Historical Linguistics 1997: Selected Papers from the 13th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Düsseldorf, 10-17 August 1997

420 Pages·1998·37.44 MB·English

by  Monika S. Schmid

HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS 1997
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND
HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
General Editor
E. F. KONRAD KOERNER
(University of Ottawa)
Series IV - CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY
Advisory Editorial Board
Henning Andersen (Los Angeles); Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles)
Thomas V. Gamkrelidze (Tbilisi); John E. Joseph (Edinburgh)
Hans-Heinrich Lieb (Berlin); Ernst Pulgram (Ann Arbor, Mich.)
E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.); Danny Steinberg (Tokyo)
Volume 164
Monika S. Schmid, Jennifer R. Austin and Dieter Stein (eds)
Historical Linguistics 1997
Selected papers from the 13th International Conference on
Historical Linguistics, Düsseldorf, 10-17 August 1997
HISTORICAL
LINGUISTICS 1997
SELECTED PAPERS FROM THE 13TH INTERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE ON HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS,
DUSSELDORF, 10-17 AUGUST 1997
MONIKA S. SCHMID
JENNIFER R. AUSTIN
DIETER STEIN
Heinrich-Heine- Universtität, Düsseldorf
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
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
International Conference on Historical Linguistics (13th: Diisseldorf, Germany: 1997)
Historical linguistics, 1997 : selected papers from the 13th International Conference on Historical
Linguistics, Diisseldorf, 10-17 August 1997 / edited by Monika S. Schmid, Jennifer R. Austin, Dieter
Stein.
p. cm. -- (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV, Current
issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763 ; v. 164)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Historical linguistics-Congresses. I. Schmid, Monika S. II. Austin, Jennifer R. III. Stein, Dieter,
1946-. IV. Title. V. Series.
P140.I5 1998
417'7--dc2i 98-36271
ISBN 90 272 3669 o (Eur.) / 1 55619 880 9 (US) (Hb; alk. paper) CIP
© Copyright 1998 - 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 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam • The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA
PREFACE
"Historical Linguistics 1997" represents a rigorously reviewed selection of
papers presented at the 13th International Conference on Historical Linguistics
held at Heinrich Heine University, Diisseldorf, August 10-17, 1997. For reports
on the conference see John Charles Smith, "Report on the Thirteenth
International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Diisseldorf, August 10-17
1997", Diachronica 15(1) 175-186 (1998) and Bridget Drinka, "Conference
report: XIIIth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Diisseldorf,
Germany, August 10-17, 1997", UCLA Friends and Alumni of Indo-European
Studies Newsletter 7(1) September/October 1997, 8f.
This volume includes papers presented at the main conference only and
does not include any of the workshop presentations. After the editors received
those papers submitted for publication, they were reviewed and from those that
withstood review, a selection - again - was made by the editors to achieve an
optimal balance of languages and approaches. Thanks must go to the reviewers
who working under time pressure took it upon themselves to give extensive
and detailed comments on the papers. They provided the editors with important
externally based criteria for the selection of papers for publication.
The proceedings offer a window on the current state of the art in historical
linguistics. They cover a wide range of different languages, different language
families, and different approaches to the study of linguistic change, ranging
from optimality theory to the linguistic consequences of political correctness.
Two notable features are the inclusion of two papers on Japanese and another
three on Yiddish. The inclusion of these papers reflects the venue of the
conference. Both the city of Diisseldorf and Heinrich Heine University have
strong ties with Japan, which were apparent in the strong contingent of
Japanese scholars attending the conference. In addition, a new Chair of Yiddish
culture, language, and literature has recently been established at the university.
The organization of the conference would not have been possible without
the help and advice of the staff of the Chair in English Linguistics at Heinrich
Heine University: Ulrike Altendorf, Theresia Bernstein, Christine Gunia,
Verena Jung, Jennie Markulf, Uschi Gretschmann, Antje Hartmann, Tobias
Philippen, Robert Rennecke, Anette Rosenbach, and Michaela Zitzen.
VI PREFACE
Special thanks must go to Nicole Schroder for the enormous amount of
work she put into putting the volume into its final form, and to Alexander
Bergs for compiling the indexes. Kimberley Duenwald read every word of
every page. Whatever errors remain are due to the editors' failure to correct
what she found.
All of these people dedicated years of always underpaid and often unpaid
effort before, during, and after the conference to bring ICHL to the Rhineland
in what was probably the hottest weather ICHL has ever seen. All of us,
however, were amply rewarded by the opportunity to host so many
distinguished scholars. The inevitable organizational hassles were resolved, and
the discomforts of the heat were lessened by quantities of our local Diisseldorf
Altbier for most of us and by financially more demanding culinary exploits by
others. As a final note, one of the unique features of the conference, which few
linguistics conference venues can boast, is that our conference site lies right on
one of the most important isoglosses in Europe: the Benrather Linie.
A conference like ICHL can only be run with the help of financial support
from many sources. Generous financial support came from the German
Research Foundation, the Ministry for Science and Research of the State of
North Rhine-Westfalia, from the Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and from
the Office of the Rector of Heinrich Heine University. Important outside
sources of funding were Lufthansa and the Deutsche Bank Diisseldorf. We are
grateful to all these sources for expressing their commitment to the future of
linguistic science during a time of financial difficulty.
Finally, it is with great regret and sorrow that we report the untimely death
of one of the participants of the conference, Gabriel Falkenberg, formerly of
Wuppertal, who died in an accident shortly after the conference.
Diisseldorf, May 14, 1998
Monika Schmid Jennifer R. Austin Dieter Stein
CONTENTS
Sound Laws: Reactions Present and Past 1
Arleta Adamska-Sataciak
Passives in Western Malayo-Polynesian: An Asian Perspective 15
Barry J. Blake
What Can This Be? A West African Contribution to Sranan 25
Adrienne Bruyn
Grammmatical and Lexical Aspect in Akkadian and Proto-Semitic 41
Vit Bubenik
Euphemism with Attitude: Politically Charged Language Change 57
Kate Burridge
The Loss of the Voice Dimension Between Late Latin and Early Romance 77
Michela Cennamo
How a Historical Linguist and a Native Speaker Understand a Complex 101
Morphology
Wallace Chafe
The Evolution of Grammar: Evidence from Indo-European Perfects 117
Bridget Drinka
Yiddish and Hebrew: Borrowing Through Oral Language Contact 135
Elaine Gold
Degenerate Feet in Tacanan Languages: Unmarkedness in OT 149
Haike Jacobs
The Evolution of 6 in Open Position: Parallel Developments in French 163
and Dutch Dialects
Thera de Jong
The Structure of ra-Deletion in Japanese 175
Fusa Katada
VIII CONTENTS
Can Grammaticalization be Explained Invisible Handedly? 191
Jurgen Klausenburger
Toward a 'Standard Yiddish' Pronounciation: An Instrumentally Aided 201
Phonetic Analysis
Ane Kleine
The Evolution of Adverbial Subordinators in Europe 213
Bernd Kortmann
A Corpus-Based Model for the Description of Language Change and 229
Variation in Nominal Classification exemplified by Dutch
Seventeenth Century Varieties
Arjan van Leuvensteijn
Towards an Explanation of some Morphological Changes which 'Should 241
Never Have Happened'
Martin Maiden
On the Conservatism of Embedded Clauses 255
Kenjiro Matsuda
Velars and Palatals in Old English Alliteration 269
Donka Minkova
The Sequencing of Grammaticization Effects: A Twist from 291
North America
Marianne Mithun
What Research on Creole Genesis Can Contribute to Historical Linguistics 315
Salikoko S. Mufwene
The Borrowing of Meaning as a Cause of Internal Syntactic Change 339
Ellen F. Prince
Grammaticalization of Complex Verbal Constructions in Finnish 363
Taru Salminen
Two Models for the Study of Language Contact: A Psycho-Linguistic 377
Perspective Versus a Socio-Cultural Perspective
Caroline Smits
A Motivated Account of the Semantic Evolution of Watch and its Catalan 391
Equivalents
Isabel Verdaguer & Anna Poch
CONTENTS IX
Subject index 401
Index of Languages 407