F. Plank, Ways of Change 1 WAYS OF CHANGE
//under construction//
F. Plank, Ways of Change 2 “Languages constantly change”
Locke, John. 1689. An essay concerning human understanding. London: Basset, Ch. 22: “Hence also we may see the reason, why languages constantly change, take up new and lay by old terms. Because change of customs and opinions bringing with it new combinations of ideas, which it is necessary frequently to think on and talk about, new names, to avoid long descriptions, are annexed to them; and so they become new species of complex modes. What a number of different ideas are by this means wrapped up in one short sound, and how much of our time and breath is thereby saved, any one will see, who will but take the pains to enumerate all the ideas that either REPRIEVE or APPEAL stand for; and instead of either of those names, use a periphrasis, to make any one understand their meaning.”
“Language constantly changes”
Stone, Alison. 2007. An introduction to feminist philosophy. Cambridge: Polity Press, p115: “Language constantly changes. Lacan infers that any encounyer with language is frustrating. Any words and phrases that one encounters promise to be meaningful, yet have no definite meaning. [...] As such, when any child enters language, it becomes gripped by a new force: desire, specifically the desire for meaning.”
...
F. Plank, Ways of Change 3 But do they? Why should they?
Given a speech community which is (i) none too large and (ii) reasonably homogeneous, (iii) with its members socially well interconnected, and (iv) which inhabits a circumscribed, coherent, none-too-big territory, and (v) largely keeps to itself, we might expect that its members – and especially its new members as they are acquiring the linguistic know-how that defines and delimits this speech community – have very similar linguistic experiences. Since mental lexicons- and-grammars are formed on the basis of experience, they might end up as very similar across the members of the speech community. And unless mental lexicons-and-grammars change (deteriorate?) over the life-spans of individuals, producing different speech acts as they grow older, the linguistic experiences of the following generation might be very similar to those of their predecessors. same/similar linguistic experiences ⇒ same/similar linguistic know-how
So, why would mental lexicons-and-grammars ever be different/change from one generation to another?
F. Plank, Ways of Change 4 Here are the reasons (= driving forces of change, often mutually antagonistic):
• When learners have the same linguistic experiences, this does not guarantee that they will end up with same mental lexicons-and-grammars: often, more than one hypothesis of learners will be compatible with the primary linguistic data they encounter.
(A simple example: If you hear, in English, [´."neI.pr´n], you may analyse these three syllables as expressing a noun phrase consisting of an indefinite
article and a noun, alternatively segmented as /´/indefArt /neIpr´n/N or /´n/indefArt /eIpr´n/N: both segmentations into meaningful chunks are consistent with what you hear. Unless you later hear utterances such as [´."nju."eI.pr´n], which establish that the noun is /eIpr´n/ rather than /neIpr´n/, you’d have to live with this uncertainty. Actually, the English noun apron was borrowed from French, and the French original was napperon.)
• Hearers sometimes mishear and misanalyse what speakers say, and then proceed according to their mishearings and misanalyses in their own constructions and pronunciations.
F. Plank, Ways of Change 5 • Speakers sometimes misconstruct and mispronounce what they intended to say, and then they themselves and their hearers proceed according to what their misconstructions and mispronunciations.
• Man in general and homo linguisticus in particular is lazy, abiding by the Principle of Minimal Effort: Only learn and do as much as is necessary for expressing and communicating your ideas – which may be less than what was done by a preceding generation.
• However, since speakers want to be able to express their ideas and sentiments, and to express them clearly, the dangers of a lack of expressive power and of misunderstanding owing to unclarity need to be precluded – which may require improvements of the lexicon-and-grammar of the preceding generation. (Expressivity and Clarity often antagonistic with Ease.)
• Rules of grammar and grammatical and lexical subsystems may be too complex to learn: through being mislearned or misremembered, they will end up being simpler.
F. Plank, Ways of Change 6 • Members of speech communities are generally conformists, but sometimes they also want to be different, even extravagant, distinguishing themselves from all others. (Conformism antagonistic with Extravagance.)
• The assumption of homogeneity is counterfactual: there is always variation in speech communities, and given different models, learners or also accomplished speakers may follow one or the other.
• The assumption of isolation is also often counterfactual: few speech communities are desert islands; rather, there often is contact between communities, and individuals, when they acquire a first language as well as later, will encounter even more variation and will have even more models to follow or not to follow; in intense contact, they will even learn more than one language – and untutored L2 learning tends to result in mental lexicons and grammars rather different from those which an L1 learner would arrive at given the same input.
F. Plank, Ways of Change 7 To appreciate this last point, compare Modern Icelandic with Modern English and Afrikaans. All three are Germanic languages, but their external histories have been rather different: there has been relatively little contact between the Icelandic and other speech communities, whereas both English and Afrikaans have been in intense contacts with other languages. How does this show in their lexicons and grammars?
F. Plank, Ways of Change 8 Kinds of changes
Lexical change — loss or acquisition (borrowing, creation) of words — major, high-frequency word becoming less frequent, used with a more marginal, contextually more restricted meaning, or vice versa — morphologically complex words re-analysed as simple
Semantic change (of forms, of constructions)
Sound change — phonetic change — phonological change
Morphological change — creation, replacement, loss of inflectional or derivational morphology: forms and categories — “analogy”
F. Plank, Ways of Change 9 “Grammaticalisation” — looser > tighter constructions (syntax > morphology); — lexical words (N, V, A) > grammatical words (adpositions, conjunctions, articles, auxiliaries, ...) > clitics > affixes > Ø
Syntactic change — word order change — change in word class categorisation — ...
F. Plank, Ways of Change 10 Lexical change
• words discontinued (and usually replaced by other words for the same meanings, which may be native or loans):
rād ‘reckoning, account’ (survived in hund-red), ræd ‘advice, plan, policy’ and related words; gavol ‘tribute’ (cf. gavel [gœvl] ‘small hammer’, a chance similarity); brōga ‘terror, danger’; mæg ‘kinsman’; œðel-ing ‘noble-man, prince’ eafora ‘son, heir’ þēod ‘folk, people’ (cf. German deut-sch) greut ‘gravel’; hron ‘whale’; grorn ‘sad’; swīðe ‘very’;
F. Plank, Ways of Change 11 raðe ‘soon’; weorðan ‘become’ weorpan ‘cast’ niman ‘take’ ge-frīnan ‘learn, hear of’ ... (and several more especially from Beowulf)
Is there an expected constant rate of lexical replacement?
Are particular words particularly susceptible to replacement or to retention? (Compare, for example, numerals, pronouns, colour terms, and intensifying adverbs.)
Why would lexical items be replaced, quickly or slowly? (non-optimal form–meaning? better words available?)
F. Plank, Ways of Change 12 • words marginalised (with other words taking their place as central vocabulary):
sweart ‘black, dark’, as central word replaced by black (which was more marginal in OE), but surviving more marginally in swarthy ‘dark-complexioned’; hergian ‘raid, ravage’ (derived from OE high-frequency noun here ‘(hostile) army’), surviving more marginally, next to several near- synonymous verbs, as harry ‘ravage, harrass’; hebban, PRET hof ‘lift up, raise’, as central word replaced by lift and raise, surviving more marginally in heave ‘lift with great effort; utter with effort or resignation; rise and fall rhythmically or spasmodically’
F. Plank, Ways of Change 13 • words newly acquired by borrowing (and partly/wholly nativised):
beef, veal, pork, mutton, all Romance (vs. old Gmc. cow, calf, swine, lamb for animals, as opposed to their meat) advice, plan, policy, tribute, terror, danger ...; beige [beIZ], garage ["gœrAZ, g´"rAZ], schwa, schnapps, schmaltz, schnitzel [SC...] ...
• words newly coined (a rare kind of event): gas (after Ancient Greek chaos, originally Flemish, then borrowed by many languges, including English, 17th c.); aspirin, and other brand names; meme (‘an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture’; actually, a shortening (modeled on gene) of mimeme (from Ancient Greek μίμημα [míːmɛːma] mīmēma, ‘imitated thing’, from μιμεῖσθαι mimeisthai ‘to imitate’, from μῖμος mimos ‘mime’); coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976)); ...
F. Plank, Ways of Change 14 • words now simple, formerly complex (and originally semantically and formally transparent: fully compositional)
(a) morphologically complex: English lord, lady – formerly compounds: hlāf-weard ‘Laib-Wart’, hlāf-dije ‘Laib-Kneterin’ (b) clipping and blending etc. app, blog, pram, smog, guesstimate, radar, HENRY (High Earner Not Rich Yet) ...
F. Plank, Ways of Change 15 Semantic change rima rim ‘border, bank, coast’ ‘outside edge or border of esp. a round or circular object’ ealdorman alderman ‘duke, magistrate, chief’ ‘elected member of a city council’ cunnan can ‘be mentally able to’ DYNAMIC, DEONTIC, EPISTEMIC modality (know how to) magan may ‘be physically able to’ DYNAMIC, DEONTIC, EPISTEMIC modality
ME verray very ‘true’ ‘to a high degree’ (= intensifying adverb) (cf. German sehr < ‘painful, schmerzlich’, as in ver-sehren)
F. Plank, Ways of Change 16 Is there anything “lawful” about meaning change, comparable to sound change? See GRAMMATICALISATION.
“Jedes Wort hat seine Geschichte und lebt sein eigenes Leben.” (Jacob Grimm, Dt. Grammatik, 1819) “Jedes Wort hat seine eigene Geschichte.” (Hugo Schuchardt, among others, opponents of Neogrammarian sound laws)
F. Plank, Ways of Change 17 Sound change ... remember some?
F. Plank, Ways of Change 18
Grimm’s Law/First Consonant Shift in terms of features:
1. p, t, k > f, T, x [–voiced] → [+cont] kw xw
2. b, d, g > p, t, k [+voiced] → [–voiced] gw kw
3. bh, dh, gh > (B, D, V >) > b, d, g [+aspirate] → [–aspirate] wh w w g V g /g/w
Verner’s Law
f, T, x, s > v, D, V, z [+cont] → [+voiced] / V __ [–stress]
Grimmʼs Law in motion: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~clunis/wow/grimm/
F. Plank, Ways of Change 19 1. Lat pater Go fadar [D], ON faþer, OE fæder, OS fader, OHG fater Lat tres Go þreis, ON þrīr, OE þrīe, OS thrī, OHG thrī, drī Lat centum Go hund, ON hund(raþ), OS OE hund, OHG hunt Lat quod Go hwa, ON huat, OE hwæt, OS hwat, OHG hwaz
not in /sp, st, sk/: Lat spuere Go speiwan, OHG spīwan not /t/ in old /pt, kt/, now /ft, ht/: Lat octo Go ahtau, OHG ahto
2. Lat turba Go þaurp, ON þorp, OE þorp, OS thorp, OHG dorf Lat decem Go taíhun, ON tiō, OE tīen, OS tëhan, OHG zëhan Lat augere Go aukan, ON auka, OE ēacian, OS ōkian, OHG ouhhōn 'vermehren' Lat venire Go qiman, ON koma, OE cuman, OS kuman, OHG koman/quëman (< *gwem-)
3. Lat fero Go baíran, ON bera, OE OS OHG bëran Lat nebula ON nifl-, OE nifol, OS neƀal, OHG nëbul Grk θυγάτηρ Go daúhter, OS dohtar, OHG tohter Lat hostis Go gasts, ON gestr, OE giest, OS OHG gast IE *seŋgwh- Go siggwan, OIcel syngva, OS OHG singan Lat formus Go warmjan, OS OHG warm
F. Plank, Ways of Change 20 Verner’s Law Lat fráter Go bróþar [T], OE brōþor [D] Grk πατήρ Go fádar [D], OE fæder [d]
Skt vártate OE weorþan vavárta wearþ vavr9túr wurdon vr9taná- (ge-)worden
Grammatischer Wechsel PIE stem accent suffix accent but: alternation VOICELESS VOICED often levelled! OHG heffen huobun, gihaban ziohan zugun, gizogan kiosan kurun, gikoran
līdan leiten swëhur swigar
F. Plank, Ways of Change 21 Order – relative chronology!
1. Grimm’s Law (i) [–voiced] → [+cont] 2. Grimm’s Law (ii) [+voiced] → [–voiced] 3. Grimm’s Law (iii) [+aspirate] → [–aspirate]
4. Verner’s Law [+cont] → [+voiced] / V __ [–stress] 5. Accent on word stem
... and what about
Lat pondus 'weight', (via) strāta 'prepared road', caupō 'merchant', etc. OE pund (ModE pound), stræt (ModE street), cēap (ModE cheap), etc. which should be funt, stræþ, cēaf, etc.
☞ later borrowings (from the Romans), at a time when Grimm’s Law was no longer active
F. Plank, Ways of Change 22 West Germanic innovations, relative to Proto-Germanic (or relative to Gmc minus East Gmc, = North-West Gmc), include
• Consonant Gemination (plus Umlaut; later loss of /j/, retained in OS as /i/; later sometimes degemination after long syllable)
'V Cα j → 'V Cα Cα j (C ≠ /r/)
Gothic ON OS OE OHG saljan selja sellian sellan sellen kunjis kynjes kunnies cynnes chunnes (‘race’, GEN.SG) bidjan biDja biddian biddan bitten satjan setja settian settan setzen skapjan skepja scieppan scepfen (*þakjan) þekja thekkian þeccan decchan
gemination also before /r, l/, rarely before /w, m, n/ baitrs bitr bittar bittor bittar
no gemination of /r/ farjan feria ferian ferian ferjen (‘fahren’, TRANS)
F. Plank, Ways of Change 23 • /D/ (whether original or due to Verner’s Law) > /d/, in all positions (thus, e.g., ON flóD, faDir – OE flōd, fæder);
tendency also for other voiced spirants to become voiced stops especially in West Germanic, most completely in Upper German (but in certain environments also in East and North Gmc) • loss of final /z, r/ in unaccented syllables (eliminating marked NOM.SG, e.g. PGmc *stain-az, Go stains > OE stān) • various processes of diphthongisation, with one source element a glide (geminate, final, or intervocalic)
F. Plank, Ways of Change 24 Anglo-Frisian (and Old Saxon, = Ingvaeonic) innovations, relative to common WGmc, include
• a non-event: stops unchanged, no Second (or High German) Consonant Shift (cf., e.g., E pound, ten, elk – G Pfund, zehn, Elch) • loss of nasal before fricatives /s z, f v, T D/, with compensatory lengthening (and nasalisation?) of the preceding vowel:
OS ūs, OE ūs OHG uns OS fīf, OE fīf OHG fimf OS ōthar, OE ōþer OHG andar
(A similar change also occurred, later and independently, in the Upper High German dialect of Alemannic. Before /h x/ it had also occurred earlier, in PGmc, before /s z, f v/ also in Old Norse.) • fronting (“brightening”) of /a/ > /æ/ (> /e/) (e.g., E street, deed, meal – G Straße, Tat, Mahl), except before nasal, where /a/ > /O/ (“Verdumpfung”, e.g., reflexes in E long, done – G lang, getan); probably separate changes for long and short /a/, the short- vowel change taking place independently in OE and OFris
F. Plank, Ways of Change 25 • /au/ > OE /ēa/, OFris /ā/, OS /ō/ (e.g., E cheap – G kauf-en) • palatalisation and assibiliation: /k, g, sk/ > /tS, j, S/ before front vowels (e.g., E chin, yellow, yesterday – G Kinn, gelb, gestern; /sk/ > /S/ also outside Anglo-Frisian: e.g., E ship – G Schiff) • weakening of /g/ after vowel to glide and off-glide of diphthong (cf. E day, way, hail – G Tag, Weg, Hagel) • another non-event: no defricativisation of final /B/ (from IE /bh/ by Grimm’s Law); compare OE wīf – OHG wīp • dropping of final /r/ (< /s/) of personal and interrogative pronouns
OS, OE hē OHG er cf. Go is (with onset /h/ added) OS hwē, OE hwā OHG wer Go was OS wī, OE wē OHG wir Go weis OS mī, OE mē OHG mir Go mis
F. Plank, Ways of Change 26 The Great Vowel Shift — and what’s great about it: like Grimm’s Law, it’s both general and systemic
OLD ENGLISH TODAY (Standard British English)
F. Plank, Ways of Change 27
<πúsend>
<πú>
F. Plank, Ways of Change 28 ENGLISH GREAT VOWEL SHIFT
i… u…
e… o… aj aw ”… O…
a…
ti…d tajd
F. Plank, Ways of Change 29 general (“Ausnahmslosigkeit der Lautgesetze”):
Aller Lautwandel, soweit er mechanisch vor sich geht, vollzieht sich nach ausnahmslosen Gesetzen, d.h. die Richtung der Lautbewegung ist bei allen Angehörigen einer Sprachgenossenschaft, außer dem Fall, daß Dialektspaltung eintritt, stets dieselbe, und alle Wörter, in denen der der Lautbewegung unterworfene Laut unter gleichen Verhältnissen erscheint, werden ohne Ausnahme von der Veränderung ergriffen.
Hermann Osthoff & Karl Brugman[n], Vorwort zu Morphologische Untersuchungen auf dem Gebiete der indogermanischen Sprachen (Bd. 1, 1878, S. XIII)
Neogrammarian sound change: no social diffusion; no lexical diffusion.
F. Plank, Ways of Change 30 systemic:
change affects whole phonological subsystems, rather than individual sounds/phonemes, with the individual steps of such changes interconnected (chain shifts).
Pull/drag chains (German: Sog): one step of a chain change results in a gap in a (symmetrical) phonological subsystem, which is subsequently filled through the next step of the chain change.
Push chains (German: Schub): one step of a chain change results (or would result) in a neutralisation of previously distinct sounds/phonemes, and therefore in a conflation of previously distinct morphemes, which is subsequently remedied (or in anticipation avoided: therapy or prophylaxis?) through the next step of the chain change.
F. Plank, Ways of Change 31 not so great: Metathesis
• only sporadic (rather than general): doesn’t affect a sound segment (or sequence of segments) at all its occurrences (no question of a “ausnahmsloses Lautgesetz”) • not systemic: doesn’t affect an entire natural class of segments (as definable by a phonological feature)
(i)
(ii) r-metathesis, e.g., Brihtnó∂ – Birhtnó∂ cf. work, G wirken — wrought, OE worhtan byrnan ‘burn’— G brennen yrnan — run hors — G Ross Lat. periculosus — Span. peligroso (r-metathesis at a distance!)
But see: http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~ehume/metathesis/
F. Plank, Ways of Change 32 Examples of other general and systemic sound changes?
Examples of other sporadic and non-systemic sound changes?
F. Plank, Ways of Change 33 What about these?
Old English later
F. Plank, Ways of Change 34 <án>
F. Plank, Ways of Change 35 great, at least once: Umlaut (now morphologised for NUMBER distinction for a handful of nouns, no longer a phonological rule or phonologically conditioned alternation)
• now:
SG foot, tooth, goose, man, mouse PL feet, teeth, geese, men, mice
• once (OE):
SG PL NOM mann menn ACC mann menn GEN mannes manna DAT menn mannum
→ conditioner of umlaut (i, j in syllable after stem) lost
F. Plank, Ways of Change 36 • even earlier (Common Germanic):
NOM mann-s mann-iz > [menn-iz] ACC mann-um mann-uns GEN mann-iz (> -as) mann-ōm DAT mann-i > [menn-i] mann-umiz
→ umlaut (conditioned by i, j) a “great” phonological rule
• even earlier (Common Indo-European) inflectional exponents, no umlaut:
NOM *-s/-Ø *-es VOC *-Ø *-es ACC *-m/-m9 *-n-s/-n9-s GEN *-es/-os/-s *-om/-óm ABL *-es/-os/-s, *-ot *-ios DAT *-(e)i *-bh(y)os, *-mos LOC *-i, *-Ø *-su INS *-e/-o, *-bhi/-mi *-bhi
F. Plank, Ways of Change 37 Umlaut (pre-West > West Germanic)
V [+back] → [–back] / __ (C).Ci/j
[–back] [+back] [–round] [+round] [+round]
[+high] i y ← u
↑
[–high, –low] e „ ← o
↑
œ [+low] ← Å
F. Plank, Ways of Change 38 Palatalisation (= fronting): West Gmc > Old English sk → S, k → tS, g → j / __ [+front] cf. OE spellings
[k, g] [tS, j]
But why now: kin, king — chin? both followed by a front vowel
F. Plank, Ways of Change 39
☞ ordering of phonological rules
WGmc kinni ‘chin’ kunnj- ‘kin’ Palatalisation tSinni — Umlaut — kynnj- i/j-Deletion tSinn kynn
F. Plank, Ways of Change 40
Voiced/Unvoiced Fricatives: Allophones, in complementary distribution
UNVOICED in voiceless VOICED in voiced environment (on both sides!)
<πám>
F. Plank, Ways of Change 41 and these?
F. Plank, Ways of Change 42 Is [+/–voice] still only allophonic for Modern English fricatives? cf. fast – vast, laugh – love, reference – reverence; thigh – thy, mouth – (to) mouth, method – leather; sip – zip, lose – loose, fussy – fuzzy; ship – genre, fish – rouge, mission – vision
Minimal pairs: fricative allophones have become phonemes (How come, diachronically? ← French loans)
How were the allophones spelled in Old English? How are the corresponding phonemes spelled now?
F. Plank, Ways of Change 43 The fate of vowels in unstressed syllables
• V > [E] > Ø examples: see Inflection file
The fate of consonants in the coda of unstressed syllables, especially word-finally
• depends on place of articulation of consonant; many are dropped, e.g.
[tS] > Ø
<ánlic> >
[j] > Ø
[m] > [n] > Ø, but not always examples? see Inflection file
F. Plank, Ways of Change 44 Are changes of the following inflections due to sound change? What else could they be due to?
THEN NOW wæs ... ge-herg-od was harrie-d wæs ... of-slæg-en was slai-n man ge-ræd-d-e (it) was decid-ed man geald(-Ø) (should) be pai-d hí worh-t-an they wrough-t
æt Mældún-e at Maldon on π-ám géar-e in that year for π-ám myccl-an bróg-an for the [great] [terror] be π-ám sæ-rim-an at the sea-rim tÿn πúsend pund-a ten thousand pound-s
F. Plank, Ways of Change 45 Denisc-an mann-um Danish men ic áx-ie πé I ask you hwæt sæg-est πú? what do you say? hú begæ-st πú? how do you go about? hwylc-ne cræft can-st πú? which craft do you know? hwæt drinc-aπ gé? what do you (you-guys) drink? wé habb-aπ we have wé n-abb-aπ we don’t have
F. Plank, Ways of Change 46 OE Personal Pronouns
1st Person SG DUAL PL NOM ic wít wé ACC mé(c) unc ús(ic) DAT mé unc ús GEN mín uncer úre
2nd Person SG DUAL PL NOM πú git ge ACC πé(c) inc éow(ic) DAT πé inc éow GEN πín incer éower
F. Plank, Ways of Change 47 3rd Person SG PL MASC FEM NEUT NOM hé héo hit hí ACC hine hí hit hí DAT him hire him him GEN his hire his hira
☞ roman type identifies survivors (although the items concerned may have changed form and/or function) into Middle and Modern English;
forms in italics didn’t make it, i.e., were given up or replaced.
Identify the provenance of the replacing forms, in those instances where forms were replaced because the categorial contrasts as such were continued. Not all of them were! Hint: There has been borrowing, from Viking Germanic (3PL); and there has been a remarkable switch of function (2nd person).
F. Plank, Ways of Change 48 Morphological change: Origins of morphology
• existing morphology retained (with the following generation successfully replicating the morphological system of the preceding generation)
• existing morphology retained, but re-analysed e.g., OE -s NOM/ACC.PL of one declension (strong masculines) extended to most other nouns (except the nouns from the old athematic declension: foot – feet), also serving as NOM/ACC.PL (paradigmatic extension); e.g. OE -s NOM/ACC.PL also used for GEN.PL (if there is a GEN.PL suffix); e.g. OE -en PL.SUBJ.PRES extended to PL.IND.PRES, replacing -að; e.g. German GEN.SG masculine > adverbialiser tag-s, morgen-s, nacht-s, vollend-s, hinterrück-s, flug-s, zweck-s
F. Plank, Ways of Change 49 • derivational affixes borrowed (mostly from Latin): borrowing of whole words; subsequently analysis into stems and affixes; subsequent extension of newly identified affixes also to native words (e.g. edible, possible, probable ... > ed-ible, poss-ible, prob-able ... > eat-able, do-able, ...)
e.g. Engl -able, -ee from Latin/Norman French -ab(i)l, -é, etc. e.g., original Germanic agentive noun suffixes -o (gehelfo), -il (tregel) supplemented (already in common Germanic times) and eventually (OHG/MHG) supplanted by *-arja > -āri > -ære > -er/-ler/-ner in Engl and German from Lat -āri-
F. Plank, Ways of Change 50 • affixes univerbated/downgraded from independent words, syntactic > morphological construction:
(i) derivational affixes:
English -ship, German -scaf(t) < nouns OHG scaf ‘Beschaffenheit, Ordnung’, scafti ‘Schöpfung’, OE gesceap ‘Geschöpf, Beschaffenheit’ (cf. E shape) E -dom, G -tuom < noun OE dōm ‘judgment, statute’, OHG tuom ‘judgment, position, condition, dignity’ (cf. E doom) E -ly, G -lich < noun Gmc *-līkaz ‘having the body, form of’ (cf. E like, G Leich ‘(dead) body’) E -less < adjective lēas ‘free from, without, false’ (cf. E loose, G los) G -haft < adjective haft ‘gebunden, gefangen’ G -sam < adjective samo ‘von gleicher Beschaffenheit’ (cf. E same) E -ful [fl`] < adjective full: brim-full, beauti-ful, aw-ful E -man [mn`] < noun man [mœn]: post-man, chair-man
F. Plank, Ways of Change 51 G -weise, E -wise < noun Weise, wise: dummer-weise, schritt-weise; step-wise, money-wise G -wegs < noun Weg: gerade(n)-wegs, keines-wegs
(ii) inflectional affixes
-(e)t PRETERITE of weak verbs in Germanic < verb ‘did’ (he work-ed < he work did)
-r FUTURE in French, Italian < Latin periphrastic construction, with an auxiliary with deontic modal/future-oriented meaning (‘I have to sing, I am obliged to sing’; originally possessive meaning, ‘to own’)
‘I sing’ ‘I will/am going to sing’ je chant-e je chant-r-ai I sing-1SG.PRES.IND I sing-FUT-1SG.IND < (ego) cant-a-re hab-e-o sing-THEME-INF have-THEME-1SG.PRES.IND
F. Plank, Ways of Change 52
☞ parallel, simultaneous or consecutive changes of meaning, form, distribution! obligation > future; syntactic > morphological construction (= tighter); inflected verb ‘have’ > inflectional suffix of preceding verb; -r(e) INF > FUT.
F. Plank, Ways of Change 53 Morphosyntactic change: Grammatic(al)isation
Remember this OE question: Hwylcne crœft canst πú? Which craft canst thou?
What happend to cunnan and its kind, the so-called modal auxiliaries (could, must, may, might, shall, should, will, would, ought)?
OE: pre-modals as regular verbs, in terms of morphology, syntax, and semantics – though most of them were in the inflection class of preterite-presents, with the morphological peculiarity of having a zero ending rather than -aþ for 3SG.IND.PRES (because these verbs had historically been PRETERITE or rather PERFECT forms, but with a PRESENT meaning, like ‘I know’ = ‘I have learned’)
F. Plank, Ways of Change 54 eModE, ModE: AUX gradually diverging from V, eventually AUX ≠ V
• an AUX needs a V to form a clause; • an AUX combines with a V without INF complementiser to; • a modal AUX doesn’t (normally) combine with another modal AUX; • a modal AUX lacks 3SG.PRES.IND inflection -s; • a modal AUX lacks all non-finite forms (*to can, *canning, *have canned); • a modal AUX doesn’t form a regular PAST tense (formally and semantically); • an AUX doesn’t take periphrastic do in negation, inversion, emphasis; • only an AUX allows negative not to contract to n’t (NEG inflection?); • ...
F. Plank, Ways of Change 55
☞ a typical case of GRAMMATIC(AL)ISATION: Verb > Auxiliary an open-class content/lexical word turned into a closed-class function/ grammatical word more generally: Lexeme > Grammeme: free > clitic (phonologically bound) > affix (morphologically bound) ( > Ø),
and so on, ad infinitum – with grammatical forms again and again recruited from the fund of lexical forms (N, V, A, Adv), unless reanalysed from other grammatical forms or borrowed.
Thus, grammar history is cyclical rather than linear. On linguistic grounds, we see no traces of a beginning, no prospect of an end.
F. Plank, Ways of Change 56 The cycle of grammaticalisation
(I.i) ... [ Xlex word Ylex word ]phrase ... downgrading lex > gram
(I.ii) ... [ Xlex word Ygram word ]phrase ... phono binding: cliticisation
(I.iii) ... [ Xlex word=ygram word: clitic ]phrase ... morpho binding: affixation “univerbation”
(I.iv) ... [ Xstem–yaffix ]lex word ... loss of affix, due to phonology, analogy, or imperfect learning
(I.v) ... [ X'stem ]lex word ... ------new combinations of lex words
(II.i) ... [[ X'stem ]lex word Zlex word ]phrase ...
... and so on, indefinitely
F. Plank, Ways of Change 57 An example of a (content/lexical > function/grammatical) word eventually turned into an affix (unlike the ModE modals) via an enclitic function word, and eventually disappearing: the past tense marker of “weak” verbs in Germanic: a dental suffix (-(V)d/t), going back to (the stem of) the verb ‘to do’, itself tense-inflected: the students work-ed < ... work did disappearing through phonological change (cluster simplification) in varieties of English (BVE) > Ø, if PAST is clear from stem vowel: he kep’ [kEp] keep-PAST he worked disappearing through morphosyntactic change: Präteritumsschwund, replaced by Present Perfect he worked > has worked
F. Plank, Ways of Change 58 Other examples of grammaticalisation:
• More modality expressions:
Where does this expression for deontic necessity (being under an obligation) come from? Simplified story:
I hafta [hœft´] read two books for the exam ‘I must read two books ...’
hafta is one phonological word, with the complementiser encliticised onto the auxiliary
< I have to [hœv tu] read two books ...
have an auxiliary for deontic modality, with complement clause introduced by infinitival complementiser to
< I have two books to read
have a verb of possession, with adverbial clause (‘for the purpose of reading’)
F. Plank, Ways of Change 59 • Did Proto-Germanic and early Old English have definite and indefinite articles? How was definiteness expressed at these early stages? (not at all, word order?) From what source did English get itself definite and indefinite articles? (< distal demonstrative; numeral ‘1’) What changed? (obligatoriness; formal differentiation from source words)
• Did early Old English have reflexive pronouns? From what source and how did English get itself reflexive pronouns? (< personal/possessive pronouns + noun ‘self’)
• Did early Old English/Common Germanic have a passive construction? How was it formed? What are its components and what is their origin? (< auxiliary/copula verb for change of state or state/existence, WEORÞAN and BEON/WESAN, plus resultative/participial form of verb; agentive/ ablative/instrumental preposition for agent) Any equivalent constructions? (impersonal man)
F. Plank, Ways of Change 60 • Which adpositions did Old English have? How did English later get itself new adpositions? mostly prepositions: inside, behind, aboard, during, concerning, lest, without, within, via, because of, instead of, due to, in front of, on behalf of, in spite of; at least one postposition: ago (< verbs, nouns, adverbs: because of the rain < by cause of the rain; during the war < participle of verb duren ‘to last, endure’, modelled on Latin-style absolute construction: ‘enduring the war’ = ‘while the war endured’; slightly different story for German während, though also derived from participle: < währendes Krieges; two years ago < two years agone)
• How does Modern English re-create a Number contrast for 2nd person pronouns, which had been lost owing to the extension of 2PL to 2SG? (with you originally as a formal SG pronoun of address, in contrast with informal 2SG þū, but with the formality contrast later abandoned and you as the sole survivor)?
F. Plank, Ways of Change 61 Syntactic change: Word order and dummy do
• Where is the finite verb in Old English?
(a) in subordinate clauses
(b) in main declarative clauses
(c) in main declarative clauses introduced by something other than the subject
Hér wæs Gypeswíc gehergod; Adv Vfin Sbj Vnonfin here was Ipswich harried
∏æne ræd gerædde Siric arcebiscop. O Vfin S Archbishop Sirich decided (on) this policy
Ond on πám géare man gerædde ... Coord Adv Sbjpro Vfin And in that year one decided ...
F. Plank, Ways of Change 62 (d) in main interrogative clauses
Hwylcne cræft canst πú? Obj Vfin Sbjpro Which craft canst thou?
Gehyrest πu, Eadwacer? Vfin Sbjpro Hearest thou, Eadwacer?
F. Plank, Ways of Change 63
DO support: if there is no auxiliary (finiteness marker) present – (i) to host negative not/n't, or – (ii) to carry emphasis, or – (iii) to precede the subject in inversion constructions.
(i) Alfred can not sing. Alfred does not sing. Alfred can sing, can't he? Alfred sang, didn't he? Alfred was told not to sing. Alfred prefers not singing. I suggest that Alfred not sing for a while. Don't be silly! (ii) Alfred CAN sing. Alfred DOES sing. (iii) Can Alfred sing? Does Alfred sing? Who hit Alfred? Who did Alfred hit? Never before has Alfred sung. Never before did Alfred sing.
F. Plank, Ways of Change 64 • Where are the subject and object in Old English?
∏æne ræd gerædde Siric arcebiscop. OVfinS Archbishop Sirich decided (on) this policy SVO
• Complex genitives, in OE split into a pre-head and a post-head part:
Ælfred-es godsune cyning-es King Alfred’s godson Ælfred-GEN.SG godson king-GEN.SG
Inwær-es broþur ond Healfden-es Inwær and Healfden’s brother Inwær-GEN.SG brother and Healfden-GEN.SG
• Name – Title > Title – Name
then now Brihtnó∂ ealdorman Alderman Brightbold Siric arcebiscop Archbishop Sirich