Historical Linguistics: A Cognitive Grammar Introduction

261 Pages·2020·5.435 MB·English

by  Margaret E. Winters

Historical
Linguistics
A cognitive grammar introduction
Margaret E. Winters
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Historical Linguistics

Historical Linguistics
A cognitive grammar introduction
Margaret E. Winters
Wayne State University
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
doi 10.1075/z.227
Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress:
lccn 2020005905
isbn 978 90 272 0550 6 (Hb)
isbn 978 90 272 0551 3 (Pb)
isbn 978 90 272 6123 6 (e-book)
© 2020 – 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 Company · https://benjamins.com
For my family,
Geoffrey, Eleanor, and Leendert

Table of contents
List of figures xiii
Preface xv
Acknowledgments xvii
chapter 1
What is language change? 1
1. Introduction 1
2. Characteristics of language 4
2.1 The human element 4
2.2 Arbitrariness 4
2.3 Creativity 5
2.4 Physicality 6
3. Change 6
3.1 Life cycles 6
3.2 What changes? 9
4. Evidence of change 11
5. Cognitive Grammar as a framework 15
6. Book overview 17
7. Conclusion 20
Exercises 20
For further investigation 22
chapter 2
Studying change 23
1. Overview 23
2. Uniformitarianism 24
3. Coincidence and universals 24
3.1 Pure coincidence 25
3.2 Universals 26
3.2.1 Absolute universals 26
3.2.2 Relative universals 28
4. Genetic relationships and families 29
4.1 The Genealogical (Tree) model 29
4.2 The wave model 32
4.3 Contemporary approaches 34
5. Contact among languages 35
5.1 Kinds of contact 35
viii Historical Linguistics
5.2 Stratal influence 38
5.3 Areal influence 41
5.4 Pidgins and creoles 42
6. Conclusion 43
Exercises 44
For further investigation 45
chapter 3
Lexical change 47
1. Overview 47
2. Etymology 47
2.1 Basic vocabulary 48
2.2 Coinage 48
2.3 Lexical loss 52
3. The nature of meaning 53
4. More general trends 58
4.1 Generalization (widening) 58
4.2 Narrowing 58
4.3 Meliorization 59
4.4 Pejoration 60
4.5 Shift 62
4.6 Metaphor 63
4.7 Metonymy 66
5. Wider tendencies and causation 67
5.1 Root, epistemic, and speech act meaning 68
6. Conclusion 70
Exercises 71
For further investigation 71
chapter 4
Phonetic change 73
1. Introduction 73
1.1 The scope of phonetics 73
2. A note on conventions and features 76
3. Unconditioned change 77
3.1 Simple changes 77
3.2 Complex changes: Chain shifts 78
3.3 Conclusion 80
4. Conditioned change 81
4.1 Positional conditioning 81
4.2 Conditioning by surrounding elements 84
4.2.1 Segmental influence 84
Table of contents ix
4.2.2 Suprasegmental influence 89
5. The wider context 91
5.1 Imitation and borrowing 92
5.2 Fortitions and lenitions 92
6. Consciousness of change 93
7. Conclusion 93
Exercises 94
For further investigation 95
chapter 5
Phonological change 97
1. Introduction 97
1.1 Phonetics and phonology 97
1.2 The phoneme 98
1.3 Formalism 100
1.4 Summary 101
2. Processes of phonemic change 101
2.1 Merger 101
2.2 Split 103
2.2.1 Allophonic split 104
2.2.2 The creation of phonemes: Phonologization 105
3. Phonological change as recategorization 107
3.1 Individual changes 107
3.2 Phonemic inventories 110
3.2.1 Patterns 110
3.2.2 Features 113
4. Actuation and expansion of use 115
4.1 Actuation 115
4.2 Expansion of use 116
5. Conclusion 117
Exercises 117
For further investigation 118
chapter 6
Morphological change 119
1. Introduction 119
1.1 Morphology and the morpheme 119
2. Word-level morphology 120
2.1 Coinage through affixes 121
2.2 Reanalysis across boundaries 122
3. Free and bound morphemes 123
3.1 Grammaticalization 124