkable multitude of life forms. Throughout this long process, the fluctuation of genetic variants has been subject to the constraints of environmental features, internal and external, constant and changing, gradually increasing in number, over time bringing huge numbers of genetic variants and species to extinction, and gradually resulting in increasing complexity in many of the surviving living species. The fluctuation in the living world caused by the interference of chance with the regular replication of genetic material forms a sui generis parallel to the fluctuation in the anorganic world. But the sorting process metaphorically named natural selection has no parallel there. 3. Human traditions, first and foremost traditions of speaking, exemplify the third category of history. Here historical continuity is achieved by the rational, abductive inference of grammars from utterances — the process of Reanalysis — which precedes any recombination of observed and stored utter5.2

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ance partials. In Reanalysis, the cognitive principles of utterance analysis and grammar formation, which are the major premisses in the abductive process, have the status of ‘laws of language’, analogous to the laws of nature in geological history. Elements of chance are introduced in part by ambiguities or indeterminacies in the data that are analysed, in part by the intrinsic fallibility of the abductive mode of inference. Variants that arise in Reanalysis may persist in usage if they are widely Adopted for use. Although Adoptions by individual speakers are an active and purposeful form of selection, the role they indirectly play in eliminating variants is analogous to the passive constraints of natural selection. But in addition to Reanalysis, there are two significant sources of new variants in traditions of speaking: Neologisms and Extension. The variants to which they give rise, too, are subject to Adoption. Both reflect the human capacity for the creation and creative use of signs. Neither has a parallel in the simpler categories of history. The above conception may be summarized as follows (Table 1):

Chance and necessity

Sorting

1. Formation of the Earth

2. Evolution of species

3. Traditions of speaking

Natural laws and chance

Replication and chance errors

Principles of grammar formation and ambiguous data, fallible abduction

Environmental constraints

Adoption for use

Adaptation

Neologisms, Extensions Table 1: The categories of history.

Why languages change The creative aspects of practices and traditions of speaking have been emphasized repeatedly in the preceding pages. The fact that they leap to the eye in every type of innovation that has been described suggests that they are not an accidental, but an essential characteristic of language. In one of his discussions of what he sometimes called “the alleged problem of linguistic change”, Coseriu (1974 [1958]:59) points out that the fact languages change would be surprising if they were objects, for we do not expect objects to change. But languages are not objects. Whether we view them (synchronically) as practices or (diachronically) as traditions, every language evidently consists wholly in the speakers’ activity of speaking with 5.3

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one another, fitting their speech to ever changing communicative tasks, and in the concurrent activity of developing and elaborating the individual competences they use as speakers, addressees, and listeners. “Speaking is a creative, volitional, and goal-directed activity, and it is always new inasmuch as it is determined by personal, topical, ever new communicative purposes”. Since speakers are constantly solving communicative tasks in new ways, no speaker’s competence is ever complete. “All languages change precisely because they are not finished, but are constantly being created in speech” and, we may add, in the grammatical competences employed in producing speech. Conclusion: Explaining language change In this paper I have suggested, following Coseriu, that the perennial problem of explaining language change needs to be broken down into three separate issues, (i) describing and interpreting actual historical changes, (ii) generalizing over changes, and (iii) establishing why languages change. (i) Interpreting actual historical changes means determining the circumstances — cultural, social, pragmatic, and grammatical, as precisely as possible — that have conditioned each attested (or reconstructed) change event and the (types of) innovations of which it consisted. (ii) Forming generalizations over changes makes it possible to highlight the essential, especially pragmatic and grammatical, conditions that typically motivate linguistic innovations. (iii) Both these tasks should be informed by an understanding that languages (like other cultural systems) are continually recreated and created in action. This should help us focus on the cognitive premisses of both non-innovative and innovative Reanalyses, in which utterances are analysed and grammars are developed, and of Neologisms and Extensions, in which new signs and new sign uses are created. Can we get help from evolutionary theory in these tasks? For a long time linguists have been fascinated by the partial isomorphisms between evolution and language traditions. Evidently both the genetic code and languages serve to communicate information — instructions for the generation of a vast array of proteins in one case, the myriad purposes of human speech acts in the other. But the differences between them are remarkable. In the replication of genes there is no distinction between decoding and encoding; they are conflated in a process of copying. In the replication of genes, there are no grammars, only messages (genotokens) and the laws of chemistry. By contrast, in language, encoding and decoding are distinct. And just as speech is produced with grammars (‘genotokens’ are expressed in ‘phenotokens’), so grammars are inferred from speech (‘genotokens’ are 6.

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inferred from ‘phenotokens’). Still, there remain many apparent similarities. Some of these are genuinely thought-provoking, as, for instance, the dual patterning of both the genetic code and language (Jakobson 1971b [1970]:678– 682). But other parallels are superficial. And still others, upon closer examination, turn out to be deep disanalogies hiding behind the pervasively anthropocentric, metaphoric terminology of evolutionary science. A few of the deep differences were mentioned above (Sections 4.1–4.6). In Section 5.2 it was shown that such differences are not accidental. Evolution and human traditions belong to different categories of history. With this understanding the historical linguist can be confident that the simple mechanisms of evolutionary theory can at best serve to put into relief the more complex modalities of linguistic traditions and will be of no effective use in explaining language change. Of course, one can elaborate the terminology of evolutionary theory and in this way modify it to ‘cover’ all the types of innovation that define linguistic (and other cultural) changes. This is what some scholars have thought desirable (see, for instance, Section 4.4.). But there are good reasons why the field of historical linguistics should avoid this and instead maintain and further refine its own terminology. First, any science that develops its own conceptual framework and its own methods of investigation is better served by a terminology that directly reflects these than by a makeshift adaptation of terms originally coined for different purposes in a different science. Secondly, it is only by retaining their own terminology that historical linguists can maintain a clear terminological distinction between the investigation of traditions of speaking and of the evolution of language. This distinction is essential when linguists and geneticists discuss the possibility (or rather likelihood) that the evolution of the genetic foundations of the modern language capacity was partly conditioned (‘selected for’) by evolving forms of linguistic practices and evolving ways of renewing them. Finally, at a time when scholars in other historical human sciences are evidently looking for a suitable conceptual framework, historical linguistics can best serve the wider field of human sciences by presenting a distinctive, adequate terminology, one that does not gloss over, but acknowledges the complex modalities of change characteristic of cultural systems.

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REFERENCES Aitchison, Jean. 1981. Language Change: Progress or decay. London: Fontana. (3rd ed.: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.) Andersen, Henning. 1970. “Kashubian dobëtk ‘dobytek’ and its kind”. Welt der Slaven 15.61–76. Andersen, Henning. 1973. “Abductive and deductive change”. Language 49.567–595. Andersen, Henning. 1974. “Towards a typology of change: bifurcating changes and binary relations”. Historical Linguistics. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Historical Linguistics ed. by John M. Andersen & Charles Jones, vol. 2: 18–62. Amsterdam: North-Holland. Andersen, Henning. 1980. “Morphological change: towards a typology”. Recent Developments in Historical Morphology ed. by Jacek Fisiak, 1–50. (= Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs, 17.) The Hague: Mouton. Andersen, Henning. 1988. “Center and periphery: Adoption, diffusion and spread”. Historical Dialectology, Regional and Social ed. by Jacek Fisiak, 39–85. (= Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs, 37.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Andersen, Henning. 1989. “Understanding linguistic innovations”. Language Change: Contributions to the study of its causes ed. by Leiv Egil Breivik & Ernst Håkon Jahr, 5–28. (= Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs, 43.) Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Andersen, Henning. 1990. “The structure of drift”. Historical Linguistics 1987: Papers from the 8th International Conference on Historical Linguistics ed. by Henning Andersen & Konrad Koerner, 1–20. (= Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 66.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Andersen, Henning, ed. 2001a. Actualization: Linguistic change in progress. (= Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 219.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Andersen, Henning. 2001b. “Introduction”. Andersen 2001a. 1–20. Andersen, Henning. 2001c. “Markedness and the theory of linguistic change”. Andersen 2001a. 21–57. Andersen, Henning. 2001d. “Actualization and the (uni)directionality of change”. Andersen 2001a. 225–248. Andersen, Henning. 2002. “Preglottalization in English and a North Germanic bifurcation”. Sounds and Systems: Studies in structure and change: A Festschrift for Theo Vennemann ed. by David Restle & Dietmar Zaefferer, 15–34. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Andersen, Henning. 2003. “On bifurcations and the Germanic consonant shifts”. Language in Time and Space: A Festschrift for Werner Winter on the occasion of his 80th birthday ed. by Brigitte L. M. Bauer & GeorgesJean Pinault, 19–33. (= Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs, 144.) Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

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Andersen, Henning. 2006. “Grammation, regrammation, and degrammation: Tense loss in Russian”. Diachronica 23. In press. Andersen, Henning. Forthc. “Grammaticalization in a speaker-oriented theory of change”. Historical Linguistics and the Theory of Grammar. The Rosendal Papers ed. by Thorhallur Eythórsson. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Boyd, Robert & Peter J. Richerson. 1985. Culture and the Evolutionary Process. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Brøndal, Viggo. 1917. Substrater og laan i romansk og germansk: Studier i lyd og ordhistorie. Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gad. Busse, Ulrich. 2001. “The use of address pronouns in Early Modern English”. Andersen 2001a. 119–142. Chambers, J. K. & Peter Trudgill. 1998. Dialectology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (First ed. 1980.) Collinge, Neville E. 1995. “History of comparative linguistics”. Concise History of the Language Sciences: From the Sumerians to the cognitivists ed. by E. F. Konrad Koerner & R. E. Asher, 195–202. Oxford: Pergamon. Coseriu, Eugenio. 1975 [1952]. “System, Norm und Rede”. Sprachtheorie und allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. (Translated by Uwe Petersen from “Sistema, norma y habla”. Revista de la Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias, 9.113–177, Montevideo, 1952. Reprinted in Teoría del lenguaje y lingüística general, 11–113. Madrid: Gredos, 1962.) Coseriu, Eugenio. 1974 [1958]. Synchronie, Diachronie und Geschichte: Das Problem des Sprachwandels. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. (Translated by Helga Sohre from Sincronía, diacronía e historia: El problema del cambio lingüístico. Montevideo: Universidad de la Republica, Faculdad de Humanidades y Ciencias, 1958.) Coseriu, Eugenio. 1970 [1968]. “Synchronie, Diachronie und Typologie”. Sprache: Strukturen und Funktionen: 12 Aufzätze zur allgemeinen und romanischen Sprachwissenschaft ed. by Uwe Petersen, 71–85. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. (Translated by Uwe Petersen from “Sincronía, diacronía y tipología”. Actas del 11 Congreso Internacional de Lingüística y Filología Románicas, Madrid 1965, vol. 1:269–281. Madrid, 1968.) Croft, William. 2000. Explaining Language Change: An evolutionary approach. (= Longman Linguistics Library.) Harlow, Essex: Longman. Dawkins, Richard. 1976. The Selfish Gene. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. García, Erica. 1990. “Reanalysing actualization and actualizing reanalysis”. Historical Linguistics 1987: Papers from the 8th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (Lille 1987) ed. by Henning Andersen & Konrad Koerner, 141–160. (= Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 66.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Gould, Stephen Jay. 1991 [1987]. “Life’s little joke”. Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in natural history, 168–181. London: Vintage, Random House. (Orig. in Natural History 96:4.16–25. Also in Full House: The spread of

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THE RELEVANCE OF AN EVOLUTIONARY MODEL TO HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS WILLIAM CROFT University of New Mexico Introduction Evolutionary models have become increasingly popular in linguistics and more generally in the social sciences in the past decade or two. These models have been applied to the human sciences, including linguistics, in at least three different ways. The first way involves attempts to explain contemporary human behavior, including social structures, in terms of the biological evolution of human cognitive, social and behavioral traits. In the social sciences, this application of evolution is associated with sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. Sociobiology argues that human social behavior has a biological basis and seeks evolutionary explanations for it. Evolutionary psychology largely does the same for human psychological traits (cognitive and emotional). In linguistics, this application of evolution is represented by research on the ‘evolution of language’, that is, the evolution of the human cognitive and social capacity for language, something which is lacking in our nearest primate relatives (as well as all other organisms). While the term ‘evolution of language’ has become esconced to describe this research programme, it is not entirely accurate. This research programme, including sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, is really a biological approach to the study of human society, behavior and cognition. It is evolutionary because biology is evolutionary. A second way in which evolutionary models have entered linguistics, and also archeology and physical anthropology, is the study of the correlation between genetic analyses of human populations, archeological evidence, and language classification. All three strands of data are relevant to the study of the origin and diversification of humans across the earth. Of course, the correlation is not perfect: people can shift their language, and craft traditions represented in the archeological record can diffuse. And some of the data, particularly the linguistic genetic classifications, are controversial. Nevertheless, there is sig1.

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nificant correlation between genetic, archeological and linguistic diversification, and this has led to interesting results for at least relatively recent history such as the Austronesian and Bantu dispersals. It would not be possible to establish such correlations without there being some significant parallels between biological evolution and language diversification. Indeed, some techniques from genetics are being experimented with in historical linguistics (see Section 7). The third way in which evolutionary models have entered linguistics investigates these parallels with the aim of developing an evolutionary model of language change (not ‘evolution of language’). That is, constructs, mechanisms and processes that are postulated by evolutionary theory for biology are applied to language change. The application of such concepts ranges from the occasional analogy or metaphor to a systematic explication of language change in evolutionary terms. The use of biological metaphors or analogies, while valuable for illuminating the character of some linguistic phenomena, is ultimately limited. Metaphors and analogies cannot clearly identify what biological evolution and language change should be expected to have in common. Only a systematic evolutionary framework can offer a genuinely evolutionary theory of language change. The crucial feature of a systematic evolutionary framework that can be applied to language change — or more generally to cultural transmission — is that the essential properties of evolution must be abstracted from the biological mechanisms and processes postulated by evolutionary biologists. That is, we must identify what type of abstract process evolution is, independent of a phenomenal domain such as biology. Then we can investigate whether that abstract process is instantiated in language change or other types of cultural transmission. In fact, a number of biologists and philosophers of biology have proposed abstract evolutionary analyses. The one that has inspired the most interest in the social sciences is probably that of Richard Dawkins, which goes under the name of ’memetics’. Another model that is closely related to Dawkins’ work, but differs in significant ways, was developed by David Hull (1988, 2001) and is called the ‘generalized analysis of selection’, or GAS. Hull’s abstract model is applied systematically to language change in work by this author (Croft 2000; see also Croft 2002, 2003a, b, to appear; Baxter & al. 2006). In the course of presenting the evolutionary model of language change, I have been asked the question — by both friendly and hostile questioners, “The evolutionary model you describe sounds fine as it is, but does it really change the way we do historical linguistics?” In other words, it could be the case that an evolutionary interpretation of historical linguistic phenomena at best simply

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validates what historical linguists already do anyway. In this chapter, I argue that in fact an evolutionary model, in particular the model developed in the aforementioned publications, can alter how we do historical linguistics in a variety of ways. Hull’s generalized analysis of selection is explicated in Section 2. Its relevance to the study of language and language change is presented in Sections 3–4, and its instantiation in language change is given in Section 5. In Sections 6–9, I address the relevance of the evolutionary model to historical linguistics. The generalized analysis of selection (GAS) The evolutionary model is basically a framework for the analysis of ‘change by replication’ (Hull 1988:410). Change occurs in (at least) two varieties: as inherent change or change by replication. ‘Inherent change’ is the transformation of the properties of a single entity over time. ‘Replication’ is a process that produces copies of an entity that largely preserves the structure of the original entity in the replicate (Hull 1988:408). Replication can lead to change if the copying process introduces changes; that is, the replication process is not perfect. Copying with possible changes is only the kernel of a much more complex process. It is this more complex process which is found in biological evolution, and is assumed in GAS. First, the replication process that is interesting from an evolutionary point of view allows iteration: copies are produced from copies indefinitely, forming ‘lineages’ as a result (Dawkins 1989:13; Hull 1988:409, 410). Second, the changes in the copying process are cumulative in the lineage of replications (that is, later replications do not automatically ‘revert’ to the original’s structure; Dawkins 1989:14, 1982:85). The result of this iterated copying process is a set of ‘replicators’, with variation occurring in that set. In biological evolution, the paradigm replicator is the ‘gene’. It is a structured entity that is copied in biological reproduction. Changes can occur in the replication process, by random mutation or (in sexual reproduction) by recombination. The term ‘replicator’ was used by Dawkins (1989: chap. 2), in his proposed model for biological evolution. Dawkins intended for his model to be a generalized framework, instantiated in other empirical phenomena where change by replication takes place. In particular, he coined the term ‘meme’ to describe an entity that is replicated in cultural transmission (Dawkins 1989: chap. 11), and spawned a theory of ‘memetics’. An evolutionary model of language change is a memetic model, but Hull’s generalized analysis of evolution differs in certain crucial ways from the memetic theory of Dawkins and his followers. 2.

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Replication leads to change, but change occurs at two levels in replication processes. There is change that occurs in a lineage of specific replications: an example of this would be a mutation in a gene that is replicated from one generation of organisms to the next. This process is ’altered replication’ (Croft 2000:23). Altered replication leads to variation in the set of replicators. But there is also change in the overall set of replicators: for example, proliferation of the mutated gene at the expense of the original gene in the population of organisms, that is, the increase in frequency of one variant gene (‘allele’) at the expense of another allele. This process is ’differential replication’: some replicators are copied differentially compared to other replicators. Differential replication presupposes variation — and hence, altered replication. In biological evolution, the most important process of differential replication is ‘selection’. (Another process, ’drift’ in the biological sense, will not be discussed here.) In selection, a distinct process from that which causes change in lineages causes differential replication in a set of replicators. In biological evolution, selection of genes is a consequence of the interaction of organisms with their environment. One mechanism for biological selection is ’natural selection’, in which organisms more adapted to the environment survive and reproduce at a greater rate, leading to the differential replication of their genes. Other selection mechanisms have been proposed in biological evolution, in particular ’sexual selection’, in which some organisms are selected for mating by other organisms of the opposite sex, thereby leading to differential replication of their genes. Hull (1988:409, 2001:59–61) generalizes the analysis of the selectional process as ‘environmental interaction’. Environmental interaction involves an ’interactor’ interacting with its environment in such a way as to cause differential replication of the relevant replicators. (Dawkins plays down the role of the interactor, calling it a ‘vehicle’ for the gene (1982:82) and describing it as a “survival machine” for genes (1989:19); but Hull argues, correctly in my view, that environmental interaction is as important as replication in selection (Hull 1988:413). This is perhaps the major difference between memetics as practiced by Dawkins and his followers and Hull’s generalized analysis of selection.) In biological evolution, the paradigm case of the interactor is the organism, as noted in the last paragraph, but Hull argues that many entities associated with a replicator or set of replicators can function as interactors if their interaction with the environment causes differential replication (1988:417, 2001:61). Evolution is therefore a two-step process: (i) replication which produces variation among replicators, and (ii) environmental interaction by interactors which causes differential replication (selection) of replicators. Selection can

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happen only if there is variation among the replicators. Thus, evolutionary change requires replication, variation (altered replication), and selection (differential replication). This is the essential model of change by replication developed by Hull, the ’generalized analysis of selection’, or GAS, as mentioned in the introduction. There is a further level of organization in the biological evolution of sexual organisms which also forms a part of GAS. Organisms form ’species’, and it is usually said that species are what evolve. A species is defined as a ‘population’ in evolutionary biology. The population model replaces the ’essentialist’ definition of a species previously assumed in biology (Mayr 1982:265–72). In the essentialist definition, membership in a species is defined by a set of essential properties (structural and/or behavioral). However, distinct species share the same supposedly essential properties in many cases, and in other cases, members of the same species are extremely diverse and no essential properties can be identified. Above all, species evolve and in so doing lose supposedly essential traits. The solution to the problem of essentialist definitions in biology is to redefine species as a ‘population’. The term ‘population’ has a specific meaning in biology. A population is defined by some relational property between members, not inherent properties of members. In the case of species, the relational property is interbreeding among the members, and more importantly, reproductive isolation from members of other species (Hull 1988:102). A population is therefore unified by interbreeding. (Reproductive isolation is often not complete, and not all members of a population interbreed with one another, but isolation and interbreeding are complete enough in most cases, and when they are not, population cohesiveness is weak, as predicted.) Interbreeding, of course, produces new members of the population. Interbreeding also leads to replication of the relevant replicators — the genes of the offspring are replications of the parents’ genes. Successful interbreeding leads to differential replication of the relevant replicators. Interbreeding also provides another mechanism for altered replication, that is, the production of variation: recombination of genes from the two parent organisms. Thus, a species defined as a population is tightly interwoven with the processes of replication, variation, and selection. A population of interactors is therefore defined by ‘intercourse’ between members, and isolation from intercourse with other populations. (The term ‘intercourse’ is introduced here to describe the specific sort of interaction that binds together populations.) Moreover, this intercourse brings about replication in the case of the interactors we have described in biological evolution. The population of organisms is also a historical entity, that is, an entity bounded in

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space and time. A population comes to exist when its ancestral population splits, and it continues to exist until it goes extinct, or it itself splits into new populations. In biology, a species is a token or a particular, not a type, to use the philosopher’s terminology. GAS is an abstract model of change by replication. GAS is not a metaphor or analogy derived from biological evolution, to be applied to language change or cultural transmission. GAS stands above phenomenal domains. GAS in itself does not specify how it is instantiated in a particular phenomenal domain. (It may even be the case that there are two distinct selection processes operating at once in a single phenomenal domain.) The only constraint imposed by GAS is that every element of it must be instantiated. The thing that evolves must be a historical entity. There must exist variation in the thing that evolves. All the roles defined by GAS must be instantiated: replicator, interactor, environment. Finally, there must be causal mechanisms linking those roles in the way specified by the generalized analysis of selection. In particular, variation must arise via altered replication, and environmental interaction by the interactors must cause differential replication of the relevant replicators. GAS also does not specify what the causal mechanisms are that bring about selection in a particular domain. Causal mechanisms must be identified that produce novel variants (altered replication), not to mention the even more fundamental mechanisms that lead to normal (identical) replication. Likewise, causal mechanisms must be identified that cause differential replication. These causal mechanisms are specific to the empirical phenomenon in which change by replication takes place. In this sense, for example, GAS is not necessarily incompatible with theories of mechanisms of language change in historical linguistics. GAS tells us where we must look for such mechanisms; it does not tell us what we should find. In Sections 3–5, I argue that language change does satisfy the conditions for GAS. Language can be conceived of as a historical entity (Section 3). Variation exists in language, and in fact, variation is one of the central facts of language that must be accounted for, not just by a theory of language change but by a theory of language in general (Section 4). Finally, I describe the ’theory of utterance selection’, or TUS (Section 5), which is a specific instantiation in language change of the roles and causal relations among roles specified in GAS. Language change and language One cannot define a theory of language change without some hypothesis of what a language is. There are of course several theories of language currently proposed in linguistics. But it is most useful to begin by examining 3.

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two popular layperson’s views of what a language is. These will turn out to reflect the intuitions behind two more technical views of the nature of a language. In the first view, a language is basically like a reference grammar plus dictionary: it is a stock of items and a system of rules for combining those items into sentences of the language. This lay view of a language has been formalized in linguistics as a grammar plus lexicon: a system of rules and oppositions that organizes basic elements — morphemes as well as words — syntagmatically (into sentences) and paradigmatically (into contrasting sets of words and morphemes). More precisely, of course, linguistic theory distinguishes between a ’grammar’ — the system — and a ‘language’ — the set of sentences admissible by the grammar. In theory, a language (= set of sentences) may be consistent with more than one grammar. In practice, however, most linguists assume there is a single correct grammar for a set of sentences, and much effort is devoted to identifying what is “the” grammar of the language. This is the view of a language (and grammar) that underlies the structuralist approach to a language and the generative approach which succeeded it (now often referred to as ‘formalism’). There is a serious objection to this view of language, however: it is not a real empirical entity. In philosophical terms, it is neither a token nor a type. It is not a token in that it does not represent an actual set of sentences or an actual speaker’s mental structures. An actual set of sentences will include “ungrammatical” utterances, and is finite as well (the set of possible sentences admissible by any serious candidate for a ‘formal’ grammar of a natural language is infinite). An actual speaker’s mental structures will vary from other speakers’ mental structures in many respects, in part because of different exposure to the language, even among “native” speakers. Nor is a grammar in this sense a type: the laws of Hungarian, for example, only apply to the Hungarian language, not to language in general. The defense of this view is that linguists must make do with an idealization, in this case the famous idealization of Chomsky’s: “Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly” (Chomsky 1965:3). More recently, some of this variation is instead attributed to a periphery, but there is a core that is invariant and moreover true of all languages — that is, a type in the philosophical sense. There are counterarguments to this defense, both empirical and theoretical. There is no a priori way to distinguish between what is supposed to be core and what is supposed to be peripheral. The periphery is also regular in behavior and must be explained (this argument has been put most forcefully by ‘construction’ grammarians,

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e.g. Fillmore & al. 1988; Kay & Fillmore 1999). Even the core is highly variable in a broad cross-linguistic perspective (this argument has been put most forcefully by typologists; see Croft 2001, 2003a and references cited therein). Finally this idealization in fact abstracts away from one of the most important facts of language, namely its variability. Theoretical analysis should be directed towards explaining this fact, rather than idealizing away from it. In the second view, a language is a historical entity. A language such as Hungarian arose at a certain time in a certain place, spread out over a certain area and persisted over a certain time, and (will) come to an end at a certain place and time, either through extinction or by splitting into two or more daughter languages. In this definition of a language, a language is a token, an empirically real entity; language as a type would be defined over the structures and processes common to languages so defined. In this definition of a language, a grammar is the actual knowledge that a specific speaker has about his or her language — also an empirical entity. Thus, neither a language nor a grammar is idealized in the way that these two entities are under the first definition described above. This definition of language is a plausible and defensible one from an intuitive point of view. The task facing a historical linguist is to take this lay view of what a language is and turn it into a technical concept on which a theory of language change can be built. In fact, adopting this view of a language is the first step towards formalizing it in an evolutionary model of language change. Variation in language The definition of a language as a historical entity makes language a real empirical phenomenon. It is also intended to capture a basic fact about language: variation. Variation is pervasive in the linguistic system, in terms of phonological form (phonetic variation), semantic function (semantic-pragmatic variation), and in the grammatical pairing of the two (morphosyntactic variation). Variation is also an essential ingredient to an evolutionary theory of language change. For this reason, we will examine variation in language in somewhat greater detail. Variation is manifested in three distinct ways in language: first-order variation in occasions of language use (individual utterances), second-order variation in socially-valued variants (sociolinguistic variables), and third-order variation across dialects and languages (typological patterns and implicational universals). I begin by illustrating the three orders of variation for phonological form, before turning to semantic-pragmatic and morphosyntactic variation. The phonetic realization of phonological units is highly variable. Ohala writes, ”One of the major discoveries of phonetics for the past century is the 4.

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tremendous variability that exists in what we regard as the “same” event in speech, whether this sameness be phones, syllables, or words” (Ohala 1993:239). This variation is manifested across the entire phonological spectrum, as illustrated in detail in Ladefoged and Maddieson’s The Sounds of the World’s Languages (Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996). For example, certain languages are standardly described as utilizing just the dental or alveolar place of articulation, such as French and English respectively. However, in one study, 20–30% of French speakers produced an alveolar [] while a similar proportion of English speakers produced a dental [ ] (Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996:23). Labov (1994) presents many examples of variation of vowel productions by individual speakers on different occasions of use (see for example Labov 1994: chap. 6). These are all examples of first-order variation. Labov, and the sociolinguistic tradition he played a great role in launching, also notes that this variation can acquire social value, such as the seminal study of the [Ø] and [] variants of the sociolinguistic variable (r) in New York City (Labov 1966, summarized in Labov 1994:86–94). Socially-valued variants represent secondorder variation: variants available in the speech community for use by speakers. Socially-valued variants may then be propagated (or go extinct) in a speech community. Finally, if the speech community splits, different variants may become established in the different communities. This is third-order variation: linguistic differences across dialects and languages. An example of interdialectal variation is found in Californian vs. British English “interdentals”. Californian English speakers use true interdentals in a word such as [ ] whereas British English speakers use a dental fricative [] (Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996:20). More generally, the same phonological units will undergo independent changes in independent communities. Again, a few examples from Ladefoged and Maddieson will illustrate the pervasiveness of the variation in the phonetic realization of sounds. For example, many languages distinguish dental and alveolar stops, particularly in India, Australia, and the Americas. Most such languages contrast a laminal dental []vs. an apical alveolar [ ] as in Toda [ ] ‘ten’ vs. [ ] ‘cockroach’; but Temne contrasts an apical  dental vs. a laminal alveolar (Ladfoged & Maddieson 1996:21–23). Most such languages also have greater affrication of apical alveolars than laminal dentals, as in Isako; but Dahalo has greater affrication of the laminal dentals (op. cit.:25). Many languages have so-called retroflex stops, but while the Dravidian languages have true subapical retroflex stops, e.g. Toda [] ‘head’, Ewe

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and even Hindi have apical postalveolar articulations, e.g. Ewe [  ]‘he cooks’ (op. cit.:25–26). Variation is also pervasive in linguistic function, that is, the meaning conveyed in an utterance. The information communicated by particular words and constructions is extremely variable across individual occasions of use. Every experience that is communicated is different from every prior experience communicated, even when we use the same words and constructions as we have used on prior occasions of use. Grice described the unique meaning conveyed on a particular occasion of use as ‘utterer’s occasion meaning’ (Grice 1989 [1967]:90); Clark calls it ‘speaker’s meaning’ (Clark 1996:126). Attempts have been made to construct a rigid division which would exclude the variable portions of a speaker’s conveyed meaning and leave an invariant semantic representation: essence-accidence, dictionary-encyclopedia, analyticsynthetic, conventional-nonconventional, semantic-pragmatic. However, these attempts to make linguistic meaning invariant have run against seemingly insurmountable problems. A very telescoped version of the argument is given in this paragraph (see Croft 2000, sect. 4.3 for a more extended version). Psycholinguistic experiments indicate that the “essential” properties of a meaning vary according to occasion of use; what is invariant is the total encyclopedic knowledge of speakers (Barsalou 1987, 1993:31–35). Even proper names, which do not have a “dictionary meaning” other than designating a historical individual, have evolved linguistically in response to their encyclopedic meaning (e.g. napoleonic; Haiman 1980:350). A dictionary definition (set of analytic statements) can be definitional only in terms of some theory that we have about the phenomenon (Quine 1961; Murphy & Medin 1985; Gelman & Coley 1991). That theory contains an unspecifiable number of background assumptions (Searle 1979); that is, the theory is encyclopedic. Hence the conventional meaning of words and constructions must be extremely rich. Further, in choosing words and constructions in an utterance, speakers must construe the experience to be communicated as the same in some respect as prior experiences for which those words and constructions have been used. But this is a matter of conceptualization by the speaker, who can draw on any feature of his or her experience (Croft & Cruse 2004, chap. 3). In other words, the meaning of a word or construction must encompass all of the encyclopedic knowledge behind its use, and represents choices the speaker makes in framing the experience to be communicated. This is just another way of saying that the variation in utterer’s occasion meaning is part of linguistic meaning. Finally, there is also grammatical variation; that is, there are many ways to ‘the same thing’. Putting the question this way presupposes a view of gram-

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mar as a sign system or a system of symbolic units, as in Construction Grammar, Cognitive Grammar, and also Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar. This contrasts with the structuralist and generative view of grammar as a system of formal structures encapsulated in a grammatical component that is autonomous (self-contained; Croft 1995) relative to the semantic interpretations of those structures. Space prevents me from giving a more general defense of the symbolic or semiotic, sign-based view of grammar (see inter alia, Fillmore, Kay & O’Connor 1988; Kay & Fillmore 1999; Langacker 1987; Goldberg 1995; Croft 2001; Croft & Cruse 2004, part 3). However, an argument can be made that the notion of syntactic variation (or absence thereof) does not make sense except in terms of ways of ‘saying the same thing’. Consider the following pairs of English sentences that differ in word order: (1)

a. I like beans. b. Beans I like.

(2)

a. After doing the dishes, I read the paper. b. I read the paper after doing the dishes.

English is commonly described as having an invariant SVO word order, represented by 1a. It is also commonly described as allowing variation in the placement of adverbial clauses, as in (2a–b). In this standard account, (1b) is analyzed as a special construction (called ‘topicalization’ after its transformational description), with a special discourse or informational function (see e.g., Prince 1981), but (2a–b) are not treated as distinct constructions. How different are the facts in (1a–b) and (2a–b), really? There is certainly some functional differentiation between preposed and postposed adverbial clauses (see Chafe 1984; Ford 1993). Conversely, there is also some overlap in the uses of (1a–b). The difference in variability of word order depends solely on the degree of generality of the grammatical description. At a lower level of generality, English has constructions whose word order is invariant: Basic Declarative (1a), Topicalization (1b), Preposed Adverbial Clause (2a), and Postposed Adverbial Clause (2b). At a higher level of generality, English has constructions with variable word order: a Declarative or Clausal construction subsuming (1a–b), and a Complex Sentence (Adverbial) construction subsuming (2a–b). The common description of English as invariantly SVO is really an arbitrary statement in terms of the pure order of formal elements.

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One can evaluate grammatical invariance independent of the generality of the syntactic description only by comparing how speakers grammatically encode ‘the same thing’. Any such study will show that in fact there is a great deal of variation, whose significance for syntactic change will be clear to most historical linguists (Croft 2005). Morphosyntactic variation can be illustrated here using the Pear Stories narratives (Chafe 1980). Twenty undergraduates described the same short movie to an experimenter who pretended not to have seen the movie. Certain events in the movie were described by most of the subjects. Example (3) gives the expressions for the nineteen subjects who reported this particular event (false starts, fillers, pauses and parenthetical statements are edited out; punctuation indicates intonation unit boundaries): (3)

a. anyway, a guy comes by leading a goat. b. And a man comes along with a goat, c. along comes a man with a donkey. d. a man came along with a goat, e. a man goes by with a goat, f. and you see a guy leading a goat, g. A man with a goat comes by, h. a man with a goat comes by. i. somebody…walks by with a goat or something. j. and this man is pulling a goat. k. A man with a goat, was in the distance and walked by. l. you see this man, dragging this goat, m. And this man came by, walked by, and he's leading a goat, n. a man with a goat,…well he walked by, o. someone came along first. p. you see a younger Chicano man, coming across from the back of the picture frame, and he’s leading a brown and white goat. q. Somebody went past him with a goat. r. and a man comes by leading a goat. s. And a man walked by with a goat,

We will focus on two grammatical functions found in these utterances, the expression of the presentative informational function (the man appearing on the scene) and the expression of the comitative circumstantial relationship (between the goat and the man). The constructional variation for the presentative is given in (4–9) (DIR = directional, PRN = pronoun, LOCPRED = locative predication; numbers in brackets indicate frequency in the sample):

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a NOUN [8]/This N OUN [2]/Someone[1]/ Somebody [2] VERB… Inversion [1]: DIR V ERB a N OUN… Dislocation [1]: a NOUN, P RN VERB…… Presentative [2]: You see a NOUN [1]/this NOUN [1] V ERB-ing… Coordinate [1]: a NOUN LOCP RED and VERB… Presentative/ Coordinate [1]: You see a NOUN V ERB-ing and PRN VERB Basic [13]:

The presentative construction ranges from a basic SVO construction with an indefinite subject (no prosody is indicated) to a variety of other strategies. The strategies in (4–6) and possibly (7) are highly conventionalized, and hence represent second-order variation. The strategies in (7–9) are much less conventionalized; (8–9) probably represent first-order variation, created on the fly on that occasion of use. All represent grammatical variation in English. The firstorder variation is a typical grammaticalization path of presentatives from complex sentence structures (cf. Lambrecht 1988). The same is true of the expression of the comitative, given in 10–13: (10) Preposition [11]: with Y: embedded [4]/extraposed [6]/both (with inversion) [1] (11) Participle [4]: dragging [1]/leading [3] Y (12) Coordinate [2]: and X is leading Y (13) Predicate [1]: X is pulling Y The prepositional comitative is highly conventionalized (nevertheless it varies in its position). Yet the comitative relation manifests first-order variation as well, with either a subordinate participial phrase or coordination presumably created on the fly. In one case (3j), the relation between the man and the goat is the main predication used in the utterance. The first-order variation is again a typical path of grammaticalization for the comitative (Heine & Kuteva 2002: 139–40, 287). Although various linguists, in particular sociolinguists and functionalist linguists, have argued for the centrality of variation in language (Weinreich, Labov & Herzog 1968; Bailey 1973; Heine, Claudi & Hünnemeyer 1991; Bybee, Perkins & Pagliuca 1994), it has proven more difficult to develop a model of language and language change that incorporates this idea. In the next section, I argue that Hull’s generalized analysis of selection, GAS, can fill this gap.

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The instantiation of GAS in language change The two preceding sections have argued that language and language change have the basic characteristics that make it amenable to an evolutionary model. A language can be defined as a historical entity, and that entity can be characterized as having variation as one of its basic properties. In order to develop a technical model of language change as an instantiation of selection, we must identify the roles and causal relations of the generalized analysis of selection in language. This model is presented in Croft (2000, esp. chap. 2), and is summarized here. In language, probably the most salient instance of replication occurs in language use. Every time we open our mouths to speak, we replicate grammatical structures — sounds, words and constructions — that have occurred in prior utterances to which we have been exposed. Hence the paradigm replicator is a linguistic structure in an utterance. This entity has not played a major role in grammatical theories, which have dealt with idealizations — the phoneme /p/, or the periphrastic future construction, rather than specific realizations of /p/ or the future construction occurring in particular utterances. A significant exception is variationist sociolinguistics, in which the basic data are tokens of linguistic structures; these are called the ‘variants’ of a linguistic ‘variable’. These variants are sampled from the utterances in a speech community, quantified and correlated with various social and linguistic factors. The term ‘lingueme’ is coined in Croft (2000:28) to describe this entity. By taking the replicator as a lingueme, this evolutionary model is fundamentally ‘usage-based’: replication is language use. Replication, that is, language use, produces variation, namely first-order variation in form, meaning, and their pairing in grammar (Section 4). The recognition of this variation is the first step in constructing a model of change by replication. Change occurs at two levels in replication processes, as noted in the explication of GAS (Section 2). Altered replication is change that occurs in a lineage of specific replications. A linguistic example would be replication of /p/ as [] instead of the original []. Altered replication is innovation or actuation in language change. Differential replication is change in the relative frequency of replicators in a set. To continue the linguistic example, this would be proliferation of []’s at the expense of []’s, that is, the increase in frequency of one variant of a linguistic variable in the speech community at the expense of another variant. Differential replication is propagation in language change. In GAS, differential replication is caused by environmental interaction. The interactor’s interaction with the environment causes differential replication of the relevant replicators. In language change, the paradigm interactor is the 5.

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speaker, or perhaps more precisely, the speaker’s grammar (knowledge about his or her language). We cause the differential replication of linguemes every time we open our mouths to speak: we produce certain variants in our utterances instead of certain others. The choice of variants depends on what is being talked about and above all who is being spoken to. This is the environment for speaking. The effect of differential production of variants — differential replication — is an increase in the frequency of certain variants and the decrease of others. In this instantiation of GAS in language change, the lingueme is identified as the paradigm replicator, the speaker (or speaker’s grammar) as the paradigm interactor, and the replication process is conversation, that is, the production of utterances in language use. This instantiation of GAS is called the ‘theory of utterance selection’, or TUS (Croft 2000:25–20). We now turn to the definition of the populations into which replicators and interactors are organized. In the explication of GAS in Section 2, I elaborated on the problems with the essentialist definition of a species because they are paralleled exactly by problems in defining a language. It was noted that some species are distinct yet have the same essential traits. Many languages are distinct although they share the same linguistic properties and are therefore mutually intelligible (examples include Bulgarian and Macedonian, and Danish and Norwegian). Other species are unified despite great diversitiy in essential traits. Some languages are considered to be a single language even though the varieties spoken are so diverse that members of the speech community cannot understand each other (examples include the Chinese language and, increasingly, English). Finally, languages like species evolve and change their linguistic features (for example, changes in English over the past several hundred years). These phenomena all pose problems for a language defined in terms of structural properties or even in terms of mutual intelligibility. The linguistic equivalent of the population definition of a species is a population definition of a language, or more precisely, the speech community. (Recall that biological populations are defined over organisms, that is, interactors, and interactors are speakers, not linguemes.) A speech community is a group of speakers who engage in intercourse, that is, talk to each other, and more critically, are communicatively isolated from speakers in other speech communities. Of course, communicative isolation is never complete; but nor is reproductive isolation between biological species, especially plants. Intercourse (in the linguistic sense) between speaker populations is undoubtedly of a greater degree than interbreeding across species. Nevertheless, this is a difference of degree, not kind. This definition of a language spoken by a

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speech community is therefore more ‘social’ than ‘linguistic’ (see e.g., Dixon 1980, chap. 2; Chambers & Trudgill 1998, chap. 1). Conversation is the production of utterances. Hence, conversation leads to replication of linguemes. In particular, the production of utterances involves the recombination of linguemes from prior utterances heard and internalized by the speaker: most utterances are novel combinations of words and constructions. This recombination process is what is usually referred to as the creativity of language. Some of these novel combinations turn out to be the innovations for new constructions in grammaticalization (see examples (7–9) and (11–13) above), or of new word senses, or of new words themselves (e.g. derivational innovations). Hence the recombination process is a major source of innovations in language change. Finally, the production of utterances in conversation causes differential replication of the relevant linguemes. Hence the population definition of a speech community is tightly integrated with the processes of replication, innovation (altered replication) and propagation (differential replication) — exactly as is the population definition of a species. Once we have identified a speech community — a population of speakers — then we may identify other associated populations or population-like entities. A language can now be defined as a population of utterances, that is, the population of utterances produced by members of a speech community. A population of utterances is different from a set of sentences, the definition of a ‘language’ in the first lay view of language described in Section 3. A population of utterances is a historical entity, consisting of the corpus of actual utterances produced, whereas a set of sentences admitted by a grammar is infinite and not a historical entity. A population of utterances is thus the formalization of the second lay view of what a ‘language’ is. It is born at a particular place and time, and extends over space and time until it splits into new populations or goes extinct. A population of utterances is interconnected in that the linguemes in a particular utterance are replicated from prior utterances in the same population. The other important population is the ‘lingueme pool’, that is, all the linguemes occurring in a language. This is the dataset that is sampled in variationist sociolinguistic research, yielding frequencies of variants in particular speech communities. The linguemes in a lingueme pool form lineages which trace the history of the sounds, words, and constructions of the language. These histories are sound changes, word etymologies, and grammaticalization chains of constructions — the basic facts of language change. In earlier presentations of this work to audiences, it has sometimes been objected that reducing a language to a population of utterances which evolves via shifts in lingueme frequencies misses the human role in language change.

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In fact, one of the purposes of this model of language change is precisely to put people back into language. The main alternative view, that a language is an infinite set of mostly never-uttered sentences generated by an idealized grammar that no speaker has in her head, excludes the human role in language change. First, the evolutionary model represents a language as an actual historyical entity, spoken by actual human beings. Second, in the generalized analysis of selection, the interactor plays an equally important role as the replicator. The human speaker is an interactor. (There are also other entities that can function as interactors, but this is beyond the scope of this contribution.) Third, utterances themselves — the entities that make up a language — are not just strings of linguistic forms but acts of communication between people engaging in social interaction. The lineages of replication — sound changes, etymologies and grammaticalization chains — are not just forms either, but histories of human relationships and interactions. In order to understand the mechanisms of language change, one must examine social interactions and human relationships, not just linguistic forms and their frequencies. Finally, a language in this sense is larger than any one person can know, speaker or linguist, because it is the totality of utterances produced in a speech community over the course of its existence. But the fact that any speaker’s knowledge about (not of) his or her language is partial is a crucial aspect of how variation and change are central to language. We now turn to the question of the relevance of the evolutionary model — more specifically TUS — to the practice of historical linguistics. Relevance (i): Basic theoretical issues in language change When the question is framed as “How can the evolutionary model change the way we do historical linguistics?”, it presupposes that there is one way in which historical linguistics is done. In fact, there are a number of different theories of language change currently proposed, many of which are incompatible with each other and some of which are incompatible with TUS. There are also empirical arguments against some of these theories. An evolutionary framework allows us to frame the questions that should be asked of these theories, and offers insights into the empirical failings of certain of these theories. First, the evolutionary framework requires that the object of study be a historical entity, that is, a spatiotemporally bounded token, not an idealized natural kind. This corresponds to the second view of language in Section 3. While the view of language as a historical entity is something which historical linguists all presumably accept, there is a corollary that is not so obvious, and is brought out by the evolutionary approach. For the past century, structuralism 6.

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(and its successor, generative grammar) has focused attention on the linguistic system, and further, has idealized that system to a type. However, language change is not a change in a linguistic system. The only real place for a linguistic system to reside is in a speaker’s head. Change does occur in that system, but that change is ontogeny — acquisition of a grammar (knowledge about the language) and any further changes in the grammar during adulthood (as allowed, indeed predicted, by the usage-based model of grammar). Language change across speakers is not an ontogenetic phenomenon. It is a population phenomenon, formalized specifically as a population of utterances in TUS. This is the corollary that is not so obvious: language change is an evolutionary process in a population. A second corollary is that language change is change by replication, not inherent change. Again, the structuralist (and generative) focus on a linguistic system makes language change look like inherent change: vowels in a system move around the vowel space, rules are reordered, paradigms are restructured. But these descriptions are effects, not the underlying process. The underlying process is replication, specifically altered replication of vowel sounds, constructions and word forms in utterance production. Of course, the altered replication occurs as a result of mental processes in the speaker producing the utterance. As noted in the last section, the speaker as interactor plays as important a role in the evolutionary model of language changes as the replicator. But for language change to take place, the mental process has to be realized as innovation in an utterance — that is, the relevant lingueme must be replicated — so it can then ultimately be differentially replicated (propagated) across speakers in a speech community. The evolutionary framework also allows us to compare more directly different theories of language change. One way in which theories of language change differ is in the instantiation of the roles defined by the generalized analysis of selection. As noted above, GAS does not specify what entities in a particular phenomenal domain play the roles of replicator, interactor, or environment, as long as the preconditions are met (historical entity, variation) and the causal relations between the roles specified by GAS are instantiated appropriately. TUS is one instantiation of GAS in language change. It is a usagebased evolutionary model: language change occurs in language use. But it is not the only instantiation. The ‘child-based’ model of language change, advocated in most formalist theories, can be analyzed as a selection model with a different instantiation of the roles in GAS. In the child-based model, the grammars are the replicators, not the interactors, in selection. A grammar is replicated when a child learns a language. Altered replication takes place when a child intuits a different grammar from that of her parents, based on the input

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she receives. The selection process is biological: the younger generations on the whole outlive the older ones, and so their grammars prevail. Language change is the replacement of the old grammars by the new ones. The child-based model suffers from a number of problems, however. The first problem is that the parents’ grammars do not provide a causal mechanism for altered replication of the grammar by the child. One must appeal to the input to the child — that is, language use. In this respect, the child-based model is similar to the usage-based model. The chief difference between the usage-based model and the child-based model is that in the child-based model, language change is driven by children’s behavior, whereas in the usage-based model, language change is driven by adults’ behavior. There is empirical evidence to support the usage-based model over the child-based one here. First, the sort of language changes that are attested in historical linguistics are not the same as those found in child language behavior (Dressler 1974; Drachman 1978; Vihman 1980; Hooper 1980; Slobin 1997:313–314; Bybee & Slobin 1982:36–37). Second, children are remarkably good at intuiting the same grammar as their parents even though they are almost never given direct negative evidence. This is called the ‘no negative evidence’ problem in child language acquisition (Bowerman 1988; Pinker 1989). Whatever the solution to this problem is, it indicates that acquisition of the adult language by children is remarkably robust, and does not appear to be the cause of language change. Third, children as a social group do not become agents of linguistic change (that is, driving forward the propagation of an innovation) until adolescence (Labov 1982; Ravid 1995; Kerswill 1996), and by that time, the child language acquisition process has largely ended (see the studies in Slobin 1985–1997). If these empirical objections to the child-based model are valid, then a ‘usage-based’ model would offer a superior explanation for the process of language change. One objection to the usage-based model is the claim that by adulthood, linguistic knowledge is sufficiently fixed that adults could not be the agents of language change, either for innovation or propagation. However, as was argued in Section 4, one of the fundamental facts of language is its variability. First-order variability (in language use) and second-order variability (socially-governed variation) are present for all speakers; even third-order variability (cross-linguistic variation) is present to multilingual speakers. Variation is found in a speaker’s production as well. One could attempt to model variable speaker productions in terms of the speaker possessing distinct homogeneous grammars, but a speaker’s productions vary in so many grammatical dimensions that there would soon be a combinatorial explosion of grammars in her head. Moreover, interactive activation networks offer a plausible model of variable grammatical knowledge in a single speaker’s mind (Elman & Mc-

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Clelland 1984; Elman & al. 1996). For these reasons, in the usage-based model, speakers’ grammars reflect variation directly, as weighted values of linguistic variants. If one accepts the variable model of grammatical knowledge, then changes to the grammar would involve shifting weights of linguistic variants most of the time and qualitative changes relatively rarely. Such shifts are much more plausible models of adult-driven language change, both empirically and theoretically. (Moreover, the historical evidence points overwhelmingly to the gradualness of language change, which means that adult speakers usually do not have to negotiate large-scale qualitiative grammatical changes in their lifetimes.) In sum, then, TUS is an empirically more defensible instanttiation of GAS in language change than the child-based model. The evolutionary framework also allows us to compare TUS to Keller’s ‘invisible hand’ model of language change (Keller 1994). Keller’s invisible hand model of language change is a usage-based model, like TUS but unlike the child-based model just discussed. Keller’s model is a carefully worked out and detailed model of language use and the mechanisms that lead to altered replication (innovation) in language change, which was largely adopted by TUS (see Croft 2000:71–76). Keller’s invisible hand model differs from TUS in that the invisible hand model is essentially a one-step process but TUS, like other evolutionary models, is a two-step process. In TUS the first step is replication, including altered replication: a speaker produces a new copy of a lingueme in an utterance, and that copy may differ from prior copies in the lineage in linguistically significant respects. The second process is selection: given second-order (social) variation, a speaker chooses among variants. In the invisible hand model, a speaker makes a linguistic choice based on what Keller calls the ‘ecological conditions’ of an utterance: given the conversational situation, the speaker’s current knowledge state, and the goals of the speaker (and hearer), the speaker produces a particular utterance form. Keller argues that under similar ecological conditions, speakers will make the same linguistic choice, such as a particular type of innovation. The cumulative effect of all the speakers in a community making this choice will be a language change. Keller calls this a ‘phenomenon of the third kind’: speakers have intentions about the specific linguistic choices they make on an occasion of use, but an unintended effect of the — cumulative — choices of speakers is a language change. One of Keller’s paradigm examples is pejoration (I use an American English example here in place of his German one). For cultural reasons, reference to certain bodily functions, e.g. in go to the toilet, inevitably develop negative connotations. Speakers individually choose an alternative expression, in American English go to the bathroom, to avoid those connotations. The

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cumulative effect of these speaker’s choices is a language change in American English from go to the toilet to go to the bathroom (go to the toilet, of course, was itself formerly a euphemism). Keller’s model is a one-step model in that only one process is posited: a speaker produces a particular utterance form based on her ecological conditions on the occasion of use. The “second step” is just a cumulation of individual independent acts. However, the invisible hand model also suffers from a number of empirical problems. One problem is that a speaker’s decisions in choosing an utterance form on a particular occasion of use are not independent acts. A speaker is conforming to the linguistic conventions of the speech community, and that is a replication process: she is repeating a particular behavior that has previously been used to solve a communication problem in the community (see below). That replication must be involved is clear even with the pejoration example. Independent individual choices may explain why a speaker will avoid saying go to the toilet, but it will not explain why speakers converge on the replacement go to the bathroom rather than some other euphemism. The convergence is a result of replication, first, altered replication of go to the X from toilet to bathroom, then (differential) replication of the innovation bathroom by other speakers. Hence, an individual’s action is different in type from the one implied by Keller’s invisible hand model, namely replication, not independent production. Another problem is that there are two widely attested characteristics of language change (and cultural transmission as well) that are compatible with a two-step process but not a one-step invisible hand process. First, one can have innovation without propagation, or “false starts”. For example, Hopper & Traugott (2003:83) note that causal since, a meaning originally innovated from temporal since, occurred sporadically even in very early sources of English: (14) Temporal meaning: þa siþþan he irre then after/since he angry

wæs & gewundod he ofslog was & wounded he slaughtered

micel þæs folces much of.that troop “Then after/since he was angry and wounded, he slaughtered many troops.” (c. 880, Orosius 4 1.156.11)

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(15) Causal meaning: Ac ic þe wille nu giet getæcan but I thee will now still teach u

ongitst þurh mine lare hwæt thou seest through my teaching what

one weg sian that way since

sio soe that true

gesæl  bi & hwær hio bi happiness is and where it is “But still I will now teach you the way since you see that true happiness comes through teaching, and where it is.” (c. 880, Boethius 36 104.26) But the causal meaning is not widely attested until the 15th century (Hopper & Traugott 2003:83). These facts imply that innovation occurred sporadically, but propagation was an independent step in the language change process and did not occur until the 15th century. Second, when propagation does occur, it is socially structured, as many sociolinguistic studies demonstrate. An innovation gradually spreads through the speech community following social network and class patterns. This behavior also indicates that propagation is a second, independent process, and moreover that it is also driven by replication (speakers choosing variants according to the social status that those variants possess). The evolutionary model allows us to see that language change occurs in a population through replication. It also combines with empirical evidence in historical linguistics to argue for a two-step, usage-based model of language change. Relevance (ii): Biological concepts and techniques in historical linguistics The preceding section argued that the basic structure of the generalized analysis of selection (GAS) makes a substantial contribution in clarifying, and in some cases deciding, basic questions in the theory of language change. If the evolutionary approach to language change is a fruitful theory, then one would expect that there may be other results in biological evolutionary theory that would be of use to historical linguistics. Of course, one must be cautious in making comparisons and inferences. Only those aspects of evolutionary processes that appear to follow directly from GAS are likely to be of relevance to language change. (And we cannot rule out the possibility that GAS may 7.

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have to be revised or elaborated as it is extended to other types of change by replication.) One tool of evolutionary biologists has already come into use, namely algorithms and computer programs for constructing and evaluating phylogenetic classifications of languages. Phylogeny reconstruction programs have been used by historical linguists (and others) to address questions of subgrouping in well-established families such as Indo-European (Lohr 1999, 2000; McMahon, Lohr & McMahon 1999; Ringe, Warnow & Taylor 2002; McMahon & McMahon 2003). This research is in its earliest stages, but the first results are quite suggestive. It is likely that other quantitative methods developed by evolutionary biologists and population geneticists will be applicable to parallel linguistic questions. There are also qualitative phenomena or theoretical concepts that appear to follow from GAS and find natural parallels in language change. Several of these are discussed in some detail in Croft (2000, 2002); some are briefly described here. Certain concepts found in orthodox neo-Darwinian theory (also known as ‘the evolutionary synthesis’) have relevance to historical linguistic questions. For example, a species is defined as a reproductively isolated population, but of course not all members of a species interbreed with each other. A much smaller population unit plays a significant role in biological evolution, namely the ‘deme’, a local group with equal likelihood of mating with each other. A deme resembles a social network in this respect, in particular that a social network forms the group with which a speaker has regular face-to-face contact and therefore the majority of his or her conversations (Croft 2000:19–20, 168–70). A basic fact of population lineages is that they can diverge and, in certain circumstances, converge. Divergence is a result of isolation and biologists have identified a variety of isolating mechanisms, the most important of which is geographical separation. Since conversation, like sexual reproduction, is a spatially highly localized phenomenon (at least until recently), geographical separation is also a significant isolating mechanism, and there are other similarities among other isolating mechanisms (Croft 2000:199–200). Also, isolated biological populations tend to undergo different types of changes (even speciation), or not to participate in other changes, a phenomena claimed to occur also in linguistically isolated populations (Andersen 1988; Trudgill 1989, 1992, 1996; see Croft 2000:190–94). Finally, hybridization, which occurs commonly in plant species, occurs via a process called ‘introgression’: a hybrid individual breeds back into one of the original populations, introducing genes from the other population into the first population. ‘Interference’ in language operates in the same way: an at least partly bilingual individual

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acquires knowledge of a lingueme through speaking with individuals from another speech community, and introduces the foreign lingueme into the original speech community by using it in conversation with other members of the original speech community (Croft 2000:180, 198, 201). These parallels are not accidental or arbitrary; they are corollaries of the behavior of populations of interactors and the replication processes they cause. A further set of concepts have emerged in ‘post-synthesis’ debates in evolutionary biology. These are phenomena that have been claimed by biologists to require revision of basic tenets of the neo-Darwinian synthesis of Darwinian evolutionary theory and population genetics that was developed in the early twentieth century. Some of these phenomena have striking parallels in language change. It is quite possible (though also quite speculative) that these phenomena are properties of similar processes of replication and selection (Croft 2002:82–88). For example, one characteristic of many biological organisms is their flexibility in interaction with the environment, including a high degree of plasticity and environmental influence in development. It has been speculated that flexibility evolved as a response to a constantly changing environment. Language is also highly flexible as a communication device. A simple example is that any deictic or indexical expression can be used for any possible referent. Yet speakers use a variety of non-conventional communication devices to establish reference and other aspects of meaning (Clark 1996:77–81), and can manipulate convention itself in framing an experience with a choice of words and constructions. Flexibility in language probably also arose because of a constantly changing environment, namely that every experience is different (Croft 2002:84–85; see Section 4). A number of phenomena in biological evolution do not appear to be the result of adaptation through natural selection. Biological structures that evolved for one purpose get co-opted for another function; this is ‘exaptation’. Exaptation is also found in language change (see Section 8 below). One also finds non-adaptive or vestigial traits in biological organisms. These are presumably due to the fact that a single gene or complex of genes plays a role in the ontogenetic development of a complex of traits of an organism: thus, selection of one trait means the other traits have to come along with it. This phenomenon is in turn attributed to the extreme conservatism of the replication process. One finds the equivalent in language change, in particular in the process of grammaticalization. For example, once periphrastic constructions like be going to and used to acquire tense-aspect-mood functions, the copula be and the infinitival to become vestigial traits of the construction: although they are reduced (I’m gonna quit or I useta work here), they haven’t gone away, and

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sometimes lead to syntactic oddities, such as the question form Did you used to work here? (with apparent double marking of past in Did and used). These non-adaptive and vestigial grammatical traits, or “crazy syntax” as it has been called, may also be due to the extreme conservatism of convention in replication (see Givón 1979: chap. 6; Croft 2002:86–87). Finally, the direction of evolution in biology and language is curiously parallel as well. Biological evolution is globally undirected; there is no “progress”. However, at a spatially and temporally local scale, there is directed change: an organism is increasingly adapted to a niche that it has entered or has been created. It has been suggested that the reason for global ‘stasis’ (absence of directed change) is because the earth’s niches have been “filled up”; evolution is simply the constant rejigging of the relationships between organisms as well as responding to cyclic fluctuations in the environment (climate, etc.; Hull 1988:461, citing Gould 1977:19). Language is similar. All contemporary languages are general-purpose communicative systems; we do not see any global “progress” in language history. (This may of course have been different when the human language capacity first emerged; but the same is true of the first emergence and spread of life on earth, Hull 1988:461.) Instead, we see local cycles of grammatical, phonological, and semantic change as a result of fluctuation among the same competing motivations. This is perhaps because as general-purpose communication systems, the communicative niches have been “filled up”: what we observe in language change is the constant rejigging of relationships among constructions (Croft 2000:79–84). These observations of qualitative parallels between biological and linguistic evolution are highly suggestive at this point. But they suggest that an evolutionary model of language change will be productive in understanding some otherwise mysterious or at least unexplained aspects of language change. Relevance (iii): Mechanisms of language change GAS does not specify the causal mechanisms for replication (including innovation) and selection (propagation) in any particular instantiation. The causal mechanisms are domain-specific and therefore not part of an abstract model of change by replication. This might suggest that GAS cannot have much relevance for theories of causal mechanisms of language change — one of the most important components of a theory of language change. In fact, it does have major relevance, in focusing our attention of certain aspects of language change that have traditionally been overlooked, in the analysis of types of mechanisms, and in the search for new mechanisms. Before delving into mechanisms of language change in an evolutionary perspective, an important observation can be made: GAS also implies that the 8.

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causal mechanisms of biological evolution are domain-specific and not part of GAS. For example, some functionalist linguists argue that functional motivation (including semantic, pragmatic, and processing motivations) must be a major mechanism for the propagation of change, since in biological evolution, adaptation is a major mechanism for selection (propagation of fitter variants; see for example Haspelmath 1999). However, all of the empirical evidence in language change indicates that social factors, not functional ones, are the causal mechanisms for the propagation of a change. In fact, this is a false analogy with biological evolution that is not supported by GAS (Croft 2000: 39). There is no incompatibility with the empirical observations of sociolinguistics and the evolutionary model, because adaptation by natural selection is a domain-specific, biological mechanism. Where does functional motivation play a role in language change, then? The only remaining option in GAS is the first step in the two-step process, innovation. There is an objection to this analysis also based on a biological assumption: altered replication must occur by a random process, since it does in biological evolution (genetic mutation). Yet many language changes, including many sound changes, many lexical semantic changes, and grammaticalization, are unidirectional, not random in direction. But GAS does not require altered replication to occur by a random mechanism. Directed altered replication is possible in GAS, and in fact I argue that it is the case in language change (Croft 2000; see below). How is it possible that one can observe language changes that are propagated by a social mechanism and yet they consistently display unidirectional patterns in cross-linguistic comparison that are presumably motivated by functional/phonetic factors in innovation? All that is necessary is that the mechanisms for innovation and propagation be independent. If there is a tendency for innovation of nasal vowels to be lower in the vowel space, then as long as there is no correlation between who produces the nasal vowels and their tendency to produce them in a certain way, then whenever an innovation gets picked up and propagated, the end result will be the observed pattern of the predominant lowering of nasal vowels. This makes sense because presumably the auditory–articulatory structures giving rise to the tendency to lower nasal vowels will be true of all human beings regardless of social class, position in social networks, or historical era. Kroch makes the same point in discussing his Constant Rate Hypothesis, which represents essentially the same analysis in a different context: […] the pattern of favoring and disfavoring contexts does not reflect the forces pushing the change forward. Rather, it reflects functional effects, discourse and processing, on the choices speakers make among the alternatives available to them

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in the language as they know it; and the strength of these effects remains constant as the change proceeds. (Kroch 1989:238)

Thus, one way in which GAS is relevant to the mechanisms of language change is to avoid invoking biological mechanisms — adaptation for selection, randomness for innovation — inappropriately. GAS, or evolutionary models more generally, makes another, more important, contribution to causal mechanisms of language change. An evolutionary model has to account for stasis as well as change, specifically, normal or (more or less) identical replication. The same is true of a theory of language change, though this point is often overlooked. A theory of language change must also explain why languages do not change much of the time as well. A causal mechanism for stasis must be postulated. In language change, the chief causal mechanism for stability — indeed, the chief mechanism for language — is convention. The most central fact about language is that it is a system of conventions. Language change represents the evolution of conventions. Normal replication is conformity to convention. Moreover, both of the two steps in the change process are defined in terms of linguistic convention as well. Altered replication — innovation — is breaking a convention. Differential replication — propagation or selection—is the adoption (or abandonment) of a convention by a speech community. A convention is defined in (16), following Lewis (1969) and Clark (1999; adapted from Clark 1996:71): (16) a. b. c. d. e.

a regularity in behavior that is partly arbitrary that is common ground in a community as a coordination device for a recurrent coordination problem

Lewis’ theory of convention is based on a model of cooperative joint action. Language use is an example of cooperative joint action, namely to communicate in order to achieve various social-interactional goals of the interlocutors (cf. Keller’s 1994:106 ‘hypermaxim’ of communication). Lewis’ theory of convention provides a theory of the function of language and the role it plays in language stability and change. Any cooperative action requires coordination, that is, speaker and hearer have to find a way to align their individual actions in order to achieve a joint goal. In fact, Clark (1999) argues that language serves as a means to coordinate extralinguistic joint actions. Nevertheless, language use itself is a joint action requiring coordination. The joint action is

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communicating a meaning. Clark (1999) uses a revised version of Grice’s theory of meaning, formulated as a joint action; it is given in (17) (adapted from Clark 1996:131): (17) A speaker MEANS something for someone when: a. the communicative act includes (b) and (c) b. the speaker presents an utterance to the addressee intending that what is meant is part of the communicative act c. the addressee recognizes that what is meant is part of the communicative act The definition of meaning in (17) makes clear that communication is a joint action, involving recognition by the hearer of the intentions of the speaker. For communication to succeed, speaker and hearer must (among other things) coordinate on the content of what is meant. This is the coordination problem that convention can be used to solve. Although a number of coordination devices are used in communication (see below), convention is one of the most important and distinctive of those devices. We now return to the nature of convention by means of an example. One behavior that I exhibit as an English speaker is producing the string of sounds butterfly as a coordination device to solve the recurrent coordination problem of talking about butterflies. The employment of this behavior is common ground in the English speech community: we all know that we use butterfly for this purpose. And this behavior is partly arbitrary. For example, we could have used the string of sounds Schmetterling instead; that’s what the German speech community does. Conventions are also form–function relations, the central concern of functionalist theories of grammar: the regularity in behavior is the form and the recurrent coordination problem is its (semiotic) function. Convention is the foundation of the usage-based TUS. Conformity to convention is the absence of change. The absence of change is a phenomenon that requires explanation as much as change does. After all, language does not change rapidly in all of its dimensions, despite the ubiquity of variation in language use and in socially-governed linguistic variables. The absence of change is a particularly important phenomenon to explain in a usage-based theory such as TUS. In such a theory, replication occurs every time we talk, and since we talk so much and so often, the “generations” are very short in absolute time (though still much longer than for many biological organisms, such as bacteria and viruses). Hence, conformity to convention must be powerful in order to maintain language. In fact, the principle governing conformity to convention has been proposed a number of times in the history

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of linguistics. Keller describes it as ‘Humboldt’s Law’ and it corresponds to Jakobson’s ‘referential function’. Keller formulates the principle as one of his maxims of language use: “Talk in a way in which you believe the other would talk if he or she were in your place” (Keller 1994:99). An evolutionary model also offers a perspective on the role of intentional behavior in language change. The role of intentional behavior is a vexed question in evolutionary theory, because it is often confused with the notion of teleological change. A teleological change is one in which the goal of the process is the change itself. Teleological changes are denied by evolutionary theory; indeed, one of the goals of evolutionary theory is to demonstrate the possibility that complex structures and behaviors can arise without their being intended, through the two-step process of variation and selection. On the other hand, many animals are intentional beings, in the sense of engaging in goaldirected behavior. But as Hull points out, the goal of their behavior is not evolutionary change in itself: For example, a rabbit strives to elude a fox chasing it just as surely as the fox strives to catch it. However, with respect to selection, neither organism is striving to change its future course of evolutionary development, although their behavior may well have this effect. (Hull 1988:471)

The same is true of language change. Language use is intentional behavior. What matters, however, is the goal of the intention. If the goal of language use were to change the language itself, this would be a teleological change. Historical linguists generally reject teleological changes (see for example Labov 1994, chap. 19; Lass 1997:352ff). Nevertheless teleological explanations are still invoked, leading Haspelmath to refer to the ‘teleological fallacy’ (Haspelmath 1999:188–189; see also Croft 2000:66–71). However, language change may occur in the same way as evolutionary change with respect to the rabbit and the fox: speakers have communicative goals, and they are achieved by altered replication. For example, it has commonly been proposed that speakers innovate in order to be expressive for various reasons (e.g., to be noticed, to be amusing, to be charming, etc.; see Keller 1994:101; compare Jakobson’s ‘poetic function’). Expressiveness has been invoked in a variety of approaches to language change (e.g. Lightfoot 1991:160, 171; Heine 1994:259; Harris & Campbell 1995:54, 73). Another widely invoked principle for innovation is economy, proposed for a wide variety of phonetic and grammatical processes. Economy is usually interpreted as a psychological phenomenon, the saving of energy on the part of the speaker. However, economy is more likely to have a communicative motivation: saving the speaker’s and hearer’s time, rather than saving the speaker’s

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energy (compare Clark’s 1996:69 immediacy premise; see Croft 2000:75). Finally, Keller observes that an important principle for innovation is to avoid misunderstanding (Keller 1994:94); this principle may be at least as significant as expressiveness (Croft 2000:75). Finally, the propagation of a change is generally hypothesized to result from another intentional goal, this time a social one: to identify with a social group (LePage & Tabouret-Keller 1985; prestige, covert prestige and accommodation are special cases of acts of identity, Croft 2000:73–74). These two types of changes — teleological, and intentional but not teleological — do not exhaust the possible mechanisms of language change. A third type is an unintended byproduct of the intentional act of not changing the language, namely conforming to convention. This type is called ‘non-intentional’ in Croft 2000. The intention to conform to convention may lead to innovation because of the complexity of the encoding and decoding of language. For example, the phonetic realization of phonological articulations leads to complex co-articulation effects. When this is combined with the variability of speaker productions, the decoding of the auditory signal may lead to reanalysis of the mapping between phonological form and phonetic realization (see Ohala 1981, 1989, 1992, 1993). Likewise, the complexity of the morphosyntactic encoding of meaning, combined with the variability of the experiences communicated on particular occasions of use (Section 4), may lead to the reanalysis of the mapping between morphosyntactic form in constructions and the semantic content that they denote (Croft 2000, chap. 4–5). This last process is form-function reanalysis, and four types of formfunction reanalysis are proposed. In the first, ‘hyperanalysis’, a speaker analyzes out a semantic component from a syntactic element, typically a semantic component that overlaps with that of another element. For example, in some Bantu languages, the locative subject agreement marker has evolved to an impersonal marker. In Chichewa (18) (Bresnan & Kanerva 1989:3), locative agreement is still contentful, but in Zulu, it now has an impersonal function such as the existential in (19) (Doke 1930:296). (18) Mw- a- khal -a a- nyani m- mi- tengo CL18. SBJ - PERF - sit -IND CL 2- baboon CL 18- CL 4- tree “In the trees are sitting baboons.” (19) ku- khona izinja emazweni onke CL17- be.present dogs countries.LOC all “There are dogs in all countries.”

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In unpublished work, I argue that this process occurred because the locative meaning has been analyzed out of the agreement marker. The locative phrase can occur clause-finally, as in the Chichewa example above; in that case, there is a hyperanalysis attributing a circumstantial function to the locative phrase and hyperanalyzing out the locative meaning from the subject agreement affix. Hyperanalysis thus accounts for semantic bleaching and eventually the loss of the syntactic element. In the second process, ‘hypoanalysis’, a semantic component is added to a syntactic element, typically one whose distribution has no discriminatory semantic value. Hypoanalysis is the same as exaptation (Lass 1990) or regrammaticalization (Greenberg 1991). For example, simple presents often come to be restricted to subordinate clause contexts with future or subjunctive meaning, due to replacement by another verb form in main clauses. In this circumstance, the future or subjunctive meaning is sometimes hypoanalyzed and attributed to the former simple present form, as in modern Armenian (Bybee, Perkins & Pagliuca 1994:230–236; Haspelmath 1998a; example (20) from Fairbanks & Stevick 1958:118). (20) p‘aymanóv vor uš adrutyámb varèk mekenèn condition that carefully drive.2SG car “On condition that you drive the car carefully.” In the third process, ‘metanalysis’, a contextual semantic feature becomes inherent in a syntactic element while an inherent feature is analyzed out; in other words, it is simultaneous hyperanalysis/hypoanalysis. Metanalysis typically takes place when there is a unidirectional correlation of semantic features (one feature frequently occurs with another, but the second often does not occur with the first). Metanalysis underlies pragmatic inferencing in grammaticalization (Traugott & König 1991), such as the shift of English since from a temporal to a causal meaning alluded to above (Hopper & Traugott 2003:82–83). Most contexts in which a temporal connective is used also denote a causal relation, and so the temporal and causal meanings were metanalyzed (i.e. the connective acquired an inherent causal meaning, and the temporal meaning became contextual). Metanalysis also motivates the negative cycle: negative contexts are frequently emphatic, and the emphatic marker replaces its emphatic meaning with a negative one. In the fourth process, ‘cryptanalysis’, a covertly marked semantic feature is reanalyzed as not grammatically marked, and a grammatical marker is inserted. Cryptanalysis typically occurs when there is an obligatory transparent grammatical marker (e.g., a regular plural affix) available for the covertly

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marked semantic feature (e.g., an irregular plural form). For example, the Uzbek irregular 1st and 2nd person plural pronouns biz and siz are optionally reinforced with the nominal plural suffix -lar (bizlar, sizlar; Sjoberg 1963:89– 90). Cryptanalysis also accounts for pleonasm (for example, pleonastic and paratactic negation) and reinforcement. Form–function reanalysis describes syntagmatic processes in innovation, namely form–function mappings in constructions. There are also paradigmatic contrasts in form–function mappings in the organization of linguistic elements — words and constructions — in a speaker’s mind. In Croft (2000), the phenomenon of extension or spread — the use of a grammatical form or construction for new, semantically closely related functions — is also hypothesized to result from a non-intentional mechanism. The basic unit of a grammar is a form-meaning pairing (a sign or construction, in the generalized sense of the latter term). The paradigmatic organization of grammatical forms and constructions is therefore determined by semantic as well as syntactic relations. In typological theory, the semantic map model is used to represent the semantic relatedness of forms and constructions (Croft 2003a; Haspelmath 2003; see also its use in Radical Construction Grammar, cf. Croft 2001). Grammatical forms and constructions are extended by the mechanism of ‘intraference’, the language-internal equivalent of interference. In external interference, bilingual speakers establish an interlingual identification of forms with overlapping functions in two different languages (Weinreich 1968:7). The result is introduction of a new form with a particular function, or the addition of a new function to a linguistic form (a calque of the usage of the equivalent form in the other language). Intraference is the same process within a language: instead of interference from a form with a similar function from a second language, there is intraference from a form with a closely related function in the same language. Besides various types of extension of forms and constructions, intraference also accounts for analogical leveling (where one stem in an irregular paradigm is extended to replace other stems in the paradigm) and the elaboration of idioms, as in the comment by a Deadhead on the Grateful Dead’s leader Jerry Garcia’s death: It pulled my life rug out from under me. In sum, the evolutionary model, in particular GAS, helps historical linguists avoid false analogies and teleological mechanisms; focuses attention on the need to explain why languages do not change; and thereby points out the possible existence of nonintentional mechanisms of change such as formfunction reanalysis and intraference.

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Relevance (iv): An integrated theory of language change — and of language All of the contributions of an evolutionary model to historical linguistics described in the preceding sections are useful. But perhaps the most important contribution of an evolutionary model is to provide an integrated framework for language change, and ultimately for language. One major division in the study of language change has been the division between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ causes of language change. One interpretation of the division represents ‘internal’ changes as innovations that arise in a speech community without impact from social contact with another community. These innovations are usually explained with the types of intentional mechanisms described in the preceding section. ‘External’ changes are innovations that arise as a result of contact with another speech community. TUS breaks down this division in several ways. Most fundamentally, in both ‘internal’ and ‘external’ innovations, the basic phenomenon is (altered) replication: a speaker is altering the convention of the speech community. The only difference is how the altered replication is brought about. I have proposed that the mechanism for ‘external’ altered replication, interference, is mirrored by essentially the same process in ‘internal’ altered replication, namely intraference, as described in the preceding section. Finally, even ‘internal’ to a society, the relationship between speaker and speech community is one-tomany, as sociolinguists have argued since Fishman (1972a, b; see also Clark 1996:100–12, 1998). Speech communities are defined by domains of social activity and shared expertise, in ‘monolingual’ as well as multilingual societies. Speakers belong to multiple speech communities, and so there is always contact between these communities. The codes used in each domain overlap to a great extent although they also differ. There is always ‘interference’ between the codes used in the multiple speech communities in a society. In other words, in terms of social organization, internal social structure is not much different from external social relations, and the processes of language change are therefore not that different. Perhaps the most significant division in historical linguistic theory is that between the socio-historical research programme and what might be called the ‘traditional’ (originally philological) research programme. The socio-historical research programme examines contemporary sociolinguistic variation as change in progress as well as historical changes, and proposes social explanations for language change. The ‘traditional’ research programme examines linguistic changes directly through documents, or indirectly through the comparative method and various techniques to infer diachronic processes from typological universals (Croft 2003a: chap. 8). The explanations offered in this research 9.

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programme range from ‘structural’ or ‘formal’ explanations to functional explanations. Examples of the latter explanations are the intentional and nonintentional mechanisms discussed in Section 8. The two research programmes appear to be either in direct conflict or to have little to do with each other. The evolutionary model presents a solution to this problem that preserves the empirical discoveries and valid explanations of both research programmes. In GAS, evolution is a two-step process. TUS hypothesizes that the sociohistorical and ‘traditional’ research programmes are studying two different steps of the process. The ‘traditional’ research programme studies innovation. In the theory presented here, I have argued that innovation is ‘functional’, in that it arises from the relationship between linguistic form and its meaning or function (or in the case of phonological innovation, the relationship between phonological form and its phonetic realization). The socio-historical research programme studies propagation. Socio-historical linguistics has long argued that propagation is social, that is, it arises from the social structure of speech communities, and the social relations between speech communities (Labov 1994; 2001 summarizes the research). TUS hypothesizes that there is a strict separation of causal mechanisms for innovation and propagation (see Croft 1995:524): innovation is functional; propagation is social, in the senses defined above. This ‘evolutionary synthesis’ is one of the strongest features of this approach to language change. But the evolutionary model offers an even more important synthesis from a theoretical point of view. Language change has been separated from the synchronic study of language since the rise of structuralism. The result is a view of historical linguistics as a sort of appendage to the study of language, isolated as a separated subdiscipline of linguistics and perhaps inevitably slipping to the periphery of programs of academic study and training in linguistics. The reason for this is that the first lay view of language, as an idealized and invariant system, has no place for language change, except as a perturbation of the system from outside. In this view, language change is not an essential part of the language system. In the evolutionary approach to language change, change is an essential part of language. This is because in the evolutionary model, variation is an essential property of language. The centrality of variation is not just a theoretical postulate of the evolutionary model, but a pervasive empirical fact of language, as I argued in Section 4. Taking variation as a central fact of language allows for a straightforward synthesis of synchrony and diachrony in language. Language change is simply linguistic variation at a broader scope, and more specifically, linguistic variation that trends in a particular direction

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for some length of time. The different orders of variation represent its manifestation in different phases in the process of language change. First-order variation is the origin of variation in language use. Second-order variation is the progression of the variation to conventional status in the speech community. Third-order variation is the fixation of different variants as contrasting conventions of different speech communities. I am not arguing that the distinction between synchrony and diachrony be erased entirely. But the evolutionary approach closes the gulf between the two. Synchronically, a language is a time-slice of a population of utterances, thin enough to represent the language encountered (and produced) by a single speaker; and we recognize the variation it contains. Diachronically, we have the entire population of utterances and the lingueme lineages — sound changes, etymologies, constructional changes — it contains. By recognizing that synchronic language is variable, we can integrate language change and language itself. REFERENCES Andersen, Henning. 1988. “Center and periphery: Adoption, diffusion, and spread”. Historical Dialectology: Regional and social ed. by Jacek Fisiak, 39–83. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Bailey, Charles-James N. 1973. Variation and Linguistic Theory. Arlington, Va.: Center for Applied Linguistics. Barsalou, Lawrence W. 1987. “The instability of graded structure: Implications for the nature of concepts”. Concepts and Conceptual Development: Ecological and intellectual factors in categorization ed. by Ulric Neisser, 101–140. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barsalou, Lawrence W. 1993. “Flexibility, structure, and linguistic vagary in concepts: Manifestations of a compositional system of perceptual symbols”. Theories of Memory ed. by Alan C. Collins, Susan E. Gathercole, & Martin A. Conway, 29–101). London: Lawrence Erlbaum. Baxter, Gareth J., Richard A. Blythe, William Croft & Alan J. McKane. 2006. “Utterance selection model of linguistic change.” Physical Review E, 046118. Bowerman, Melissa. 1988. “The ‘no negative evidence’ problem: How do children avoid constructing an overly general grammar?”. Explaining Language Universals ed. by John A. Hawkins, 73–101. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Bresnan, Joan & Jonni Kanerva. 1989. “Locative inversion in Chichewa: A case study of factorization in grammar”. Linguistic Inquiry 20.1–50.

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GRAMMATICALIZATION OF INDIRECT OBJECT CROSSREFERENCE IN SPANISH AS A CASE OF DRIFT SILVIA BECERRA BASCUÑÁN Christianshavns Gymnasium

In commemoration of Eugenio Coseriu (1921–2002) Since the beginnings of modern historical linguistics — since the times of Rask and Grimm — it has been recognized that in language histories one can observe not only individual changes, which run their course within the lifetimes of at most a few generations of speakers, but also long-term developments, often comprising numerous distinct changes which share a common direction and apparently have the same degree of mutual coherence and the same unity of rationale as individual changes, but are played out over considerable spans of time — centuries, sometimes even millennia. (Andersen 1990:1)

Introduction The Indirect Object (IO) in Spanish has, over the centuries, developed 1 almost obligatory clitic duplication. This centuries-long development can be conceived of as the grammaticalization of analytically expressed cross-reference (i.e. the bound coding on the verbal head of its primary dependents) out of formerly autonomous atonic personal pronouns. Furthermore, and more importantly, this grammaticalizational development may be explained as an instance of the diachronic phenomenon of drift, that is, the long-term ‘evolu1.

1

The present paper reports on some results of my Ph.D. dissertation (Becerra Bascuñán 2002); published as Becerra Bascuñán (2006a). This contribution to ICHL2003 is an English version of a paper presented in Spanish at an international workshop on grammaticalization, Sophienberg, Denmark, May 2003, and in Danish at the Danish Functional Grammar Circle, Copenhagen, November 2003. For more details of the subject matter and an ample bibliography, see Becerra Bascuñán (2006a).

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tive’ development whereby a language tends to establish an ideal conformity between its type and its system, and between its system and its norms: the system adapts to the type, and the norms to the adapted system (cf. Andersen 1990, 2001a, b; Coseriu 1989 [1952], 1988 [1958], 1968). Spanish has always been a ‘pro-drop’ language as regards the syntactic function subject — a feature it has inherited from Proto-Romance, but which was already present in Latin, as is well-known: the subject of a finite clause is synthetically crossreferenced on the verb. This partial type property — pro-drop of only the subject — was, sometime before the beginning of the 12th century, generalized (in a grammar reanalysis) to also include IO and direct object (DO), in a hierarchy where IO ranks above DO, as evidenced by the steadily increasing frequency in usage of duplicating clitic pronouns, where the occurrence of DO clitics has always lagged behind the occurrence of IO clitics. The actualization of IO cross-reference, which has developed in parallel on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, is not haphazard but structured: From a synchronic corpus investigation (Becerra 2002, 2006a) it can be projected that IO cross-reference developed first and has evolved the most in ‘unmarked’ extra-linguistic as well as linguistic contexts, as predicted by Andersen’s theory (Andersen 1990, 2000a, b): first in the younger generations of speakers, first in the socioculturally ‘popular’ sections of the speech community, first in spoken conversation, first in casual speech and informal written text; first in the speech-act persons and human/animate third persons, first in topical, preverbal position; first in main clauses; and within ditransitive clauses, first in combination with referential, or ‘actual’ DOs. This will be the subject matter of Section 3. However, this picture of the Spanish Drift as only ‘evolution’ (the generalization of an unmarked category) is only partial, as will be detailed in Section 2: the globally determined ‘evolutive’ development has been fed by local, pragmatically-motivated Markedness Shifts (cf. Dik 1997; Andersen 2001a, b), of which there has been at least three. One Markedness Shift concerned the frequent use, at some time, of strong, inherently emphatic, tonic dative pronouns in a non-emphatic function. This was a marked use that came to be signaled by subordinate, ‘pleonastic’, inherently unemphatic, independent but atonic dative pronouns (Rini 1991b) — also a marked use. Later these atonic pronouns were reranked as superordinate and were generalized: they became cross-referencing head markers. Accordingly, the tonics were again free to occur in their unmarked, emphatic function, but now with cross-reference marking, as is the case at present. Another Markedness Shift was constituted by the re-ranking as crossreferencing IO markers of the originally independent atonic dative pronouns in the function of endophorically pronominalizing extra-clausal IOs functioning

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as Theme (or Afterthought). These external thematic IOs were integrated as clause-internal topic IOs (a kind of grammaticalization) whereby the atonic pronouns had to be reranked, and this reranking was the source of cross-referencing (cf. Givón 1976; Lehmann 1995; Dik 1997). This will suffice as an illustration here of the relevant Markedness Shifts; I will return to the phenomenon in Sections 2.4 and 2.5. The Spanish development of IO cross-reference and head marking thus confirms Andersen’s evolutive theory of Drift, but additionally requires, for a total explanation, the inclusion of feeding, local pragmatic Markedness Shifts. This more comprehensive model of Drift is then the suggestion of this paper. The Spanish Indirect Object and its Drift towards grammaticalization The two senses of ‘Indirect Object’ Indirect Object (IO) in Modern Spanish, in the terminology of the late Simon Dik’s Functional Grammar (cf. Dik 1997), is a ‘syntactic’, perspectival function representing a secondary ‘vantage point’, or perspective, assigned to a referent of a given state of affairs as designated by a Core Predication (Becerra Bascuñán 2002, 2006a), the primary perspective being with the Subject referent. Some examples of IO in Modern Spanish are given in (1) and (2). 2. 2.1

(1)

Le dio el libro a Joaquín IO:3.SG gave:S:3.SG DEF book DAT Joachim “S/he gave Joachim [Recipient] the book.”

(2) a. Le trajo un cenicero a María IO:3.SG take:PST:S:3. SG INDEF ash tray DAT Maria “S/he fetched an ash tray for Maria [Beneficiary].” b. ¿Le pusiste el candado a la puerta? IO:3.SG put: PST:S:3.SG DEF padlock DAT DEF door “Did you put a padlock on the door [Direction: Goal].” c. Le saca las hojas secas al gomero IO:3.SG remove: PRS:S:3. SG DEF leaves dry DAT:DEF rubber tree “S/he removes the dry leaves from the rubber tree [Direction: Source].” d. Le lavé los dientes a Joaquín IO:3.SG brushed:S:1.SG DEF teeth DAT Joachim “I brushed Joachim’s [External Possessor] teeth.”

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(3) a. ¡Pónga-me-le un colchón bien mullido! give:S:2. SG-ED:1.SG-IO:3.SG a mattress well soft “Give [me] him a good, soft mattress!” (ED: ethical dative) b. ¡No me le deis caramelos al niño! Don’t ED:1. SG IO:3.SG give:S:2.PL candy DAT:DEF child “Please, don’t give [me] the child candy!” c. Me le arruinaron la vida a mi hija ED:1. SG IO:3. SG ruin:PST:S:3.PL DEF life DAT my child “They destroyed [me] the life of my daughter.” In (1) the secondary vantage point is with the Recipient (a nuclear semantic role), the prototypical instance of an IO. In the examples in (2) IO is assigned to more peripheral semantic roles, in (2a) to a Beneficiary (a personal role), in (2b)–(2c) to spatial Direction roles, and in (2d) to a Possessor role, which thus comes to function as a direct verbal argument (external possession). Notice that (a true) IO can only be assigned on the level of the Core Predication, not on the level of the Proposition and the Speech Act. Therefore, the ethical datives (ED, cf. Smith 2001) in (3) are not examples of IO. Ethical dative clitics differ from IO clitics by not allowing 3rd person reference — they are more often than not first person; they cannot duplicate a lexical dependent, and they require the co-presence of a core predicational IO (Maldonado 2002; Gutiérrez Ordóñez 1999). In another sense than that of an assigned perspectival, ‘syntactic’ function, the term indirect object is also used for the third out of three basic semantic bound argument relations (‘macro-roles’), viz., for what in the terminology of Herslund & Sørensen (1994) has become known as an Adject (A) relation. In (1) the Adject is a prototypical Recipient IO, in (2a) a Beneficiary, whereas in (2b)–(2c) it is a spatial Adject. However, common to all these instances of the Adject role is that they perform a localizational function with respect to a so-called Fundamental Argument (FA), which may be either an intransitive subject or a transitive object: in (1), for instance, the book (FA) is localized with Joachim (A). In (2d) the teeth are localized in Joachim’s mouth, inalienably possessed by him. Cross-reference and head marking of IO As dealt with above, IO is a grammatical relation representing both semantic (argument) and ‘syntactic’ (vantage point) functions, and thus belongs to the semantic ‘underlying’ clause structure. But IO is also formally 2.2

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manifested, and signaled by way of Expression Rules (Dik 1997): IO is both ‘dependent marked’ and ‘head marked’. In terms of dependent marking, it is coded primarily syntactically/periphrastically, by the dative preposition a (which is homophonous with the circumstantial preposition a and the proclitic a used for prominent DOs), which is approaching the status of a prefix (Lehmann 1995). Secondarily, it is signaled morphologically, by the oblique, or prepositional, case of the tonic personal pronouns. In terms of head marking, IO is expressed by a ‘reduplicating’ originally and primarily dative clitic, i.e. by the presence of a clitic pronoun co-referential with a potentially present lexical — nominal or tonic pronominal — manifestation. This clitic marking is an instance of ‘cross-reference’, the kind of concord whereby the lexical manifestation of a grammatical relation is secondary and may be absent (or, ‘implicit’) — the underlying referent is represented by the cross-reference marker in terms of person, number, and gender (cf. Lenz 1935; Rini 1991a, b). This characterization of IO as head-marking and cross-referencing is functionally similar to the morphological subject ending of a given Spanish verb: just as the subject endings alone manifest the sentential subject (S) in Spanish, also the IO dative (and the DO accusative) clitic pronouns themselves alone may perform the function of indirect (and direct) object, as seen in the comparison between (4a) and (4b). (4) a. Se lo doy todo a los pobres IO:3. 3.SG:ACC give:1.SG everything DAT the: PL poor: PL [Gr.IO Gr.DO Gr.S ] [Lex.DO Lex.IO] [ Head ] [external Dependents] “I give the poor people everything.” b. Se lo doy “I give it (to) him/her/them.” Thus, S, IO, and DO are cross-referenced in Modern Spanish — S by the personal desinence of the verb, IO and DO by clitic pronouns. The subject conjugation is affixal (synthetic), the object conjugations analytic, by way of clitic pronouns. The independent, cross-reference manifestations of S, DO, and IO are (in the terminology proposed by Alarcos Llorach 1994) grammatical S, DO, and IO, whereas the unbound, dependent manifestations are lexical S, DO, and IO, respectively: the presence of a lexical IO (and DO) requires the copresence of a corresponding grammatical IO (and DO) (cf. (4a)), but the presence of a grammatical IO (and DO) does not require the co-presence of a lexical IO (and DO) (cf. (4b)). The co-presence of a lexical and a grammatical

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object, referring to the same entity in the universe of discourse, is termed double representation or duplication (of the object). Grammaticalization Modern Spanish: Cross-reference and head marking of IO. The present situation, characterized with (almost) obligatory cross-reference and head 2 marking of IO by way of (referring) dative clitic pronouns, is a result of the diachronic process of grammaticalization, that is the gradual process whereby a lexical expression becomes ‘grammatical’, and a grammatical expression even ‘more grammatical’ (cf. Hopper and Traugott 1993; Lehmann 1985, 1995). In Functional Grammar terms (Dik 1997), a full grammmaticalization chain comprises the development from a referring lexical pronominal IO — that is, a pronoun stored in the lexicon as a basic term — into a non-referring, ‘empty’/ non-contentive ‘grammatical’ pronominal IO agreement marker which is inserted by the Expression Rules: the pronoun changes status from belonging to the underlying clause structure (as a referring term) into being inserted by productive conjugation rules of person agreement. In this conception, the Spanish cross-reference story is only an example of partial grammaticalization: by being referring the present-time IO clitic belongs to the underlying clause structure as a basic term (and is, in fact, inserted from the lexicon), just as the (content of) the subject desinence. This is why it is convenient to speak about it as a grammatical IO, that is, as an IO with grammatical, structural content (cf. above, Alarcos Llorach 1994). 2.3

Early Hispano-Romance: No cross-reference and head marking of IO. In early Hispano-Romance all IOs were ‘lexical’, both the nominal and the pronominal ones — that is, there were no cross-reference and head marking at this stage. This can be illustrated by the following (adapted) examples in (5) from Old Spanish, borrowed from Rini (1991a, b). (5) a. Do le la heredat gave:S:3. SG DAT:3.SG DEF inheritance Gr.S Lex.IO Lex.DO “S/he gave him/her the inheritance.” (unemphatic) 2

Other contributions relevant in the present context are: Barrenechea & Orrechia -Havas (1970); Becerra Bascuñán (1999); Bello (1954 [1847]); Company Company (1998, 2001); García-Miguel (1991, 1995a, b); Lapesa Melagar (1981); Llorente Maldonado de Guevara & Mondéjar (1974); Menéndez Pidal (1950); Poston (1953); Rini (1990); Suñer 1993 [1988]; Vazquez Rozas (1995); Velázquez-Castillo (1999).

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b. Do la heredat a él gave:S:3. SG DEF:inheritance DAT hím Gr.S Lex.DO Lex.IO “S/he gave the inheritance to hér/hím.” (emphatic) The lexical IO expressions in (5) are complementarily distributed: the atonic dative pronoun in (5a) is unemphatic whereas the prepositionally dativemarked tonic pronoun in (5b) is emphatic. Thus, there were two groups of lexical pronominal IOs at this stage of the language, (i) and (ii): i. weak unstressed/atonic dative pronouns used in neutral deixis and anaphora (not usable in coordination), unemphatic. ii. strong stressed/tonic, preposition-governed dative pronouns emphatic, contrastive, or focal (secondarily, in coordination with nonemphatic/non-contrastive contentive NPs). The group of lexical pronouns in (i) became grammaticalized into the present-day ‘grammatical’ IO cross-referencing pronouns. As both pronominal variants were lexical IOs, they were verb-dependents and as such dependentmarked. The nominal (substantive) IOs, all prepositionally marked, could be either emphatic or non-emphatic, cf. (5c). (5) c. Do

la heredat

a Iohán / a Iohan (emphatic) (non-emphatic)

Early on, the unstressed lexical pronominal IO is observed to sometimes co-occur with the stressed lexical pronominal IO or a nominal IO in the same sentence, as in (5d). (5) d. Do

le la heredat a él / a Iohán / a Iohan (pleonastic)

Assuming that the non-bound Recipient IO (a él, a Iohán, or a Iohan), at some stage, was not an ‘extra-clausal constituent’, but rather belonged within the simple clause together with the bound pronominal representation of the IO, one of the expressions of the IO relation had to be ‘pleonastic’ (superfluous), given that there is room for only one non-coordinated expression of the same grammatical relation per clause (Herslund & Sørensen 1994). This is the crux of the development of head marking/cross-referencing. In the first pre-head

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marking stage of the evolution, the clitic pronoun was pleonastic (supportive); in the second head-marking stage, the clitic was the primary expression of the IO, the lexical IO becoming supportive (specifying the content of the grammatical, cross-referencing IO). During the course of the first stage, it was felt increasingly more necessary to append an unstressed lexical dative pronoun when another —pronominal or nominal — lexical IO was present in the underlying clause structure. This double representation of the IO corresponds to a reanalysis of the unstressed lexical pronoun as a grammaticalized pronoun, inserted via productive cross-referencing rules to head-mark the clausal presence of an IO referent. The actualization of this reanalysis, that is, the slow increase in the textual manifestation of the grammatical (however, referring) IO, approaching 100% in the 20th century (in normal ordinary speech), thus corresponds to the grammaticalization of head marking and cross-reference of the IO in Spanish. The diachronic obligatorification of the presence of a (referring) grammatical-pronominal IO is an instance of grammaticalization, as mentioned above, but not of full grammaticalization, in that (referring) cross-reference is only a prefinal stage, preceding the final stage of (non-referring) grammatical agreement (as found in e.g. French, cf. Lehmann 1995). However, this final stage of non-referring agreement does not seem to be the typological target of the Spanish Drift: Spanish IO cross-reference employs a referring periphrastic concord marker (periphrastic in the sense that the coding is by way of a separate morpheme, not a morphologically bound desinence), just like the subject employs a referring desinence. In this way the present-time independently referring bound, grammatical IO resembles its non-bound, lexical precursor, the independent deictic-anaphoric atonic personal pronoun. Part of the grammaticalization of the Spanish IO is also the development of a fixed placement, to the effect that the grammatical IO has to be a preverbal proclitic, except with infinitives, gerunds, and imperatives, where it occurs as a postverbal enclitic, as in (5e) and (5f). (5) e. Le dio la heredad a él (indicative) IO:3.SG gave:S:3.SG DEF inheritance DAT him “S/he gave the inheritance to him” f. ¡Da-le la heredad a él! give:IMP -S:2.SG DEF inheritance DAT him “Give the inheritance to him!”

(imperative)

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Drift, actualization, markedness, and Markedness Shift Drift. The grammaticalization of IO in Spanish is a Drift phenomenon (cf. esp. Andersen 1990; 2001a, b), the kind of long-term development whereby, after a possible reinterpretation of the type of a given language, its different ‘functional levels’ (Coseriu 1989 [1952], 1988 [1958], 1968) strive towards internal conformity: the system striving to conform with the type, and the norms with the system, as can be inferred from attestation in usage, which gradually, over time, actualizes the drift. In the case of IO in Spanish, Spanish has been reinterpreted, after Vulgar Latin/Proto-Romance, as a language of the type characterized by head marking not only of its subject (as already in Latin), but also of its IO and DO — this is an internal generalization with respect to the type. The reanalysis is being implemented according to a hierarchy of grammatical relations (ranked according to topicality): 2.4

Subject > Indirect Object > Direct Object That is, IO attains grammaticalization before DO — the subject, as stated above, already being inherited as head marking and cross-referencing. Drift, as is also evident from Spanish, is a long-term development that takes several generations of speakers and may last several hundreds of years, even millennia, as Andersen (1990) expresses it in the quotation prefacing the present paper. The system of Spanish pronouns was restructured, according to its type, so as to also include a subsystem of grammatical, bound, cross-referencing clitic pronouns, functionally equivalent to the subject desinences, and used in productive rules of IO conjugation. The different norms (or, registers) of the language have also tended towards being in conformity with the system of productive rules of IO conjugation. It seems to be the case that it is the norm of the spoken language which starts the actualization, and with the younger generations of speakers of the ‘popular’ sections of the speech community taking the lead — the extra-linguistic contexts where IO cross-referencing is (approximately) obligatory at the turn of the 21st century, as we shall see in Section 3 below. The internal structure of drift: The Principle of Markedness Agreement. According to Andersen’s theory of Drift as a language-internal, evolutive kind of development, actualization starts “from below” in unmarked contexts and spreads to marked contexts. The reason is that a language in which there is a discrepancy between its type and its other functional levels is ‘marked’, and so an innovation seeking to establish conformity between all its functional levels

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is ‘unmarked’ (Andersen 2001a, b). According to the hypothesis proposed in Becerra Bascuñán (2002, 2006a), the original situation in Old Spanish with head marking and cross-reference only of the subject is a marked situation, in that not all primary grammatical relations behave in a similar, analogous fashion. Therefore, a reinterpretation of the language, whereby all the primary grammatical relations are head-marked and cross-referenced, will be unmarked. The development of cross-reference and head marking of the object relations starts with the indirect object, because IO resembles the subject (most) — both are ‘nexual subjects’, the IO being ‘subject’ in a secondary nexus, the subject in a primary nexus (cf. Herslund & Sørensen 1994). The two main parameters relevant to the development towards crossreference and head marking are, first, the status of the referent of the IO with respect to primarily the Animacy Hierarchy (cf. Herslund’s Empathy Hierarchy, the first of his three reference hierarchies, Herslund 2002), and second, its topicality status. This is due to the fact that the IO is a highly empathetic (cf. the perspective point definition of IO above) and topical grammatical relation (next after the subject), which, everything else being equal, prefers referring NPs which are ranked as high on the reference hierarchies. The Animacy Hierarchy is roughly thus: 1st > 2nd > 3rd person, Pronoun > Noun, Human > Animate > Inanimate, Concrete > Abstract It couches a set of Animacy paradigms valuated as to markedness, cf. Table 1: Unmarked SAP: 1st–2nd person 1st person (Personal) Pronoun [topical] Human Animate Concrete

Marked Non-SAP: 3rd person 2nd person Noun Non-Human Inanimate Abstract

Table 1: The Animacy Hierarchy as a paradigm.

The theory of Drift predicts that the innovation of IO cross-reference and head marking is more compatible with the unmarked Animacy categories. Grammaticalization will start there. With respect to ‘thematicity’, prototypically the most topical part of the clause is its beginning, the preverbal zone (in this contribution termed ‘anteposition’, P1 in Functional Grammar, cf. Dik 1997; Contreras 1976). This lin-

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ear part of the clause would accordingly be the unmarked context for the occurrence of a lexical IO constituent (and for its pronominal IO cross-reference and head marker). All these factors taken into consideration, the (internal) global development of IO cross-reference would start with an IO that represents a human being and a speech act participant, expressed by a lexical pronoun occurring at the beginning of the clause. This is an unmarked category, in an unmarked function, occurring in an unmarked position — an instance of the Principle of Markedness Agreement that regulates linguistic (and other semiotic) behavior (cf. Andersen 2001a). (See also Table 5a–c, Section 3 further below.) This would trigger a reanalysis in Old Spanish, as cross-reference markers, of normal unbound, atonic (deictic; unmarked) lexical pronouns (me gusta-Ø > megusta-Ø ‘I like it’). However, an unbound, but tonic (emphatic; marked) lexical pronoun manifesting the IO function (a mí gusta-Ø ‘Í like it’) would “need” a cross-reference marker (a mí me-gusta-Ø): the IO will be generalized to occur also in the marked contexts. This brings into the picture the phenomenon of Markedness Shift (Dik 1997). Markedness Shift. The grammaticalization of IO cross-reference is globally an evolutive development — a Drift — due to language-internal drives towards type-conformity, and involving unmarked terms (IO cross-references) in unmarked contexts (highly animate in topical, clause-intitial function). However, as mentioned, it also comprises local changes that are conditioned by ‘external’, pragmatic factors, and starting in marked contexts (Andersen 2001a, b), as I shall try to describe here. The local changes are basically instances of Markedness Shifts (Dik 1997), whereby marked terms become unmarked (cf. Dahl’s 2001 notion of ‘rhetorical devaluation’) — and thus, by becoming unmarked, become potential input to Drift. Before going into more detail with Markedness Shift, I shall recapitulate the major factors of Drift as relevant to Spanish. I suggested that in the former, pre-cross-reference system of personal pronouns the lexical atonic pronouns functioned as non-bound, obligatory constituents, as in (6a)–(6b). (Note that the sentences are only illustrative.) (6) a. Se b. Se c.

lo doy. lo doy, todo a los pobres. Doy todo a los pobres.

Thus, the pronouns in (6) are independent, lexical objects. It is important to stress that the verb, and only the verb, is the nucleus of the construction at this

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stage. This implies then that the co-referential term in (6b) was dislocated, occurring in extra-clausal ‘coda’ position (expressing an ‘afterthought’ in Dik’s 1997 terminology). To reiterate, in the present Modern Spanish system, the corresponding dative clitic pronouns are bound, “implicit” grammatical objects, whereby they, as head ‘markers’, belong to the nucleus of the construction, together with the verb. Accordingly, the “explicit” objects in the present system are optional, informative non-dislocated lexical objects specifying the “implicit” ones (narrowing down their reference potential), as in (6’) (where the hyphens (-), as above, indicate bonding/analytic conjugation): (6’) a. Se-lo-doy. b. Se-lo-doy todo a los pobres. As mentioned above, Drift not only has direction (in this case, towards a uniform head marking and cross-reference type), it also has structure: in linguistic developments innovations are more compatible with some contexts than with others, and will start in the compatible contexts before going on to the less compatible contexts. This means that the actualization that we can witness in the development of IO cross-reference and head marking is structured, favoring some contexts more than others. Insofar as the Spanish Drift dealt with here involves the development of an unmarked category of its grammar, i.e. the cross-reference and head marking of IO in a ‘pro-drop’ language, the favoring contexts should also be ‘unmarked’, according to Andersen’s (2001a:27) Principle of Markedness Agreement. Now, face-to-face, oral language is the ‘unmarked’ register. Therefore, as observed, the oral language is more compatible with the innovation. Thus, in the textual attestation of Spanish dealt with in Silva Corvalan (1984) and represented in Table 2, the oral heroic poem Mio Cid, first written down in the 12th century, represents oral language, in contradistinction to the texts from the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries (only meant to be read). Therefore, the Cidian percentage of crossreference is relatively high as compared to that of the following centuries. IO/Le (3.) 12th c. 14th c. 15th c. 16th c.

Total Anteposition 28/100 28% 19/41 46% 6/35 17% 3/6 5/35 14% 3/12 25% 16/77 21% 9/16 56%

Postposition 9/59 15% 3/29 10% 2/23 09% 7/61 11%

Nominal 24/79 30% 2/26 8% 3/5 7/65 11%

Pronominal 4/21 19% 4/9 2/5 9/12 75%

Table 2: Percentage of IO–V 3rd person cross-reference in 12th–16th c.

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As said above, an evolutive understanding of the development of IO cross-reference would predict that the thematic part of the clause would be the most compatible context for its actualization. However, Rini (1991a, b) demonstrates that in the commencement, IO in general (duplicated or not) was more frequent in rhematic postverbal position (as against its inherent topical and animate character), only gradually increasing its numbers in preverbal position, see Table 3.3 Pron. vs. nom. IO positioning 1150–1252 13th c. 14th c. 15th c. 16th c.

Pronominal IO Postposition Anteposition 92.4% [7.6%] 80.5% 19.5% 51% 48.88% 38.7% 61.29% [68.75%] [31.25%]

Nominal IO Postposition Anteposition [97.5%] [2.5%] [94%] [6%] 89.25% 10.75% [74%] [26%] [81.2 %] [18.8%]

Table 3: Development of the positioning of the IO.

4

It should not go unnoticed, however, that there seems to be a correlation (in the figures in Table 3) between the syntactic category of noun and rhematic position, and between pronoun and thematic position, in accordance with the Animacy markedness paradigm, dealt with above, and Andersen’s Principle of Markedness Agreement. Before closing this subsection I shall mention that previous investigations have convincingly demonstrated that IO duplication has been steadily increasing throughout the centuries. In conformity with the hypothesis that this development is an instance of evolutive Drift, the steadily increasing actualization of the cross-reference of IO can be expressed more accurately as a statistical S-curve, where the beginning and the end of the evolution is very slow, and the middle very rapidly increasing, as seen in Table 4 (Becerra Bascuñán 2002, 2006a), based on crude figures from Rini (1991a) — the percentages of the 12th c.–15th c. and the 17th c. — and Keniston (1937a) — the percentages for the 16th c. 12th c. 6.76%

13th c. 14.7%

14th c. 22.22%

15th c. 22.58%

16th c., 1 16th c., 2 17th c. 65% 84% ≈100%

20th c. ≈100%

Table 4: The actualization of cross-reference and head marking.5

3

The text of the 16th century is, so it seems, an exception, by being an autobiography. The percentages within brackets are my calculations (SB) based on the figures in Rini (1991). 5 Notice that results concerning the 18th–19th c. are unfortunately lacking. 4

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As is evident, there is a great leap in frequency in the middle of the curve from the 15th to the 16th century (almost a factor 3), and from the first to the second half of the 16th century (almost 20%). For what the textual attestation is worth it is telling. In Section 3 we shall focus explicitly on my own corpus investigation of the 20th century (Becerra Bascuñán 2002, 2006a), with special reference to the question of the structure of the Spanish Drift (and the Principle of Markedness Agreement). However, before we can do this, we have to be more specific about the interaction between the global evolution and the local Markedness Shifts. The global evolution and the local Markedness Shifts feeding it As just seen, the global evolution of cross-reference and head marking of Spanish IO has followed a statistical S-curve from 1100 to 2000. However, this development is only the global trend: when zooming in on it, it shows out that it has required that formerly unstressed, but independent lexical pronouns should be made compatible with the function of marking the role and person of the IO relation — they had to be grammaticalized as ‘non-autonomous’ (but independently referring), bound pronouns — as head-markers within the clausal nucleus. This has happened via the previously mentioned Markedness Shifts. Two general kinds of Markedness Shift (in this context) concern the expressivity of the speaker and hearer relevance. 2.5

Speaker’s expressivity: Emphasis and cross-reference. The first kind of markedness shift to be dealt here concerns expressivity, in the sense of ‘speaker’s emphasis’. In the original system (stage 0), which was not characterized by cross-reference and head marking, the (unmarked) function of the strong, stressed pronouns was ‘emphasis’, the (unmarked) function of the weak, unstressed pronouns being accordingly ‘non-emphasis’ (i.e., normal deixis and anaphora). However, in the first stage of the development, a marked, nonemphatic occurrence of the strong, preposition-governed pronouns is observed, primarily in coordination with non-emphatic nominal IOs — nominal IOs could not be coordinated with weak pronouns (Menéndez Pidal 1954 [1908]; Rini 1991a, b), see (7a). (7) a. Do

la heredat a él

et a sua mulier and DAT his:FEM wife Lex.DO Lex.IO1 Lex.IO2 [–EMP] [–EMP] “S/he gave the inheritance to him and (to) his wife.”

(Stage 1)

GRAMMATICALIZATION OF SPANISH IO CROSS-REFERENCE AS DRIFT

b. Do c. Do

le Lex.IO1’ [–EMP] le [+ EMP]

la heredat a él et Lex.DO Lex.IO1 [–EMP] la heredat a él [+ EMP]

147

a sua mulier Lex.IO2 [–EMP] (Stage 3) (Stage 5)

The ambiguity between the unmarked, emphatic and the marked, nonemphatic use of the strong pronouns — the latter of which is illustrated in (7a) — became disambiguated by inserting the weak atonic dative pronoun to signal non-emphasis (cf. (7b)) — a Remedial change (cf. Andersen 2001b). This is stage 3 in the development, illustrated in (7b) above, where le cataphorically points towards the co-occurrence in the same clause of a nonemphatically understood strong pronominal IO. Notice that the weak pronoun is still a free, lexical dependent in the clause (pleonasm). The double representation, or reduplication, in (7b) is generalized to also include cases where the strong pronoun is to be understood in its normal, unmarked, emphatic function, as in (7c). Thereby, the unmarked value of the co-occurring weak pronoun as signaling non-emphasis is rhetorically devaluated (cf. Dahl 2001) to also signal emphasis. This is stage 4 and 5 in the development. There is now, in stage 5, an opposition between an unmarked double representation signaling non-emphasis and a marked one signaling emphasis. The single pronominal representation of emphatic IO is no longer in use. The unmarked double representation of non-emphasis, outside coordination contexts, is really superfluous — because there is already the unmarked, non-emphatic single use of the weak pronouns — and it is thus falling into disuse (Remedial change). Consequently, the previously marked, emphatic function of double representation becomes unmarked, which it still is today (cf. stage 6): the strong pronoun is emphatic, but requires the presence of an unstressed, weak pronoun, which is no longer a ‘pleonastic’ lexical IO, but a ‘grammatical’, however, independently referring IO. In the present situation there is again a sign (in stage 7) that the tonic pronoun (now duplicated) devaluates rhetorically, becoming less and less emphatic in connection with certain psychological verbs, as e.g. parecer ‘believe’: a mí me parece ‘in my (not: MY) opinion’ (Detges 2003, 2006). This would result in a stage 8, resembling the non-duplicating stage 2. (If this kind of expression would become obligatory, and the atonic duplicating pronoun non-referring, i.e. an analytic agreement marker, rather than the referring cross-referencing head-marker it is today, this would be a post-crossreference stage (8), of full grammaticalization (with lack of symbolic content). Input to this process would be some cases of subject duplication, also with psychological verbs, see Detges (2003, 2006), and cf. the French situation dealt

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with in Lehmann (1995): yo creo would then be yo-creo rather than yo cre-o ‘I believe’, with the desinence being a non-referring subject agreement marker.) This rather complicated development is summarized in Table 5, which thus concerns the Markedness Shifts occurring under the global Drift of IO cross-reference in connection with lexical tonic IO pronouns. The description of the development and the table representing it only depicts the logical structure of the development — it should not be understood that each stage strictly precedes the other in terms of generations of speakers. Marked

Unmarked

Obsolete

Stage 1

strong [non-emphasis]

strong [emphasis] (weak [non-emphasis])

—

Stage 2

—

strong [non-emphasis]

(strong [emphasis])

Stage 3

dupl. [non-emphasis]

strong [non-emphasis]

—

Stage 4

—

dupl. [non-emphasis]

(strong [nonemphasis])

Stage 5

dupl. [emphasis]

dupl. [non-emphasis]

—

Stage 6

—

dupl. [emphasis] (weak [non-emphasis])

(dupl. [nonemphasis])

Stage 7

dupl. [non-emphasis]

dupl. [emphasis]

—

Stage 8

—

dupl. [non-emphasis]

dupl. [emphasis]

*Stage 9

Agreement

Table 5: Markedness shifts in the system of the strong IO pronouns (local, adaptive change).

To summarize thus far, the global evolution of cross-reference and head marking is an internally motivated long-term development, a Drift towards conformity between the type and the system; the local Markedness Shifts just mentioned are externally motivated changes, changes whereby the language is adapted to the communication situation. Here we see adaptive changes, where linguistic expression is adapted to the speaker’s expressivity. The global evolution started in an unmarked context, namely the context of personal pronouns;

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the local Markedness Shift started in a marked context, namely to signal the non-emphatic use of the strong pronouns. Receiver relevance: Dislocation cross-reference. Closely related to the above factor of speaker’s expressivity (the focalization of a constituent for emphasis) is the second factor of receiver relevance expressed in preverbal topical constituents, left dislocation, that is a construction with a clauseexternal theme followed by the clause itself (Dik 1997), as seen in (8). (Right dislocation is also a construction in question, the construction with an ‘afterthought’ in clause-external coda position.) (The theme may also be expressed by en cuanto a ‘with respect to’.) (8) a.

A él,

do gave:S:3. SG

DEF

A Iohán, do DAT Johan gave:S:3. SG

DEF

DAT

b.

3.sg

la heredat inheritance la heredat inheritance

It is evident that external thematization is a marked expression of topicality (as compared to the internal topicality of a subject), and the development of crossreference and head marking also starts in this marked context, see the examples in (9). (9)

a. A él, do le la heredat Theme Gr.S Lex.IO Lex.DO

(9’) a. A él do le la heredat Lex.IO Gr.S Lex.IO Lex.DO (9’’) a. Lex.IO Gr.S Gr.IO Lex.DO (9)

b. A Iohán, Theme

do le la heredat Gr.S Lex.IO Lex.DO

(9’) b. A Iohán do le la heredat Lex.IO Gr.S Lex.IO Lex.DO (9’’) b. Lex.IO Gr.S Gr.IO Lex.DO This type of adaptive change concerns receiver relevance, the pragmatic influence of the addressee in the communication situation by way of information structuring expressed by word order. In the beginning, the internal

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unstressed, weak pronominal lexical IOs referred anaphorically to the external thematized constituent, which more and more came to be conceived of as an integral part of the clause (9’). Accordingly, the weak pronominal IO turned ‘pleonastic’, and the possibility was there to reanalyse it as a cross-referencing and head marking grammatical IO (9’’). (Later on the unmarked placement of the dative pronoun was fixed to preverbal position — it became a proclitic, as mentioned above.) IO cross-reference and head marking in the 20th century Although it is possible to hypothesize which factors of markedness have been operative in the actualization of the cross-reference and head marking system of the IO, it is not possible to be certain about their actual relevance until the (late) 20th century, because real corpus investigations covering the previous centuries are unviable, due to lack of data from the spoken language. One can be reasonably sure, however, that the heroic poem El Cid, written down around 1200 represents an oral poetic tradition with a high number of features from the presumed spoken language (see e.g. Silva Corvalan 1984). The language represented in this poem seems to be much more innovative than the language represented in the written sources from the nearest following centuries — texts written to be read in silence, not to be recited. This is of course a sign that linguistic drift is actualized in the spoken language — the unmarked or neutral medium — prior to its actualization in the written medium. It is also reasonably evident that recorded traditional fairy tales from the 20th century told by old people (around 50 of which have been studied in Becerra Bascuñán 2002, 2006a), even though they are fairly innovatory, are nevertheless less innovative than the contemporary spontaneous conversational speech, because they continue an earlier oral narrative tradition. However, if one undertakes a stratified synchronic corpus investigation, notably including a sociolinguistic investigation of the spoken language, to recover the contemporary variation and its conditioning factors, one can ‘retrodict’ the changes in the past (reconstruct the previous stages of the Drift) and, of course, also make predictions about the future of the development, with the proviso that we do not deal with a stable variation throughout the linguistic tradition. However, this caveat, as we have seen above, does not apply. In Becerra Bascuñán (2002, 2006a) I made a corpus study of modern Spanish from the 20th century — Iberian Spanish as well as Hispano-American Spanish — establishing a corpus of texts of a total of around 2.5 million running words, covering oral conversation (three generations and three social strata), oral narratives (cf. above), published speeches (political and other), literary fictional prose (including child literature and popular literature), drama, 3.

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literary academic and essayistic prose, and official documents (represented by three legal constitutions, those of Spain, Chile, and Argentina). The corpus can be classified in several ways, among others according to register (Biber & al. 1998), i.e. the feature of ‘interactivity (involved)’ [the speaker involves the addressee in his communication] versus ‘informativity (informational production)’. This yields an opposition between oral spontaneous speech as one pole and official documents (written) as the other, where official documents are characterized by a very low degree of interactivity (irrespective of the fact that they are meant as directives for society). It is a truism that this type of text — Civil Service Style (officialese) — will represent an “archaic” or conservative, non-innovating norm, which is a marked register. The behavior of this register can be gathered from Table 6: a–c. The prediction is, naturally, that duplication (cross-reference and head marking) goes with a high degree of interactivity and the lack of it with a high degree of informativity. Thus, lack of duplication should be expected in this kind of text. 6:a: Spanish constitution IO animate IO inanimate Total 6:b: Chilean constitution IO animate IO inanimate Total 6:c: Argentinian constitution IO animate IO inanimate Total

+duplication

–duplication

Postposed Anteposed 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 (0%)

Postposed Anteposed 11 0 34 0 45 0 45 (100%)

+duplication

–duplication

Postposed Anteposed 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 (3%)

Postposed Anteposed 13 2 16 0 29 2 31 (97%)

+duplication Postposed Anteposed 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 (0%)

–duplication Postposed Anteposed 6 0 20 2 26 2 28 (100%)

Total 11 34 45 100%

Total 16 16 32 100% Total 6 22 28 100%

Table 6: a: Spanish constitution, 1978 [17,628 words]. b: Chilean constitution, 1980 [26,690 words]. c: Argentinian constitution, 1994 [12,713 words].

And this is what we find in these tables: the Spanish, the Chilean, and the Argentinian constitutions show almost a categorial lack of cross-reference and head marking. This means that the legislators have applied a set of adaptive

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rules (Andersen 1973), which dictate non-manifestation of duplication in those places where duplication should be present according to the type-conforming productive rules of IO conjugation. It is, however, telling that even in this register there is a leakage, the type and system making their influence: there is one example of cross-reference in the Chilean constitution. How can this be interpreted? According to Kuno’s (1976) theory of Empathy (whereby is understood the personal involvement in the state of affairs described, e.g. by identifying oneself with one of its participants), the lack of duplication in the legal texts could be conceived as the expression of absence of empathy — the law texts are impersonal and objective, not personal and subjective — and would therefore disfavor the grammaticalization of IO in the first place. Accordingly, the adaptive morphosyntactic rules of IO conjugation dictate duplication when there is empathy and non-duplication when there is none. The legal texts lack interactivity (the addressee is not involved), applying to all subjects in a neutral and objective manner, thus leaving no room for empathy. The Chilean constitution may be evidence of the future disappearance of a variable rule of expressing empathy, generalizing duplication to all contexts (this would be an instance of rhetorical devaluation). The maximally formal register would correspond to an initial stage with its (almost) total lack of duplication, whereas the maximally informal register, oral conversational speech, approximates the final situation, where the IO cross-reference marker has become obligatory. Table 7 shows data for oral conversation (sociolinguistic interviews, encuestas) obtained from the city of Sevilla in Andalucia, southern Spain. Conversational register IO animate IO inanimate Total

+duplication Postposed Anteposed 166 268 19 4 185 272 457 (93%)

–duplication Postposed Anteposed 22 0 10 0 32 0 32 (7%)

Total 456 33 489 100%

Table 7: Encuestas, Sevilla, 1973 and 1984–1986 [186,408 words].

Even though this table does not distinguish between the socio-culturally popular and cultivated levels, there is an almost categorical presence of duplication, pointing to a very late stage of the grammaticalization of the IO conjugation. Singling out the chronolectal factor of age (generation, 1st meaning ‘young’, 2nd ‘older’, 3rd ‘old’), the picture in Table 8: a emerges. The chronolectal factor is, as would be expected, correlated with the presence of crossreference: the older speakers (3rd generation) show a significantly lower

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degree of cross-reference than the younger speakers (1st) — the first generation (92%) has almost 20% more duplication than the third (75%). ±Dupl/IO/Position

Postposition +dupl. –dupl. 92% (82) 8% (7) 89% (58) 11% (7)

Anteposition +dupl. –dupl. 100% (126) 0% (0) 100% (44) 0% (0)

1st gener.

Totals % (N) 3rd pers.

2nd gener.

Totals % (N) 3rd pers.

86% (54) 81.25% (39)

14% (9) 18.75% (9)

100% (104) 100% (44)

0% (0) 0% (0)

Totals % (N) 3rd pers.

75% (48) 65% (30)

25% (16) 35% (16)

100% (44) 100% (12)

0% (0) 0% (0)

3rd gener.

Table 8: a: Encuestas, Sevilla, 1973 and 1984–1986 [186,408 words].

It can be seen that IO is fully grammaticalized in (unmarked) topical anteposition for all generations, and that third person (marked) tends to be less topical (anteposed), and less prone to empathy, than first and second person (cf. that the percentage totals are higher than for third person), in accordance with the Animacy Hierarchy. The younger speakers (who are supposed to master fewer (formal) registers and show less use of adaptive rules) will be those speakers first obtaining full grammaticalization. With respect to sociolectal variation, the hypothesis is, of course, that the lower socio-cultural (‘popular’) levels will be leading in the actualization of cross-reference and head-marking of IO — they are supposed in general to master fewer (formal) registers and show less use of adaptive rules than the higher (‘cultivated’) levels. Table 8: b (position) and c (animacy) confirms this. ±Dupl/IO/Position Popular

Totals % (N) 3rd pers.

Cultivated

Totals % (N) 3rd pers.

Postposition +dupl. –dupl. 95% (138) 5% (7) 93% (93) 7% (7) 65% (47) 58% (35)

35% (25) 42% (25)

Anteposition +dupl. –dupl. 100% (168) 0% (0) 100% (57) 0% (0) 100% (104) 100% (41)

0% (0) 0% (0)

Table 8: b: Position. Encuestas, Sevilla, 1973 and 1984–1986 [186,408 words].

The spoken language, as already stated, shows an almost 100% use of IO cross-reference. It is evident that the topicality of the IO (as manifested in anteposition), as well as its inherent value on the Animacy Hierarchy (simultaneously a topicality and empathy hierarchy) is decisive:

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Human/1st & 2nd person Human/3rd person Animate  Inanimate Concrete Abstract

Popular

Totals % (N) 3rd pers.

Animate +dupl. –dupl. 98% (293) 2% (7) 95% (137) 5% (7)

Cultivated

Totals % (N) 3rd pers.

90% (141) 81% (66)

±Dupl/IO/Animacy

10% (15) 19% (15)

Inanimate +dupl. –dupl. 100% (13) 0% (0) 100% (13) 0% (0) 50% (10) 50% (10)

50% (10) 50% (10)

Table 8: c: Encuestas, Sevilla, 1973 and 1984–1986 [186,408 words].

Inanimates (marked in IO function) are a point on the scale where the actualization of cross-reference has only been partial: here, the ‘cultivated’ section of the speech community has not generalized the cross-reference of the inanimate 3rd person IO (only 50%). The ‘popular’ level shows (almost) categorical use of duplication with animate as well as inanimate IOs. Both sociolects have attained full grammaticalization in anteposition, whereas only the ‘popular’ level has done so (approximately) in the less topical postposition; here the ‘cultivated’ level only attains approx. 50%. The evolution of IO crossreference has thus spread to the marked, less topical position, first in the ‘popular’ section of the speech community (and with the younger speakers). It is quite evident from the above that the factor of interactivity (involvement) is crucial. This is also demonstrated by the following results of an investigation of the same person (Ricardo Lagos) in two different situations characterized by different degrees of interactivity, as seen in Table 9. ±Dupl/IO/Position

Animate +dupl. –dupl. 69% 31% 41 18

Inanimate +dupl. –dupl. 88.9% 11.1% 8 1

Interviews: Marcos, 1995–2001, México

% N

Interviews: Lagos, 2001, Chile

% N

71% 42

29% 17

90% 9

10% 1

Speeches: Lagos, 2000–2001, Chile

% N

26% 14

74% 40

0% 0

0% 0

Speeches: Castro, 2000–2002, Cuba

% N

29% 13

71% 32

50% 2

50% 2

Table 9: Oral register.

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The contrast is between the linguistic behaviors of the former Chilean president in political speeches (more formal, less interactive) versus in informal, more interactive radio interviews (where also the radio listeners ask the president questions via the telephone). The more interactive register is 90% duplicating in anteposition, whereas the more informative one has no duplication in ante-position. Notice, however, that postposition, in this specific instance, is statistically more informative (even though it is less topical). Notice also that the former Chilean president did not behave differently in the interview situation from Subcomandante Marcos from Mexico, and not differently in the genre political speeches from the Cuban president. In the same direction — the degree of interactivity of the text determining the use of cross-reference and head-marking of IO — points Table 10, showing that the stage directions in drama texts are less duplicating and thereby more formal than the dialogues of these texts. (This situation is reminiscent of the legal language: the stage directions are directed at all potential theater directors and actors, whereas the directives of the drama itself are concrete, personal.) Theatre Stage direction Dialogue Total

+duplication 22 (39%) 132 (83%) 154 (72%)

–duplication 34 (61%) 27 (17%) 61 (28%)

Total 56 (100%) 159 (100%) 215 (100%)

Table 10: Modern theater, different authors (1987–1994) [81,419 words].

Here again, the interactive speech (the dialogues) shows much more crossreference than the non-interactive speech (the stage directions). The colloquial (informal) character of a literary text (here, novels) is mirrored in its use of cross-reference and head marking: there is more IO conjugation present in a colloquial text than in a more cultivated literary text, as seen in Table 11. 3rd pers. Encuestas Colloquial Cultivated

Position Postposition Anteposition +dupl. –dupl +dupl. –dupl 76% 24% 100% 0% 84% 16% 100% 0% 71% 29% 68% 32%

Animacy Animate Inanimate +dupl. –dupl +dupl. –dupl 92% 8% 100% 0% 91% 9% 86% 14% 74% 26% 36% 64%

Table 11: Written prose: colloquial style (1990) [approx. 56,840 words] versus cultivated style (1994), the first part of the novel [55,698 words].

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The colloquial novel takes the lead both in the domain of topicality and in that of animacy. This may be due to the kind of audience implied: the colloquial text has a sociolectally and chronolectally broader target audience than the audience of a more ‘cultivated’ literary text. Not only the inherent features of person and animacy and the pragmatic notion of topicality (as expressed in anteposition), but also the character of the morphosyntactic context of the IO plays a role. The grammaticalization of IO is for instance higher in superordinate (unmarked) clauses than in subordinate clauses (marked), here relatives, in the colloquial style literary text versus the cultivated style literary text (dealt with in Table 11) — see Table 12. ±Dupl/Relatives Colloquial Cultivated

+duplication 94% (94) 74% (98)

Totals –duplication 6% (10) 26% (35)

+duplication 80% (4) 18% (3)

Relatives –duplication 20% (1) 82% (14)

Table 12: Written prose: colloquial style (1990) [approx. 56,840 words] versus cultivated style (1994), first part of the novel [55,698 words].

Likewise, the grammaticalization of IO is higher with referential, ‘actual’ DOs (unmarked), as in example (10a), than with ‘incorporated’, nonreferential, ‘potential’ DOs, as in example (10b)6 — see Table 13, which includes the distinction between marked ‘incorporation’ and unmarked structures. (For a treatment of ‘incorporation’ of potential DOs, see Becerra Bascuñán 2004; concerning ‘complex predicates’, see Becerra Bascuñán 2006b.) (10) a. Jaimito le da un golpe fuerte al casette, que está encima de la mesa (…). “Jaimito gives the tape recorder, which is on the table, a hard blow” (Teatro moderno: Bajarse al moro) b. Nada más entrar, empieza a “As soon as she enters, she begins to dar golpes con el bolso a su hijo. give blows with the bag DAT POSS:3.sg son hit her son with the bag.” (Teatro moderno: Bajarse al moro)

6

Notice that this example also is an instance of (lack of cross-reference in) a subordinate clause, a marked context, cf. previous factor.

GRAMMATICALIZATION OF SPANISH IO CROSS-REFERENCE AS DRIFT

±Duplication/ Incorporation Novel, 1986 Novel, 1993

Totals (incl. incorporation) +dupl. –dupl 81.6% (62) 18.4% (14) 75% (30)

25% (10)

157

Only unmarked structures +dupl. –dupl. 94% (62) 6% (4) 91% (30)

9% (3)

Table 13: Two novels (1986, 1993) [aprox. 28,800, 33,210 words] .

This (rather superficial) selection of factors and several other factors as well (cf. Becerra Bascuñán 2002, 2006a), robustly confirm Andersen’s (1990, 2001a, b) theory of Drift, namely that its actualization is structured, occurring first or more frequently in unmarked contexts, only later being generalized to also occur in marked contexts. Conclusion Generally, it can be concluded that Andersen’s theory of Drift (Andersen 1990, 2001a, b) has been confirmed by the development of cross-reference and head marking of IO in Spanish: Drift has a unique direction towards conformity between the type and the other functional levels of the language, and between these and usage, and it is structured, by the Principle of Markedness Agreement (Andersen 2001a:27). The Spanish Drift has been determined by a typological reanalysis, namely a generalization of its type as totally “prodrop”. It has been demonstrated that the norms of usage (all through the centuries) have sought to adapt themselves to the type-conforming system of productive rules of IO conjugation, whereby adaptive rules of non-cross-reference have been gradually dropped. Specifically, it can be concluded that the global (internally motivated) evolutive development seems to have recruited a set of local (externally motivated) Markedness Shifts (Dik 1997), whereby the atonic pronouns have been made compatible with the function as cross-referencing head-marker. The Markedness Shifts are adaptive changes, adjusting the language in accordance with the communicative context: the speaker’s expressivity (originally emphasis; later empathy) and hearer relevance (thematization of IO, reanalyzed as clause-internal topicality, cf. Givón 1976) get explicitly coded by the IO crossreferencing atonic pronouns. The marked character of the pragmatic contexts gets devaluated (‘inflated’), as proposed by Dahl (2001). The outcome is the generalization necessary for (grammaticalizational) Drift. 4.

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García-Miguel, José María. 1995b. Transitividad y complementación preposicional en español. (= Verba, Anexo 40.) Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. Givón, Talmy. 1976. “Topic, pronoun, and grammatical agreement”. Subject and Topic ed. by Charles N. Li, 149–188. New York: Academic Press. Gutiérrez Ordóñez, Salvador. 1999. “Los dativos”. Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, vol. 2 ed. by Ignacio Bosque Muñoz & Violeta Demonte Barreto, 1854–1930. Madrid: Espasa. Herslund, Michael. 2002. “El dativo en una teoría de la valencia y transitividad”. (Manuscript, Copenhagen.) Herslund, Michael & Sørensen, Finn. 1994. “A valence based theory of grammatical relations”. Function and Expression in Functional Grammar ed. by Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen; Lisbeth Falster Jakobsen; & Lone Schack-Rasmussen, 81–95. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Hopper, Paul J. & Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 1993. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (2nd rev. ed. 2003.) Keniston, Hayward. 1937a. The Syntax of Castilian Prose: The sixteenth century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Keniston, Hayward. 1937b. Spanish Syntax List. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Kuno, Susumo. 1976. “Subject, theme, and the speaker’s empathy: A reexamination of relativization phenomena”. Subject and Topic ed. by Charles N. Li, 417–444. New York: Academic Press. Lapesa Melagar, Rafael. 1981. Historia de la lengua española. Madrid: Gredos. Lehmann, Christian. 1985. “Grammaticalization: Synchronic variation and diachronic change”. Lingua e Stile a.20:3.303–318. Lehmann, Christian. 1995. Thoughts on Grammaticalization. Munich & Newcastle: LINCOM EUROPA. Lenz, Rodolfo. 1935. La oración y sus partes. Madrid: Publicaciones de la Revista de Filología Española, vol. 5. Llorente Maldonado de Guevara, Antonio & José Mondéjar. 1974. “La conjugación objetiva en español”. Revista Española de Lingüística 4:1.1–60. Maldonado, Ricardo. 2002. “Objective and subjective datives”. Cognitive Linguistics 13.1–65. Menéndez Pidal, Ramón. 1950. Orígenes del español. Madrid: Espasa Calpe. Menéndez Pidal, Ramón. 1954 [1908]. Cantar de Mio Cid. Texto, gramática y vocabulario, vol 1. Madrid: Espasa Calpe. Poston, Jr., Lawrence. 1953. “The redundant object pronoun in Contemporary Spanish”. Hispania 3.263–272. Rini, Joel.1990. “Dating the grammaticalization of the Spanish clitic pronoun”. Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 106.354–70. Rini, Joel. 1991a. “The redundant indirect object constructions in Spanish: A new perspective”. Romance Philology 55.2.269–286.

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Rini, Joel. 1991b. Motives for Linguistic Change in the Formation of the Spanish Object Pronouns. (= Juan de la Cuesta – Hispanic Monographs: Estudios lingüsíticos, 4.) Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta. Silva Corvalán, Carmen. 1984. “Semantic and pragmatic factors in syntactic change”. Historical Syntax ed. by Jacek Fisiak, 555–573. Berlin, New York & Amsterdam: Mouton. Smith, John Charles. 2001. “Illocutionary conversion, bystander deixis, and Romance ‘ethic’ pronouns”. Working Papers in Functional Grammar 74. Suñer, Margarita. 1993 [1988]. “El papel de la concordancia en las construcciones de reduplicación de clíticos”. Los pronombres átonos ed. by Olga Fernández Soriano, 174–204. Madrid: Taurus Ediciones. (Orig. ed. “The role of agreement in clitic-doubled constructions”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 6:1988.391–434.) Vázquez Rozas, Victoria. 1995. El complemento indirecto en español. Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. Velázquez-Castillo, Maura. 1999. “Body-part EP constructions: A cognitive– functional analysis”. External Possession ed. by Doris L. Payne & Immanuel Barshi, 77–107. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

THE ROLE OF FUNCTIONAL FACTORS IN LANGUAGE CHANGE AN EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH

GUIDO SEILER Universität Zürich Introduction The evolutionary scenario as a model for linguistic change has become more prominent in recent years (Croft 2000; Haspelmath 1999; Kirby 1999). The principled idea behind the evolutionary scenario is quite straightforward: change operates on the basis of variation between available linguistic options and the selection of options in the course of speakers’ use, such that particular options may be more and more frequently selected whereas others die out. Its concrete instantiation yet appears to be much more intricate, and raises questions such as: How do new variants come into grammar? What factors guide variant selection? Is language change in any sense ‘adaptive’? The aim of the present paper is to test the evolutionary scenario of language change (particularly in its currently most elaborated version due to Croft 2000) against an interesting case of dialect variation, Prepositional Dative Marking in Upper German. It will turn out that the evolutionary scenario is a useful tool for understanding how dialect variation arises. In particular, it provides an explanation for the fact that individual speakers often have the choice between several equally grammatical options. A closer look at this kind of grammar-internal variation reveals that functional properties of the options influence their selection in speakers’ use. However, Croft’s (2000) model explicitly denies any importance of functional factors for selection. Therefore, I will propose that a reconsideration of the role of functional factors is desirable, and I will show how they can be integrated in our understanding of the selection process. The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, I will lay out the basic ideas of the evolutionary scenario, based on Croft (2000). The model will be contrasted with an alternative approach due to Haspelmath (1999), which is different in an interesting way, namely in the estimation of the impact of functional factors on variant selection. Section 3 describes the patterns of Pre1.

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positional Dative Marking (PDM) found across Upper German dialects.1 A crucial observation will be that the functional properties of PDM vary across the different dialect areas. In Section 4 I will attempt to explain the observations in the light of the evolutionary scenario. I will argue that the patterns described in Section 3 are partly at variance with the claims of Croft’s (2000) model. My account relies on the influence of functional factors on variant selection: the functional properties of expressions are the results of selection in speakers’ use. Section 5 outlines the consequences of my findings for the evolutionary scenario. Language change (actualization) is gradual, not only because linguistic patterns are transmitted across speech communities, but also because they gradually develop functional arrangements with other patterns in their respective subsystems of the grammar (the ‘implementation’ dimension, as I shall term it). Selection, therefore, is a multi-factorial and multi-dimensional process, a fact that is compatible with Hull’s (1988) general model of evolutionary processes. The evolutionary scenario In this section I shall attempt to sketch the motivations for applying the evolutionary scenario to linguistic change, focusing on Croft’s (2000) and Haspelmath’s (1999) proposals. I will start with the properties that are shared between the two approaches, and what they claim on the instantiation of language change. I will then show that Croft’s (2000) and Haspelmath’s (1999) conceptions differ in the role of functional factors in language change. I will close this section with a remark on the importance of the study of spatial (dialect) variation, a perspective that has not been taken into account by Croft (2000) or Haspelmath (1999). I will argue that dialect variation provides an evaluation tool for the different claims. How and why is it possible that languages change over time, and what has to be happening for a language to be claimed to be changing? The explanation uncontroversial among evolutionists is this: in languages there is an amount of variation, and variants are selected in speakers’ usage. A particular variant may be selected increasingly often such that other competing variants possibly die out. Change therefore is an unintended by-product of many individual choices among available variants (speakers don’t select variants ‘in order to’ change their languages, but because they want to communicate successfully, here and now). The empirical consequences of the evolutionary scenario can be summarized as follows: 2.

1

Abbreviations used in the text: A: Accusative; D: Dative; DEF: Definite; DM: Dative Marker; Infinitive; NP: Noun Phrase; F: Feminine; M: Masculine; P: Preposition; P: Plural; PDM: Prepositional Dative Marking; PP: Prepositional Phrase; S : Singular. INF:

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 The locus of change is language use rather than (incomplete) language acquisition (Croft 2000, chap. 3.2). 2  Change (actualization) necessarily passes through phases of variation and thus is gradual, because (i) in order for selection to take place selectable variants must be available, and (ii) each individual variant selection only has a minimal effect on the language as a whole (understood both as a set of conventions of a population of speakers and its mental representation in the speakers’ minds). Therefore, variation within a language at a given time is entirely expected.  Languages never stop changing so long as they are in use, because speakers do (and probably need) make choices while realizing their communicative aims and the choices are not always identical across a community of speakers.  If a change has taken place, actually two things have happened: first of all, a new variant has come into play, and second, the variant must have been attractive so as to be selected by the speakers, since it has spread across a community and has been integrated in the grammar of the language. If the success of a variant depends on the frequency of its selection by the speakers, one question immediately arises: Which factors are relevant for variant selection? The answers crucially differ among evolutionists. In a programmatic paper, Haspelmath (1999) aims at explaining the functionality of linguistic structure in a non-teleological fashion. In particular, he seeks an explanation of the observation that the constraints proposed in the context of Optimality Theory (OT) can often easily be functionally motivated — since they implement articulatory, perceptual, cognitive, economy, and explicitness requirements, although the OT formalism itself does not provide a mechanism to implement functional requirements in grammar: The two widely applicable syllable structure constraints ONSET (“A syllable must have an onset”) and NOCODA (“A syllable must not have a coda”), together with the constraint FAITHFULNESS (“The output must not contain fewer or more segments than the input”) allow three types of languages, depending on their mutual ranking […]. However, this cannot be the whole story yet. We must ask 2

“The child-based model makes a number of predictions. The first is that the sorts of changes to the adult system that children make in first language acquisition should be of the same type as are found in language change […]. The second is that the sorts of change that children make in first language acquisition will be maintained through to their adulthood […]. The third is that language change should be relatively abrupt […]. The fourth is that a speaker will either have the ‘old’ grammar or the ‘new’ one. All four predictions are false.” (Croft 2000:45–46).

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further: Why are there no constraints such as CODA or NOONSET, which are opposite to NOCODA and ONSET? Nothing in standard OT prohibits these constraints, so if it is true (as it seems to be) that they do not exist, this can only be achieved by stipulation. Such an account may be satisfactory for linguists who limit their goal to an elegant description of particular languages. But the theoretically minded linguist will be more ambitious and ask a further why question: Why are the constraints the way they are? (Haspelmath 1999:183; emphasis in the original)

Haspelmath’s explanation is evolutionary: variants that are ‘good for the user’ are more often selected by the speakers and therefore can become an obliga3 tory part of the grammar: The application of the evolutionary scenario in linguistics presupposes three hypotheses: (i) Languages show structural variation in all areas of grammar, and language change is unthinkable without structural variation; (ii) frequency of use is determined primarily by the usefulness (or “user optimality”) of linguistic structures; and (iii) high-frequency structures may become obligatory, and low-frequency items may be lost as a result of their (high or low) frequencies. (Haspelmath 1999:190; emphasis in the original)

Haspelmath refers to this process as ‘functional adaptation’ and thus parallels it with adaptation in evolutionary biology. To put it in other words: It is functional factors that guide variant selection in speakers’ use. Croft’s (2000) contribution is different from Haspelmath’s (1999) both in its aims and conclusions. Whereas Croft agrees with Haspelmath in the general assumptions listed above, he presents a much more inclusive and coherent theory of linguistic change that crucially differs in the estimation of the role of functional factors in the evolutionary process. The theory is an instantiation of Hull’s (1988) generalized theory of evolution. Starting from the observation that selection processes in biology apply on various levels of structural organization, Hull (1988) proposes a set of more abstract ‘functional’ units that are involved in selection processes. The ‘functional’ units can be instantiated by replicable structures from different levels: […] as long as the traditional organizational hierarchy is taken as fundamental, then selection will be found to wander erratically from level to level and, consequently, explanations in terms of selection will be highly variable and contingent. Selection will be discovered to occur at different levels in different taxa not to mention at different stages of the life cycles of individual organisms. 3

It is not entirely clear to me whether Haspelmath proposes a model (i) for the emergent (vs. innate) character of usage-based constraints on grammars in general, or (ii) for concrete historical changes from earlier to later stages of a language.

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[…] In this chapter I adopt a different strategy. I define the entities that function in the evolutionary process in terms of the process itself, without referring to any particular level of organization. Any entities that turn out to have the relevant characteristics belong to the same evolutionary kind. Entities that perform the same function in the evolutionary process are treated as being the same, regardless of the level of organization they happen to exhibit. (Hull 1988:401–402)

The crucial units for our purposes are the replicator and the interactor. The replicator is “an entity that passes on its structure largely intact in successive replications”. The interactor is “an entity that interacts as a cohesive whole with its environment in such a way that this interaction causes replication to be differential”. Given these concepts, the selection process can be defined as “a process in which the differential extinction and proliferation of interactors causes the differential perpetuation of the relevant replicators” (Croft 2000:22, following Hull 1988:408–409; emphasis in the original). Now, recall that the abstract units of the selection process are instantiated at various levels. Therefore, for every selection process it has to be determined which entities act as replicators and interactors: “Once terminological issues have been clarified, the units-of-selection controversy resolves into two different questions: what are the units of replication, and what are the units of interaction?” (Hull 1988:414). Croft (2000:28) proposes that in linguistic change the replicator is any bit of linguistic structure that is embodied in concrete utterances. This kind of entity he terms ‘lingueme’. The interactor is instantiated as the speaker (Croft 2000: 27). The speaker includes a grammar as a conrete, spatiotemporally bound psychological entity. The environment the speaker interacts with is “the other members of the speech community, the social context of the speech event, and the goals of the speech event itself”. The grammar as a “real existing mental structure” must be able “to interact with a real physical/mental/social environment” (Croft 2000:27). Language change, then, involves two steps, altered replication of replicators, and selection of replicators, corresponding to ‘innovation’ and ‘propagation’, respectively (Croft 2000:31). Innovation brings new variants into play. Croft sees the causal mechanism behind innovation in the “alteration of the relationship between form and meaning” (Croft 2000:115). He claims that “form–function reanalysis can explain all examples of grammatical change” (Croft 2000:140).4 Here, and only here, functional factors can play a role in 4

This view is certainly insufficient. First, it does not say anything about phonological change. Croft mentions phonology only once en passant (“processes such as phonological erosion”, Croft 2000:165). I am wondering how changes in e.g. prosodic structure such as foot inventories, stress assignment, etc. should be analyzed as form–function reanalysis or erosion. Second, not everything in grammatical structure and change can be accounted for as form-

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language change: “In linguistic evolution, […] external functional motivation that is presumably adaptive for communication […] is the cause of altered replication, not selection” (Croft 2000:39). Propagation, then, is the gradual transmission of a new variant across a speech community, due to variant selection in speakers’ use. Croft repeatedly emphasizes that it is exclusively due to social factors whether a speaker selects one of available variants. The linguistic properties of a variant are assumed to be irrelevant for differential selection. In other words, if speakers have the choice between available variants, the choice always is purely socially determined: […] the selectional process is essentially a social one, not a functional one in the sense of (external) function that I use to characterize innovation. […] It is social factors, not functional factors, that play the same role in selection that ecological factors do in biology. (Croft 2000:32) Functional factors ― the phonetic and conceptual factors appealed to by functionalist linguists ― are responsible only for innovation, and social factors provide a selection mechanism for propagation. (Croft 2000:38) […] the empirical evidence indicates that linguistic selection is governed largely if not exclusively by social forces that have little or nothing to do with functional adaptiveness for communication. (Croft 2000:39) […] the pattern of distribution of the variants of a linguistic variable in language use across the speech community and over time is dependent on social factors, including socioeconomic class, gender, age, and ethnicity. (Croft 2000:54) There is a great deal of variability in an individual speaker’s linguistic behavior […]. Moreover, this variability is structured, that is, the variants have social values conventionally associated with them […]. (Croft 2000:56) The propagation of a linguistic variant is a selection process: one variant is selected over another one. Selection is a process that takes place among interactors, however. A speaker does not produce one linguistic variant in preference to another in an utterance because of its linguistic properties. A speaker identifies herself with a community or a subset of a community and that causes her to produce one linguistic variant in preference to another. (Croft 2000:178)

meaning couplings and shifts between them. A notion of purely structural well-formedness is missing in Croft’s proposal: e.g. the verb-second constraint in continental West Germanic languages is not linked to any meaning, and it does not implement any other function than guaranteeing syntactic well-formedness — in contrary, it even is opposed to functional requirements, since it rules out multiple topicalizations, e.g. German *[dieses Buch] [der Lehrerin] habe ich noch nicht gegeben (literally) ‘[this book] [the teacher] have I still not given’.

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An interesting property of the selection process is addressed by the ‘First Law of Propagation’ (Croft 2000:176). When a variant has spread and thus the speakers have the choice between alternative options, it is commonly the case that the alternatives tend to be used for different functions, or they are assigned different social meanings, or one of them dies out: “There appears to be a natural tendency for a community to select one alternative as the conventional signal for a recurrent coordination problem” (Croft 2000:176). Two things are worth noticing here. First, there is an internal paradox within the model. If it is exclusively social factors that guide speakers’ selection between available variants, it is not obvious to me how a functional differentiation can emerge at all. Second, if we accept that functional asymmetries can arise in the course of propagation (thus ignoring the paradox), and if we take seriously the claim that only social factors are decisive for a variant to be chosen by the speakers, it follows that the kind of emerging functional asymmetry between competing variants cannot be related to any linguistic property of the variants, since “a speaker does not produce one linguistic variant in preference to another in an utterance because of its linguistic properties” (Croft 2000:178). That is, even if we accept that a functional differentiation between variants can emerge through propagation, the kind of differentiation is not expected to be functionally motivated in the sense that ‘variant v tends to be used for function f because v is a more user-friendly (transparent, economic, etc.) symbolization of f than its competitors are’. Which variant is chosen for which function appears to be totally arbitrary from a purely linguistic point of view. To summarize Croft’s proposal, the central claims can be stated as follows: the source for innovation of new linguistic variants is form–function reanalysis. Its motivation is functional. The selection of variants, however, is purely socially motivated. The effect of the selectional success of a variant is its gradual spread, or propagation, across a speech community. Croft’s proposal can be summarized by the following three empirical claims (1): (1) a. Functionally motivated properties of linguistic expressions must be due to innovation. b. If there is variation, i.e. a set of alternative options, the choice of one or another option is sensitive to social factors only (and not to functional factors). c. Functional differentiations between options are independent of their linguistic properties.

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In the remainder of the present contribution, I will test these claims against an interesting case of dialect variation, Prepositional Dative Marking in Upper German. All three claims will turn out to be problematic at least. Dialect variation is a type of empirical evidence that is not taken into account, either by Croft (2000) or by Haspelmath (1999). However, dialect variation seems to be an extraordinarily promising laboratory for testing hypotheses about the role of functional factors in language change. Language change is not only gradual on the temporal dimension but also on the spatial dimension. Therefore, we might expect to uncover the minimal contrasts between very similar grammars, which differ not only in their inventories of formal devices, but also in subtle functional properties of these devices, i.e., diachronically speaking: different kinds of integration of an innovation in similar systems of grammar. If the most principled assumption of the evolutionary scenario — namely, language change as a two-step process — is correct, the first result of a change is simply a new option which is added to the grammar. As long as the new option has not entirely replaced its competitors, speakers are able to select between available alternatives. The study of dialect variation enables us to detect different patterns of variant selection across space, which is an important empirical key to the leading question of the present paper. Prepositional Dative Marking in Upper German The basic facts Upper German (Alemannic and Bavarian) distinguishes three morphological cases: nominative, accusative, and dative. In several dialects dative NPs can be preceded by a prepositional marker which is homophonous with the prepositions an “at, beside of” or in “in, into”: 3. 3.1

(2)

Bavarian, AN: du muasst es a deinà frau vaschraibn lássn you must:2S it DM your:DSF wife transfer let:INF “you have to transfer it [=the money] to your wife” (Malching; Ströbl 1970:66)

(3)

Bavarian, IN: sàg’s in der frau say-it DM the:D SF woman “Say it to the woman!” (Upper Inn Valley; Schöpf 1866:286)

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(4)

Alemannic, AN: er git dr Öpfel a mir, statt a dir he gives the apple DM me:D instead DM you:D “He gives the apple to me, not to you.” (Glarus; Bäbler 1949:31)

(5)

Alemannic, IN: Di isch uf də altə Eedə mburg that is on the:D SF old:D SF [a castle] wòòrschinlich probably

ufpauə , di built which:NSF

i də Edlə vo Jeeschtetə DM the:DP noble:P from [a village]

khöört hät. belonged has “This [chapel] is built on the old Edenburg which probably belonged to the nobles of Jestetten.” (Jestetten; Keller 1970:57) I will call this construction ‘Prepositional Dative Marking’ (PDM), the morphemes an or in ‘dative markers’ (DM). Used as dative markers, in and an are functionally equivalent; their distribution is geographically determined. The dative marker is completely meaningless. The examples above have exactly the same meaning as their equivalents in other Upper German dialects or in Standard German, where no PDM occurs. Moreover, PDM is possible with all thematic roles that are encoded by dative NPs in Upper German. For most speakers, PDM is optional. Interestingly, however, different factors can be isolated which favor or constrain dative marker insertion. Note that in PDM the prepositional marker is combined with dative case morphology. Thus, the dative case is expressed twice: by inflectional morphology of determiners and by the dative marker. Since in many Germanic and Romance languages the emergence of prepositional encodings of the indirect object co-occurs with the loss of dative case inflection (English to my mother, French à ma mère), one might think that the erosion of case morphology is a necessary condition for the emergence of prepositional strategies. In Upper German PDM, however, prepositional markers occur although dative case morphology is fairly intact. Thus, PDM cannot simply be explained as a compensatory strategy for eroded case morphology. The dative marker is redundant with regard to possible distinctions in case paradigms. In the following, I will first give a brief sketch of the emergence of PDM (Section 3.2). I will then discuss three distributional patterns found across dif-

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ferent dialects (Section 3.3). In Section 4, I will outline the consequences of the findings for the evolutionary scenario. On the emergence of the dative marker The details of the emergence of the dative marker are described in Seiler (2003, chap. 8). For our purposes it is important to note that PDM probably is not the result of a grammaticalization process, but is rather due to reanalysis of article forms. At first glance, one might think that the dative marker in or an is grammaticalized from the Upper German true prepositions in “in, into” or an “at, beside of”, respectively. In fact, there are cases in Upper German as well as in Modern Standard German where a recipient dative object alternates with a directional PP introduced by an, cf. from Standard German: 3.2

(6) a. sie hat das Buch ihrem she has the book her:DSM “She sent the book to his friend.” b. sie hat das she has the

Buch book

an to

ihren her:ASM

Freund geschickt friend sent Freund geschickt friend sent

However, in a directional PP an governs accusative, not dative. If PDM were grammaticalized from directional PPs, we would expect an plus accusative as a realization of the indirect object, not an plus dative. However, in PDM the dative marker is always combined with dative, never with accusative. Instead, I assume that the dative marker emerged due to a historical accident, namely the phonological development and reanalysis of article forms which made it possible to generalize the (highly frequent) post-prepositional occurrence of the dative case over all instances. Three conditions were relevant for the emergence of PDM. First condition: the Middle High German definite article dative singular masculine dëme lost its initial dental when it was cliticized to prepositions. The spellings <m> or <em> always represent the cliticized article, attached to various prepositions: (7)

obem 1280, uf(f)em 1270, am 1277, im 1258, underm 1276, us(s)em 1409, vom 1277, vorem 1280, hinderm 1403, bim 1280, zem 1245 (Idiotikon XIII, 1191f)

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In most Upper German dialects (with the exception of a few very conservative ones), the form without initial dental has been generalized over all contexts. The article form now is əm (with some variation in the vocalism) in the entire Upper German dialect area, that is, even in dialects where no PDM exists. Nübling (1992:201) explains this generalization by the fact that the dative is much more frequently governed by a preposition than it occurs as a dative object (without preposition). Second condition: there is a whole paradigm of fusional morphs where prepositions and article forms are merged, cf. Table 1: Alemannic a(n) “at” i(n) “in” bi “by, next_to”

+ə m “the:D SM” am im bim

+ə mə nə “a:DSM” amənə imənə bimənə

+ə nə rə “a:DSF ” anə rə inərə binərə

Table 1: Paradigm of fusional morphs.

Depending on sentence stress and speech rate, the phonetic quality of the first vowel varies between [] and [ə ] (in the amalgams of a(n) “at”), or between [ ] and [ə ] (in the amalgams of i(n) “in”), respectively. Thus, the amalgams am , im and the bare article form ə m are potentially homophonous. Again, this situation is common to almost all Upper German dialects, even those where PDM does not occur. Third condition: the by far most frequent occurrence of the dative case is post-prepositional. Following Nübling (1992:221), more than 90% of the occurrences of datives are governed by prepositions. This is the context where an innovation took place in a subset of the Upper German dialects. Those dialects reanalysed the forms of the dative articles +DEF:DSM, –DEF:DSM and –DEF:DSF as prepositional amalgams. Thus, they interpreted the — not very frequent — bare article forms as belonging to the highly frequent pattern of fusional morphs <preposition_article>. The reanalysis is illustrated in Figure 1, where the phonetic shapes of the dative article and the amalgam am are conflated (likewise for im ). The exponent is reinterpreted as an amalgam even if etymologically it reflects the bare article form:

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Morphological structure

<article> ə m/am

Exponent

Origin (MHG)



dëme

an + dëme

Figure 1: The exponent .

Once the (etymologically) bare article forms are reanalysed as prepositional amalgams, this pattern can be analogically extended to other determiners where no fusional morphs with prepositions exist. Consequently, the dative in Upper German PDM dialects is realized ‘in analogy’ to post-prepositional datives. The result of the reanalysis is a new morpheme, our ‘dative marker’. Three distributional patterns Only in a small subset of the PDM dialects, dative marker insertion is mandatory, e.g. in some regions in Central Switzerland, namely the Muotathal valley and the Lucerne district. In these dialects, every dative NP has to be preceded either by the dative marker or another preposition. However, for the vast majority of PDM speakers, the dative marker is optional, i.e., there is no strict grammaticality contrast between the options bare dative vs. PDM. However, it is possible to isolate certain factors which increase the preference for the PDM option. Although concrete informants’ judgements vary — some informants, for instance, reject PDM totally in an unpreferred environment, whereas for others it is acceptable although they prefer the bare dative; for some informants, PDM is required in preferred environments, for others it is acceptable only here, but not obligatory, etc. — the judgments are always in accordance with the preference directions as such: if there is a preferential asymmetry between bare datives and PDM, it follows the predicted direction. Interestingly, the factors guiding variant selection vary across the different dialect areas. In the following, I will focus on three distributional patterns, found in South Bavarian, Northern Switzerland, and Central Switzerland. 3.3

3.3.1 Morphology: South Bavarian. In South Bavarian (Tyrol and Carinthia), case paradigms of plurals are morphologically underspecified. Whereas the dative is inflectionally distinct from nominative/accusative in feminine singular, there are no inflectional case distinctions in plurals (cf. Seiler 2003:165–6), see Table 2:

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FEM NOM ACC DAT

SING

PLUR

“the woman” d frau d frau da frau

“the women” di fraun di fraun in+di fraun

175

Table 2: South Bavarian case paradigm.

Dative marker insertion occurs exclusively (Innsbruck, Tyrol: Stranzinger 1951:202) or preferred (Stubai, Tyrol: Mair 1938:201; Feldkirchen, Carinthia: Rader 1966:144) before plurals. Here, and only here, PDM can be motivated as a compensatory strategy for missing case distinctions. 3.3.2 Information structure: Northern Switzerland (Alemannic). The second pattern is very common in German-speaking Switzerland. It is found, for instance, in Schaffhausen (Northern Switzerland). Here, dative marker insertion depends on information structure. PDM is preferred if the dative NP is focused. If the dative NP is not focused, the dative marker is not inserted (cf. Seiler 2003:177–186): (8) a. Dative ≠focus: dasmal han ich etz dr Marte es BUECH this_time have I now the:DSF M a book “This time, I gave Martha a BOOK.” b. Dative = focus: ich han s buech i dr MARTE I have the book DM the:DSF M “I gave the book to MARTHA.”

gschänkt given

ggëë given

I propose that this distribution can be motivated by iconicity principles (cf. Haiman 1985:150, Lambrecht 1994:242). PDM is more explicit and involves more phonological material than a bare dative NP. The more explicit encoding option is used when the dative NP is the information peak of the utterance and bears main sentence stress. Thus, explicitness correlates with informationstructural salience. 3.3.3 Metrical stress patterns: Central Switzerland (Alemannic). In Lucerne (Central Switzerland), PDM is obligatory for many speakers. However, those speakers for whom PDM is optional insert the dative marker according to metrical stress patterns. The dative marker is more likely to be inserted if it

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prevents a clash of two stressed syllables. PDM is less preferred if the dative marker would cause a lapse, i.e. a sequence of more than one unstressed syllables (cf. Seiler 2003:164–165): (9) a. ich ha das buech i allne I have this book DM all:DP “I gave this book to all of them.” x x buech

x i

x x all

x ne

b. ich ha die büecher (*i) allne I have those books DM all:DP “I gave these books to all of them.” x x büe

x (*x) cher (*i)

ggä given

x x all

ggä given

x ne

To close this section, it should be emphasized that for many speakers, PDM vs. bare dative are in completely free variation, that is, no functional asymmetries can be attributed to any of the options, and both options are equally acceptable. The freedom of variation is reflected in those speakers’ spontaneous speech, too, where the occurrence or non-occurrence of the dative marker cannot be related to any linguistic or extra-linguistic factor, but is totally random. Prepositional Dative Marking in the light of the evolutionary scenario Let us now reconstruct an evolutionary account of the findings presented in the previous section. There is no doubt that the evolutionary scenario provides a helpful interpretative framework for our understanding of the complex picture sketched above, and in particular of the role of optionality in the whole process: if the development of PDM is an instantiation of the evolutionary scenario, we expect innovation to cause variation between options, and the available variants to be selected by the speakers according to certain principles. In the case of PDM, the different distributional asymmetries described above must reflect selectional preferences, since the evolutionary scenario predicts that during stages of variant competition selection is at play. I propose the following historical scenario: the innovation per se is the formal reanalysis of article forms as amalgams of preposition plus article. The 4.

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reanalysis can be motivated as a generalization of the very common post-prepositional occurrence of the dative. The fact that the innovation has spread over a relatively large area demonstrates that it must have been socially acceptable. The result of the innovation is that a new expressional option is added to the grammar. Therefore, in the areas where PDM has spread, two encoding options for dative NPs co-exist, bare datives and PDM. But innovation as such does not automatically imply a specific functional arrangement between options, it only makes options available. None of the functional properties of PDM sketched above has played a part in the innovation process as such. The emergence of functionally motivated preferential asymmetries between bare datives and PDM is a separate process. Given the evolutionary scenario, it must be due to variant selection in speakers’ use. That is, the (relatively ‘soft’) functional contours of PDM are not the result of innovation, but they evolved only afterwards in the course of selection between the variants. Evidence for the above claim can be taken from two observations: first, the emergence of functional contours between PDM and bare datives is facultative, that is, functionally motivated distributional asymmetries need not necessarily arise. Remember that not for all speakers/areas a functional contrast between the variants can be observed. In my account, these dialects represent the stage where nothing else has happened than the mere addition of a new option to the grammar. However, if functional factors were relevant only for innovation but not for selection, and if innovation really were driven by those functional factors, we would expect to observe them in all dialects which participated in the innovation. Second, the specific functional contours that PDM developed in different dialects are independent of each other. If they were not secondary results of selection (but due to innovation which these dialects have in common), we would expect a much more uniform pattern cross-dialectally. That is, in the dialects where a functional asymmetry between bare datives vs. PDM can be observed, not only is a new option added to the grammar, but speakers select between the options in a way that is sensitive to functional principles. Of course, a particular functional pattern must be socially acceptable in order to spread within its area; but the respective functional patterns must have arisen only at a stage when both options, bare dative and PDM, already were available to the speakers. Therefore, I assume — thus diverging from Croft’s model — that the innovation per se can be taken as a very mechanical process, not necessarily linked to functional properties of the items involved. Although we are dealing with a case of reanalysis—a shift in the relationship between expressions (article forms) and their categorial interpretation (<preposition_article>), this reanalysis is purely formally motivated: it is a mere generalization of a morphophonemic pattern (the occurrence of

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dative articles in prepositional amalgams). Yet it is obviously not the locus where the functional factors are involved that guide the choice of variants in the different dialects. Functional factors come into play only afterwards, as unintended results of selection in speakers’ activity. Therefore, PDM can be seen as a ‘from-structure-to-function’ change: a structural innovation spreads over an area, and then the new pattern starts to be functionally arranged in relation to other available patterns. Let us return to the three claims from (1) above, repeated here as (10): (10) a. Functionally motivated properties of linguistic expressions must be due to innovation. b. If there is variation, i.e. a set of alternative options, the choice of one or another option is sensitive to social factors only (and not to functional factors). c. Functional differentiations between options are independent of their linguistic properties. Ad a: Although a larger area shares one innovation — reanalysis of article forms as prepositional dative marker plus article, the functional properties of PDM are different across different dialects. Dative marker insertion is sensitive to underspecified inflectional paradigms (South Bavarian), information structure (Northern Switzerland), or metrical stress patterns (Central Switzerland). However, for the innovation as such, no such functional motivation is available: PDM is not a better symbolization of the dative than (largely intact) inflectional morphology. If there were functional properties of PDM which played a role for the innovation as such, we would expect them to be constant across the different dialects. Therefore, given the evolutionary scenario, they must have evolved in the course of variant selection — which is not predicted by (10a). Ad b: It is unquestionable that social factors do play a crucial role in the selection between options. However, the case of PDM confronts us with different kinds of variant competition. According to the evolutionary scenario, stages of variation are the locus where variant selection comes into play. In the three dialects I mentioned in Section 3 above, the selection of variants is driven by general functional principles, too — which is not predicted by (10b). Ad c: As a consequence of Croft’s (2000) ‘First Law of Propagation’, functional differentiations which emerge in the course of selection are not expected to be related to more general functional principles. However, I have

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shown that the distributional asymmetries between bare datives and PDM can easily be motivated by well known functional principles. The relation between the shape of the expressions and the functional properties of the expressions is not entirely random (it is, for instance, more expected from a functional point of view that for focused datives the more explicit expression is chosen rather than the less explicit one). Again, the observations are not predicted by (10c). Consequently, Croft’s exclusion of functional factors from variant selection turns out to be too restrictive. It is worth noticing that in Haspelmath’s (1999) much less elaborated model functional factors do play a prominent role in variant selection. However, the important influence of social factors is totally absent there. In the following, concluding section I will make a proposal as to how the influence of functional factors on variant selection can be integrated in Croft’s model without weakening generalizations on the importance of social factors or giving up basic categories such as replicator and interactor. Conclusion: The case for the concept of variant ‘implementation’ A central consequence of the evolutionary scenario is the gradualness of linguistic change: new variants emerge, compete with other variants, may be more and more often selected by the speakers and perhaps even become obligatory, i.e. totally replace competing variants. Croft (2000) accounts for the gradualness of change by distinguishing between ‘innovation’ (actuation) and ‘propagation’ (transmission). Propagation in its proper sense, however, captures only one dimension of gradual spread of an innovation, viz., its socially determined spread from speaker to speaker. The linguistic change as such is conceptualized as being abrupt: either an innovation has become part of a speaker’s inventory of linguistic devices or not. However, linguistic change is also gradual on the dimension of its integration in a system of grammar. Recall how different functional factors intervene in the distribution of bare datives vs. PDM across different dialects. These different ways of integrating a new option in a system of grammar cannot be interpreted as something other than the result of variant competition. The functional arrangement, or the systematic status of a variant relative to other variants, gradually emerges and changes over time, in the course of speakers’ variant selection. Therefore, the relationships between the items and categories in a system of grammar, their valeur linguistique (de Saussure 1967 [1917]: chap. 4), must occupy a more prominent place in an evolutionary account of selection-driven distributional asymmetries between variants. I propose the term ‘implementation’ for the integration of a variant in the system of grammar and its changing status within that system (Seiler 2003:247). Thus, if a variant has emerged (‘innovation’), it may spread along at least two dimensions: it may spread from speaker to 5.

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speaker (‘propagation’), and it may develop specific systematic arrangements with other elements in the grammar (‘implementation’). We have seen that if a new option such as PDM is added to the grammar, it may be implemented in different directions and to different degrees. The implementations of PDM turned out to be sensitive to functional factors. Note, however, that the influence of functional factors may change or even cease to exist over time. As I mentioned earlier, dative marker insertion has become obligatory in a few dialects. Here, PDM has been implemented to its full extent and totally replaced bare datives — which also means that the functional factors guiding dative marker insertion during periods of variation have become obsolete: in dialects with obligatory PDM, the dative marker is inserted due to purely structural well-formedness; no other functional motivation can (or must) be reconstructed here. The implementation dimension replaces Croft’s ‘First Law of Propagation’. In my proposal, the notion of propagation is restricted to the spread of a variant on the social dimension, whereas selectional functional contours of variants belong to the implementation dimension. The propagation and implementation dimensions are, of course, in close interaction with each other, but in order to understand how languages change it is mandatory to acknowledge their conceptual independence. Croft’s (2000) model provides an elaborate account for the propagation dimension, that is, for what happens with a variant in its environment understood as a speech community, but it has little to offer for the implementation dimension, i.e., for what happens with a variant in its environment understood as a system of grammar. Note that there is nothing “essentialist” in talking about a system of grammar. A grammar has a concrete locus in space and time: it is a coordinate network of conventions internalized in the speakers’ minds, and there is no doubt that the network is highly structured, including complex relationships and interactions within itself and with its environment. Why is there a restriction to social factors for variant selection in Croft’s (2000) account? It might be the case that it is due to an empirical bias. All cases of variant competition Croft mentions are taken from sociolinguistic studies (the empirical bias perhaps reflects the fact that syntactic theory has not 5 paid much attention to facts of variation). Of course, a sociolinguistic study will be able to show that social factors do guide the choice of variants, since this is exactly the goal of the study. However, a sociolinguist would hardly 5

There are, of course, studies on variation in syntax. Just to mention one recent example, Rosenbach (2002) examines the factors guiding the variation between Genitive and of-phrases in English. Rosenbach shows that the selection between the two available options is guided by several “soft” (and non-social) factors such as animacy, topicality, or weight.

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claim that no other factors than social ones may influence a speaker’s choice of variants. How is the restriction to social factors instantiated in Croft’s (2000) model? “Selection is a process among interactors […]. A speaker identifies herself with a community or a subset of a community and that causes her to produce one linguistic variant in preference to another” (Croft 2000:178; emphasis GS). The exclusion of all factors other than social ones from the selection process is somewhat surprising given Croft’s definition of the interactor: It seems fairly uncontroversial that the paradigm case of a linguistic interactor is the speaker, including of course the speaker’s grammar as we have defined it. The speaker interacts as a cohesive whole with her environment. The speaker is a cohesive whole as a member of the speech community, communicatively interacting with other members of the speech community. The environment is thus the other members of the speech community, the social context of the speech event, and the goals of the speech event itself […]. The grammar used by the speaker is a real existing mental structure: it must be able to interact with a real physical/mental/ social environment. (Croft 2000:27; emphasis in original)

Two things are worth mentioning here. First, since the interactor includes a grammar as a structured system of embodied conventions, the grammar is in interaction with the environment. It is therefore expected that variation in grammar can be tuned according to the “goals of the speech event itself”, or to extra-grammatical cognitive structure, in other words: to functional factors. The definition of interactor quoted above is remarkably multi-dimensional. If a speaker has the choice between options, it is not surprising that at the moment of the concrete selection of an option she is exposed to a multiplicity of influences and preferences, only a subset of which are social factors. Second, if grammar as a whole is in interaction with environmental factors, then all its subparts are so, too. Since a speaker has a memory of previous utterances (and the capacity to produce new utterances), one might say that in every communicative act — which spells out bits of structural organization of the grammar, non-uttered but partially similar and partially distinct bits of structural organization are activated, too. Therefore, communicative interaction may have an impact on the systematic arrangements of options. To put it in other words: not only the actually uttered utterances are real existing objects and therefore a legitimate ingredient of a non-essentialist theory, but to a certain degree also the associative relationships from actually uttered to virtual utterances, because speakers have memories and linguistic competences that make options available to them in the first place — a necessary prerequisite for the existence of variation.

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REFERENCES Bäbler, Heinrich. 1949. Glarner Sprachschuel. Glarus: Verlag der Erziehungsdirektion. Croft, William. 2000. Explaining Language Change: An evolutionary approach. Harlow: Longman. Haiman, John. 1985. Natural Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haspelmath, Martin. 1999. “Optimality and diachronic adaptation”. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 18.180–205. Hodler, Werner. 1969. Berndeutsche Syntax. Bern: Francke. Hull, David L. 1988. Science as a Process: An evolutionary account of the social and conceptual development of science. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Idiotikon. 1881ff. Schweizerisches Idiotikon: Wörterbuch der schweizerdeutschen Sprache. Frauenfeld: Huber. Keller, Rudolf Ernst. 1970. “Jestetten Kr. Waldshut”. Phonai 7.7–89. Kirby, Simon. 1999. Function, Selection, and Innateness: The emergence of language universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topic, focus and the mental representations of discourse referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mair, Raimund. 1938. Die Flexion der Stubaier Mundart, historisch dargestellt. Doctoral dissertation, University of Innsbruck. Mayr, Ernst. 1997. This is Biology: The science of the living world. Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University Press. Nübling, Damaris. 1992. Klitika im Deutschen: Schriftsprache, Umgangssprache, alemannische Dialekte. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Rader, Wolfram. 1966. Sprachbiologische Untersuchungen an der Mundart von Feldkirchen in Kärnten. Doctoral dissertation, University of Vienna. Rosenbach, Annette. 2002. Genitive Variation in English: Conceptual factors in synchronic and diachronic studies. Berlin & New York: de Gruyter. Saussure, Ferdinand de, ed. by Charles Bally & Albert Séchehaye. 1967 [1917]. Cours de linguistique générale. (3rd ed.) Paris: Payot. Seiler, Guido. 2003. Präpositionale Dativmarkierung im Oberdeutschen. Stuttgart: Steiner. Schöpf, Johann B. 1866. Tirolisches Idiotikon. Innsbruck: Wagner. Stranzinger, Oswald. 1951. Laut- und Flexionsverhältnisse der Innsbrucker Umgangssprache. Doctoral dissertation, University of Innsbruck, 1951. Ströbl, Alex. 1970. Grundlinien einer formalistischen Syntax der Mundart von Malching. München: Fink.

COMPUTATIONAL MODELING OF PROTOTYPICALITY IN LANGUAGE CHANGE

NEUTRALIZATION TO SCHWA, DEFAULT LOGIC, AND THE HISTORY OF THE GERMAN NOUN

MIGUEL VÁZQUEZ-LARRUSCAÍN Northeastern University Preamble German has undergone the common West Germanic and Continental Scandinavian process of neutralization of unstressed vowels to schwa but has retained a morphological system of four cases realized through different morphological classes.1 How vowel neutralization to schwa in unstressed syllables and the closely related extension of -i Umlaut in stressed syllables are differently reinterpreted in this system in comparison to the other Northern and West Germanic languages is the main focus of this paper. The morphological Drift in German is difficult to understand in the light of grammatical models which impose a division between grammar and an unstructured lexicon. In this contribution I hold the contrary view that declensional classes are not independent entities but rather nodes hierarchically embedded in a morphological network, as in Network Morphology (Corbett & Fraser 1993). Morphological paradigms are models, exemplars, or prototypes which attract the rest of the words of the lexicon into different patterns of realizing the inflectional categories of the language. Morphological prototypicality exerts its influence at two different levels: both within and between paradigms. The first type of relationship, the degree of bonding between morphological words of the same lexeme, has been 0.

1

Some words concerning the title are necessary. First, the notion of ‘computational modeling’ must be understood in a ‘manual’ sense: the different stages of the language are done by hand and there is no attempt at modeling the transition between the different stages in a mechanical way. Doing so should be a very exciting enterprise and could be attempted by using techniques from the field of automatic learning as in Goldsmith (2001). Second, for reasons of space, I will not provide the complete three DATR implementations of the three historical stages of the German language. An explicit computational implementation of the history of German has already been presented in Vázquez-Larruscaín (2003a, b), for the noun and the verb, respectively.

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studied in different morphological frameworks. The study of the second type, the emphasis on the relationship between the different morphological classes of the same syntactic category, is an insightful innovation of Network Morphology. In this paper I will show that this notion of inter-paradigmatic relationship is necessary to understand the evolution of the German noun declension across time. Introduction The present contribution is intended to provide an explanation of language change which relies on the existence of an autonomous morphological component (Aronoff 1994) as a hierarchical network of morphological classes (Corbett & Fraser 1993). Membership of lexical items in these classes becomes a crucial factor in determining the course of a language’s history. In this sense, it is here claimed that mainstream approaches are not well-equipped 2 to handle the ideas presented in this chapter. Specifically, mainstream models are still based on the neogrammarian idea that linguistic change is blind, mechanically driven by phonetic forces and liable to morphological or analogical restructuring or reinterpretation only after the sound change has taken place. This conception of diachrony can be traced back to the major figures of the neogrammarian school, as shown in the following quotation by two of the most representative Junggrammatiker, Osthoff and Brugmann — a quotation in which the neogrammarian idea of the interplay between phonological change and analogy leaves no room for further interpretation: 1.

At first glance another objection which has been raised against us recently in order to discredit our efforts makes more sense. It is said: whoever operates with the concept of analogy can here and there perhaps hit upon the right thing with a stroke of luck, but in the main he can only appeal to faith. Now the latter statement is quite right, and everybody who deals with the principle of analogy is also clearly aware of it. [...] A principle which we strictly maintain, to the best of our ability, is: only then to take recourse to analogy when the sound laws compel to us. Form association is for us too an “ultimum refugium” (Osthoff & Brugmann 1967 [1878])

2

To see this more clearly, I will now quote from an anonymous source in the web which I think reflects the mainstream view in Linguistics (cf. Blake 2001, below): “The current system [of the German noun] is the ruble left over from the inflectional system of Proto-Germanic. Over the ages, many changes have taken place — nouns have changed their gender and their declension, but strangely enough, a general simplification as in Dutch (plural in -s, -en) or English (plural in -s) has not taken place.”

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This view has not been challenged in its essentials by any of the subsequent schools. The structuralist school did not challenge the basic conception of linguistic change as being basically driven by phonetic conditions; if only because the structuralists were much more successful in elaborating a fullyfledged theory of phonology and less so in elaborating a theory of morphology which could handle analogy in a more principled way than the neogrammarians did. The generative school to a certain extent represents a step back to the neogrammarian standpoint, on abandoning the idea of the system as devoid of explanatory content and begrudging the existence of an autonomous morphological level in its foundational stages. The generativists were even criticized of having transferred the diachronic notion of sequential change into the architecture of the synchronic grammar and so blurred the Saussurean distinction between synchrony and diachrony. The generative school however made a positive methodological contribution to both Linguistics and the Cognitive Sciences by moving the focus of inquiry from mere empirical facts to the form of the grammar underlying these facts.3 The conception of change in the generativist school is that grammars are basically a sequence of rules. Therefore, change is seen as a transformation of the rule-component of the grammar: rule re-ordering, addition, suppression or conflation. The notion of ‘analogy’ disappeared completely from the general framework and its echo was only dimly heard in the peripheral practice of those engaged in the treatment of exceptions by means of so-called ‘minor rules’ or exogenous principles like Paradigm Uniformity or the like. Nowadays, a new framework has appeared, Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993; Kager 1999), which claims that the basic element of a grammar is not the rule but the constraint. Grammars are indistinguishable in terms of rules: rules form part of the generative component GEN, which is universal and identical for all grammars. Grammars are also made up of constraints which ideally belong to a language-independent and universal repository CON. Variation emerges either in the idiosyncratic mapping of form and meaning in the lexicon or else in the language-specific ordering of constraints in a hierarchy EVAL. The same neogrammarian view prevails in this model: change takes place either in the restructuring of EVAL or else in the lexical entry, as the result of the principle of Lexicon Optimization (cf. Smolensky 1995, and Green’s 1997 interpretation of this principle in diachrony). The neogrammar3

In Vázquez-Larruscaín (2003b) I presented a view of ‘historical accumulation’ in the study of regularity in linguistics, a sense of ‘knowledge increment’ which I think is worth maintaning in an inclusive rather than an exclusive way. I reproduced there an outline of what I think the different grammatical models have brought forth in the shaping of the modern tradition in linguistic studies: history, system and competence/grammar.

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ian point of view is inherited in its almost total integrity if only because once again there is no independent morphological component in the architecture of current Optimality Theory grammars. With this in mind we can now start a general and brief review of the representation of language change in current grammatical models. A direct consequence of the neogrammarian view is the simplistic conception of linguistic change, and, in particular, the assumption of an asymmetrical interaction between levels, with morphology subordinate to phonology. The typical story about how these two major components interact can be read in most introductory and general works on the topic. I will quote Blake (2001:177) as an example of this view: The Old English case paradigms are strikingly similar to those of German, whether old or Modern, but while German has lost only the instrumental from Old High German to Modern German, English lost almost the entire system between the late tenth and thirteenth century. [...]

Blake (2001) gives the following prototypical neogrammarian explanation: Two phonological changes destroyed the system. One was reduction of unstressed vowels to schwa which involved the loss of a number of distinctions. The other was the loss of word-final n in inflections which affected not only the -an paradigm but all the datives in -m, since n had been substituted for -m.4

If the elimination of the morphological structure of the old Germanic languages is dependent on the effects of sound change, we can readily conclude that the history of German does not fit in the picture. How is it that German did not eliminate its morphological classes or the overt marking of morphological case, in the same way as the other Germanic languages did, which underwent the same phonological erosion of phonological contrast in unstressed syllables such as Mainland Scandinavian or English? The evolution of German in this light is certainly a mystery. On top of that, this view is also problematic when confronting specific facts of the history of German in detail. Let’s assume that the reduction of unstressed syllables to schwa is a phonologically regular process. Then how is it possible that certain forms did not undergo this reduction, such as the retention of the original -iu suffix in the NOM .SG.FEM. or NOM./ACC.PL.NEUT. in the strong forms of the adjective in Middle High 4

It is obvious that the loss of -n only affects inflection, which should have raised some suspicion about this simplistic but dominant view of the relationship between phonology and morphology. On the other hand, genitive plurals in -ena are similarly leveled to the uniform plural -s or genitive –s, and several nouns keep the -n as it was the case for any other form in which final -n is not interpreted as inflectional.

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German (cf. blindiu)? On the other hand, how can we explain the different strength levels with which umlaut processes persist in the historical stages of the Germanic languages? Finally, the fact that words like Wort, Mann, and Buch receive umlaut and [-er]5 affixation is also left aside from any principled diachronic explanation. In general, we can say that the diachronic account of any language becomes highly impoverished if we stick to the claim that sound change is the only locus of regularity. The alternative view to be defended here is that words do not exist in their phonological form independent from their morphological properties. A hypothetical word like, say, Spanish hubiere does not exist anymore in the Spanish language once the morphological category which generates this particular word, i.e. future subjunctive, has disappeared from the language. The phonological word as such has no independent life of its own. This observation, which I think is not a controversial one, demands the exploration of morphological issues in depth. The exploration of the role which morphology has played in the history of the German language is the major concern of this contribution. But before we plunge into the historical waters, it is necessary to lay out the morphological landscape and explore the dynamics of this component from a general perspective. In Section 2, I will present a model of morphology which conceives of the inflectional component of a grammar as a lexical database in the form of a hierarchical lexicon. This model is implemented in the formal language DATR (see Evans, Gazdar & Keller 1998, The DATR Web Pages at Sussex). In Section 3, I present a brief application of this model to different morphological types. In this sense, I try to connect the study of synchronic grammar or grammar proper with the dynamics of grammar such as typology, history, variation, acquisition, and performance. 6 In Section 4, I apply the ideas introduced in Sections 2 and 3 to modeling the evolution of the 5

By [-er] affixation I refer to the so-called neuter -s declension in the historical grammars which base their terminology on the Indo-European classification. Original –s declension are nouns like Lamb in OHG. This class has contributed to the history of German with the extension of the suffix [-er] to mark the plural. 6 It is usually claimed that the emergence of constraint-based grammars holds the promise to bring the separate aspects closer together of competence and performance, or synchrony and diachrony. Optimality Theory has made of its ability to connect competence to both typology and learning theory one of its most attractive values. Similarly, DATR theories, as constraintbased grammars, can also boast of bringing the connection between the static and dynamic studies of grammar closer together. So far, the application of DATR models has been extended to the study of acquisition and adult performance. The study of multi-lexica has been attempted by Cahill & Gazdar (1999b). In this contribution I will give brief indications about how the DATR architecture can be applied to the study of morphological typology (Section 2) and how DATR architectures can be highly suited to handle diachronic issues. In other projects I have been extending the range of DATR applications to matters of variation and dialectology.

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German noun inflection across time.7 In Section 5, I extract the relevant conclusions of the central section. DATR based morphology The morphological model to be employed in this study is couched in the formal language DATR, and is inspired by previous applications of the same formalism to morphological issues, as in Network Morphology (Corbett & Frazer 1993; Cahill & Gazdar 1999; or Kilbury 2001). The last two studies are also devoted to the analysis of the German nominal system. Unlike these works, the present study uses DATR to tackle issues of historical morphology. DATR models highlight the relevance of taxonomical issues and have therefore much to offer to the analysis of the fluctuation of morphological class membership in diachrony. Before dealing with the particular episodes of the history of the German noun, I will briefly review the main properties of a DATR model and comment on how DATR theories can be extended beyond the realm of synchronic studies into the study of typology, variation, and change. 2.

DATR models. Multiple, orthogonal, and non-monotonic inheritance The main feature of DATR is the use of default, or non-monotonic logic in codifying lexical information. The combination of under-specification and non-monotonicity provides a natural formalization of the Elsewhere Condition (Kiparsky 1973). The Elsewhere Condition has been a successful contribution to the principled treatment of exceptions, blocking and suppletion. Multiple inheritance is helpful in modeling processes of morphological blending, a good example of which is the so-called mixed paradigm in modern standard German, which emerged as a blend, or compromise between the original feminine ō -declension and the feminine weak nouns. Orthogonality replicates the linguistic idea of breaking up the grammatical analysis into levels. The information in a DATR base is encoded as sets of attribute-value pairs under a node which represents a certain category. The node can be either a morphological class or a lexeme. The attribute path will encode morphological properties and the value will contain either the phonological exponence of the corresponding property or a new attribute path. The specification in (1) reflects the fact that [manns] represents the morphological realization of the categories genitive and singular for the lexeme MANN as /mann+s/: 2.1

7

For a more specific treatment of the different issues (Vázquez-Larruscaín 2003a, b).

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(1)

189

Mann: == mann == s ....

The concatenation of the root and the affix is not a particular fact about Mann, but rather a general property of every German noun which is made up of a stem (based on a root in most cases) and an affix. This fact is inherited by Mann from the superordinate node Noun, as in (2): (2)

Noun: <>== <mor>== “<stem>” “” <stem>== “” ... Mann: <>== Noun == m a n n == s

The use of quoted paths means that the required information is to be looked up in the node where the query originates. So if the query is Mann:<mor sing gen> the process of search through the database is as follows. (3)

Mann: <mor sing gen>== ?

After we look for the information required, we see that the entry Mann in the database does not contain information about the query. Therefore, the only path that satisfies the query is the empty path. The empty path sends the search to the node Noun: (4)

Mann: <|| mor sing gen>== Noun:<||mor sing gen>

This now creates the new query in (5): (5)

Noun: <mor sing gen>==?

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This new query matches the lexical specification Noun:<mor>==”<stem>” “”, which now becomes a new query: (6)

Noun: <mor || sing gen>== “<stem || sing gen>” “”

“<stem || sing gen>” becomes “” and looks up that value in the original node Mann, where it matches == mann and so returns the information [mann]. “” matches the path containing the same information in the query node to produce the value [s], which is now concatenated to the root value [mann] to yield the final form [mann s]: (7)

Mann: <mor sing gen>== mann s

The Elsewhere Principle The Elsewhere Principle is captured in two different ways in the DATR formalism: internal and external blocking. Instances of internal blocking take place whenever there are two or more paths that match the original query (8): 2.2

(8)

Lexical Database: X: == x == y Query: X: ==?

The query path X: in (8) now matches two paths in the database X: and X:. The database nevertheless returns the value corresponding to the longest path. This instantiation of the Elsewhere Principle is called in DATR parlance “the longest path wins”. (9)

X: == y.

External blocking takes place when the query path matches a path in a subordinate node which in turn bleeds the application of other matching paths in superordinate nodes.

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191

(10) Lexical Database: X: == “” == y Y: <>== X == x Z: <>== Y Query: Z: ==? The search of the database returns the value of Y:== x, since this is the first path that matches the query, rather than the potential path X:== y in the upper node. (11)

Z: == x

Morphological typology, variation, and change DATR theories have so far been applied to a great number of languages as the Sussex archive or the Kentucky-based KATR archive show. This is again a proof of the theory-independent character of the formalism and its suitability to cope with different morphological types. This formal plasticity can also successfully integrate different structural types within a single language, a widespread situation which has previously been found disturbing for the strong versions of the typological enterprise as a whole. As is well known, languages seldom belong to one pure morphological type. Rather, languages move gradually along the most extreme points of the typological scale. DATR formalisms can handle this hybridity of morphological type without much effort. This elasticity will be exploited in the present study when modeling the morphological drift of the German noun from an old stage in which lexemes belong to arbitrary declensional classes to the contemporary system in which morphological classes are assigned according to prosodic shape, syntactic gender and semantic animacy, as it has been made clear by recent analyses (cf. Wiese 1996, 2001; Wunderlich 1999; Kilbury 2001; among others). In this section, I will apply DATR to highly simplified samples of two morphological types: Turkish as an example of an agglutinative language, and German as an example of a fusional language. Although I will briefly touch on 3.

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matters of the internal structure of the paradigms, this aspect is not central in the rest of the contribution. Turkish nominal morphology Turkish is a fairly prototypical agglutinative language. According to for instance Plank (2001), agglutinative languages are characterized by invariant and separate exponence of the morphological categories, cf. (12): 3.1

(12) NOM ACC GEN DAT LOC ABL

SG

PL

Adam Adam- i Adam- i n Adam- a Adam- d a Adam- d a n

Adam-lar Adam-lar- i Adam-lar- i n Adam-lar- a Adam-lar- d a Adam-lar- d a n

A simplified DATR description of this paradigm would look like the ‘minitheory’, which is supplied in (13): (13) Noun: <>== <mor>== “” == l a r == i == i n == a == d a == d a n. Adam: <>==Noun == a d a m. This formalization is able to generate the paradigm in (12). Two important features of the formalizations are in direct correspondence with the properties of the agglutinative type. First, the realization of Number and Case are kept distinct as the formula == lar shows. Second, the lack of morphological classes allows us to do without global inheritance since the exponence of the different cases is invariant and therefore no declensional classes are needed. Local inheritance is sufficient when dealing with languages

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without arbitrary allomorphy. It is important to note how closely the design of DATR is to one of the central traits of a morphological type. However, DATR is theory-independent and does not determine the analysis of the data: the same paradigm can be captured by an infinite number of different strategies, as I will show in the following lines. We can capture the internal relationship among the different subcategories by means of arbitrary partial syncretism, as in (14): (14) Noun: <mor>== “” == l a r == i == n == a == d == n. Adam: <>== Noun == a d a m Or we can try to uncover the internal relationship between the different categories in a more direct and compact way by decomposing the different case categories into features. So, if we assume the analysis in (15), we can produce the DATR theory in (16): (15)

NOM

ACC

GEN

+

+

DAT

LOC

ABL

+

+ + +

+ +

+ (16) Noun: <>== <mor>== “” “” == <> == l a r < > <primary>== i <> <secondary>== D:<> a <> <spatial source>== <source> <source>== n.

primary secondary spatial source

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D: <>== <spatial>== d. Adam: <>== Noun == a d a m. The theory in (16) will yield the Turkish forms, if the queries are as in (17): (17) # show <mor sg nom> <mor sg primary> <mor sg primary source> <mor sg secondary> <mor sg secondary spatial> <mor sg secondary spatial source>8 <mor pl nom> <mor pl primary> <mor pl primary source> <mor pl secondary> <mor pl secondary spatial> <mor pl secondary spatial source>. The plasticity of DATR to capture the same pattern by implementing several different theories can be considered either a shortcoming or an advantage of the model. The formalism may be considered to be quite unrestricted in its theoretical possibilities. On the other hand, it can provide a realistic scenario in which to conceptualize the possibility of language variation and change. It is reasonable to assume that different groups of people or even the same speaker might hypothesize different models for the same range of data. If the data changes at some point, the competition between different models can be expected to move in the direction of those models which will handle the new data in the most satisfactory way. German nominal morphology I will now present a similarly simplified DATR theory for the nominal morphology of modern standard German. In this case we must find a way to tackle the fact that German presents arbitrary allomorphy as well as accumulation of the categories of number and case. Arbitrary allomorphy requires the introduction of declensional classes in the morphological analysis. Representing paradigms as nodes in a database will show the effects of the internal and external Elsewhere Condition as introduced in Section 1.2. 3.2

8

<mor sg primary>means <mor sg accusative> , <mor sg secondary> means <mor sg dative>, <mor sg secondary spatial source> means <mor sg ablative>, and so forth.

COMPUTATIONAL MODELING OF PROTOTYPICALITY

(18) Class_1 Tag Tages Tage Tagen

Class_2 Name Namens Namen Namen

Class_3_1 Nachbar Nachbarn Nachbarn Nachbarn

Class_3 Frau Frau Frauen Frauen

195

Class_3_2 Wort Wortes Wörter Wörtern

These five major declensional patterns of German can be captured by the simple DATR theory in (19): (19) Noun: <>== <mor>== “” “” == ”> == s == == n. Class_1: <>==Noun == @ <>.

Class_2: Class_3: <>==Noun <>==Noun == @ r <>. == n.

Class_3_1: Class_3_2: <>==Class_3 <>==Class_3_1 == n “<>” == s. ==. Tag: <>==Class_1 == t a: g.

Name: <>==Class_3_2 == n a: m e.

Nachbar: Frau: <>==Class_3_1 <>==Class_3 == n a x b a r. == f r a u.

Wort: <>==Class_2 == v o r t == v ö r t.

The History of the German declension In this section I will apply the ideas introduced in the two previous sections to the analysis of the morphology of the noun in the history of the German language. As a reference point I will assume the traditional division of the history of German into three main periods for each of which I will adopt an 4.

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idealized synchronic morphological state. The approximate chronology for these linguistic systems is as follows:9 (20) 10

...–1050 Old High German 1050–1500 Middle High German 1050–1170 Early Middle German/Late Old High German 11 1170–1370 Classic Middle High German 1370–1500 Late Middle German/Early Modern German 12 1500–2000 Modern German 1500–1800 Modern High German 1800–2000 Standard German In this review I will certainly recognize the importance of the changes in the phonological system as a crucial factor in the evolution of German, namely, the neutralization of unstressed vowels to schwa and the appearance of umlauted vowels in stressed syllables. But I will interpret these phonological transformations, not in a morphological vacuum but in the context of the morphological systems in which these phonological changes took place. In a framework which does not recognize the existence of an autonomous morphological component, the evaluation of the morphological role of phonological change is doomed to remain marginal and the total integration of the two levels of analysis becomes unfeasible. The main contribution of the present chapter to the specific problems of German diachrony is the explicit discussion of the different morphological sys9

This chronology is taken from different sources and is only meant to provide basic points of reference. Issues of a purely chronological nature are not the concern of this paper and are therefore not dealt with in these pages. 10 The grammar of Old High German assumed in this paper is an extremely idealized version in order to facilitate the comparative analysis. The idea of a stable Old High German is obviously illusory since there is nothing like a literary standard for the documents of this period. 11 The so-called Dichtersprache is here taken as the representative synchronic state for this period. For the first time in the history of the German language, we can speak of a supra-regional standard. 12 For modern German I will adopt the linguistic structure described by any contemporary grammar of standard German. As it is well known the roots of this linguistic system can be traced back to the language of Luther in his creation of a supra-regional but aristocratic version of the High German variety for his translation of the Bible. The fixation of standard German such as we know it today has its roots in the monumental Deutsche Grammatik by Jacob Grimm, which had a decisive impact on the elaboration of normative grammars based on historical principles in the nationalistic 19th century.

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197

tems and the way in which these systems are shaped by the different morphological classes in their mutual connections. My analysis of the system of both Old and Middle High German in (27) and (32) is new, as far as I know. They should be justified by the extent to which they facilitate the understanding of morphological change. The analysis of Modern Standard German, on the contrary, draws heavily on contemporary work on the structure of the German language. Recent research on German morphology is converging in the idea that morphological paradigms are not arbitrary but rather determined by prosodic type, syntactic gender and semantic animacy.13 The basic idea of this paper can now be summarized as follows: Old High German nouns belong in arbitrary morphological classes, a situation inherited from Indo-European. As a consequence of a common morphological drift along similar lines to other Indo-European languages, the German noun declension is restructured in such a way as to let the assignment of nouns to morphological classes be determined by means of a complex interaction of prosodic type and syntactic gender. Old High German The basic structure assumed for all stages can be seen in (21) for morphology and in (22) for phonology: 3.1

(21)

<mor> <stem> <syl 1>

(22)

<> <syl 2> <syl>

14

“” “” “” “<s>”

13

This is in consonance with the Network Morphology analysis of Russian nominal morphology in Corbett & Frazer (1993), where semantic animacy and sex, syntactic gender, and morphological class all contribute to the structure of the inflectional system. 14 Although I here assume a phonological representation with information about prosodic roles and major segmental classes in both input and output, the model in (22) is not committed to any particular theory of syllabic constituency. It is highly minimalist in this regard. This minimalism is sufficient to handle the facts of German and also the morphologies of a great number of other Indo-European languages as I have shown elsewhere, see Vázquez-Larruscaín (in progress).

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The way in which these structures are to be understood is in terms of constraint satisfaction and propagation. A hypothetical query X:<mor a b> will be projected onto the templates in (21) and (22) in the following way: (23)

<mor || a b> <stem|| a b> <syllable 1|| a b>

... ...

<|| a b>

<syllable 2|| a b> ...

The diagrams in (21) and (22) correspond to the DATR node in (24), which is also the beginning of our DATR theory for Old High German. (24)

WORD: <>== <mor>== “<stem>” “<>” <stem>== <syllable 1> <syllable 2> <syllable>== “” “” “” “<s>”.

On the next level we will postulate a node called NOUN in which we capture the fact that the realization of the dative and genitive plural are almost constant 15 accross classes as in the other old Germanic languages. We add also the 16 default specification for gender, namely, masculine: (25)

NOUN: <>==WORD == o == m == masc

This takes care of the following array of facts:

Only -ōfeminines and weak nouns have a different realization of the genitive plural (28) and only the -i umlaut class presents a slightly different way of realizing the oblique cases of the plural (gestio, gestim; kreftio, kreftim). 15

COMPUTATIONAL MODELING OF PROTOTYPICALITY

(26)

PL GEN DAT

MANN WORT LAMB TAG Mann-o Wort-o Lemb-ir-o Tag-o Mann-o-m Wort-o-m Lemb-ir-o-m Tag-o-m

199 HIRTI Hirt-o Hirt-o-m

The realization of the other categories requires a more intricate picture of the morphological structure of the language.17 I take the diagram in (27) as point of departure for my analysis of the historical drift of the German Declension: (27)

noun strong NEUT strong MASC

strong -er

FEM

-ō

weak weak MASC

weak FEM

strong -um strong -ja

The first thing to notice about (27) is that I follow Jakob Grimm’s classification into strong and weak declensions instead of other approaches which make 18 a major division into consonantal and vocalic declensions. This division is justified by the idiosyncratic properties of the weak or -n declension from a formal point of view. On the other hand, the strong group appears as the default group and presents a great deal of internal variation which has to be taken care of by further sub-groupings into more fine-grained categories. The reason why I maintain this traditional partition into strong and weak is that it is in harmony with the ideas of the present contribution: prosody is going to be an important factor in determining membership of a noun in a certain morphological class during the history of the German language, therefore the -n declension is going to act as an attractor from the very beginning. However, I 16

The assumption that masculine is the default gender in Old High German is based on Stein metz studies on the gender systems of the Germanic languages, see Steinmetz (2003). 17 As is well-known, there is nothing extraordinary in having both variant and invariant exponence of different morphological properties in the same system. This lack of structural symmetry is readily handled by DATR-based models. 18 The division into vocalic and consonantal declensions emphasizes the Indo-European background of Old High German. This classification is useful in a synchronic analysis of Sanskrit, and is necessary in a historical account of Germanic. It is nevertheless unmotivated in any synchronic analysis of the Germanic languages and therefore plays no role in the future stages of the German language.

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will depart from Grimm’s classification as regards the feminine -ōdeclension for the same reasons. This class will also become an important attractor in the historical drift due to the prototypical coincidence between morphological class and syntactic gender: a crucial factor in determining membership to morphological class in future stages of the language. Besides, I see no morphological reason to connect the feminine -ōdeclension with the rest of the strong classes. Therefore, I have granted this class an independent node in the dia19 gram in (27). As a matter of fact, the -ōdeclension is by all means closer to the weak than to the strong class, as the realization of the oblique cases of the plural shows, and the history of the language will prove in later stages: (28)

PL GEN DAT

ERDA Erd-oo-n-o Erd-oo-m

ZUNGA Zung-oo-n-o Zung-oo-m

HANO Han-oo-n-o Han-oo-m

Morphological interconnection is more intricate for the rest of the morphological classes. The degree of prototypicality among them will be an important factor in determining the course of the evolution of the language. Providing reasons for the degree of embedding of the different classes in the hierarchy becomes a central piece of the overall analysis. The degree of embedding in the hierarchy is motivated by the degree of specification required by the different morphological classes in their marking of the morphosyntactic categories: the nature of morphological marking is directly correlated with levels of morphological depth. The more overt the marking, the deeper is the level in the morphological network, cf. (29) and (30). I assume that the root class is the unmarked one in the sense that it is this class that has less explicit marking of morphosyntactic features. Next to this class in morphological depth are the strong neuter nouns. Next are the strong masculines. And next to the strong class are both the i-class and the ja-class/wa-class. (29) Strong_neut: <>== NOUN == neuter == e <sg obl gen>== s. 19

Strong_masc: <>== Strong_neut == masc == a.

The division into vocalic and consonant declensions emphasizes the Indo-european background of Old High German. This classification is useful in a synchronic analysis of Sanskrit, and is necessary in a historical account of Germanic. It is nevertheless unmotivated in any synchronic analysis of the Germanic languages and therefore plays no role in the future stages of the German language.

201

COMPUTATIONAL MODELING OF PROTOTYPICALITY

I-strong <>==Strong_masc == e == i.

Ja-strong <>==Strong_masc ==i.

This partial tree accounts for the following array of morphological subclasses: (30) NOM .SG GEN.SG NOM.PL

NOM.SG GEN.SG NOM.PL

MANN Mann Mann Mann

20

GAST 24 Gast Gast-e-s Gest-i

21

WORT Wort Wort-e-s Wort

22

TAG Tag Tag-e-s Tag-a

23

HIRTI Hirt-i Hirt-e-s Hirt-a

LAMB Lamb Lamb-e-s Lemb-ir

The second main branch is the weak declension in which morphosyntactic features are realized in a completely different way. The weak node contains nouns of the three genders, which are, however, kept distinct by means of different subclasses within the weak node. In this sense, a close connection between class and gender is obtained at the subclass level: (31) Weak: N: <>== NOUN <>== n ==oo <masc sg dir nom>== <s 2>== N:<””> == <masc> == SUBCLASS:<””>. ==. SUBCLASS: <>== <masc>== u <masc sg obl.>== i == a 20

== <masc> == u u == a <masc sg dir nom>== o.

Mann:<>==noun ==m ==a ==n. Wort:<>==strong neut ==w ==o <s 1>==r ==t. 22 Tag:<>==strong masc ==t ==a ==g. 23 Hirti:<>==strong -ja ==h ==i <s 1>==r ==t. 24 Gast:<>==strong -um ==g ==a <s 1>==s ==t. 21

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On another descending path we have the -ōfeminine class which is highly individualized both in terms of morphosyntactic realization as well as in the clear correspondence between class and syntactic gender. Middle High German It is generally acknowledged that the great divide between Old and Middle High German is created by the phonological process of reducing all 25 unstressed vowels to schwa. At a certain point in the history of the language the phonological effects were incorporated in the morphological structure by means of a new realization rule which makes schwa the unmarked or default suffix rather than zero marking as in the old stage. This change will produce a re-ranking of the strong nouns with regards to the specification of the default realization of morphosyntactic properties. The most dramatic effect is felt in the subordination of the strong neuters to the strong masculines in the strong node at the same time that it will bring these strong neuters closer to the -er neuters in the hierarchy. 4.2

(32) noun strong MASC strong -ja

strong -er

strong NEUT strong

If we compare the diagram in (27) with the one in (32) we see that there has been a rearrangement of hierarchical levels which will determine the course of the neuter nouns in the next stages of the system: (33) Old High German strong | strong NEUT | strong MASC

25

Middle High German strong MASC | strong NEUT/strong/strong er

“Der Hauptunterschied des Mittelhochdeutschen gegenüber dem Althochdeutschen liegt in der Abschleifung der vollen Endsilbenvokale zu farblosem e.” (de Boor & Wisniewski 1998 [1964]:12).

COMPUTATIONAL MODELING OF PROTOTYPICALITY

203

The new situation is justified in the necessary reformulation of the DATR morphology: (34) Noun: <>== WORD == e.

Strong_neut: <>== Strong_masc ==.

Strong_masc: <>==Noun == <sg gen>== s. Strong _er: <>==Strong_masc <s 2 pl>== r.

Root_noun: <>==Strong_masc ==. This rearrangement paves the way for the partial fusion of the neuter -er declension and the strong neuters, which now start adopting the pattern of plural formation of the -er declension, providing a new example of how German moves in the direction of strengthening the connection between morphological class and syntactic gender. In posterior stages of the language, this class will also receive morphologically marginal masculine nouns like Mann which will not disrupt the already solid association between class and gender. (35) NOM .SG GEN.SG NOM.PL

MANN Mann Mann(-e-s) Mann__

WORT Wort Wort-e-s Wort__

LAMM Lamm Lamm-e-s Lämm-e-r

TAG Tag Tag-e-s Tag-e

HIRTI Hirt-e Hirt-e-s Hirt-e

At the same time, the -i class loses its status as an independent subclass which required different realizational rules as a direct consequence of the phonological neutralization of the unstressed syllables. The old -i class, however, retains its singularity through a morphophonological rule of -i umlaut. Unlike in other Germanic languages, the particular morphological structure of Middle German explains that -i umlaut, which in Old High German had been weaker than in the older stages of other Germanic languages, now becomes much stronger due to its newly acquired morphological value. This is a clear example in which we can see phonology and morphology functioning in a much more integrated way than is usually conceived of. Furthermore, -i umlaut feminines will attract all strong feminines which are kept away from the prototypical feminine

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classes: feminine weak and the ō-declension. Naht, Brust and other feminine nouns move from the eximious root class into the strong -i umlaut class. Similarly, members of other marginal classes adopt the -i umlaut pattern as it is the case with -ter nouns like Vater, Muoter, Bruoder, or Tohter. The loss of phonological contrast for unstressed vowels eliminates the connection between subclass and gender within the weak class. This result is certainly contrary to the general morphological drift, which rather aims at a close connection between class and gender. This contradiction will be resolved in the next stage of the language. Feminine weak nouns will fuse with the feminine -ōdeclension, while masculine weak nouns will retain the old weak pattern. Once the new situation is created in which the bonds between class and gender are restored, the weak masculines will attract masculines of the strong class with which they share prosodic properties, namely, the old -ja and -wa classes such as Bauer or Schatte, or highly misplaced masculine nouns such as -i class bisyllabic Rise. Finally, the weak and the -ōdeclension still maintain their separate status but the degree of interference and exchange between them becomes more frequent anticipating the situation in the new stage of the language (see fn 28). Modern High German The final part of the analysis is to draw a connection between Middle High German and Modern Standard German. Fortunately several analyses of the noun morphology of German are available, many of them in a DATR framework. As we saw in Section 3.1, there is usually the possibility of capturing a certain synchronic stage in more than one way. This is also the state of affairs found in contemporary analyses of the morphology of the German noun. In this contribution, I will choose a grammar of Modern High German which will facilitate the connection to previous stages of the language. My proposal maintains the fusion of the weak and the strong -ōfeminine classes, now called the mixed class, as an autonomous node in the morphological 26 hierarchy. 4.3

26

In this regard, my analysis can be seen as a mid point between Cahill & Gazdar (1999a) and Kilbury (2001).

COMPUTATIONAL MODELING OF PROTOTYPICALITY

(36)

205

noun

strong

mixed

strong um

weak weak(INANIM)

strong er It could be possible to have this class be part of a higher node with the rest of the weak masculine nouns, as suggested in Kilbury (2001), compare (37): (37)

atypical noun noun strong

noun weak(FEM)

noun Umlaut

noun weak(MASC )

noun er

noun weak(INANIM )

or it could be part of the strong class as in Kilbury & al. (1993), considering that the -n plural of this class is just another way to implement the plural. (38)

noun strong strong um | strong er

weak

mixed

The most important change that takes place in the transition from Middle High German to Standard Modern German is, then, the creation of the Mixed Class which is nothing but a blend of both the weak and strong feminine classes of Old High German. (39) NOM.SG SG

Middle High German

Modern Standard German

ERDE Erde Erde

ERDE Erde Erde

ZUNGE Zunge Zungen

ZUNGE Zunge Zunge

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MIGUEL VÁZQUEZ-LARRUSCAÍN

PL.DIR PL.OBL

Erde Erden

Zungen Zungen

Erden Erden

Zungen Zungen

This process of fusion has been a gradual shift which had already started in the Old High German stage in which the strong -ōclass realized the oblique plural cases by means of the realizational rule of the weak class, as in (28). In Middle High German, there is already a well-attested state of confusion and instability among the feminine nouns, both strong and weak, with respect to class membership.27 A decisive factor which speeded up this process of blending is the confusion of gender among the originally weak nouns, once the unstressed syllables lost the ability to license vocalic contrast. Weak nouns which had maintained the gender distinction by means of subpatterns with different vocalism in Old High German lost this ability in Middle High German, an outcome which must have been felt as highly disturbing as regards the general trend of the history of the language. Consequently, weak feminines adopted the strong feminine pattern for the realization of their singular cases. Similarly, the original -ōclass together with the original feminine weak nouns managed to make the suffix -n become the prototypical feminine mark of the plural. This mark extends its sphere to strong feminines in -el or -er.28 On the other hand, the genuinely strong feminine i-umlaut class became the great attractor for the rest of the monosyllabic feminine nouns, left outside the newly created feminine mixed declension. Once these transformations had taken place, the final stage was basically completed. The final result is a stage in which nouns are basically assigned to a certain morphological class by an intricate pattern of deductive rules driven by information about the prosodic type and the syntactic gender of the noun (see Wunderlich 1999). Or, in the case of morphologically complex words, class membership is assigned by means of the derivational rule itself. The latter process I have not dealt with in this chapter. Conclusion: ‘Prototypicality’ in linguistic change Why bring the notion of ‘prototypicality’ to the fore in matters of linguistic diachrony and change? In the preceding pages I have tried to show that 5.

27

In this regard, my analysis can be seen as a middle point between Cahill & Gazdar (1999a) and Kilbury (2001). 28 The value of -n marking of the plural as the prototypical feminine suffix is not only seen in the extension of this suffix to originally strong feminines such as Gabel, or Mutter (“nut”). The most crucial proof of its prototypical status is the fact that class membership into the mixed declension is now a property of the feminine derivational suffixes -schaft, -heit or -keit, which in Old High German were feminine strong -i class assigners.

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class membership has been highly determinant in the historical course of the German declension and that class survival, stability, or loss has been partially determined by the degrees of strength with which the different classes have been related to each other in the different stages of the language. The notion of ‘paradigm’ itself is a notion of ‘prototypicality’, about how lexemes follow one or the other declensional pattern, according to the extent to which they participate in the central features of the class or paradigm. The modeling of these relationships between classes is something which the grammatical framework of Network Morphology has successfully brought forth to the theoretical discussion. The related notion of ‘internal bonding’ between the various morphological words which make up an inflectional paradigm has been the notion which has been more thoroughly studied so far. This notion is also related to the idea that the several components of a lexeme occupy the inflectional space with different degrees of strength. The more prototypical a certain combination of morphosyntactic features is within the inflectional paradigm, say 3rd person and singular, the less marked it is taken to be and the more prone to serve as a base in the generation of other forms of the same lexeme, as Watkins’ Law testifies. I have not focused on this notion of internal prototypicality in this chapter, but it certainly should be the complementary aspect to the ideas presented in the preceding sections. So if we assume, as we did in the introductory section, that the neogrammarian or any other model which leaves the neogrammarian stones unturned is not sufficient to provide a sufficient explanation of the process of linguistic change, we are forced to look for alternative strategies. The picture that presents the phonology as the basic driving force of change and morphological analogy as a last resort is bound to be an incomplete one. The notion of ‘Drift’ towards a certain structural configuration or type, an idea advanced in the work of such influential pioneers of the structuralist school as Jakobson (1929) and Sapir (1921), has been extremely influential in diachronic studies, as well as insightful in understanding phonological change, even though not free from reserve and disagreement in certain quarters. It is only remarkable that the corresponding notion of a morphological Drift has not had the same impact in mainstream linguistics, beyond, of course, the oversimplified view that the famous morphological archetypes such as isolation, inflection and agglutination are the only possible structural attractors. This may be due to historical reasons, to an insufficient investment of effort in morphological research, or perhaps simply to a lack of interest. In this contribution, I have concluded that the German noun undergoes a ‘drift’ from a stage in which morphological classes are assigned in an arbitrary fashion — a situation inherited from its roots in the old Indo-European family — to a stage in which morphological

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specification is determined by both syntax and phonology: the membership of most modern German nouns in a certain set of realizational rules or declensional classes must now be understood as motivated in terms of its gender and prosodic properties rather than being arbitrarily assigned, as contemporary research in this area is progressively revealing (cf. Wiese 2001, Kilbury 2001). The same drift towards the elimination of a morphological system of arbitrary classes is observable in many other modern descendants of Indo-European languages. Once we assume this thesis, the next question follows in a natural way: Which were the morphological classes in Old High German that better represented the clustering of structural features to be found in the future stages of the language? In other words, which declensional classes acquired the role of ‘prototypes’, i.e. central objects, which will act as internal attractors for the dynamics of the system? The declensional classes which survive in modern standard German can be considered to be direct heirs of the corresponding classes of Old High German: the strong class, the weak class and the -er class. Strong and weak classes are easily abstracted as prosodic types: mono- vs. bisyllablic stems, and therefore good candidates for a system which will use prosodic type as an index of morphological classification. More importantly, the role of the -er neuter in the historical course is completely disproportionate with its numerical weight in the early stages of the German language. How could then this class have become so important in the historical course? The answer is easy: the neuter -er class was, together with the feminine -ōclass, the only morphological class in Old High German in which gender and class were connected in the way that was meant to be the morphological ideal in the future stages of the language. This fact made these classes into morphological prototypes. REFERENCES Aronoff, Mark. 1994. Morphology by Itself. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. Blake, Barry J. 2001. Case. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. de Boor, Helmut & Roswitha Wisniewski. 1998 [1964]. Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik. Berlin & New York: de Gruyter. Cahill, Lynne J. & Gerald Gazdar. 1999a. “German noun inflection”. Journal of Linguistics 35:1.1–42. Cahill, Lynne J. & Gerald Gazdar. 1999b. “The PolyLex architecture: Multilingual lexicons for related languages”. Traitement Automatique des Langues 40:2.5–23.

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Corbett, Greville G. & Norman M. Fraser. 1993. “Network Morphology: a DATR account of Russian nominal inflection”. Journal of Linguistics 29.113–142. Evans, Roger, Gerald Gazdar & Bill Keller. 1998. “The DATR web pages at Sussex”. http://www.informatics.susx.ac.uk/research/nlp/ datr/datr.html Goldsmith, John. 2001. “Unsupervised learning of the morphology of a natural language”. Computational Linguistics 27:2.153–198. Green, Antony D. 1997. The Prosodic Structure of Irish, Scots Gaelic, and Manx. ROA 196. (http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=196.) (= Rutgers University Optimality Theory Archive.) (Also: Cornell University Linguistics Department, Cornell Linguistics Circle: CLC Publications.) Jakobson, Roman. 1929. “Remarques sur l’évolution phonologique du russe comparée à celle des autres langues slaves”. Travaux du Cercle linguistique de Prague, vol. 2. Prague: Cercle linguistique de Prague. Kager, René. 1999. Optimality Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kilbury, James. 2001. “German noun inflection revisited”. Journal of Linguistics 37:2.339–353. Kiparsky, Paul. 1973. “Elsewhere in phonology”. A Festschrift for Morris Halle ed. by Stephen R. Anderson & Paul Kiparsky, 93–106. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Osthoff, Hermann & Karl Brugmann. 1967 [1878]. Morphological Investigations in the Sphere of the Indo-European Languages: A Reader in Nineteenth-Century Historical Indo-European Linguistics, vol. 1 ed. & transl. by Winfred P. Lehmann. (= Indiana University Studies in the History and Theory of Linguistics.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press (orig. Morphologische Untersuchungen auf dem Gebiete der Indogermanischen Sprachen). Plank, Frans. 2001. “Split morphology: how agglutination and flexion mix”. Linguistic Typology 3.279–340. Prince, Alan & Paul Smolensky. 1993. Optimality Theory: Constraint interacttion in Generative Grammar. (= ROA, 537) http://roa.rutgers.edu/view. php3?roa=537. (= Rutgers University Optimality Theory Archive.) Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language: An introduction to the study of speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Smolensky, Paul. 1995. “On the structure of Con, the constraint component of UG”. ROA-86. (= Rutgers University Optimality Theory Archive) (Orig. handout of talk at UCLA, April 7.) Steinmetz, Donald. 2003. “Yiddish gender revisited in the light of the Germanic gender shift”. Paper presented at The 9th Germanic Linguistics Association Conference, Buffalo, NY, April 2003. Vázquez-Larruscaín, Miguel. 2003a. “Computational modeling of the German nominal declension across time”. Paper presented at The Joint Meeting of the Forum for Germanic Language Studies & Society for Germanic Linguistics. London, January 2003.

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Vázquez-Larruscaín, Miguel. 2003b. “The computational history of the German conjugation”. Paper presented at The 9th Germanic Linguistics Association Conference, Buffalo, NY, April 2003. Vázquez-Larruscaín, Miguel. In progress. A Computational Grammar of the IE Word. Wiese, Richard. 1996. The Phonology of German. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wiese, Richard. 2001. “How prosody shapes German words and morphemes”. Marburger Arbeiten zur Lingistik 5. (Also in Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis 6:2.155–184.) Wunderlich, Dieter. 1999. “German noun plural reconsidered”. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22.1044–1045.

FROM PROPOSITIONAL SYNTAX IN OLD RUSSIAN TO SITUATIONAL SYNTAX IN MODERN RUSSIAN PER DURST-ANDERSEN Copenhagen Business School Introduction1 Nouns as image-idea pairs One of the peculiar properties of human languages is the property of common nouns of having two functions in one content: they name a single piece of content, i.e. a ‘concept’, by creating two different pieces of content, viz. an ‘image’ consisting of a prototypicalized figure (cf. Peirce’s object) and an ‘idea’ consisting of a prototypicalized description of that figure (cf. Peirce’s interpretant). A concept is neither identical to the image, nor to the idea — a concept incorporates both the image side and the ideational side. It is an amalgamation of the image and the idea. Since a common noun names a concept, its meaning is, so to speak, an ‘image-idea pair’. The double nature of the content side of linguistic signs ensures that people can relate entities in reality and in their mind to linguistic entities, and vice versa. Although a common noun names a concept, it should be stressed that it is only possible to specify either the image or the idea — the language has to make a semiotic choice in applying either one of two different naming strategies, that of specifying the idea or the image. The existence of these two naming strategies becomes clear when one compares the lexicalization patterns of Danish with those of French. It strikes one’s attention that English common nouns such as (golf) course, (ice) rink, (tennis) court, (running) track, (bowling) alley, (soccer) field, range (in the Army) and lane are all called bane in Danish. This cannot be a mere coincidence. It appears that if we stipulate that bane has the meaning “location for rule-guided motion”, we can account for all of its uses. This is not a specification of the image, but of the idea —more specifically, a specification of what could be called ‘function’. In other words, 1. 1.1

1

In order not to burden the text itself I supply here the most relevant references not mentioned in the text: Durst-Andersen & Herslund (1996); Guillaume 1965 [1929]; Hewson & Bubenik (1997); Ivanov (1983); Krys’ko (1994); Lunt (1970); Sreznevskij (1989); Stecenko (1972).

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the Danish nouns golfbane “golf course”, løbebane “running track”, tennisbane “tennis court” specify the ideational side of the noun by describing the function, i.e. bane, and the subfunction (e.g. golf-, løbe-, tennis-) of the cultural phenomenon in question. If we compare what is called -bane in Danish with the corresponding nouns in French, they seem mainly to fall into three groups: those having terrain (e.g. golf course or soccer field), those having piste (e.g. ice rink or running track), and those having court (e.g. tennis or badminton court). That is to say, although French speakers very well know that terrain, piste, and court are united by being locations for rule-guided motion, the French language has chosen another naming strategy than Danish. It seems to make good sense to say that French lexicalizes the image structure, i.e. what from the point of view of the human eye looks similar in structure gets the same name. This may also explain why French systematically lacks words for collective concepts that have no original in reality — French has many words for different chairs, for different machines, for different bowls, etc., but no words for the collective concepts ‘chair’, ‘machine’, ‘bowl’, etc. (For a detailed description, see Baron 2002.) Verbs as image-idea pairs Just as common nouns like golf course, running track, and tennis court name an image as well as an idea, lexical verbs like stand, work, and give also have an image side as well as an ideational side. The difference between them is that whereas the image of a common noun prototypically consists solely of a figure and its idea of a description of that figure, the image of a verb is always made up of a figure–ground relationship, and the idea is always a description of that relationship. I call the image part a ‘ground-situation’ and the idea part a ‘ground-proposition’ in order to underline that at the lexical-grammatical level we are dealing with potential meaning (cf. ‘ground’) where a certain proposition (idea) is said to be true with respect to a certain situation (image) in all logically possible worlds. Let me illustrate this by taking a concrete example from English, viz. the verb give (see Figure 1). Give is a so-called ‘complex verb’, which names an ‘action’, defined as an ‘activity’ related to a ‘state’ via ‘telicity’. The ground-situational structure consists of an ‘unstable’ situation, i.e. an activity, where X, the primary figure (cf. Actor), is producing an activity, while having the flowers, Y, the secondary figure, in his hand, followed by a ‘stable’ situation, i.e. a state, where the flowers, Y, the secondary figure, are in the hands of Z, the ground. The ground-propositional structure also consists of two parts: the activity description, X PRODUCE something, which logically entails Y EXIST with X (if this description were not true, the activity description could not be true either), and the state description, 1.2

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Y EXIST with Z. In the activity description ‘X’ is underlying subject, so-called ‘p-theme’, while in the state description ‘Y’ is underlying subject, so-called ‘qtheme’.

Figure 1: The English verb model of the action ‘Somebody (X) gives flowers (Y) to somebody else (Z)’.

Two different syntacticization mechanisms My hypothesis is that a language has to make a fundamental choice (see Figure 1): either it takes its starting point in the ground-situational structures whereby the linguistic structures become models of situations, or it takes its point of departure in the ground-propositional structures whereby linguistic structures become models of propositions. This semiotic choice is even more important than the previously mentioned one within common nouns because the actual choice will determine the syntactic structures of the language in question, and thus also text structures. Those languages that syntacticize the ground-situational structures will all have ‘situational syntax’, whereas those languages that syntacticize the ground-propositional structures will all have ‘propositional syntax’. In the former type, surface syntactic functions will be triggered by the figures of de facto situations being perceived, while in the latter type surface syntactic functions are triggered by the themes of underlying propositions. It is my hypothesis that languages may change syntacticization strategy and thus, for instance, change from a proposition-based syntax to a situation-based syntax. In order for a language to have a ‘propositional’ syntax it must apply lexicalization patterns that are based on the ground-propositional structures, and in order for a language to have a ‘situational’ syntax it must apply lexicalization patterns that are based on the ground-situational structures. It goes without saying that there must be harmony between lexicalization patterns and syntacticization mechanisms — they must speak with the same tongue. In the following sections I shall examine the lexicalization patterns of Old Russian 1.3

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(OR) and those of Modern Russian (MR), and I will conclude that they are very different from one another. Moreover, I shall attempt to define the prototypical patterns of both OR and MR and relate them to syntactic structures and grammatical case functions. The result of my investigation is that the lexicalization pattern of OR paved the way for the introduction of the grammatical category of aspect that itself changed the lexicalization patterns, forced the subsystem of direct cases to change direction of reference, and, more importantly, changed the entire syntacticization mechanism. Naming strategy and lexicalization patterns In modern linguistics the distinction between the two different naming strategies is often ignored, as is the dependence of the lexicalization patterns found in a given language on the chosen naming strategy. One might be tempted to believe that it makes no difference if one names a situation from the point of view of its image or from the point of view of its idea — the difference is, nevertheless, big. If one chooses to base the name on the groundproposition (for instance, “X is happy about somebody/something”), the description seems to be concrete, but it seems possible to find many situations that fit that description (for instance, when X shouts with joy, X celebrates something, or X praises somebody). If, on the other hand, one chooses to take one’s starting point in the ground-situational structures, the description cannot but be concrete because one describes a “here-and-now” situation. The consequence is that ‘shouting with joy’, ‘celebrating something’ and ‘praising somebody’ represent three different situations that will need three different names. Languages that describe the ground-situational structures are not ambiguous with respect to concrete reference whereas languages that describe the groundpropositional structures often tend to be multi-ambiguous. Let me illustrate this by an example from Modern Danish compared to Modern Russian. The Danish sentence, Vil du have mere is? “(lit.) Will you have some more ice cream?” can be used in two different scenarios: (1) it may be used if the addressee has some ice cream left on his/her plate and the speaker is about to take the plate; and (2) it may be used if the hearer has already eaten all the ice cream and the speaker is about to offer him/her yet another portion. This kind of ambiguity will never appear in the Russian speech community since Russian speakers take their starting point in the concrete situation. In the first scenario above the speaker will think that the addressee does not want more ice cream since he has not eaten up his ice cream. In the second scenario the speaker will think that the addressee wants more ice cream since he has already eaten what was on his/her plate. This difference corresponds to two different questions, viz. a negative question in the former case and a positive one in the latter case. 1.4

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The Old Russian System In the following paragraphs I shall examine various OR verbs from a lexical point of view in order to define its naming strategy and lexicalization patterns. I have investigated numerous verbs, but due to the lack of space I can only present a small, however representative number of them. After this examination I turn to the OR case system which, though it in many ways looks like the MR system, however appears to represent a quite different construal of the two direct cases, the nominative and the accusative. 2.

‘Verbal Gender’ I distinguish two major classes of verbs, ‘simplex verbs’ and ‘complex verbs’ (cf. Durst-Andersen 2000). Simplex verbs comprise two subclasses — ‘state verbs’ that create a static ground-proposition, i.e. a state description, which is paired to a stable ground-situation, i.e. an image of a state, and ‘activity verbs’ that create a dynamic ground-proposition, i.e. an activity description, which is paired to an unstable ground-situation, i.e. an image of an activity. State verbs and activity verbs are ‘simplex’ because both kinds of verbs denote simple states of affairs that can be captured, so-to-speak, in one single picture by the human eye. It is, however, important to note that any activity implies as its background a certain state: you cannot run unless you are in an upright position; you cannot carry something unless you have it with you, etc. This does not affect the ground-situational structure of activity verbs — it is still a single, unstable image, but it certainly affects the ground-propositional structure, in that any activity description logically entails a certain state description, e.g., “X RUN ” logically entails “X EXIST VERTICALLY on L”. I call this type of state description an ‘entailment structure’ (cf. Figure 1). As will be clear from my examination of various verbs in OR below, the entailment structure plays an important, but hitherto unnoticed role. Complex verbs are composed of the contents of simplex verbs (see Figure 1 again). Complex verbs create a ground-propositional structure consisting of an activity description (which logically entails a state description) as well as an autonomous state description. They are paired to a ground-situational structure consisting of an unstable situation (corresponding to the activity) and a stable situation (corresponding to the state). Complex verbs are used to denote complex states of affairs, viz. either ‘processes’ (defined as an activity “intending” to cause a state) and ‘events’ (defined as a state actually caused by an activity). Processes and events are coded by the progressive and the simple aspects, respectively, in Modern English, whereas in Modern Russian they are coded by, respectively, the imperfective and the perfective aspects. In other words, both languages have a grammatical form for the process as well as the 2.1

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event, but they do not have a common verbal form for the lexical meaning which is common to the two aspectual forms. Other languages lack the category of aspect and have only one form that functions as the common denominator of processes and events, which I call ‘actions’, i.e. an activity related to a state by telicity. This means that the Russian perfective aspect presents an action as an event, whereas the imperfective aspect presents an action as a process. They have in common that they name the complex situation called action, which is a construct, a collective concept of processes and events. Just as it is impossible to find a human being as such, but only a male or a female representative, you cannot find an action in reality, but only its manifestation, viz. either a process or an event. I emphasize that it is no coincidence that Russian does not have a name for the collective concept of action, but instead has a name for ether of its manifestations in reality, namely the process and the event. All this has to do with naming strategy. The imporatant thing is that four different situation types, two simple and two complex, correspond to three different verb classes in human language, viz. state verbs, activity verbs, and action verbs (cf. Durst-Andersen 1992, 2000). We have states and state verbs, activities and activity verbs, but we do not have process verbs and event verbs — processes and events are always referred to by different grammatical forms of the same lexical verb. Moreover, we are not capable of defining an overt category for the three types of verbs just outlined because languages do not tend to give expression to their different lexical content (however, see below). Nevertheless, it must be considered a fact that people classify verbs as belonging to one of the above three classes. This appears, for instance, very clearly from borrowing in Russian where all simplex verbs are assigned the imperfective aspect, whereas all complex verbs are assigned the perfective aspect. Since all languages need verbs that name situations, and since what we normally call verb classes functions as the input structure for all other verbal categories, we are facing a universal lexicalgrammatical category that is basic with respect to the grammatical categories. In order to attract your attention to this lexical-grammatical category I have decided to provocatively name it ‘verbal gender’. This term underlines the fact that any verb has to be assigned to a ‘gender’, be it a state, an activity or an action, before it can be assigned any aspectual form, any tense form, and any modal form (cf. Durst-Andersen 1996). The three ‘verbal genders’ in OR In the following I shall attempt to find the naming strategy applied by OR, i.e. find out whether OR names the ground-situational structure, where we operate with primary figure (= Actor) and secondary figure (= Undergoer; Exi2.2

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stentiator), or names the ground-propositional structure, where we operate with p-theme (= underlying subject of an activity description) and q-theme (= 2 underlying subject of a state description). But before going into a detailed analysis of lexicalization patterns in OR, we shall take some words from OR and apply our classification to them. State verbs (q): vĕ dati + ACC “know” (but also “govern”); bъ dĕti “be awake”, “be fresh/gay”; vorovati “be a thief” (but also “cheat”). Activity verbs (p, or more precisely: p logically entails q): krič ati “shout”; ljubovati + ACC “enjoy looking at; caress”; lajati “bark” (INTR), “jump upon” (TR). Action verbs (p TEL q): laditi + ACC “reconcile; tune; manage”; liti “pour” (TR), “flowing” (INTR); krasti + ACC “steal smth; rob smb”. Already from this short list of verbs it strikes one’s attention that if a certain verb form OR has survived in MR, it has preserved only one of its two or three meanings. It also strikes one’s attention that OR seems to have a considerable number of ‘ambivalent’ verbs, i.e. verbs that are used transitively as well as intransitively. This should be compared with MR where in principle there are no ambivalent verbs. It seems to be important to find out why an OR verb has an intransitive use with one meaning and a transitive use with a completely different meaning. How can we explain that a verb such as vĕ dati functions, at the same time, as a state verb with the meaning “know” and as an activity verb with the meaning “govern”? (Only the latter meaning has survived in MR, and vedat’ (+ INSTR ) is only used to give a characterization). A possible explanation could be that OR makes a sharp distinction between simplex verbs and complex verbs (and not between state and activity verbs), or that OR treats a characterization as a state description. Let us look more closely at some of these verbs in order to find out what is going on in OR with respect to lexicalization patterns. Lexicalization patterns Unlike the majority of linguists, I take my starting point in what is known as the ‘principle of semiotic teleology’, i.e. the principle that claims that to one expression unit corresponds only one piece of content. Of course, it is not possible to convince anybody of this ‘invariance principle’ if one only recognizes a superficial level of description where all meanings correspond to a certain translation in another language. One has to dig deeper to find the 2.3

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I use q for any state description and p for any activity description.

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underlying structures. This is exactly where my ‘verb models’ for states, activities and actions come into play. Below I shall paraphrase the various meanings found with different verbs by using my verb models. We will start with gostiti which is derived from the noun gost’ “guest”. The verb has at least three meanings, which seem to lack consistency and seem to be impossible to bring on a common formula. (1) Gostiti “1. stay/live with smb. as a guest (INTR ); 2. be a commercial traveller, trade (INTR); 3. receive smb. as a guest (TR)”. 1: X PRODUCE an activity logically entails X BE GUEST at Z’s place. 2: X PRODUCE an activity logically entails X BE GUEST at a certain place, L. 3: X PRODUCE an activity and Y BE GUEST at X’s place. The verb is ambivalent, i.e. it is intransitive (cf. meaning 1 and 2) and transitive (cf. meaning 3). Meaning 1 and 2 both denote activities, while meaning 3 denotes an action. Meaning 1 and 2 are never used as ‘situation descriptions’, but always as ‘characterizations’, i.e. X’s ‘role activity’ is defined by his status as being guest with somebody else (cf. the entailment structure in meaning 1) or at some other place (cf. the entailment structure in meaning 2). In meaning 3, the action meaning, Y is guest with X who produces the activity that causes such a state. In other words, it is the filling in of the q-variable that unites the different meanings of gostiti. “Smb. is guest at a certain place” functions as the ‘basic meaning’ of all three possible meanings and explains their common expression. If we compare this with MR, gostit’ in MR is only used intransitively and has only one meaning, namely “stay/live as a guest at a certain place” — which more or less corresponds to meaning 1. In short, the MR verb is an intransitive activity verb that is used to give a characterization. Our next verb is also ambivalent and three-way ambiguous: (2) Bluditi “1. wander around bewildered (INTR); 2. be unfaithful (INTR ); 3. misguide (TR)”. 1: X PRODUCE an activity logically entails X BE ON A WRONG TRACK. 2: X PRODUCE an activity logically entails X BE ON A WRONG TRACK in relation to Z. 3: X PRODUCE an activity and Y BE ON A WRONG TRACK . The verb is used as an activity verb (cf. meaning 1 and 2) and as an action verb (cf. meaning 3). The two activity meanings reflect intransitive uses, whereas

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the action meaning is transitive. This seems to be a normal pattern in OR and does not strike one immediately as being abnormal, cf. Eng. write vs. write smth. It should, however, be stressed that the activities denoted by bluditi in its various meanings are quite different — quite in opposition to Eng. write and write smth. In meaning 1 X is walking around, in meaning 2 X is having intimate relations with another person than he/she is supposed to, and in meaning 3 X is producing (misguiding) words or signs. There is nothing whatsoever that can be said to unite these three different activity situations. When looking for a basic meaning that can account for the common expression of all three meanings, the state description q again enters the picture. That is to say, the q-proposition “X/Y BE ON A WRONG TRACK” can be argued to motivate the common expression of the different meanings of the verb. Since this, as a matter of fact, repeats what was found just above, we may preliminarily argue that OR seems to name a state, activity or action by specifying its state description, be it the so-called entailment-structure of activity descriptions or the autonomous state description of complex verbs naming an action. Moreover, it seems as if the activity description itself has no unifying function at all. Note that meaning 1 and 2 only make sense as characterizations —opposed to situation descriptions. If we take the corresponding verb in MR, i.e. bludit’, it has only one meaning, namely “to wander around”. This means that the MR verb is an intransitive activity verb. The following verb represents a type that in the French linguistic tradition is called ‘symmetrical verbs’ — a specific variety of ambivalent verbs: (3) Legčati “1. feel better, abate (INTR ); 2. lighten, facilitate, make easier for smb. (TR)”. 1: Smth. HAPPEN and X BE BETTER. 2: X PRODUCE an activity and Y BE BETTER. The verb is symmetrical because in its intransitive use it is the surface subject that carries the quality in question (cf. meaning 1), whereas in its transitive use it is the surface object that carries the quality (cf. meaning 2). All symmetrical verbs are complex verbs that name an activity as well as a state. Symmetrical verbs play an important role in Modern French (there are approximately 300 verbs of this type), but plays no role whatsoever in MR (there is not a single symmetrical verb in MR). As should appear from the paraphrases, it is exactly the state description “X/Y is better” that combines the two possible meanings. In MR we find the verb legč at’, but only in its intransitive meaning. Once again we notice that the transitive variant in OR has fallen out in MR. The next verb to be examined is an ambiguous transitive activity verb:

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(4)

Ljubovati “1. enjoy looking at smb. (TR); 2. caress (TR)”. 1: X PRODUCE a visual activity logically entails Y BE DEAR to X. 2: X PRODUCE a tactile activity logically entails Y BE DEAR to X.

Two quite different situations, viz. a visual and a tactile activity, are treated identically from a lexical point of view. The only thing that connects these two meanings is the state description of the entailment structure, viz. “Y BE DEAR to X”. Note that the feeling of a positive experience which is felt in meaning 2 is not part of the lexical meaning of the verb, but must be considered an implicature. In MR we find ljubovat’sja (+ INSTR ) which is monosemous, cf. meaning 1. A MR verb could never have two meanings that denote two so different activity situations. The next verb to be examined involves a special device that I have chosen to name an ‘incorporated’ or ‘internal characterization’: (5) Doiti “1. milk (TR); 2: breastfeed (TR)”. 1: X PRODUCE a milking activity logically entails Y (=cow) BE ACCESSIBLE to X. 2: X PRODUCE an activity logically entails Y HAVE the quality of PRODUCING milking activity. The verb denotes both a milking and a breastfeeding activity — meanings that seems to be very difficult to get on a common formula. It is an activity verb because both meanings involve activity descriptions, i.e. the situation denoted by the verb can be captured in one single, unstable picture. Apart from that, both uses are transitive. The key to an understanding of these two types is found in the important distinction between verbs that give a situation description and verbs that give a characterization — a distinction that plays a fundamental role in the MR lexicon, where especially activity verbs tend to give either a situation description, e.g. vesti urok “to be teaching” and idti “to be walking”, or a characterization, e.g., prepodavat’ “to teach” and xodit’ “to walk”. What we observe in OR is that ‘characterization’ is used as a specific lexical-grammatical device to incorporate the original activity description, i.e. the milking activity, into the state description of the entailment structure. The result of this operation is that the milking activity description becomes attached to Y as an internal quality. This means in plain terms that X can only be said to be breastfeeding Y if Y can be said to have the quality “Y PRODUCE milking activity with X”. The lexical-grammatical device resembles the syntactic notion of embedding. Another way of putting it is to say that doiti is a location-based activity verb in the original meaning, but a qualification-based

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activity verb in the derived meaning. This may seem natural from the point of view of OR, but is surely unnatural from the point of view of MR where it is impossible to find a verb that in one meaning is location-based, while in another it is qualification-based. From this it is easy to infer that MR doit’ has preserved meaning 1 but skipped meaning 2. You could not have a verb in MR where the subject were extremely active in one use, but almost passive in another use. In other words, if the Actor is performing different activities, these must be named by different verbs. This principle seems not to be operative in OR where quite different activities are named by the same verb (cf. all examples mentioned above). Semantic incorporation is perhaps more evident with the following verb which is an action verb: (6) Krasti “1. steal smth. (TR); 2. rob smb. (TR)”. 1: X PRODUCE a forbidden activity and Y EXIST with X. 2: X PRODUCE a forbidden activity and Y HAVE the quality yY EXIST with X. The two meanings are united by two things. First, they both include a description of the circumstances under which the activity denoted by the verb is produced. Secondly, they both involve the state description “Smth. EXIST with X” (i.e. with the Agent). Meaning 1 “steal smth.” reflects a possession-based action, i.e. “Y (e.g. some jewelry) EXIST with X”. Meaning 2 “rob smb.” also contains a possession description, but it is represented in quite a different way, namely as being a quality with another person—that is to say, a person, Y, is characterized by the fact that a part of him/her, i.e. y, exists with another person, X. Once again we observe a shift in state description type: “steal” is a possession-based action description, whereas “rob” is a qualification-based action description. MR krast’ knows of only meaning 1, while meaning 2 has been taken over by a prefixed variant, viz. obokrast’ (PF) / obkradyvat’ (IPF ). The last verb to be dealt with is three-way ambiguous: (7) Likovstvovati “1. shouting with joy ( INTR ); 2. celebrate smth. (TR); 3. praise smb. (DAT/INTR )”. 1: X PRODUCE an activity logically entails X BE HAPPY . 2: X PRODUCE an activity logically entails Y HAVE the quality X BE HAPPY about Y. 3: X PRODUCE a verbal activity logically entails X BE HAPPY about Z.

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The verb is ambivalent: it is monovalent and intransitive (cf. meaning 1); it is divalent and transitive (cf. meaning 2); and it is divalent and intransitive (cf. meaning 3). Meaning 2 involves the function of incorporating a characterization, and since its use is transitive in this case (as it has been above in the cases of internal charaterization), we may conclude that this lexical-grammatical device necessarily implies a transitive object. This surface object is, however, always derived from an underlying subject of a state description. MR has preserved meaning 1 in the intransitive activity verb likovat’ — the two remaining meanings are expressed by different verbs because they involve different activities. Concluding remarks We have just examined a small number of different verbs and have found that OR verbs seem to be grounded on the idea-based naming strategy. This means that OR has chosen to take the ground-propositional structures as their point of departure. With respect to lexicalization patterns, it seems fair to conclude that OR specifies the state description, not the activity description when there is a choice. We may thus conclude that an OR activity verb names an activity by specifying the entailment structure, while an OR action verb names an action by specifying the autonomous state description. Since, however, in many cases an OR verb denotes an activity as well as an action, it is sufficient to say that an OR verb names a situation by specifying q, i.e. the state description. The great number of ambivalent verbs in OR shows that transitivity vs. intransitivity does not play any significant role at the lexical-grammatical level, which seems to be in harmony with Krys’ko’s thorough investigation (cf. Krys’ko 1997). However, this does not mean that the distinction between transitivity and intransitivity plays no role at the sentence level. In my view, OR does not operate with a distinction between subject and direct object, but with a distinction between two subjects, viz. a primary subject in the nominative case and a secondary subject in the accusative case. If we look carefully at the paraphrases, it turns out that the nominative case always corresponds to p-theme, i.e. the underlying subject of an activity description, whereas the accusative case always corresponds to q-theme, i.e. the underlying subject of a state description. This interrelationship makes it easy to explain the so-called symmetrical verbs: if no p-theme can be specified (i.e. it is a determined event) or if the person or thing occupying the position of p-theme in the activity description is identical to the q-theme of the state description, then the q-theme takes the ptheme’s place and becomes nominative thereby turning the original transitive 2.4

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construction into an intransitive one, e.g., napustiti “send smb. against smb.” and “go against smb.”; naslĕ dstvovati “inherit” and “leave”; pognati “hurry along” and “drive smb. away”; etc. The old problem of trava kosit’, i.e. “cut (infinitive) grass (nominative)” with the object in the nominative is explained in the same way: when X, the ptheme, cannot be specified in the surface construction (which is true of infinitive and imperative constructions), then Y, the q-theme, takes X’s place and is assigned the nominative case instead of the accusative case. It is exactly in connection with symmetrical verbs and with nominative objects that we realize that the accusative does not distinguish itself from the nominative and vice versa. The difference between them is one of ranking: the nominative is primary subject and is chosen when there is no alternative (for instance, in connection with pure state descriptions exemplified by imati “have”), while the accusative is secondary subject. All these explanations point in the same direction. OR seems to have a proposition-based syntax, i.e. a surface syntax that exhibits diagrammatic relations to the underlying syntax of the ground-propositional structures. If there is an option of theme in OR, the nominative always corresponds to the ptheme and the accusative to the q-theme. If there is no alternative, then there will be no choice between the two direct cases: the nominative will take over because it ranks above the accusative. In other words, there is a clear connection between the lexicalization pattern where the state description is specified, be it the entailment structure or the autonomous state description, and the syntactization mechanism which is propositionally defined. The OR case system The OR case system is identical to the MR case system if we consider the overall structure and exact number of members of the system. It has six cases, viz. the nominative, the accusative, the genitive, the dative, the instrumental, and the locative. Just like the MR case system, the OR one sharply distinguishes between direct cases and oblique cases (cf. Durst-Andersen 1996): the nominative and the accusative are direct cases, all the other cases are oblique. But if we take a closer look at the functions of the direct and the oblique cases in OR and compare them with the corresponding cases in MR, it turns out that the functions of the oblique case subsystem are far more similar to each other than the functions of the direct case system. Both the oblique case system of OR and that of MR operate with external reference. The genitive denotes an extrovertive viewpoint (from something near to something distant). Thus, for instance, we find verbs that profile the endpoint, e.g., sluš ati “listen”; smotriti “look upon”; č ajati' “hope”; dozirati “keep an eye on smb.”; primeč ati 2.5

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“notice”, etc. The dative denotes an introvertive viewpoint (from something distant to something near), and the instrumental denotes a correlative viewpoint (the interrelationship between something near and something distant). Note that the so-called Agent Role in passives is not expressed by the instrumental in OR, but has ot “from” + GEN. If we compare the oblique case system with the OR tense system, certain similarities cannot escape one’s attention. The genitive case (from something near to something distant) and the imperfect tense (from p towards q) both view things from a starting point towards an endpoint; the dative (from something distant to something near) and the perfect tense (q because of p-and-q) both view things from an endpoint (the resulting state) and relate them to a starting point (the action that resulted in the state); and the instrumental (the interrelation between something near and something distant) and the aorist tense (p and q) both view things from an external viewpoint in their entirety. These similarities cannot be coincidental. If, however, we look at the direct case subsystem of OR and compare it with that of MR, we notice important differences. These differences manifest themselves in the presence of ambivalent and symmetrical verbs in OR and in their categorical absence in MR; they manifest themselves in those situations where OR uses the nominative as the case of the direct object, which would be totally nonsense in MR; and they appear in connection with negation where OR systematically uses the genitive in connection with negated direct objects (as in Modern Polish) — in MR there is an obligatory choice between the accusative and the genitive in connection with negation (for more details, see below). The Modern Russian system Verbal gender, aspect, and transitivity When comparing OR with MR with respect to lexicalization patterns and transitivity, one gets the feeling that what has happened resembles a revolution, rather than an evolution. If a verb from OR has survived in MR, it would not be a wrong prediction that the verb has preserved only one out of its two or three meanings. This is a clear tendency that needs an explanation. The most obvious explanation seems to be the introduction of the category of aspect — a category that was missing in OR (cf. Nørgård-Sørensen 1997; see also Bermel 1997), but which is a determining category in MR. All verbs belong to either the perfective or the imperfective aspect — this also pertains to verbal forms, including infinite forms. Let us look at the way in which verbs divide themselves into what was provocatively called verbal gender: 3. 3.1

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 State verbs (q): One finds few lexical verbs, e.g., stojat’ “stand”; lež at’ “lie”; viset’ “hang”; sidet’ “sit”; videt’ “see”, etc. — all are imperfective. But one has syntactic constructions for external reality (location and possession are expressed by the existential byt') and for internal reality (experience and qualification are expressed by the copula -byt’). One can derive so-called procedural verbs from the imperfective verbs: a prefix yields the perfective aspect, e.g., posidet’ “sit for a short while”; etc.; a suffix yields the imperfective aspect, e.g., siž ivat’ “used to sit”.  Activity verbs (p, but p logically entails q): One finds many verbs, all are imperfective and in principle intransitive: krič at’ “shout”; ljubovat’sja + INSTR “enjoy looking at” (characterization); + præp. na + ACC “enjoy looking at yourself or others” (situation description); lajat’ “bark”; likovat’ “shout with joy”; ladit’ “live in harmony with smb.”, etcetera. One can derive perfective procedural verbs, e.g., kriknut’ (PF) “utter a scream”; prokričat’ (PF) “scream a period of time without interruption”; zakrič at’ (PF) “start screaming”; etc.  Action verbs (p TEL q): One finds extraordinarily many verbs, most of them prefixed and transitive (all action verbs derived from an activity verb by a prefix are transitive). All action verbs are paired, e.g., legč at’ (IPF ) / polegč at’ (PF) “get better”; oblegč it’ (PF)/oblegč at’ (IPF) + ACC “make smth. more easy'; ugostit’ (PF)/ugoš č at’ (IPF) + ACC “treat”; naladit’ (PF)/nalaž ivat’ (IPF)+ ACC “get in order”; krast’ (IPF )/ukrast’ (PF) + ACC “steal smth.”; obokrast’ (PF)/ obkradyvat’ (IPF) + ACC “rob smb.”; etc. As hopefully appears from this short list of verbs, MR makes a sharp distinction between simplex verbs, i.e. state and activity verbs, and complex verbs, i.e. action verbs. All simplex verbs are inherently imperfective, whereas all complex verbs are inherently perfective. Simplex verbs derive various procedural verbs, be they perfective or imperfective; complex verbs, on the other hand, do not offer any option of procedural verbs, but all perfective action verbs create an obligatory imperfective partner. This is due to the fact that a perfective action verb represents an ‘event’, which is only one part of the dual concept of an action — in order to be complete the action concept has to complement the perfective ‘event’ by an imperfective ‘process’. The distinction between simplex verbs and complex verbs repeats itself at the syntactic level in the shape of intransitive and transitive verbs. In principle, there is a neat correlation between imperfectivity and intransitivity in connection with simplex verbs, and between transitivity and perfectivity in connection with complex verbs, as is evident in borrowing: it appears that all state verbs are automatically assigned the imperfective aspect, e.g. konfliktovat’ (INTR ) “to be in conflict”; all activity verbs are also assigned the imperfective aspect, e.g.

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aplodirovat’ (INTR ) “applaud”; whereas all action verbs are automatically assigned the perfective aspect, e.g. realizovat’ “implement” — and as soon as an automatically perfective action verb has entered the Russian lexicon, an imperfective partner is derived, realizovyvat’ (TR). It makes good sense to say that in MR lexical transitivity plays an important role, although it should be noted that the notion of transitivity in MR differs from its English counterpart. In Russian, passivization is not linked to transitivity as such, but rather to its lexical-grammatical counterpart, i.e. the concept of action. That is why transitive activity and state verbs do not allow passivization, whereas certain intransitive action verbs do allow it. Lexicalization patterns Due to the fact that the vast majority of action verbs involve a prefix, it seems to be crucial to find out the individual meanings of the prefixes in question — the unifying meaning is that they turn an activity verb into an action verb, i.e. turn one situation into two situations, marked by the prefix and the original verb. As to the individual meanings of the prefixes, they can be said to fall into two major groups: 1. those where the prefix designates a relation between the (secondary) figure and the ground (cf. Section 1.1) — in other words, the prefix functions as a preposition in the underlying state description (cf. (8) below); and 2. those where the prefix designates the transference of (secondary) figure from one state to another state (cf. (9) below). The following verb is unambiguously a transitive action verb with 6 different meanings. They are paraphrased according to the verb model of actions in order to show the basic meaning of the verb, i.e. the meaning that motivates their common expression: 3.2

(8) zabit’ (PF )/zabivat’ (IPF ) (TR) “1. hammer smth. into smth. (e.g. a nail into the wall); 2. score a goal; 3. fill smth. with smth. (e.g. a closet with clothes); 4. block up, cover up (e.g. a window with boards); 5. round up (e.g. cattle); 6. beat smb. (in sport)”. 1: X produces a hammering-activity into smth. (a wall) and Y (a nail) is behind it. 2: X produces a hammering-activity and Y (a ball) is behind L (goal line). 3: X produces a hammering-activity into smth. and Y (a closet) is behind smth. (clothes). 4: X produces a hammering-activity and Y (a window) is behind smth. (boards).

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5: X produces a hammering-activity into smth. and Y (cattle) is behind L (=X’s domain). 6: X produces a hammering-activity and Y is behind X. All six meanings are united by two things. Firstly, all six meanings refer to the same prototypical activity. Secondly, all involve a description of the relation of the secondary figure to a certain ground, i.e. Y is behind something else. This suggests that MR has chosen the ground-situational structures as their naming strategy. In choosing between which part of the ground-situational structure should be specified, MR has chosen a double strategy in the sense that the state situation as such is specified, while the activity situation is vaguely described. Note that the prefix za- is originally derived from the preposition za which means ‘behind’. The next verb is also an action verb with six meanings. All of them reflect transitive uses: (9) perevesti’ (PF)/perevodit’ (IPF) (TR) “1. take/escort smb. across smth. (e.g. a road); 2. transfer/move (e.g. a ministry) to smth. (e.g. a new building); 3. move up, be promoted to smth. (e.g. to the next form); 4. transfer smth. (e.g. money) to smth. (e.g. a bank); 5. con-vert (e.g., rubles/versts) to smth. (e.g., pounds/meters); 6. translate smth. (e.g., from English) to smth. (e.g. Russian)”. 1: X produces an activity with Y (a child) being on L1 and Y exists on L2 (street). 2: X produces an activity with Y being on L1 and Y exists on L2 (in a building). 3: X produces an activity with Y being on L1 and Y exists on L2 (in the next form). 4: X produces an activity with Y being on L1 and Y exists on L2 (in a bank). 5: X produces an activity with Y being in World1 (rubles) and Y exists in World2 (pounds). 6: X produces an activity with Y being in World1 (English) and Y exists in World2 (Russian). Once again it can be argued that the different meanings are tied together by two things. The state situation consists of a figure-ground description, more precisely of a description of a person or an object that is located at one place or in a specific world before the activity takes place, but at another place or in another world after the successful termination of the action. The very activity

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description is extremely vague, but in all six cases it denotes a transference from one location to another. The prefix itself marks this process of transferring. Concluding remarks As to naming strategy and lexicalization patterns in MR, we observe a clear connection between the situation named by the verb and the very description. In other words, the state description is dependent on the state situation that is referred to by means of the verb in the shape of a stable ground-situation, and the activity description is dependent on the activity situation that is referred to by means of the verb in the shape of an unstable groundstuation. There is, however, a difference in the degree of specificity of description. The state situation is specified to a high degree (corresponding to the fact that the perfective aspect foregrounds the state) whereas the activity is only vaguely specified — it is described as a prototypical activity (corresponding to the fact that the imperfective foregrounds the activity). We may conclude that MR names an action by describing the state situation in specific terms and by describing the activity situation in vague terms. The naming strategy and the lexicalization pattern described above mirror the ranking of the two aspectual forms which together make up the lexical item. This is only natural considering the fact that they are two grammatical forms of the same lexeme. The perfective aspect constitutes the marked and prominent member of the opposition, it has a specific meaning in the sense that it asserts the state description and presupposes the activity description, thereby presenting an action as an event. The imperfective aspect is the unmarked member of the opposition and has a vague meaning in the sense that it asserts the activity description and treats the state description as a standard implicature, i.e. it is up to the hearer to decide whether the state description is true or false –– if he decides it to be false, we are dealing with an ongoing process, if he decides that it is true we are dealing with a characterization of the Agent of the action. In other words, the imperfective aspect is capable of presenting an action as anything except an event, be it an ongoing process (its principal meaning), a cancelled event, an attempt, an intended action, and a characterization of a person. The markedness relation described above is found in the lexicalization pattern too: the state situation is specified (corresponding to the focus of the prominent perfective aspect on the state situation) but the activity situation is only defined in prototypical terms (corresponding to the focus of the non-prominent imperfective aspect on the activity situation). The MR verbs have to designate the ground-situational structures, i.e. the image part of the collective concept of an action, because by 3.3

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asserting the state and the activity description, respectively, the Russian perfective and imperfective aspects automatically create the corresponding situational counterparts. The semantic potential of action verbs is thus dependent on figure-ground constellations. That is why, for instance, the activity verb nesti/ nosit’ “carry smth.” demands that Y is either hanging or sitting on X (this is described in the entailment-structure) — it could not be used correctly if this were not the case. Compare this with Eng. carry smth. which requires that X controls Y. Since figure-ground constellations govern the semantic potential of verbs, MR action verbs are either location-based (which includes positionbased verbs), possession-based, experience-based, or qualification-based. The majority of Russian action verbs are location-based (external reality) or experience-based (internal reality). Interestingly, there are very few qualificationbased verbs. The reason why OR verbs that survived into MR prototypically preserved one meaning out of two, three or four potential meanings has to be found in the shift from being proposition-based to being situation-based. Gostiti had three meanings in OR (cf. (1), namely “stay/live with smb. as a guest”; “be a commercial traveller, trade”; “receive smb. as a guest”), but the corresponding MR verb gost’ has only one meaning, viz. “stay/live with smb. as a guest”. This meaning survived because it is perfectly normal in MR to have an activity verb that denotes a specific role activity where the role itself is defined by the noun from which the verb is derived, gost’ “guest” > gostit’ “stay/live with smb. as a guest”. The meaning “be a commercial traveller, trade” could never survive, because the Actor’s role activity (the guest trading) is no longer defined in relation to the guest’s necessary counterpart, i.e. the host, but instead in relation to a buyer or customer whereby the activity becomes quite different. The meaning “receive as smb. as a guest” which reflects a transitive use in OR would not make any sense in MR: MR does not have ambivalent verbs — that is to say, it is impossible in MR to have a verb where the description “be guest” occurs in the entailment-structure as well as in the autonomous state description. The MR Case System At first sight it seems as if there are no appreciable differences between the OR and the MR case systems. The structure of the original case system in OR seems to be intact in MR, i.e. we still have a distinction between direct cases (the nominative and the accusative) and oblique cases (the genitive, the dative, the instrumental). The fact that the locative has fallen out of the system of non-governed, ‘pure’ cases in favour of the system of prepositionally governed cases does not seem drastic in itself, but when added to this that the 3.4

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accusative and the dative have lost their ability to name directions without a preposition the situation changes. If we, moreover, consider all those verbs that originally took a ‘pure’ oblique case (for instance, smotriti + GEN “look at”), but in MR take a preposition (e.g., smotret’ na + ACC), we get the feeling that the prepositional case system has been extended in its use and redefined (the accusative and the locative are contact cases — the accusative is dynamic, the locative static, all other cases are non-contact cases — the instrumental is static, the two others are both dynamic and static). These changes cannot but be related to changes in the system of ‘pure’ cases. In other words, we might be talking about a qualitative leap, rather than about quantitative changes. This is confirmed by verbs that originally governed an oblique case, but in MR take an accusative object. This suggests that the notion of lexical transitivity has entered the picture. Many of the verbs that originally governed the genitive, including all perception verbs (e.g. sluš ati “listen”; videti “see”; dozirati “keep an eye on smb.”; primeč ati “notice”, etc.) have become transitive (sluš at’, videt’, primetit’, etc). In other words, the very turning of your eyes or ears towards something has been reinterpreted: originally it denoted an extrovertive viewpoint where the endpoint (the distant thing) was profiled; in MR it denotes something transitive: Y is not q-theme Y is the distant thing (10) X looks at Y Y exists on L Y is q-figure and q-theme As illustrated by (10), the speaker is facing a dilemma because Y can be understood in two ways: 1. Y can be viewed from the point of view of the perceiver X whereby the direction goes from X to Y, i.e. from something near to something distant (the extrovertive viewpoint). In this understanding the verb profiles the endpoint itself, i.e. Y is the goal of X’s visual activity. This interpretation yields the genitive case and fits nicely into the structure of the oblique case system of OR; 2. Y can be viewed as a static entity that exists on a certain location, i.e. Y has become an independent entity that has its own life completely isolated from the visual activity. In this understanding Y is figure and the location itself is ground. This reinterpretation has taken place within the framework of the direct case system of MR, and since Y is q-figure and therefore secondary figure, Y receives the accusative case, the case for secondary subjects, q-themes. This suggests that the original direct case system has

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been reinterpreted from being a propositionally oriented system operating with underlying subjects within ground-propositions to becoming a referentially oriented system operating with figure-ground constellations in pictures that mirror situations in reality. The following example from MR illustrates this: Characterization X keeps away from Y/ GEN (11) X is afraid of Y X keeps away from Y/ ACC Situation description In MR bojat’sja “be afraid of” may take an object in the genitive or in the accusative case (originally it governed the genitive). When it appears with a transitive object, it gives a situation description which is felt by Russians to be a concrete description. When it occurs with the genitive case, the idea of having a figure appearing on a ground is automatically blocked. The result is that we automatically leave the level of situation description and instead gets a characterization of the person in question which reflects the speaker’s own inner world and not the real external world. This description is felt by Russians to be abstract. What we witness is that the direct case system of MR has obtained the same external frame of reference as the oblique case system in OR, i.e. it has become a question of local existence (there is a figure-ground constellation) vs. no local existence (there is no figure-ground constellation). The original structure is intact, but whereas the oblique case system of OR was alone in describing external relations between participants from various viewpoints, in MR it has received a partner in the shape of the direct case system. Both systems speak now in the same tongue — the entire system has achieved harmony. Earlier the direct case system involved a choice between p-theme and q-theme, now it involves a choice between p-figure and q-figure: p-figure yields the nominative case, q-figure yields the accusative case. If there is no figure-ground constellation, the genitive case, being the oblique case per se, takes over (see also below). 3.5 Syntactic structures It is crucial to understand that not only the system and structure of Russian cases (cf. Durst-Andersen 1996), but also its syntactic patterns are grounded in the observable structures of our real world (where we deal with notions like picture and figure-ground) and not in the unobservable structures of our thoughts (where we deal with notions like proposition, logical subject and predicate). That is why a situation without a kernel corresponding to Eng. It

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darkens will be named by a Russian verb, Temneet, which does not take a subject or another argument for that matter (the ground-situation of the verb will have no p-figure and therefore there will be no p-theme). One can simply say that when there is no figure-ground constellation, there can be no subject. This rule knows of no exceptions in MR. In contradistinction to that situation, English is — just like OR — based on the principle of propositional syntax, but in English it has been completely generalized in demanding a subject in any sentence. And that is also why a Russian verb which prototypically takes a subject in the nominative case, e.g., byt' “be” obligatorily marks “loss of figure”, if, for instance, X is not home in the de facto situation referred to by the verb. This is done by putting the underlying subject in the genitive case, e.g. Ego ne bylo doma “He was not at home”. The nominative and the accusative can only be used if there is local reference. In that way MR can be said to be determined by the prototype structures of reality and their various manifestations in de facto situations, and not the other way around, where sentence structures can be said to put a certain form on structures in our referential reality — which is the case in, for instance, English. Here it and there in socalled thetic sentences have no reference at all, i.e. they do not refer to anything in our referential reality — they only serve the obligatory function of topic (i.e. in English there must be a surface sentential subject). Moreover, it applies to all types of construction where what appears to be subject in many other languages, for instance, in English and in Danish, turns out to be direct objects in MR, cf. He was killed by a grenade and Ego (ACC) ubilo granatoj (INSTR). The point is that when there is no p-figure (corresponding to Actor), there can be no surface subject in the nominative case. Since the person was qfigure (corresponding to Undergoer) in the situation referred to, he receives the accusative case marking. That the Gestaltist notions of figure-ground indeed play a crucial role in MR appears from the fact that imati + ACC, which was the normal construction for “to have smth.”, was preserved in MR as imet’, but it was outranged by a new existential construction, viz. “smth. exists with smb.”, e.g. U nego bila ž ena “(lit.) With him was wife”, i.e. “He had a wife”. The existential construction is the normal way of expressing HAVE-relations — imet’ in MR means “to have at one’s disposal”. The existential construction was introduced and gained more and more ground because it fits the figureground-like way of thinking (for a contrastive-typological analysis of English and Russian, see Durst-Andersen 2002). Conclusion: The role of aspect in the changes When wondering why the above mentioned qualitative leap took place, the first thing that comes to one’s mind is the introduction of the category of 4.

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aspect. But one may also wonder why aspect was introduced in the first place, the process of which started 600 years ago and which has not ended yet, although we are close to the terminating point. I see a natural connection between the naming strategy and the lexicalization patterns of OR, on the one hand, and the rise of the grammatical category of aspect, on the other. OR had chosen to name the ground-propositional structures and had a systematic lexicalization pattern telling that when naming an activity or an action the state description should be specified — exactly the state description motivates the common expression of the various meanings of a single lexeme. This is tantamount to saying that from a lexical point of view all dynamic verbs foreground the state description, but background the very activity description. As I see it, the described lexicalization pattern in OR paved the way for the occurrence of the grammatical category of aspect which, as a matter of fact, just repeats what has been standard at the lexical level and transfers it to the grammatical level. The perfective aspect inherently belongs to action verbs, is the marked and prominent member of the opposition; it asserts the state description and presupposes the activity description. In doing so, the perfective aspect creates a state situation which is foregrounded and an activity situation which is backgrounded. The connection could not have been more clear. Legitimizing lexical procedures on a higher level is thus just another way of defining grammaticalization. With the introduction of aspect the original lexicalization pattern had to be changed. This was done by eliminating all ambivalent verbs by creating a whole range of prefixed variants of the original simplex verb. For instance, MR created obokrast’/obkradyvat’ “rob smb.”, nakrast’/nakradyvat’ “steal a lot”, vykrast’/vykradyvat’ “pinch, nick”, raskrast’/raskradyvat’ “loot, clean out”, and others, in order to be able to describe different “stealing-situations” from the point of view of the resulting state. Krast’ was preserved for the “normal” stealing-situation, but a perfective partner was created, viz. ukrast’, in order to complete the dual notion of an action. All these verbs are possession-based action verbs and are all transitive. They follow the new naming strategy and lexicalization pattern since they name the action from the point of view of its image structures by focusing on the state, but on the condition that the state is an effect of the same prototypical activity. Likewise, I see the reinterpretation of the original direct case system as being a result of the introduction of the category of aspect. The final result is that, on the one hand, we find harmony between the direct and the oblique case subsystems, and between lexicalization patterns and aspect, and on the other, between aspect and the syntactization mechanism which is governed by the situations themselves.

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Acknowledgments I wish to thank Henning Andersen who has been of great help to me in my attempt to grasp the system of Old Russian, and Jan Erik Nielsen who helped me in finding material and data. REFERENCES Baron, Irène. 2002. “Leksikalske prototyper i dansk”. Sprog og typer i kontrast: Forskelligartede danske bidrag til en forståelse af sproglig typologi ed. by Per Durst-Andersen, 1–21. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School. Bermel, Neil. 1997. Context and the Lexicon in the Development of Russian Aspect. Berkeley: Berkeley University Press. Durst-Andersen, Per. 1992. Mental Grammar: Russian aspect and related issues. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica. Durst-Andersen, Per. 1996. “Russian case as mood”. Journal of Slavic Linguistics 4.177–273. Durst-Andersen, Per. 2000. “The English progressive as picture description”. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 32.45–103. Durst-Andersen, Per. 2002. “Russian and English as two distinct subtypes of accusative languages”. Scando-Slavica 48.102–126. Durst-Andersen, Per & Michael Herslund. 1996. “The syntax of Danish verbs: Lexical and syntacic transitivity”. Content, Expression, and Structure. Studies in Danish Functional Grammar ed. by Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen & al., 65–102. Amsterdam & Philadelpha: John Benjamins. Guillaume, Gustave. 1965 [1929]. Temps et verbe. Paris: Champion. Hewson, John & Vit Bubenik. 1997. Tense and Aspect in Indo-European Languages: Theory, typology, diachrony. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Ivanov, Vjacheslav V. 1983. Istorič eskaja grammatika ruskogo jazyka. (Izd. vtoroe.) Moscow: “Prosveš č enie”. Krys’ko, Vadim B. 1994. Razvitie kategorii oduš evlennosti v istorii russkogo jazyka. Moscow: Lyceum. Krys’ko, Vadim B. 1997. Istorič eskij sintaksis russkogo jazyka. Ob’ekt i perexodnos’. Moscow: Lyceum. Lunt, Horace G. 1970. Concise Dictionary of Old Russian (11th–17th Centuries). Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Nørgård-Sørensen, Jens. 1997. “Tense, aspect and verbal derivation in the language of the Novgorod birch bark letters”. Russian Linguistics 21.1–21. Sreznevskij, Izmail I. 1989 [1893]. Slovar’ drevnerusskogo jazyka. Moscow. Stecenko, Anatolij N. 1972. Istoriceskij sintaksis russkogo jazyka. Moscow: “Vysš aja š kola”.

CONSTRUAL OPERATIONS IN SEMANTIC CHANGE THE CASE OF ABSTRACT NOUNS

LENA EKBERG University of Lund Introduction This paper deals with lexical variation and semantic change of abstract nouns.1 The theoretical framework is Cognitive Semantics as presented in works by Langacker (1987, 1991), Talmy (2000), and others. We assume that at least a subset of the regular sense developments is due to cognitively based processes — so called ‘construal operations’ (Croft & Wood 2000) — operating on a semantic input, i.e., the schematic structure constituting the foundation of the more detailed lexical meaning. As for relational predicates, e.g. prepositions and verbs, transformations on the basic schematic structure, commonly referred to as the image schema, have proved to be an important device of generating new meaning variants (Ekberg 2001, 2004). For nouns, (also) other types of operations can be assumed to be relevant in relating meaning variants to each other. In this paper I argue for the impact of construal operations by means of analyzing a selection of Swedish abstract nouns, namely tillfälle “occasion”, mening “opinion”, uppgift “information”, and fråga “question”. The nouns chosen show various degrees of relatedness to verbs that are synchronically used with the same meaning. As a consequence, they show various degrees of abstractness in terms of different content ontologies (Paradis 2005). In short, there are abstract entities that are located in time and space, i.e. events (actions, processes or states), and those that are not located in time and space, e.g. abstract phenomena such as idea, opportunity. A noun referring to an event re1.

The reported study is part of the project The Dictionary of the World, of which the overarching aim is to describe and explain regularities in lexical polysemy. The members of the project are, in addition to the author, Jerker Järborg and Kerstin Norén (project leader). The project is financed by The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. I am grateful to my project colleagues and to Carita Paradis and Christer Platzack for valuable comments and stimulating discussions. I am solely responsible for remaining inconsistencies. 1

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lates to a situation profiled as a THING (Langacker 1987) but has the same situation type characteristics as the related verb (Paradis 2005). Crucial for the semantic account of these (and other) lexemes is the notion of profile–base asymmetry. The profile is what the lexeme designates within a given cognitive domain, i.e., the base. In other words, the profile is equal to those portions of the base that the semantic predication invokes (Langacker 1987). As will be argued, the profile of verbal nouns includes an event structure (E), embedded in the holistic conceptualization characteristic of a nominal. The concept of an event comprises activities, processes and states.2 The different event types represent different elaborations of an event structure; thus E will be short for a semantic entity with a relational internal structure, e.g. one of the various elaborations of the basic action chain underlying the semantics of all four nouns in question. The thesis elaborated here is that the process of ‘attention’ plays a crucial role in relating meaning variants of verbal nouns to each other. Attention is taken to be one of four basic cognitive abilities manifested in language by way of continuously occurring processes — the others being ‘comparison’ (the foundation of metaphorical relations), ‘choice of perspective’ and ‘constitution’ (Gestalt), respectively. Croft & Wood (2000) distinguish five subtypes of attention, which are partly overlapping. The most important ones for a lexical description of verbal nouns are ‘selection’, ‘scalar adjustment’ and ‘schematization’. Selection amounts to focusing on only part(s) of an entity or an experience and disregarding the rest, whereas scalar adjustment (‘abstraction’, in terms of Langacker 1987) is construing an event with various degrees of abstraction/specificity. On this view, schematization — the choice of viewing something by means of a more encompassing category — is one end of the abstraction cline. Cognitive linguists see construal operations of the type presented above as structural devices of the lexicon. The assumption made here is that the same types of operations that underlie the structure of the lexicon also underlie the structure of lexical networks, i.e. the category formed by the various meanings of a single lexeme. Furthermore semantic change and synchronic lexical variation is claimed to be two sides of the same coin. The tracks of semantic change may simultaneously be looked upon as meaning relations within a lexical network.

2

Activities and processes have the feature [+dynamic] in common but differ with respect to agentivity — activities are [+agent] while processes are [–agent]. State predicates are both non-dynamic and non-agentive (see further Schmid 2000).

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Lexical variation and semantic change of some abstract nouns Tillfälle “occasion” One of the synchronic uses of tillfälle is “occasion”, designating a single point of time, as in (1). 2. 2.1

(1)

vid det tillfället ... at that occasion .... “on that occasion ...”

The conceptualization of a single point of time presupposes an event (E) taking place at the specific moment (see Figure 1). 3 The event constitutes the LM (the reference point) in relation to the focused point of time (PT), which is the TR. I assume that the TR–LM-relation is hosted within the profile of a region, since the “surface” meaning of tillfälle is a holistic situation connecting a point of 4 time (PT) with a particular event (E), cf. Figure 1.

E/TR Profile

Time Base PT/LM Figure 1: The schematic structure of “occasion”.

The example in (2) illustrates the profile–base-relation inherent in the semantics of tillfälle. (2)

3

Vid ett tillfälle UNDER MÄTNINGARNA bröts strömmen. at one occasion during measurements.the switched.off.PASS current.the “One one occasion DURING THE MEASUREMENTS the current was switched off.”

In Schmid (2000: 79), tillfälle functions as a shell noun with an inherent semantic gap that is filled by an unspecific ‘event’. 4 Here, and henceforth, the profile is given in boldface and the focused entity within the profile is designated by a filled circle.

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Here the base is explicitly referred to as a number of temporally sequential events, bound to a sequence of points in time, out of which a particular point of 5 time is profiled by the noun phrase ett tillfälle “one occasion”. In (3) however, the meaning of the particular event is focused, at the cost of temporal meaning. Note that the point of time (September the 28th) is explicitly stated and consequently not focused in the use of the noun. As shown in Figure 2, the event corresponds to the TR (in boldface) and the point of time to the LM (underlined). (3)

Detta historiska tillfälle inträffar den 28. september. this historic event occurs the 28th September “This historic event will occur the 28th of September.”

The meaning in (3) thus represents an interchanged TR–LM-relation within the profiled region compared to the one in Figure 1, namely: E/TR

Profile

Time Base PT/LM

Figure 2: The schematic structure of “event”.

A further step from the pure temporal meaning is when tillfälle corresponds to “opportunity”: (4)

bereda någon tillfälle att framföra sina synpunkter give someone opportunity to express his/her views “to give someone opportunity to express his/her views”

This meaning assumes — just as the meaning “occasion”— a course of time, which includes a specific point of time when the possible event may be realized. In other words, the relation between the elements hosted within the pro-

5

The — sometimes slightly manipulated — examples are mainly taken from a computerized corpus named SUC/LBAB (see Järborg 1999).

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file is the same as in the temporal meaning but the setting is virtual instead of actual.6 In Figure 3, the virtual setting is represented by broken lines. E/TR

Profile

Time Base PT/LM Figure 3: The schematic structure of “opportunity”.

Summarizing, the synchronic meaning category of tillfälle includes the meanings “occasion”, “event”, and “opportunity”. “Event” is related to “occasion” through change of focus within the profile. The meaning “opportunity” instead retains the relation between point of time and event as profiled by the temporal meaning but changes the setting of the relation. Note that whereas “opportunity” intuitively is a separate sense, 7 the temporal and the eventive meanings are rather variants of the same sense. As I have argued “occasion” and “event” in fact presuppose each other (and are often difficult to separate in actual use). In other words, they seem to be different ‘facets’ of the same meaning, conventionally associated with the lexical item (see Paradis 2003; Cruse 2003). The boundary between “occasion” and “event” on the one hand and “opportunity” on the other is motivated by the different bases (or settings) decisive of the interpretations of the profile. The temporal and the eventive meanings are interpreted within the same setting, whereas “opportunity” is interpreted within a different setting. The history of tillfälle however adds further meaning variants to the lexical network. The following variants are attested in Old Swedish (Söderwall 1884–1918): “event” (5), “opportunity” (6), “occasion” (7), “cause” (8), and “accident” (9). Of these, “accident” seems to be the earliest meaning, cf. the parallel formations MLG tôval, MHG zuoval “accident”, and Lat. accidens (from ad- “to” and cadere “fall”, Hellquist 1957).

6

Setting is defined as a “global, inclusive region within which an event unfolds or a situation obtains” (Langacker 1991:553). 7 ‘Meaning’ is used as a superordinate term, not distinguishing between contextually triggered interpretations and well-entrenched lexical meaning variants (‘senses’).

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(5)

ciprianus […] taladhe til biscopin all sin tilfälle Ciprianus [...] spoke to bishop.the all his events “Ciprianus ... told the bishop everything that had happened to him”

(6)

han sökir tilfälle mik fördriffwa oc dräpa he seeks opportunity me to.drive.away and kill “he seeks an opportunity to drive me away and kill me”

(7)

jak gaf thik tillfälle I gave you occasion “I gave you occasion”

(8)

at ond gerning var hans dödz tilfälle that evil deed was his death. GEN cause “that evil deed caused his death”

(9)

aff eno tilfälle of one accident “because of an accident”

As I will argue, the meaning “accident” — paraphrased as “a random cause of something that has happened” — in fact includes all the other meaning variants of tillfälle. From “accident” we may proceed to “cause”, by way of ‘generalization’ of the cause-notion, suppressing the feature “random” and leaving “cause” as the only profiled content. The semantic structure of “cause” (C), as well as “accident”,8 in turn presupposes the concept of “event” (E) — bound to a point of time (PT), as diagrammed in Figure 4, below. By varying the structure in Figure 4, also the other meaning variants (cf. (5), (6), and (7) above) are derived. First, “event” is related to “cause” through ‘promotion’ of the event-notion (E) in the profile, resulting in a schematic structure equal to the one in Figure 2. Further, “occasion” is related to “event” through promotion of the notion point of time (PT), resulting in the schematic structure of Figure 1. In both cases the focus of attention is changed. Finally, “opportunity’ is related to both “occasion” and “event” by changing the setting of the entire event-structure, cf. Figure 3.

8

It is assumed that “accident” and “cause” share the same schematic structure. The feature “random”, distinguishing the two meaning variants, is taken to be part of the lexical specification.

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Profile C

E PT

Time Base

Figure 4: The schematic structure of “cause”/“accident”.

As shown above the set of meaning variants in Old Swedish also includes the ones retained in Modern Swedish, i.e. “occasion”, “event”, and “opportunity”. Thus both diachronically and synchronically the meaning variants of tillfälle stay within the realms of the complex meaning attested in the earliest use of the word. Assuming that the concept “cause” includes an event, bound to a point of time, provides an explanation of the coexistence of “cause” and “opportunity” (i.e. a possible point of time bound to a possible event) within the same lexical network. There are in fact further examples of this coexistence. Swedish, Norwegian anledning — formed in accordance with German Anleitung “cause” 9 (orig. “guidance”) — shows, cross-linguistically, the same ‘lexical intraference’ (with a term borrowed from Croft 2000) as tillfälle. In Modern Swedish the central meaning is “reason” whereas in Norwegian the central meaning is “opportunity”. Thus a possible explanation of this cross-linguistic polysemy is that “opportunity” is derived from “reason” — which meaning is present also in Norwegian — by way of interpreting the event-structure (presupposed by “cause”) in a virtual setting. This derivation will thus be a parallel to the semantic development of tillfälle. 2.2 Mening “opinion” The noun mening is derived from the verb mena “(to) mean; think”, and one of the salient synchronic meanings is “view, opinion”, as in (10): (10) Enligt min mening … according.to my view …. “According to my view …” 9

Germ. Anleitung in turn is derived from the verb anleiten “(to) guide” (composed of an “to” and leiden “(to) lead”). The cause-sense — actually, “what has led to something” — thus seems to be a natural extension of the concrete sense of the verb.

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The schematic structure underlying the more specific lexical meaning of the noun presupposes an elaborated variant of the schematic model of an action chain (Langacker 1991:283). As the profiled entity — LM1, in Figure 5 — is interpreted within the event frame of a communication situation, the Trajector (TR) matches the sender whereas LM2 corresponds to the addressee. LM1 is equal to the “message” — here specified as the “opinion” of the TR — transferred from TR to LM2.

TR

LM1

LM2

“opinion” COMMUNICATION Figure 5: The schematic structure of “opinion”.

In addition to the meaning “opinion”, the word shows a number of semantically related meanings, namely “intention” (11a), “purpose” (11b), “sense” (11c), and “sentence” (11d). (11) a. Meningen är att förstärka partimedlemmarnas inflytande […] intention.the is to.reinforce party.members.the.GEN influence “The intention is to reinforce the influence of the party members […]” b. Lydnad är meningen med människans liv på jorden. obedience is purpose.the with man.the.GEN life on earth.the “Obedience is the purpose of man’s life on earth.” c. i ordets verkliga mening in word.the.GEN real sense “in the word’s real sense“ d. en lång mening a long sentence / “a long sentence”

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Opinions are typically expressed by means of verbal communication, i.e. in words and sentences, which (in our culture at least) are conceptualized as some sort of containers (Reddy 1979). In terms of this metaphorical thinking the linguistic form corresponds to the embracing container whereas the linguistic meaning is seen as the content of the container. There is thus a clear connection between “opinion” (10) and “sense” (11c) in that part of the background knowledge of the meaning “opinion” is highlighted (or profiled) in the meaning variant “sense”. A verbally expressed opinion is not only an instance of a linguistic sense (wrapped up in words and sentences), but it also manifests intention and purpose. Thus “intention” and “purpose” are linked to both “opinion” and “sense”, respectively. Further, the use of mening in (11b) is related to the metaphorical use in (11c) — life is just like a word conceptualized as a container but whereas the content of life is equal to the purpose of life, the content of a word is equal to its sense. Also the meaning “sentence” (11d) — although clearly separated from the variants in (11a–c) — fits well into the base knowledge of the sense “opinion”. Sentences are in fact not only the typical means to verbally express an opinion but the way to do it. That is, sentences represent the form side of a linguistic expression used to express an opinion. Interestingly, also Eng. sentence shows an earlier meaning “meaning, sense”, “opinion”, motivated by its origin in Lat. sententia “mental feeling, opinion” (ODEE: 809). Together, all these meaning variants — “sense”, “intention”, “purpose”, and “sentence” — are parts of the base, referred to as COMMUNICATION in Figure 5, along with other semantic aspects which are not lexically realized. The interconnections between the various elements in the base are illustrated in Figure 6 below. Lexically realized meanings are given within double quotation marks. In each of the uses in (11) above only one of the elements in the base is focused — that is has entered the profile — whereas the others are backgrounded.

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Profile:

Mening “opinion”

Base:

[linguistic expression]

[symbolic unit]

[form]

“sentence”

[functional unit]

[meaning]

“intention”

“purpose”

“sense”

Figure 6: Overview of the interconnections in the base of Sw. mening “opinion”.

Uppgift “information” The noun uppgift has two well-entrenched meanings, namely “information” vs. “task”. The meaning “information” can be paraphrased as “a message containing a statement”, showing that uppgift is viewed as a container (cf. 2.2.). In addition, the verbal message per se is conceptualized as a bounded object, which can be given (12a), received (12b), and possessed (12c). 2.3

(12) a. uppgift skall lämnas om hur många dagar […] information shall leave.PASS about how many days […] “information should be left about how many days […]” b. att han fått uppgiften om yxhugget that he got information.the about cut.of.axe.the “that he got the information about the cut of the axe” c. Har du några uppgifter på det? have you any information.PLUR on that “Have you any information about that?” The range of uses of uppgift supports the idea that verbal messages are conceived of in terms of the conduit metaphor, shown in the examples below where “the content” of uppgift is underlined.

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(13) a. Framställningen bör innehålla uppgift om övriga report.the ought to.contain information about other omständigheter. circumstances “The report ought to contain information about other circumstances.” b. att uppgiften skall avse näringsidkarens registrerade firma that information.the shall concern manufacturer.the. GEN registered firm “that the information should concern the manufacturer’s registered firm” In some uses, however, only the content is focused — disregarding the embracing verbal form. For instance, this is the case when uppgift is combined with the verb stämma “to be correct”: (14) Stämmer uppgiften? is.correct information.the “Is the information correct?” Compare also the example in (15) where uppgift takes an attribute that modifies the truth of the verbal content: (15) tvivelaktiga / äkta uppgifter doubtful / genuine information.PLUR “doubtful / genuine information” In other uses the focus is shifted the other way around, so to speak, that is, to the form of the verbal information, disregarding the conceptual content. In (16) this has led to an almost concrete sense of the word uppgift. (16) De uppgifter som förr sparades på papper finns i dag […] those information. PLUR that previously saved.PASS on paper is. found today […] “The information that previously was saved on paper is found today…”

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Given the semantic description of uppgift — “a message containing a statement” — form and content are different facets of the meaning (see 2.1.). Thus the different uses focusing on either the form or the content — or referring to both — are contextual meaning variants, not different senses. Out of context, both aspects (form and content) are simultaneously referred to. Another meaning of uppgift, clearly distinct from “information”, is “task”. This meaning can be paraphrased as “a certain activity, with a certain 10 purpose, that is expected to be executed by a given person, organization etc.”. (17) a. Åklagarens uppgift är att försöka visa att […] prosecutor.the.GEN task is to try to.show that […] “The prosecutor’s task is to try to show that […]” b. Musikernas uppgift är den svåraste. musician.PLUR.the.GEN task is the most.difficult “The musician’s task is the most difficult one.” At first glance the two meanings of uppgift seem to be unrelated, but I will argue that there is a cognitively plausible way of connecting the two. Uppgift appeared with the meaning “information” in the 17th century, derived from the complex Swedish verb upgiva “to give away”, “inform”. In the 18th century the noun appears also with the meaning “task”, which is a translation loan from German Aufgabe with the same meaning (NEO). Common for both meanings, however, is the conception of an action chain (see 2.2.) underlying the semantics of the derivational verb base “to give away”. When used to mean “information” (Figure 7, below) the profiled entity — LM1 — is equal to the message transferred from TR to LM2. On the other hand, when used to mean “task” (Figure 8, below), LM1 is identical to “a piece of activity” that, also, is transferred (given) to LM2. The underlying schematic structure is identical, but the boundary of the profile is different. LM1 is still the entity focused on, but also LM2 is hosted within the profile — reflecting the fact that “task” refers to a goal-oriented action. The lexical content of LM1 is due to the different cognitive domains (bases) in which the noun uppgift is interpreted.

10

The definition is taken from the lexical database GLDB/SDB (see Järborg 1999).

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TR

LM1

LM2

“statement” COMMUNICATION Figure 7: The schematic structure of “information”.

TR

LM1

LM2

“task” ACTIVITY Figure 8: The schematic structure of “task”.

The representations in Figure 7 and 8, respectively, are assumed to be different specifications of the schematic structure underlying the verb upgiva “to give away”, of which the noun uppgift is derived. Summarizing, the meaning category of uppgift includes both the meaning “information” and the related but distinct (i.e. lexical) meaning “task”. The former meaning has contextual variants focusing on either the form of the verbal message or the content expressed. The meaning “task” is linked to “information” (and its variants) by means of a different construal of the profile, in turn related to different bases of the underlying schematic structure. Fråga “question” In Modern Swedish the central meaning of fråga is “question”, which according to SAOB is elaborated as “request for information about a state of affairs of which one is ignorant” (my translation). The complex meaning is de2.4

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rived from the verb fråga “to ask”, elaborated as “x asks for information from z”. The underlying schematic structure is thus the same as for uppgift. That is, the schematic structures of fråga and uppgift, respectively, are variants of the general action chain (see 2.2, 2.3.), where the TR transfers an entity (LM1) to a recipient (LM2). In Figure 9, illustrating the schematic structure of “question”, the profiled entity LM1 is the “question”, which is understood in relation to the cognitive domain STATE OF AFFAIRS. The entire action chain in turn is related to the domain COMMUNICATION .

TR

LM1

LM2

“question” COMMUNICATION Figure 9: The schematic structure of “question”.

What the meaning variants of fråga have in common is that they all select elements in either of the bases — STATE OF AFFAIRS vs. COMMUNICATION — and promote them to the profile. The most salient meaning variants of fråga are given below, numbered F1–F5. The central meaning is referred to as F. F1: “state of affairs of which one is ignorant”, which further develops into “problem, matters”, cf. the examples in (18): (18) a. frågan är hur vi ska göra med X question.the is how we shall do with X “the question is what to do with X” b. lösa en fråga to dissolve a question “to dissolve a question (i.e. a problem)” Meaning derivation: F > F1, as a result of promotion of elements in the base STATE OF AFFAIRS into the profile, combined with a conventionalized prag-

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matic inference. The inference is based — hypothetically — on the reasoning that a state of affairs of which one is ignorant easily may become problematic. F2: “state of affairs”; exemplified by: (19) ekonomiska, sociala, politiska frågor economical, social, political matters “economical, social, political matters” Meaning derivation: F1 > F2, as a result of generalization of meaning F1 (“state of affairs of which one is ignorant”). F3: “discussion; consideration (about a state of affairs)”, illustrated by an example from the 18th century: (20) Tå fråga är om Ledamots uteslutande böra altid Tolf Ledamöter vara närvarande. (SAOB) when consideration is about member.GEN exclusion ought always twelve members be present “When exclusion of a member is considered twelve members should always be present.” Meaning derivation: F > F3, as a result of selection of elements in the base COMMUNICATION. The meaning F3 relates to the reciprocal communication, of which the questioning is part. F4: “argument, debate, dispute” (18th–19th c.), exemplified by: (21) Det är bekant, hvad fråga varit emellan Philosophiska Sedelärare, om en enda princip för Sedeläran (SAOB) it is known what dispute been between philosophical moral. philosophers, about one single principle for moral.philosophy.the “It is known what dispute has been between philosophical moral philosophers, about one single principle for the moral philosophy” Meaning derivation: F3 > F4, as a result of pragmatic inference. The motivation for this assumption is that “discussion” often implies “disagreement”. F5: “doubt”, exemplified by: (22) Frågan är om fästingar verkligen orsakar hjärnhinne-inflammation. question.the is whether ticks really cause meningitis “The question is whether ticks really cause meningitis.”

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Meaning derivation: F > F5 as a result of selection of elements in the base STATE OF AFFAIRS, combined with pragmatic inference. The reasoning goes as follows: it is likely that one may be doubtful about a state of affairs of which one is ignorant. The developmental network of fråga is summarized in Figure 10. F

F1

F3

F2

F4

F5

Figure 10: The developmental network of fråga “question”.

As for the meaning variants F1, F3, F5 they can all be traced back to meaning F — through the process of selection of elements in either of the two bases of the semantic predication. The variant F2 in fact instantiates the meaning of an entire domain (STATE OF AFFAIRS), present in the variant F1 (and F). Summary and conclusion The present account of the semantics of four abstract nouns leads to the following — tentative — conclusions. Firstly, the semantic pole of a noun profiling a region may host a schematized relational structure. More precisely this schematic structure is what Talmy (2000) refers to as an ‘event frame’ with particular characteristics depending on the conceptual content of the noun. The event structure embedded in the profile is inherited from a related verb, either this verb is synchronically present (uppgift) or not (tillfälle). However, the embedded event is invariably construed as a whole unit, giving rise to a holistic conceptualization. Secondly, it has been demonstrated that processes generating semantic variation and change operate on the schematized structure underlying the lexical representation of a linguistic expression. Among these processes are ‘selection’ of elements of the profile vs. the base, and ‘change of setting’ of the entire event structure. ‘Selection’ amounts to the foregrounding of x, where x is either part of the profile or the base. In the latter case, the elements in the profile is backgrounded — that is, put in the base — and substituted by the new profiled element(s). ‘Generalization’ and ‘promotion’ are taken to be subcases of selection. The former amounts to a case where the foregrounding of x leads to the 3.

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elimination of other elements in the profile, leaving x as the only profiled content. The latter amounts to promotion of elements from the base to the profile. ‘Change of setting’ is assumed to be a general construal mechanism — a transformational device — giving rise to new meaning variants. The prerequisites of meaning variation of a lexeme are intrinsic in the underlying schematic structure as well as in the construal operations that may apply to that structure. Thus every instance of semantic change and variation — either resulting in polysemy or contextual meaning variation — is motivated by the possibilities of varying a given schematized structure by means of general and cognitively motivated construal operations. REFERENCES Croft, William. 1998. “The structure of events and the structure of language”. The New Psychology of Language: Cognitive and functional approaches to language structure ed. by Michael Tomasello, 67–92. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Croft, William, 2000. Explaining Language Change: An evolutionary approach. Harlow, Essex: Longman. Croft, William & Esther J. Wood. 2000: “Construal operations in linguistics and artificial intelligence.” Meaning and Cognition: A multidisciplinary approach ed. by Liliana Albertazzi, 51–78. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Cruse, D. Alan. 2003. “The construal of sense boundaries.” Revue de Sémantique et Pragmatique 12.101–119. Ekberg, Lena. 2001. “Transformations on the Path-schema and a minimal lexicon”. Studia Linguistica 55:3.301–323. Ekberg, Lena. 2004. “Transformations on image schemas and cross-linguistic polysemy”. Nordlund: Småskrifter från Institutionen för nordiska språk. 24.25–46. Hellquist, Elof. 1957 [1922]. Svensk etymologisk ordbok. (3rd ed.) Lund: Gleerups förlag. Järborg, Jerker. 1999. “Lexikon i konfrontation”. Research Reports from the Department of Swedish, Göteborg University. Göteborg. GU-ISS-99-6. (http://svenska.gu.se/~svedk/resrapp/konfront.pdf) Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, vol. 1: Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Langacker, Ronald W. 1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, vol. 2: Descriptive Application. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. NEO = Nationalencyklopedins ordbok. 1996. Språkdata, Göteborg & Bra Böcker, Höganäs. ODEE = C. T. Onions, ed. 1966. The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Paradis, Carita. 2003. “Where does metonymy stop? Senses, facets and active zones”. The Department of English in Lund: Working Papers in Linguistics 3.77–91. (Also in Metaphor and Symbol 19:4.245–264.) Paradis, Carita. 2005. “Ontologies and and construals in lexical semantics.” Axiomathes 15.541–573. Reddy, Michael. 1979. “The conduit metaphor”. Metaphor and Thought ed. by Andrew Ortony, 284–324. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. SAOB = Ordbok över svenska språket utgiven av Svenska Akademien. 1889–. Lund. Schmid, Hans-Jörg. 2000. English Abstract Nouns as Conceptual Shells: From corpus to cognition. (= Topics in English Linguistics, 34.) Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Söderwall, K. F. 1884–1918. Ordbok öfwer Svenska Medeltidsspråket. Lund. Talmy, Leonard. 2000. Toward a Cognitive Semantics, 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

CLITIC PLACEMENT IN OLD AND MODERN SPANISH A DYNAMIC ACCOUNT

MIRIAM BOUZOUITA & RUTH KEMPSON Kings College, London Introduction This paper addresses clitic placement in Old Spanish (12th century–mid 15th century) in finite main clause environments with the goal of using Dynamic Syntax (DS; Kempson & al. 2001; Cann & al. 2005) to explore a diachronic account of the differences found between the clitic distribution in Old Spanish (OSp) and Modern Spanish (MSp). The aim of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, we provide a synchronic account for both Old and Modern Spanish clitics. In addition, we model the diachronic changes that took place, which can be represented as progressive lexical simplifications. 1.

Clitic placement in Old Spanish Unlike MSp, OSp clitics occur both preverbally (proclisis) and postverbally (enclisis). Preverbal clitics need not be adjacent to the verb, a phenomenon called ‘interpolation’. Further, unlike MSp, no clitic occurs first in a sentence. This restriction on sentence-initial clitics is known as the ToblerMussafia law. 2.

Strict proclisis constructions: Negation, wh-questions and focus There are only three kinds of root clauses in which OSp clitics continuously occur in a proclitic position throughout the whole period between the 12th and the 16th century, namely main clauses with negation, wh-questions, and construals containing a left-dislocated focused object NP which is not coreferential with the clitic (Nieuwenhuijsen 1999; Granberg 1988:131–136 inter alia):1 2.1

1

For each OSp example we will provide the century from which it comes between brackets. For visual clarity, the clitic will be in bold.

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(1)

Ove famne e nom diestes a comer had-I hunger and not-CL gave-you to eat “I was hungry and you did not feed me.” (XIII; Granberg 1988: 131)

(2)

Qui los podrie contar? who CL could-he count “Who could count them?” (XIII; Fontana 1993:270)

(3)

A to linnaje la daré to your lineage CL give-will-I “I will give it to your lineage.” (XIII; Granberg 1988:135)

2.1.1 Strict enclisis constructions: Verb-initial and vocative clauses. The root clause environments in which clitics appear in enclisis in the 13th century are verb-initial clauses and clauses commencing with a vocative (Nieuwenhuijsen 2 1999; Granberg 1988:152–155, inter alia). (4)

Respondiol don Pelayo en guisa […] answered-he-CL don Pelayo in this-way “Don Pelayo responded him […].” (XIII; Fontana 1996:41)

(5)

Amigos, ruegouos por Dios […] friends, beg-I-CL for God “Friends, I beg you for God’s sake […].” (XIII; Granberg 1988: 152)

As concerns the shift from enclisis to proclisis, which was taking place in the Middle Ages, the earliest examples of sentence-initial clitics are found in the 15th century (1438) and they occur in direct style dialogue, which indicates that, in colloquial language, sentence-initial clitics may have been widely used.3 As with verb-initial main clauses, paratactic root clauses commencing 2

Proclisis is found in clauses commencing with a vocative if the vocative element is preceded by an adverb that normally is followed by a preverbal clitic such as, for example agora “now”. Since we decided to limit the scope of this account by excluding adverbs, these vocative proclitic examples have not been taken into account. In this preliminary account, coordination is also excluded. 3 As Granberg (1988:246) noted, it is difficult to determine when exactly this shift started taking place on basis of written corpora, due to the existence of prescriptive rules:

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with a verb seem to admit proclitic object clitics in the 16th century. The same applies for clauses commencing with a vocative expression. Pro-/enclitic constructions: Clitic left-dislocation and preverbal subjects In some root environments, OSp clitics oscillate between pro- and enclisis, namely in Clitic Left-Dislocation structures (CLLD) and in clauses containing an expressed preverbal subject. As concerns the CLLD constructions, in the 13th and 14th c., object clitics occur predominantly in post-verbal positions unless the dislocated NP contains a quantifier such as todos “all” or am(b)os “both” (Rivero 1986; Ramsden 1963:85–86; Granberg 1988:146–152): 2.2

(6)

E estas pazesi traxolasi marutas […] and these peaces brought-he-CL Marutas “And Marutas brought this peace […].” (XIII; Fontana 1993:266)

(7)

Con el su manto a amasi lasi cubrió with the his mantle to both CL covered-he “He covered both with his mantle.” (XIII; Ramsden 1963:86)

Aside from the CLLD constructions involving todos/ambos, the earliest cases in which CLLD occurs with proclitic object clitics are found in the 15th c. With respect to clitic behavior after preverbal subjects, Granberg (1988: 195–227) showed that the position of the OSp clitic is determined by the presence or absence of emphatic stress on the subject, as in Modern Galician: clitics occur postverbally unless the subject is highlighted by emphatic stress.4 (8)

E yo and I

donna doña

Maria Maria

que uendi who sold-I

la the

sobre above

dicha eredad la otorgo […] spoken inheritance CL confer_on-I “And I, doña Maria who sold the above mentioned inheritance confer it on […].” (XIII; Granberg 1988:205) “You cannot say […] that what some careless people or foreigners say, commencing their discourse with those enclitics like in: te vas? […] or se va, which is intolerable, but the proper use is vaste?, voime, vase, vanse; that all are warned with this […]. The rule says that if the verb introduced the discourse, the pronouns are postponed to it […].” (Our translation from Correas 1626 apud Granberg 1988:246) 4 Example (8), taken from a legal document, contains an oath while (9) proceeds from a document that recounts a series of events.

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(9)

el arçipreste fiçolo assi the archpriest did-he-CL like-this “The archpriest did it like this.” (XIII; Granberg 1988:209)

In these construals as well, there is a shift from enclisis to proclisis starting in the 14th century. Dynamic Syntax analysis In this section we will give a DS analysis for OSp object clitics. We will also outline a possible analysis for Renaissance Spanish (RSp) and sketch an account of the OSp–RSp shift. 3.

A brief introduction to Dynamic Syntax The novelty of DS is that it is a grammar formalism that reflects the dynamics of parsing. According to DS, the parsing of a natural language string is a monotonic tree growth process defined over the left-to-right sequence of the words, where the tree to be established as the overall goal represents one possible interpretation of that string and has some logical form of type t (Ty(t)) decorating its root node. This overall goal — represented as ?Ty(t) — of establishing a propositional formula as interpretation at the root node of a tree, e.g. Fo(Sneeze(Ruth))) as interpretation for Ruth sneezes, will be achieved through the annotations of the nodes of the tree, each node being decorated with a subterm of the formula. The tree is arrived at by imposing additional subgoals such as ?Ty(e  t) for a predicate, ?Ty(e) for an individual-denoting expression, and then using the words in the string in order to create the appropriate decorations. Transitions from one partial tree to another are licensed by the interaction of lexical, computational and pragmatic rules. At any interim stage, the tree will be in some way not fully specified. The primary tools required for this account of clitics are the concepts of ‘underspecified formula’ value, ‘unfixed node’, and ‘linked structure’. Underspecified formula values are projected from pronouns, which are lexically defined as providing a metavariable place-holding device instead of a full content expression. This placeholder is then assigned a value either from context or during the construction process. 3.1

3.1.1 Building unfixed nodes from the left periphery. Unfixed nodes are used to represent positional underspecification at an early stage of the parsing process, as the structural analogue of pronoun construal: the structural relation of the unfixed node to the other nodes in the tree structure is not known at the point at which the left-peripheral expression is parsed. This analysis is used to

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replace accounts of long-distance dependency and other movement phenomena: the left-peripheral position marks the introduction of the appropriate term into the structure albeit at an unfixed node, the position of the ‘trace’ in movement accounts is the point in the left-right interpretation process at which the contribution of the unfixed node is determined. The introduction of an unfixed node is ensured by the ‘*Adjunction’ rule which introduces a node that is characterized as being dominated by a node a (<↑ *>Tn(a)) and requiring a fixed tree node position (? xTn(x)). This new node is required to be decorated by an argument node (marked ?Ty(e)).5 Sentences containing left-dislocated items such as Mary, John likes will be analyzed in these terms as in Figure 1, which represents the point after the verb has been processed:

Figure 1: Parsing Mary, John likes.

With the pointer at the open object node which the lexical actions of the verb have introduced, there remain some outstanding requirements: a requirement for a fixed tree node position (?xTn(x)) on the unfixed node and a requirement for a construal of type e (?Ty(e)) on the object node. These two requirements can be solved simultaneously by unifying the not yet annotated object node and the unfixed node through a process called ‘Merge’. Once all terminal nodes are decorated, rules for evaluating the tree provide annotations for nonterminal nodes, leading to a tree that is decorated at the top node with the formula value Fo(Like(Mary)(John)) of type t (Ty(t)). 3.1.2 Building linked structures from the left periphery. Another primary tool required for DS is the concept of ‘linked structures’. These structures involve the development of two separate trees connected by a ‘link relation’, with a requirement for a shared term in each of the two trees. The rule of ‘Link Ad5

<↑*>Tn(a) means, by definition, “somewhere dominating the current node is a tree node with label a”. Ty(e) picks out individual-denoting expressions. In any partial node, there is a pointer ◊indicating the node currently being developed.

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junction’ introduces a new tree across a ‘link relation’ from a head node in some partial tree structure to a new tree with requirement ?Ty(t).6 It will also impose a requirement on the local tree for a copy of the head node formula α somewhere within the newly introduced tree, forcing an anaphoric link between the two structures. This concept of ‘linked structure’ is used for relative clauses and topic constructions. In the case of relative clauses, it is, in English, the relative pronoun which provides the required copy. Figure 2 shows the partial tree for the construal of a relative clause at the point at which the relative pronoun who has been uttered and parsed.

Figure 2: Parsing Mary, who in Mary, who smokes, is sick.

Note that in this example the link relation is built from the node annotated with formula Fo(Mary) to a new tree, the top node of which is connected to an unfixed node, introduced by the process of *Adjunction. The parsing of the relative pronoun ensures a flow of information between the two trees and will therefore fulfill the requirement for a copy of the head formula Fo(Mary) (?<↓*>Fo(Mary)) since it constitutes an anaphoric device. In the case of topic structures, the pronoun has to provide the copy, as in Ruth Kempson, she talks too fast. 3.1.3 Building unfixed nodes and linked structures from the right periphery. Both these strategies of building paired linked structures and introducing unfixed nodes may also be applied in the later stages of processing an utterance. Building linked structures at the right periphery is used to model the ‘background topic’ effect in sentences such as She talks too fast, Ruth Kempson. In these construals, the pronoun, having lexically introduced a place-holding metavariable as a decoration on the subject node, is identified contextually. Then the subsequent full NP is interpreted as providing the decoration for a separate linked tree. This formula and the metavariable already identified are 6

The modal operator and its inverse describe this relation.

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interpreted as coreferential, thus ensuring that the paired linked structures share a term. The use of unfixed nodes at a late stage of the interpretation process can be illustrated by English expletive pronouns, as in It is likely that I am wrong. In these construals, the pronoun introduces a place-holding device (the lexically provided metavariable). This is replaced during the construction process by the rule of Merge, which applies after the sequence I am wrong has been used to decorate an unfixed node, unifying that propositional structure with the subject node, thereby updating the metavariable. The updating of the unfixed node within the structure does not itself require the presence of an anaphoric device, but the interaction of Merge, and updating a metavariable is not precluded, in this case allowing the replacement of that metavariable with structure. The only difference between a regular anaphoric device and the expletive pronoun is that the metavariable which the latter projects can be replaced by such tree-structure rather than merely some formula value. This difference is secured by presuming that the substitution of the metavariable projected by regular anaphoric expressions must be a terminal node in the resultant tree (Cann & al. 2005). Since this is a minor difference in lexical specification, we can model the development of anaphoric expressions into expletive devices by simple loss of this restriction. 3.2 A Dynamic Syntax account of Old Spanish clitics 3.2.1 Proclisis triggers: Unfixed nodes. The main claim about proclisis in OSp, we propose, is that if a clitic follows an expression interpreted as decorating a left-peripheral unfixed node, the clitic will appear in proclisis. 7 Given the independent motivation for unfixed nodes in DS analyses, this claim leads us to expect two environments in particular as inducing strict proclisis: (i) whquestions and (ii) left-dislocated focused NP constructions.8 3.2.1.1 Wh-questions. English wh-questions in which the wh-expression appears sentence-initially as in Who did Bill see?, are modeled in DS as projecting a metavariable WH that annotates an unfixed node (Kempson & al. 2001:150–189). As in Mary, John likes, the unfixed node will merge with the object node. OSp wh-questions are very similar to English ones:

7

This account is developed in detail in Bouzouita (2002, 2005). Negation also induces proclisis. We will not provide a detailed analysis for negation since this issue has not been addressed yet in the DS framework. For now, we will use the feature [NEG +] to indicate the presence of a negation operator in a clause. 8

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(10) ¿Qué me darás? what CL give-will-you “What will you give me?” (XIII; Granberg 1988:132) (11) Qui los podrie contar? who CL could-he count “Who could count them?” (XIII; Fontana 1993:270) Example (10) contains a wh-element which functions as an object while the wh-expression in (11) is a subject. Since this object wh-expression projects a left-dislocated element, it will annotate an unfixed node, as in English. Initial wh-elements that function as subjects will also decorate unfixed nodes in OSp, due to the fact that, unlike English, OSp is a subject pro-drop language which can be represented formally in DS by letting expressed subjects annotate either unfixed nodes or linked structures while the parsing of the verb will project the full predicate-argument structure. Given the analysis of wh-initial questions as decorating an unfixed node, proclisis seems to be triggered by the presence in the tree of a left-peripheral unfixed node. Accordingly, we will define the preverbal clitic as itself introducing lexically a locally unfixed node, in addition to an already present unfixed node.

Figure 3: Clitics decorating a locally unfixed node.

As shown in Figure 3, the object metavariable (Fo(U)) from the clitic in (11) decorates the locally unfixed node and will unify with the object node that has been introduced by the parsing of the verb.9 The subject metavariable (Fo(WH)), on the other hand, will merge with the subject node.

9

This tree display ignores the auxiliary podrie for simplicity.

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3.2.1.2 Focused NP constructions. OSp sentences containing leftdislocated focused NPs will be analyzed in the same way as English focus constructions, as in Mary, John likes (see Figure 1). There we saw that *Adjunction and Merge were used to model so-called ‘focus movement’. Likewise, OSp focused NPs will decorate unfixed nodes which will unify with the direct or indirect object node projected by the verb. These phenomena then also corroborate the hypothesis that OSp clitics occur preverbally when preceded 10 by a left-peripheral expression taken to decorate an unfixed node. 3.2.2 Enclisis triggers. Unlike the proclisis case, enclitic pronouns need no special statement: like postverbal object NPs, they decorate a fixed object node. We will look at (i) verb-initial root clauses, and (ii) main clauses introduced by vocative phrases. 3.2.2.1 Verb-initial root clauses. In the 13th c., the Vfinite –CL configuration is the predominant one for root clauses. Since in this configuration the clitics appear in the position in which full NPs usually occur, we propose that these OSp clitics decorate in the tree the fixed object node on which the pointer has been left and which has been introduced lexically by the verb. As regards paratactic main clauses commencing with a verb, we consider them as distinct trees of type t. In these cases we expect that the clitic will appear in enclisis (as long as there is no negation marker) since prior to parsing the verb, the tree is by definition empty and so will not have an unfixed node, which is the trigger for proclisis. 3.2.2.2 Root clauses commencing with vocatives. In our view, main clauses commencing with vocative phrases can be analyzed, like CLLD structures, as instances of linked structures:11 (12) Amigosi,ruegouosi por Dios […] friends, beg-I-CL for God “Friends, I beg you for God’s sake […].” (XIII; Granberg 1988: 152)

10

Further evidence for this account is strict proclisis in OSp relative clauses. See Section 2.1.2 for an account of English relative pronouns as decorating an unfixed node. 11 Although the vocative expression and the clitic are coreferential in example (12), this is not always the case. Such instances are then analyzed as linked structures which do not impose a requirement for a copy of the head node formula.

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Recall the concept of linked structures. Topic constructions are analyzed as a pair of linked trees: the left-peripheral NP projects a tree of type e (with a root node annotated by a formula α) which is linked to the top node of another tree of type t, the development of which is constrained by the requirement for the occurrence of the formula αsomewhere in this tree. We propose, that is, the same analysis for OSp CLLD structures and the vocative cases involving coreferential clitics. With respect to OSp clitic placement, the discussed vocative constructions and verb-initial root clauses both corroborate indirectly the hypothesis that proclisis takes place after any expression that induces the construction of a left-peripheral unfixed node since these construals do not involve unfixed nodes as tools for their account and, as expected on this analysis, are expressed using postverbal clitics. 3.2.3 The mixed situation: Pro- and enclisis triggers. The mixed situation is displayed by CLLD structures and preverbal subjects. Again the distribution is as the DS analysis would lead us to expect. 3.2.3.1 Clitic left-dislocations. The account so far proposed treats OSp CLLD constructions as a pair of linked structures (see (6)). This analysis, however, does not apply for the CLLD construals involving a quantifier such as todos “all” or am(b)os “both” (see (7)). In our view, these left-dislocated quantifiers are emphasized and thus, need to be analyzed as decorating unfixed nodes which will unify with the coreferential metavariable associated with the clitic through the application of Merge. Consequently, the OSp clitics arise in proclisis. 3.2.3.2 Expressed preverbal subjects. This assumption leads us to expect with Granberg (1988:195–227) that proclisis arises when the expressed preverbal subject is emphasized while enclisis appears when the stress lies on the verb. We have already seen that subject NPs in subject pro-drop languages can either decorate a linked structure or an unfixed node. The difference from English is that no pronoun will be required to establish the link-required copy, as it is the verb and its lexical specification that will ensure the presence in the tree of a metavariable in subject position, exactly as though a morphologically expressed pronoun were present. This metavariable will duly be replaced by a term which is identical to whatever decorates the linked structure, fulfilling its requirement for a shared term. So we expect subject NPs to be able to be construed as either focused or as a topic-presenting structure without any explicit anaphoric devices being present. The only reflex of this distinction in

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construal will be the positioning of the object clitics, these being proclitic in the focused case, enclitic otherwise. The mixed effect is thus expected. 3.2.4 Old Spanish clitics 3.2.4.1 Lexical entry. In the light of the general proclisis pattern of occurring immediately after any left-peripheral expression that induces the construction of an unfixed node, we propose the following lexical entry for OSp clitic lo as illustrative of the general pattern. See figure 4.

Figure 4: Lexical entry for OSp accusative clitic.

This lexical entry makes pro- and enclisis complementary since it not only induces the construction of an unfixed node to be decorated with a metavariable in the presence of either a negative marker or an already constructed unfixed node but it also explicitly states that enclitic positions in those environments are ungrammatical. The trigger condition <↑ >T is a specification ensuring that this use of the clitic only decorates a fixed node in a structure (one with an immediately dominating node). Notice how nothing additional needs to be said to ensure the Tobler-Mussafia law, which becomes in this account epiphenomenal. In a partial structure with only a predicate (as provided by the verb), 12 enclisis will be obligatory. 12

Unlike other accounts (e.g. Rivero 1986), this analysis does not reduce the Tobler-Mussafia effect to a purely phonological phenomenon.

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3.2.4.2 Interpolation and multiple *Adjunction. In order to account for the interpolation cases, we apparently need multiple applications of the process of *Adjunction. Consider the following example of double interpolation: (13) Qui lo fer non quisiesse […] who CL do not wanted-he “Who were to refuse to do it […].” (XIII; Sánchez Lancis 1992: 327) Qui, the wh-element, decorates an unfixed node introduced by *Adjunction and, thus, triggers proclisis. Given the presence of this unfixed node, the clitic also annotates an unfixed node but this second unfixed node is induced by the lexical actions of the clitic. However, this unfixed node is in turn apparently followed by the construction of another unfixed node which the left-dislocated infinitive fer “do” will decorate, and which is also introduced computationally by *Adjunction. 13 Sketch for Renaissance clitics As mentioned earlier, during the Middle Ages a shift from enclisis towards proclisis took place and seems to have been almost completed at the beginning of the 16th century. Basically, all the OSp cases in which enclisis appeared during the Middle Ages acquired the possibility of occurring in proclisis as well. In other words, the restrictions that were imposed on the occurrence of proclitic pronouns in the 13th century no longer applied in the 16th century. Notice how, in the following lexical entry (cf., Figure 5), these subconditions for proclisis — which were present in the lexical entry for OSp clitics — are dropped, hence generalizing proclisis. Nonetheless, the restrictions for enclisis did not vanish. The diachronic shift from enclisis towards proclisis is thus modeled in this account as the simplification of the lexical characterization of the clitic. 14 However, it remains to be seen what triggered these lexical simplifications. 3.3

13

These data are problematic for Cann & al. (2005) who claim that only one node within a tree can be unfixed at any one stage in the construction process. However, they propose a range of types of structural underspecification, and it remains possible that (13) can be analyzed as involving more than one type of Adjunction operation. See Bouzouita (2005, forthcoming) for an account along these lines. 14 See Bouzouita (2005) where different hypotheses are explored.

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Figure 5: Lexical entry for RSp accusative clitic.

3.4 A Dynamic Syntax account of Modern Spanish clitics 3.4.1 Modern Spanish: Standard Spanish data. In Modern (Standard) Spanish (MSp), only proclisis has survived the passage of time. (14) Lo

vi, a Juan saw-I to Juan “I saw Juan.” CL

vi saw-I “I saw him.”

(15) *(Lo) CL

(16) Le

a él to him

di el libro gave-I the book “I gave Juan the book.” CL

a Juan to Juan

As regards accusative clitic doubling, MSp can double full NPs, if an intonational break precedes the full NP.15 There is a specificity restriction: only refer16 entially construed NPs are allowed. However, doubling with overt, so-called strong pronouns él/ella, is obligatory. With the dative counterpart, there is e15

In this MSp account, we have omitted CLLD structures, since the main focus of this paper is the diachronic change in clitic placement in finite main clauses. 16 Indefinites are also allowed, but, for simplicity, we shall take these here to be name-like under this interpretation (Fodor & Sag 1982), though see Kempson & Meyer-Viol (2004).

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qually obligatory doubling with strong pronouns, but with full NP clitic doubling, there is no specificity restriction and no requirement for an intonational break. 3.4.2 Lexical entries for Modern Spanish. The analysis we propose for MSp clitics involves a further lexical simplification: compared to RSp, the enclisis trigger is lost. Therefore, in MSp, clitics decorate an unfixed node irrespective of whether any other (unfixed) node has already been introduced, as in RSp.

Figure 6: Lexical entries for MSp accusative and dative clitic.

Modeling the dative clitic pronoun as lacking one restriction retained by the accusative clitic can bring out the distinction between dative and accusative. The accusative clitic remains a full pronoun, only decorating a node in the tree that is terminal.17 All instances of clitic doubling must therefore involve a pair of linked trees, linked only through the sharing of a term, a sharing which is secured through the presence of the pronoun. The specificity restriction follows, as quantifiers cannot bind across from one tree structure to another, so not across linked trees. The dative, on the other hand, lacks this terminal node restriction. This allows it to decorate an unfixed node which can then unify with any other node that may get introduced into the structure, whatever the complexity of the structure with which it unifies.18 So, for example, in a derivation such as (16) in which the clitic pronoun precedes the verb and the full doubled NP follows it, the clitic will be taken to decorate an unfixed node which then merges with the indirect-argument node projected by the verb, and this node may then unify with some node introduced by late application of 17

It remains to be seen whether this difference is due to a diachronic change or whether it stems from some inherent difference between the accusative and dative case, the dative case signaling a semantic relation whose status as adjunct or argument is unclear. 18 In this paper, names have been analyzed as semantically simple terms. In a fuller account, these would be analyzed as uniquely referring terms with internal structure.

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*Adjunction. Hence the lack of any necessity of an intonational break.19 It is notable that on this analysis, there is no need to invoke ambiguity between two uses of the dative clitic as a regular anaphoric expression on the one hand and some quasi-agreement device on the other, since the analysis of the dative clitic as lacking a terminal node restriction, immediately predicts its broader distribution than the accusative clitic which retains such a restriction. The idiosyncrasy of the obligatory doubling with a strong pronoun across all dialects is captured by analyzing these strong pronouns as lexically defined only to decorate a linked structure or an unfixed node, in effect encoding their use for specialized pragmatic effects. Despite appearances, they never decorate a node as introduced into the structure through lexical specification by the verb. Hence the obligatory presence of the clitic, itself decorating an unfixed node, but merging with the appropriate argument node of the verb’s specification, and expressing the basis for the shared-term restriction imposed by the link relation. Conclusion Though this short sketch is no more than the beginning of an account of clitics, the general advantage of the dynamic perspective of DS is apparent. With just three concepts of tree growth, all independently motivated, we have provided a principled account of the heterogeneous positioning of OSp clitics; and thus, unlike other accounts, we do not have to invoke additional machinery or special projections. Furthermore, we outlined an account of the diachronic change in clitic placement in finite main clause environments as a process of lexical simplification, namely the reduction of complexity of possible triggers, which leads to a contracted distribution, since enclisis is considered ungrammatical in MSp. The difference between the MSp accusative and dative clitic has been captured by the absence of a terminal node restriction for the dative clitic, which is the basis of its more generalized distribution in clitic doubling. This analysis signally does not necessitate the invocation of ambiguity in the clitic itself. 4.

19

In Río de la Plata Spanish (Uruguay/Argentina), the accusative clitic is also losing this terminal node restriction, no longer requiring any intonational break between the string containing the clitic pronoun and that of the doubled NP, but nevertheless retaining a specificity restriction (Suñer 1988).

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REFERENCES Bouzouita, Miriam. 2002. Clitic Placement in Old and Modern Spanish: A dynamic account. MSc Dissertation, King’s College London. Bouzouita, Miriam. 2005. “Variation and change in Spanish clitic placement: From Medieval to Renaissance Spanish”. Paper presented at the Dynamic Syntax Workshop, King’s College London, May 2005. Bouzouita, Miriam. Forthcoming. “Variation and change in Spanish clitic placement”. Papers in Linguistics of the University of Manchester Proceedings of the 14th Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics, 4th March 2005, The University of Manchester ed. by Nuria Yañez-Bouza. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Cann, Ronnie, Ruth Kempson & Lutz Marten. 2005. The Dynamics of Language. Oxford: Elsevier. Fodor, Janet Dean & Ivan A. Sag. 1982. “Referential and quantificational indefinites”. Linguistics and Philosophy 5.355–398. Fontana, Josep M. 1993. Phrase Structure and the Syntax of Clitics in the History of Spanish. PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. (http:// repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI9331867/.) Fontana, Josep M. 1996. “Phonology and syntax in the interpretation of the Tobler-Mussafia Law”. Approaching Second: Second position clitics and related phenomena ed. by Aaron L. Halpern & Arnold M. Zwicky, 41–83. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI. Granberg, Robert Arthur. 1988. Object Pronoun Position in Medieval and Early Modern Spanish. PhD Dissertation, University of California Los Angeles. Ann Arbor, Mich.: United Microfilms International. Kempson, Ruth, Wilfried Meyer-Viol & Dov Gabbay. 2001. Dynamic Syntax: The flow of Language Understanding. Oxford: Blackwell. Kempson, Ruth & Wilfried Meyer-Viol. 2004. “Indefinites and scope choice”. Descriptions and Beyond ed. by Marga Reimer & Anne Bezuidenhout, 558–84. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nieuwenhuijsen, Dorien. 1999. “Cambios en la colocación de los pronombres átonos en la historia del español”. (= Estudios de Lingüística Española, 5.) ISSN: 1139-8736, Depósito Legal: B-3919s8-99. (http://elies.rediris.es/ elies5/.) Ramsden, Herbert. 1963. Weak-pronoun Position in the Early Romance Languages. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Rivero, María Luisa. 1986. “La tipología de los pronombres átonos en el español medieval y el español actual”. Anuario de Lingüística Hispánica 2.197–220. Sánchez Lancis, Carlos. 1992. “La interpolación de complementos entre el pronombre personal átono y el verbo en español medieval”. XXe Congrès International de Linguistique et Philologie Romanes, Zurich, 6–11 April 1992 ed. by Gerold Hilty, vol. II, 324–334. Tübingen: Franke Verlag. Suñer, Margarita. 1988. “The role of agreement in clitic doubled constructions”. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 6.391–434.

GRAMMATICALISATION AS CONTENT REANALYSIS THE MODAL CHARACTER OF THE DANISH S-PASSIVE

LARS HELTOFT Roskilde University Introduction The history of the inflectional passives of the Scandinavian languages represents a particularly interesting chain of grammaticalisation processes, from prehistoric times to around 1600. The more recent changes, undergone particularly by Danish, do not lend themselves to analyses along the lines of the traditional models of grammaticalisation (as summarised in e.g. Hopper & Traugott 1993, Heine, Claudi, & Hünnemeyer 1991), nor can they be accounted for within antistructuralist models (see for instance Bybee, Pagliuca & Perkins 1993). Rather, they will call for quite different, especially structural models that include ‘content reanalysis’ as a central factor. The changes studied in the present contribution do not represent a semantic bleaching process, but a process that adds more polysemy to a morphological form and thereupon reinterprets it as a mood, in addition to its being a member of the category of voice. Nor does this process involve any other changes at the level of expression than analogical ones and simple generalisations. The first part of this development is a classical reinterpretation of a lexical category, the reflexive pronoun, as an inflectional category. Let us restrict ourselves to the 3rd person of the reflexive pronoun, Germanic *sik, Gothic sik, OIcel. sik, as in Old Icelandic geyma sik “guard oneself, hide oneself” > geymask (i.e. geyma-sk), an example of the so-called middle or mediopassive inflectional form of Old Scandinavian verbs. In East Norse, the mediopassive endings reduced to -s and were even more tightly grammaticalised in passives, e.g. Swedish hittas (hitta-s) “be found”, dödas (döda-s) “be killed”, and skjutas (skjuta-s) “be shot”. The second part of the development, the one that I shall focus on in this contribution, is a process that results in a split between Danish and Swedish with respect to the passive. Danish undergoes a thorough restructuring, a semantic reorganisation of already existing inflectional paradigms. 1.

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The classical model of grammaticalisation will not provide us with an adequate description of this change since the change makes use of already existing inflectional expression material and reorganises it semantically. Rather, the change calls for a model the core of which is ‘content reanalysis’. Many content reanalyses do follow the lines sketched in the classical model, but others certainly do not. What is common to all processes that lead to grammatical status, or lead to changes in grammatical status, is content change and thereby paradigmatic change (cf. Heltoft 1996, Heltoft & al. 2005). An understanding of grammatical change that is adequate also to the facts scrutinised in the present case study is the one proposed in Andersen (2001a). However, as far as I can judge, Andersen’s specific typology of morphological change (cf. Andersen 1980) does not offer any parallels to the present type of content reorganisation. The results of the changes: The Danish and the Swedish s-forms To understand the development of the inflectional passive in -s in Danish we shall need an overview of the differences between Danish and Swedish in this respect. Danish shows a particularly interesting reanalysis of the s-passive that added functions of mood to this form. Example (1) illustrates this modal character of the ‘s-mood’: 2.

(1)

For Paludan-Müller er der ingen tvivl. Anne Meinstrup var en gammel, stiv, hovmodig kvinde uden situationsfornemmelse. Hun kæftede op og var derved selv skyld i ”To Paludan-Müller’s mind there is no doubt. A.M. was an old, stubborn, haughty woman with no sense of situation. She shot her mouth off and was therefore herself the reason at hun blev myrdet. why she become.PAST murder.PERF.PTC why she was murdered.” Grev Christoffer var helt uden skyld. I hans fremstilling “Duke Christoffer had no guilt at all. In his exposition myrdes Fru Anne Meinstrup murder.PRES.S -MOOD Lady A.M. Lady A. M. is murdered a second time.”

for anden gang. a second time

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Hendes ry som agtværdig kvinde hugges Her reputation as an honourable woman cut.PRES.S -MOOD lige så meget sønder, som hendes legeme to pieces just as much as her body

blev det become.PAST it

den dag på tinget i Ringsted. that day at the thing in R. “Her reputation as an honourable woman is just as much cut to pieces as her body was that day at the thing in Ringsted.” (Saxo 4, 1998:37) We shall need to explicate a number of subtle distinctions here. In the above text the present tense of the s-passive is used to mark a sentence as a p