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Heine, Bernd Kaltenböck, Gunther Kuteva, Tania Long, Haiping The Rise of Discourse Markers Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2021 308 10.1017/9781108982856 Discourse markers (DMs henceforth) are items which are semantically and syntactically independent from their environment, they are usually set off prosodically from the rest of the utterance, and they have a metatextual function. I The Rise of Discourse Markers i , written by Bernd Heine, Gunther Kaltenböck, Tania Kuteva, and Haiping Long, is a valuable contribution to the comparative typological study of DMs. Heine, Kaltenböck, Kuteva, and Long report no convincing evidence that these properties developed gradually, and argue that the dramatic change in the history of I anyway i took place all at once around the mid-nineteenth century, and survived largely unchanged into Present-Day English. In Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6, Heine, Kaltenböck, Kuteva, and Long test the cooptation hypothesis by looking into more than 20 DMs in English, French, Japanese, and Korean. [Extracted from the article]

Polarity reversal has recently been argued to be the defining characteristic of counterfactuality. Ancient Greek had a diverse set of constructions which bring about polarity reversal that is not the direct result of a negation marker nor do they all express a counterfactual meaning. It is the aim of this paper to detail the major differences between these constructions synchronically and especially diachronically, focusing on counterfactual mood forms, counterfactual modal verbs, avertives (almost+past (im)perfective), non-counterfactual rhetorical questions and non-standard wishes. As a historically varied constructional group, these constructions bring about polarity reversal in different ways with different implicatures (e.g., counterfactual, contradictory, undesirable), but they most importantly differ in their diachronic conventionalization of polarity reversal. Whereas counterfactuals conventionalize their polarity reversal in various ways (e.g., changing temporal reference, counterfactual implicature transfer), non-counterfactual polarity reversal constructions create polarity reversal as a synchronic implicature through pragmatic means (e.g., a rhetorical question identifying a contradictory presupposition in the common ground or a non-standard wish evaluating an undesirable outcome to the speaker). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Besides highly grammaticalized analytic verb forms that constitute the system's main tense, aspect, and mood forms, Basque has a handful of less grammaticalized periphrases for secondary aspectual and modal meanings. In both older and more recent texts, some of these periphrases have been reanalyzed as monoclausal and readjusted in accordance with the auxiliated verb's argument structure. This readjustment or actualization process involves changes in two respects: case-marking and indexation through auxiliary change. The reanalysis and actualization of theses periphrases seem to be driven by analogy with highly extended and frequent analytic verb forms. With regard to their actualization, it seems to depend on three factors: word order, valency of the auxiliated verb, and plural patient agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim and scope of this article is to take a closer look at the functions and semantics of the three relative particles da, so, and wo, and to show that they have developed differently over a period from 1350 to 1800, continuing up to our modern dialects and the standard language. We will focus on wo because it is the only relativizer which is attested both as locative relative and as general relative clause marker, and we will propose that wo has extended its functional domain from a locative relative to a general relative marker. We will furthermore discuss if there has been a grammaticalization path "relative locative > general relative clause marker" in German diachrony or not. Finally, we will suggest that standardization processes are responsible for the different degrees of functional extension of wo attested in the historical/modern varieties and the standard language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This corpus-based study examines the diachrony of differential place marking in Basque. In spatial cases, animate nouns in Basque exhibit heavier morphological forms than inanimate ones, but, under some circumstances, they can also be marked as inanimate. The data for the study comprises 66 sixteenth-to-twentieth-century texts (9,791 examples). A generalised linear mixed-effects model was fitted to analyse factors influencing the choice of marking. It is shown that animate nouns are sensitive to different aspects of the extended Animacy Hierarchy. The strongest effect is that of number (singular nouns prefer animate marking), followed by referentiality (pronouns are more prone to take animate forms than other nominals) and definiteness (definite nouns show animate marking more often than indefinite ones). The analysis also shows that animate marking became more widespread, and that there are dialectal differences. Moreover, more factors were relevant for the alternation in the earliest data (number, referentiality, definiteness, person and case) than in the most recent texts, where number is the most important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed overview of the changes undergone by the reflexive buru-construction in Basque under the light of grammaticalization theory. On the basis of quantitative historical data, the reflexive construction is argued to have undergone changes predicted by the grammaticalization path of reflexive markers: the distinction between regular and reflexive possessive pronouns is lost; anaphoric, non-reflexive uses of buru disappear; and number agreement between the subject and buru is no longer obligatory. The buru-construction is furthermore argued to have become more prevalent at the expense of other reflexivization strategies. As opposed to these changes, the reflexive construction seems to have degrammaticalized as well: the number of direct object uses of this construction decreases over time, and it occurs in subject position with more predicates in present-day written Basque than in the historical period. In view of these facts, an argument is made against unidirectional conceptions of grammaticalization. External motivations for these developments, such as the standardization of the language, are also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically assesses probabilistic predictions on the theory of contactinduced grammaticalization of the comitative-instrumental polysemy in those Slavic languages which have had a history of long and intense interaction with either German or Italian. Having provided extensive dialectal data, I argue instead that there are no grounds for positing a direct correlation between the introduction of the comitative preposition to instrumental in "high-contact" Slavic languages and the history of language contact with German or Italian. I propose to distinguish between the grammaticalization of the comitative-instrumental polysemy due to analytic simplification and the grammaticalization of the instrumental-comitative polysemy due to synthetic simplification. The comitative marking for instrumentals in Slavic is likely to develop in places of prolonged multilingual contacts, not necessarily with German or Italian. Under these conditions one can predict the development of convergent analytic features in closely related or even areally contingent languages (dialects), as is the case of the Circum-Baltic area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the semantic developments of the major future time expressions in Late Modern English are traced in detail, with the aim of uncovering mechanisms of language change in a complex functional system. The results of the study reveal that to express a pure prediction, the major shift that has taken place in the Late Modern period is from a comparatively frequent use of shall to a comparatively frequent use of ’ll; that to express a prediction based on the intention of the subject, BE going to and the present progressive have replaced will and shall to a certain degree; and that to express a prediction based on a previous arrangement, earlier uses of the simple present have been replaced to a considerable degree by the progressive with future time reference. In addition, the construction WANT to is identified as what may be called an emerging future marker, which has started to be used for predictions based on the subject’s intention. Finally, the possible contribution of certain stylistic and socio-cultural changes to the many recent changes in the system of English future time expressions is also considered, such as the complexification of society, (pseudo-)democratization, and a tendency of many text types towards a more personal style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For good reasons, linguists are highly skeptical when it comes to predicting linguistic change. As has been argued in Heine (2003: 598–599), based on observations on some regularities of grammatical change made within the framework of grammaticalization theory, however, it seems possible to propose at least some probabilistic predictions on what is a possible grammatical change and what is not. In the present article it is argued that this also applies to grammatical change that takes place in situations of language contact. As more recent research has demonstrated (Heine & Kuteva 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2010, Heine forthcoming), contact-induced grammatical change is essentially subject to the same principles of grammaticalization as grammatical change not induced by contact. The data analyzed in this article concern case marking in Slavic languages, more specifically expressions for comitative and instrumental participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]