In contrast to scholars and signers in the nineteenth century, William Stokoe conceived of American Sign Language (ASL) as a unique linguistic tradition with roots in nineteenth-century
, a ...conception that is apparent in his earliest scholarship on ASL. Stokoe thus contributed to the theoretical foundations upon which the field of sign language historical linguistics would later develop. This review focuses on the development of sign language historical linguistics since Stokoe, including the field's significant progress and the theoretical and methodological problems that it still faces. The review examines the field's development through the lens of two related problems pertaining to how we understand sign language relationships and to our understanding of cognacy, as the term pertains to signs. It is suggested that the theoretical notions underlying these terms do not straightforwardly map onto the historical development of many sign languages. Recent approaches in sign language historical linguistics are highlighted and future directions for research are suggested to address the problems discussed in this review.
In this article, we analyze the emergence of discursive markers note that and go there in specific contexts in which the linking of meaning and form between the subparts constitutes a unit – a ...microconstruction – from the perspective of the Grammar of Constructions (TRAUGOTT; TROUSDALE, 2013). Based on the theoretical support of Use-Centered Functional Linguistics, we are interested in examining the patterns of use of these microconstructions, aiming to detect the levels of semantic-syntactic integration relating them to the contexts in which they are inserted. We are also interested in examining the contexts that motivate the emergence of new uses that articulate the beliefs and positions of text producers. To capture this emergence, we methodologically chose to compare uses in source contexts and in isolation contexts (DIEWALD, 2006), computing the types of textual sequences in which new uses tend to settle. Finally, in the analyses, we identified the contribution of the constructional approach to grammar in giving a holistic treatment to the data.
This article investigates semantic prosody in a diachronic perspective. Although prosodies have been shown to change over time, there is no consensus regarding the source of such changes. The present ...study explores this further through a corpus study of the development of the lemmas
,
and
from the late 15th century to the late 20th century, drawing on material from Early English Books Online, the Corpus of Late Modern English Texts and the British National Corpus. The results of the study show that prosodic changes coincide with the emergence of new senses and indicate that these processes are related to and possibly caused by semantic transfer induced by persistent prosodies over time.
Although personality-related factors play a crucial role in sociolinguistics as conceivable sources of language variation and change, there is insufficient quantitative evidence on such ...relationships. Using a large and balanced sample (n = 1000), this study investigated effects of personality traits on the use of a Swiss German plural marker in its early stages of diffusion. Besides age and region, conscientiousness and extraversion emerged as the most important predictors: less conscientious and, to a certain extent, more extraverted speakers were more likely to contribute to the diffusion of the morphological innovations under investigation. Based on our results, we argue that less conscientious speakers might monitor their own speech and that of others less closely, thus adopting innovations earlier, whereas extraverted speakers may act as successful brokers in transmitting innovations from one social group to another.
Abstract Beck et al. (2009) and much follow-up research (including Bochnak 2015; Bowler 2016; Deal and Hohaus 2019) argue that languages systematically differ in the semantics of gradable predicates ...like tall and old , with some languages adopting a vague, delineation-based semantics and others adopting a relational, degree-based semantics. Beck et al. (2009) capture this point of variation in the so-called Degree Semantics Parameter. Based on elicitation and corpus data, we suggest here that the grammar of Samoan (Austronesian, Oceanic; Independent State of Samoa, American Samoa) has recently undergone a change from one parameter setting to the other, triggered by the addition of a degree-based comparative operator to the functional lexicon of the language. This operator developed through lexical and syntactic re-analysis from a directional particle. In Samoan, the grammar of degree is thus modelled after the grammar of another scalar domain, directed motion in space, a strategy that the typological literature suggests is cross-linguistically common.
Acquisition is an intuitive place to look for explanation in language change. Each child must learn their individual grammar(s) via the indirect process of analyzing the output of others’ grammars, ...and the process necessarily involves social transmission over several years. On the basis of child language learning behaviors, I ask whether it is reasonable to expect the incrementation (advancement) of new variants to be kicked off by and sustained by the acquisition process. I discuss literature on how children respond to input variation, and a series of new studies experimentally testing incrementation, and argue that at least for some phenomena, young children overgeneralize innovative variants beyond their input. I sketch a model of incrementation based on initial overgeneralization, and offer further thoughts on next steps. Much collaborative work remains to precisely link analogous dynamic phenomena in learning and change.
Abstract
When language change phenomena have repercussions in various social areas at the same time, they are worth an analysis. One of the well documented occurrences of this kind is the discursive ...history of the metonymic proper name
Bologna
as a designation of an education reform. As Johannes Angermüller und Ronny Scholz stated in their remarkable study (2013), its mere introduction had made some political processes easier. In this paper the question is put whether some distinctions of the notable metonymy theory by Peter Koch (2004) are able to deliver categories to clarify this phenomenon. In doing so, I point out some deficiencies of Kochs approach concerning his conception of metonymy as such and demonstrate that these are to be ascribed to its “cognitive” frame and that the remedy lies implicitly in an elementary consideration by Saussure and in an explicit passage by Husserl whom Koch himself invokes. As a result of this, I come to the conclusion that Saussure and, particularly, Husserl could have elucidated the most crucial feature of the metonymic proper name more appropriately.
This study investigates a previously unresearched use of the discourse marker so: prefacing answers to questions from an interlocutor, informally coined “backstory so” and found to signal that the ...answer necessitates background information, or more complexity or length than the asker assumes the questioner expects, a function known to be carried out by well. This investigation was motivated by (i) negative attitudes toward this use of so, describing the speakers with attributes like annoying, condescending, confusing, and wrong; (ii) layperson claims that it is new; and (iii) non-scholarly writings by linguists reporting controversy over whether answering questions with so is actually new or a Zwickian Recency Illusion. This paper draws on spoken data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English from 1990 to 2016, and presents findings of 774 target tokens by 544 unique speakers starting in 1992. Results of a logistic regression show a statistically significant increase in the rate of this form over that time. I tentatively suggest that previous constraints against the discourse marker so prefacing answers to mark added information seem to have undergone a rapid language shift, competing with the older use of well, and supporting the layperson intuitions of newness.
•Prefacing the answer to a question from an interlocutor with so shows evidence of being an innovation on the rise.•This use of so marks added background information that the answerer assumes the questioner lacks, a function often carried out by well.•Grassroots prescriptivists in the online discourse criticize so-prefacing answers and claim that it has been increasing.•The rise of this form may have started in the early 1990s, which does not support a Zwickian Recency Illusion.•Those laypeople associate so-prefacing answers with expert interviews on NPR, which was also the most common source in the corpus.
Language change is always topical. A living language used in interaction between people does not become ready or solidified in place, although from the perspective of an individual person and periods ...or in ideologized speech it may sometimes seem this way. Language change is also of interest to the general public. For example, editors of daily newspapers seem to target us linguists on the verge of language change most sensitively when the change has activated talk of concern about the language skills of the latest generation of schoolchildren or the current state of the Finnish language, or when a new ten-item rapid test is needed the next day to find out whose language skills are or are not up to date.
The present study deals with levelling processes in the traditional Austrian dialects – on the one hand inter-dialectal levelling (= the reduction of variation between dialects), and on the other ...hand intra-dialectal levelling (= the reduction of variation within one dialect). The interplay of both processes is analysed for the realizations of postvocalic r (= variable (r)). Although a complex variability is stated for (r) – which is also relevant for Austrian dialect classification – there are no recent studies on (r). This desideratum is addressed in the present article by investigating data of 163 speakers from 40 localities. In doing so, 7,951 realizations of (r) in 50 lexical items are analysed. Based on a real- and apparent-time design the study reveals a significant spread of vocalized forms resulting in both inter- and intra-dialectal levelling. In the article, the interplay of both processes is discussed. This includes also their origins (horizontal and vertical contact) and developments (e.g. lexical diffusion).
