Item does not contain fulltextInternational Conference on Historical Linguistics XVIIIUniversité ... more Item does not contain fulltextInternational Conference on Historical Linguistics XVIIIUniversité de Quebec a Montreal, Canad
This volume provides a collection of research reports on multilingualism and language contact ran... more This volume provides a collection of research reports on multilingualism and language contact ranging from Romance, to Germanic, Greco and Slavic languages in situations of contact and diaspora. Most of the contributions are empirically-oriented studies presenting first-hand data based on original fieldwork, and a few focus directly on the methodological issues in such research. Owing to the multifaceted nature of contact and diaspora phenomena (e.g. the intrinsic transnational essence of contact and diaspora, and the associated interplay between majority and minoritized languages and multilingual practices in different contact settings, contact-induced language change, and issues relating to convergence) the disciplinary scope is broad, and includes ethnography, qualitative and quantitative sociolinguistics, formal linguistics, descriptive linguistics, contact linguistics, historical linguistics, and language acquisition. Case studies are drawn from Italo-Romance varieties in the Americas, Spanish-Nahuatl contact, Castellano Andino, Greko/Griko in Southern Italy, Yiddish in Anglophone communities, Frisian in the Netherlands, Wymysiöryś in Poland, Sorbian in Germany, and Pomeranian and Zeelandic Flemish in Brazil
This article presents evidence that Sal-Frankish had a word for ‘500’, sunde, which corresponds t... more This article presents evidence that Sal-Frankish had a word for ‘500’, sunde, which corresponds to the Roman numeral D, being half of M ‘1000’. With this analysis, the Sal-Frankish numbers become transparent, even the two higher values of the so-called chunnas. The neologism sunde was a back formation from tusunde ‘thousand’, which was analysed as tu ‘two’ + sunde ‘500’. This back formation was possible in the contact language Sal-Frankish for both segmental reasons (ongoing occlusion of [θ] to [t]) and stress, but not in Old Low Franconian, Old Middle Franconian, Old Saxon or OHG.
A configurational approach is given to quantificational variability, i.e. the fact that quantific... more A configurational approach is given to quantificational variability, i.e. the fact that quantificational elements in natural language do not have a rigid quantificational value. A new perspective is given to the question why indefinite noun phrases may have existential, specific indefinite, and generic readings, but no interrogative readings, and why WH-words may have existential and interrogative readings, but no specific indefinite or generic readings. Selfsimilarity, a concept from mathematics and widely applied to natural-world phenomena, turns out to be applicable to natural language: its syntax and its semantics. Self-similar left-branches are linked to interrogative readings; self-similar right-branches are tied to existential readings. Repeated mixed leftand right-branching patterns in the middle filed are tied to specific indefinite readings. Self-similarity echoes Kayne’s 1984 concept of connectedness of quantificational subtrees but its application is both wider and narro...
In this paper, we study the drop of the preverbal negative clitic ne/en using a sub-corpus of Dre... more In this paper, we study the drop of the preverbal negative clitic ne/en using a sub-corpus of Drenthe verdicts over the period 1399-1405. The earlier fi nding by Van der Horst & Van der Wal (1978) that clitic drop is delayed in embedded contexts is not confi rmed. Only when we make a distinction between lexical verbs and auxiliary verbs, the effect shows up in the case of lexical verbs. Clitic drop with auxiliary verbs, on the other hand, behaves in an opposite way: while neg-drop seems to be underway for auxiliaries in C and lexical verbs in clausefi nal position, ne/en is absent with lexical verbs in C-position and auxilary verbs in clause fi nal position. We argue that both effects are realisations of one process of morphological blocking. This is an absolute process. This process is similar in nature to the situation in English where the negator not/n’t only combines with not/n’t only combines with not/n’t auxiliaries. This is often attributed to verb position in English: auxili...
Item does not contain fulltextInternational Conference on Historical Linguistics XVIIIUniversité ... more Item does not contain fulltextInternational Conference on Historical Linguistics XVIIIUniversité de Quebec a Montreal, Canad
This volume provides a collection of research reports on multilingualism and language contact ran... more This volume provides a collection of research reports on multilingualism and language contact ranging from Romance, to Germanic, Greco and Slavic languages in situations of contact and diaspora. Most of the contributions are empirically-oriented studies presenting first-hand data based on original fieldwork, and a few focus directly on the methodological issues in such research. Owing to the multifaceted nature of contact and diaspora phenomena (e.g. the intrinsic transnational essence of contact and diaspora, and the associated interplay between majority and minoritized languages and multilingual practices in different contact settings, contact-induced language change, and issues relating to convergence) the disciplinary scope is broad, and includes ethnography, qualitative and quantitative sociolinguistics, formal linguistics, descriptive linguistics, contact linguistics, historical linguistics, and language acquisition. Case studies are drawn from Italo-Romance varieties in the Americas, Spanish-Nahuatl contact, Castellano Andino, Greko/Griko in Southern Italy, Yiddish in Anglophone communities, Frisian in the Netherlands, Wymysiöryś in Poland, Sorbian in Germany, and Pomeranian and Zeelandic Flemish in Brazil
This article presents evidence that Sal-Frankish had a word for ‘500’, sunde, which corresponds t... more This article presents evidence that Sal-Frankish had a word for ‘500’, sunde, which corresponds to the Roman numeral D, being half of M ‘1000’. With this analysis, the Sal-Frankish numbers become transparent, even the two higher values of the so-called chunnas. The neologism sunde was a back formation from tusunde ‘thousand’, which was analysed as tu ‘two’ + sunde ‘500’. This back formation was possible in the contact language Sal-Frankish for both segmental reasons (ongoing occlusion of [θ] to [t]) and stress, but not in Old Low Franconian, Old Middle Franconian, Old Saxon or OHG.
A configurational approach is given to quantificational variability, i.e. the fact that quantific... more A configurational approach is given to quantificational variability, i.e. the fact that quantificational elements in natural language do not have a rigid quantificational value. A new perspective is given to the question why indefinite noun phrases may have existential, specific indefinite, and generic readings, but no interrogative readings, and why WH-words may have existential and interrogative readings, but no specific indefinite or generic readings. Selfsimilarity, a concept from mathematics and widely applied to natural-world phenomena, turns out to be applicable to natural language: its syntax and its semantics. Self-similar left-branches are linked to interrogative readings; self-similar right-branches are tied to existential readings. Repeated mixed leftand right-branching patterns in the middle filed are tied to specific indefinite readings. Self-similarity echoes Kayne’s 1984 concept of connectedness of quantificational subtrees but its application is both wider and narro...
In this paper, we study the drop of the preverbal negative clitic ne/en using a sub-corpus of Dre... more In this paper, we study the drop of the preverbal negative clitic ne/en using a sub-corpus of Drenthe verdicts over the period 1399-1405. The earlier fi nding by Van der Horst & Van der Wal (1978) that clitic drop is delayed in embedded contexts is not confi rmed. Only when we make a distinction between lexical verbs and auxiliary verbs, the effect shows up in the case of lexical verbs. Clitic drop with auxiliary verbs, on the other hand, behaves in an opposite way: while neg-drop seems to be underway for auxiliaries in C and lexical verbs in clausefi nal position, ne/en is absent with lexical verbs in C-position and auxilary verbs in clause fi nal position. We argue that both effects are realisations of one process of morphological blocking. This is an absolute process. This process is similar in nature to the situation in English where the negator not/n’t only combines with not/n’t only combines with not/n’t auxiliaries. This is often attributed to verb position in English: auxili...
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