Table Of ContentTEXTUAL PARAMETERS IN OLDER LANGUAGES
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
Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles); Lyle Campbell (Christchurch, N.Z.)
Sheila Embleton (Toronto); John E. Joseph (Edinburgh)
Manfred Krifka (Berlin); Hans-Heinrich Lieb (Berlin)
E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.); Hans-Jürgen Sasse (Köln)
Volume 195
Susan C. Herring, Pieter van Reenen and Lene Schøsler (eds)
Textual Parameters in Older Languages
TEXTUAL PARAMETERS IN
OLDER LANGUAGES
Edited by
SUSAN C. HERRING
University of Texas, Arlington
PIETER VAN REENEN
Free University, Amsterdam
LENE SCHØSLER
University of Copenhagen
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
8 National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Textual parameters in older languages / edited by Susan C. Herring, Pieter van Reenen, Lene Schøsler.
p. cm. -- (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV,
Current issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763 ; v. 195)
Includes revised versions of papers originally presented at the 11th International Conference on
Historical Linguistics, held at the University of California, Los Angeles, Aug. 1993.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Discourse analysis. 2. Historical linguisitics. I. Herring, Susan C. II. Reenen, Pieter Th. van. III.
Schøsler, Lene, 1946- IV. Series.
P302.T457 2000
417’.7--dc21 00-021367
ISBN 90 272 3702 6 (Eur.) / 1 55619 973 2 (US) (alk. paper)
© 2000 – 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
For Suzanne Fleischman,
whose standards for scholarship have challenged and inspired us.
Preface
The idea for the present volume was born at the 11th International Conference
on Historical Linguistics, which was held at the University of California, Los
Angeles in August of 1993. Several of the papers presented at that conference,
although focusing on different linguistic phenomenena from different theo-
retical perspectives, seemed to be making the same point: linguistic analysis of
an older language may depend crucially on variable properties of the textual
data themselves. Moreover, while any one example could have been taken as
an isolated cautionary tale, the ensemble of the evidence presented in the
various papers suggested something more compelling — a need for a new
methodological paradigm for working with older languages, and a potentially
significant insight about language change.
Intrigued by this vision, the first editor approached the second and third
editors and proposed a collaborative volume. Among the first papers invited
for inclusion were those that had inspired the idea for the volume; thus roughly
half of the chapters in this book are expanded versions of papers originally
presented at ICHL XI. The other chapters were added subsequently as a result
of invitations issued to scholars with a known interest in the topic of text-
based variation in older languages. The result, some six-and-a-half years later,
is the present volume.
Of the ICHL presentations that originally inspired this book, the most
influential was a plenary talk by Suzanne Fleischman, which more than any
other crystalized the vision of (and need for) a textual parameters approach. In
addition to contributing her talk as a chapter of the book, Suzanne took part in
early discussions that helped define the approach, and commented closely on
the editors’ introduction to the volume. For this guidance, and in recognition
more generally of her pioneering contributions to the field of historical dis-
course analysis, we have dedicated this volume to her. Sadly, she did not live
to see it published. On February 2, 2000, as this volume was in press, Suzanne
succumbed after a long, courageous struggle to a blood disease that had turned
into leukemia, at the age of 51. We are deeply saddened that this dedication,
originally intended as a gesture of appreciation, must now be a posthumous
tribute.
viii PREFACE
The delay in getting the volume to press in no way reflects the timeliness
or cooperation of the authors or the publisher, which were exemplary, but
rather was due to health problems (now passed) of the first editor. We wish to
thank the authors for their patience. We also wish to thank Henning Andersen,
ICHL XI organizer, for allowing us to publish papers based on presentations at
that conference (i.e. those by Brinton, Fleischman, Gvozdanovi´c, Herring,
Kroch et al., Kytö, and van Reenen & Schøsler); Konrad Koerner, for accept-
ing the volume for publication in the Current Issues in Linguistic Theory series;
and the staff at John Benjamins for their pleasant cooperation and technical
assistance. Thanks are also due to Mouton de Gruyter Publishers for granting
us permission to reprint Laurel Brinton’s chapter, which due to the delay in
getting this volume to press, first appeared in print in her 1996 book Pragmatic
Markers in English: Grammaticalization and Discourse Functions.
Finally, we wish to express our appreciation to Andreas Jucker, Peter
Koch, John Paolillo and Nigel Vincent for their constructive and often
thought-provoking comments on the introduction to this volume.
Susan C. Herring
Pieter van Reenen
Lene Schøsler
February 5, 2000
Contents
THEORETICAL OVERVIEW
Susan C. Herring, Pieter van Reenen and Lene Schøsler
On Textual Parameters and Older Languages 1
Suzanne Fleischman
Methodologies and Ideologies in Historical Linguistics:
On Working with Older Languages 33
TEXT TYPE
Pieter van Reenen and Lene Schøsler
The Pragmatic Functions of the Old French Particles AINZ,
APRES, DONC, LORS, OR, PUIS, and SI 59
A. Machtelt Bolkenstein
Discourse Organization and Anaphora in Latin 107
Laurel J. Brinton
The Importance of Discourse Types in Grammaticalization:
The Case of Anon 139
POETICALITY
Hans Heinrich Hock
Genre, Discourse, and Syntax in Early Indo-European,
with Emphasis on Sanskrit 163
Susan C. Herring
Poeticality and Word Order in Old Tamil 197
Shoichi Iwasaki
Suppressed Assertion and the Functions of the Final-Attributive
in Prose and Poetry of Heian Japanese 237
