Papers from the 7th International Conference on Historical Linguistics

689 Pages·1987·56.009 MB·English

by  Anna Giacalone Ramat, Onofrio Carruba, Giuliano Bernini (Eds.)

PAPERS FROM THE 7th ICHL
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 (Copenhagen); Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles)
Thomas V.Gamkrelidze (Tbilisi); Hans-Heinrich Lieb (Berlin)
J.Peter Maher (Chicago); Ernst Pulgram (Ann Arbor, Mich.)
E.Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.); Danny Steinberg (Tokyo)
Volume 48
Anna Giacalone Ramat
Onofrio Carruba and Giuliano Bernini (eds.)
Papers from the 7th International Conference on Historical Linguistics
PAPERS
from the
7th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
on
HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS
Edited by
ANNA GIACALONE RAMAT
ONOFRIO CARRUBA and GIULIANO BERNINI
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
1987
This book was published with the financial support
of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
International Conference on Historical Linguistics (7th: 1985: Pavia, Italy)
Papers from the 7th International Conference on Historical Linguistics.
(Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV, Current
issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763; v. 48)
Conference held in Pavia, Italy, Sept. 9-13, 1985.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Historical linguistics -- Congresses. I. Giacalone Ramat, Anna, 1937- . II. Carruba,
Onofrio. III. Bernini, Giuliano. IV. Title. V. Title: Papers from the Seventh International
Conference on Historical Linguistics. VI. Series.
P140.I5 1985 410 87-8100
ISBN 90 272 3542 2 (alk. paper)
© Copyright 1987 - 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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface page ix
General Programme of the Conference » xi
John Anderson, Gothic obstruents: The limits of reconstruction » 1
Françoise Bader, Structure de l'énoncé indo-européen » 13
Joëlle Bailard, Il s'en va où le français, et pourquoi? » 35
Giuliano Bernini, Attempting the reconstruction of negation pat­
terns in PIE » 57
Pier Marco Bertinetto, Structure and origin of the «narrative»
imperfect » 71
Bernard H. Bichakjian, The evolution of word order: 
paedomorphic explanation » 87
Joan L. Bybee and William Pagliuca, The evolution of future
meaning » 109
Theodora Bynon, Syntactic change and the lexicon » 123
Gualtiero Calboli, Die Syntax der ältesten lateinischen Prosa » 137
Andrew Carstairs, Diachronic evidence and the affix-clitic
distinction » 151
Thomas D. Cravens, The syllable and phonological strength: Gra­
dient loss of gemination in Corsican » 163
William Croft, Hava Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot, and Suzanne Kemmer,
Diachronic semantic processes in the middle voice » 179
Gerrit J. Dimmendaal, Drift and selective mechanisms in mor­
phological change: The Eastern Nilotic case » 193
Dorothy Disterheft, The diachronic relationship of morphology
and syntax » 211
Nils E. Enkvist and Brita Wårvik, Old English þa, temporal
chains, and narrative structure » 221
Thomas Fraser, The establishment of «by» to denote agency in
English passive constructions » 239
vi TABLE OF CONTENS
Herbert Galton, From Indo-European perfect to Slavic perfect
to Slavic preterite » 251
John Harris, On doing comparative reconstruction with genetical­
ly unrelated languages » 267
Henry M. Hoenigswald, A and the prehistory of Greek noun
accentuation » 283
Cor Hoppenbrouwers, The instability of peripheral /./, /ø./,
and /./ in Dutch lects » 285
Paul J. Hopper and Janice Martin, Structuralism and diachrony:
The development of the indefinite article in English » 295
Robert J. Jeffers, On methodology in syntactic reconstruction:
Reconstructing inter-clause syntax in prehistoric Indo-European » 305
Romano Lazzeroni, Considerazioni sulla cronologia relativa dei
mutamenti fonetici » 325
Winfred P. Lehmann, Time » 339
Helmut Liidtke, Auxiliary verbs in the universal theory of
language change » 349
Silvia Luraghi, Patterns of case syncretism in Indo-European
languages » 355
Yakov Malkiel, Integration of phonosymbolism with other
categories of language change » 373
Derry L. Maisch, The grammaticalization of social relationship:
The origin of number to encode deference » 407
Maria Manoliu-Manea, From conversational to conventional
implicature: The Romanian pronouns of identity and their
substitutes » 419
Celestina Milani, Note su /s/ interconsonantica nei dialetti greci
antichi » 429
Donka Minkova, The prosodic character of early schwa deletion
in English » 445
William Pagliuca and Richard Mowrey, Articulatory evolution » 459
Rebecca Posner, Creolization and syntactic change in Romance » 473
Aldo Luigi Prosdocimi, Syllabicity as a genus, Sievers' law as
a species » 483
Norbert Reiter, Die Entwicklung von komplexen zu einfachen
semantischen Inhalten » 507
TABLE OF CONTENS vii
Elke Ronneberger-Sibold, A performance model for a natural
theory of linguistic change » 517
Haiim B. Rosén, On «normal» full root structure and its
historical development » 535
Thomas F. Shannon, The rise and fall of final devoicing » 545
Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Richard Dasher, On the historical
relation between mental and speech act verbs in English and
Japanese » 561
Dieter Wanner, On the persistence of imperfect grammars: clitic
movement from Late Latin to Romance » 575
Otmar Werner, The aim of morphological change is a good
mixture - not a uniform language type » 591
Margaret E. Winters, Syntactic and semantic space: The develop­
ment of the French subjunctive » 607
Roger Wright, The study of semantic change in early Romance
(Late Latin) , » 619
Wolfgang U. Wurzel, Paradigmenstrukturbedingungen: Aufbau
und Veränderung von Flexionsparadigmen » 629
Index of Names » 645
Index of Languages » 657
Index of Subject Matter » 665
m

PREFACE
The VII International Conference on Historical Linguistics was held
in Pavia, Italy, from September 9th to 13th, 1985, in the pleasant setting
of the old University with its courtyards and towers lit up by the late sum­
mer sun.
It was organized by Anna Giacalone Ramat, President of the Interna­
tional Society for Historical Linguistics for the period 1983-85, assisted by
the following Local Committee members: G. Bernini, O. Carruba, M.-E.
Conte, G. Graffi, G. Manzelli, M.V. Molinari, P. Ramat, C. Segre.
The International Committee, whose members at the time of the Con­
ference were J. Fisiak (Vice-President), H. Andersen (Secretary), T. Fraser,
M. Gerritsen, M. Harris and P. Hopper, gave advice before, during and
after the Conference and their help was invaluable in the task of assessing
which abstracts should be included in the programme and which ought to
appear in this volume. I wish to thank all my colleagues for their hard work
and sound advice and particularly the co-editors of this book O. Carruba
and G. Bernini.
There were over two hundred participants attending the Conference,
coming from all the corners of the world: Eastern and Western Europe, Iran,
Japan, New Zealand and the U.S. More than 65 papers were read which
created great interest, stimulated much debate and provided an excellent over­
view of the current state of the art in historical linguistics and related topics.
The papers collected in this book clearly show that new issues are emerging
in the theory of linguistic change which tend to incorporate non-autonomous
principles like naturalness in phonetic processes, the influence of socio-
cultural settings and discourse pragmatics, This wide range of issues is design­
ed to contribute to an explanatory theory of language change.
On the last day of the Conference, Friday, September 13th, two
workshops were held on Historical Development of Auxiliaries (the co­
ordinators were Martin Harris and Paolo Ramat) and on Reconstructions
of the Indo-European Sound Systems and Their Consequences (co-ordinator
Theo Vennemann). The papers from these workshops will appear in the near