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Gothic preverb compounds illustrate several interesting characteristics, including multiple preverb stacking, idiomatisation, tmesis (i.e., separation by clitics), and P-copying (i.e., multiple pronunciation of the preverb). This paper is a close examination of the morphosyntax of these compounds, highlighting novel empirical generalisations about the Gothic language with key theoretical implications for our understanding of Germanic complex verbs and the alternations they participate in. In particular, this paper proposes a structural distinction between preverb compounds which are obligatorily semantically transparent and those which are optionally idiomatic. In arguing that transparent compounds involve the mechanism of preposition incorporation and m-merger, paralleling recent accounts of clitic doubling, while idiomatic compounds involve a thematic high applicative projection, this paper captures nuanced differences in these compounds' case assignment and argument licensing behaviour. These structural differences will be shown to derive these two compound types' constrained interaction with the aforementioned phenomena of stacking, tmesis, and copying. In addition, this paper compares Gothic complex verbs to their cross-linguistic correlates within and beyond Germanic, whilst also providing a diachronic pathway for the development of (multiple) preverb compounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the grammaticalization of future and conditional tenses in Navarro-Aragonese and Medieval Castilian during the 13th and 14th centuries. It examines the variation between synthetic verb forms with postposed object pronouns and analytic forms with mesoclitic pronouns, and shows that Navarro-Aragonese has a higher frequency of use of synthetic forms. It is concluded that the advancement of this change may have started in the northern Pyrenees and then spread through language and dialect contact in the Iberian Peninsula. [Extracted from the article]

This article presents a development of evidential categories derived from a verb related to the auditory sense in the evidential system attested in rGyalthang Tibetan varieties. The language varieties under study possess a morphological distinction of at least five evidentials in the access-to-information category and two evidentials in the source-of-information category. The discussion focuses on one morpheme derived from the Literary Tibetan verb grag 'resound, hear' used for both categories, and examines its process of grammaticalisation and degrammaticalisation. Elicited data illustrate the following functions: (1) grag as a nonvisual sensory evidential suffix that was further degrammaticalised as a copulative nonvisual sensory verb stem; (2) grag as a hearsay marker in a separate syntactic slot, which extended from (1); and (3) grag as a lexical verb stem meaning 'hear' [the common origin to (1) and (2)], which underwent two grammaticalisation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study empirically investigates functional and social variation in the use of TAYYIB ('okay, well, right') in light of grammaticalisation. Thirty naturally occurring conversations of 60 Najdi Arabic speakers were recorded in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The analysis demonstrates that TAYYIB has two realisations: full Tayyib [tˁajjib] and reduced Tab [tˁab]. Drawing on the conversation analytic approach within a variationist framework, TAYYIB was used to perform multiple discourse-pragmatic functions: interpersonal, textual and interpersonal–textual. The statistical analysis reveals that variant choice is significantly conditioned by the pragmatic functions. While Tayyib is employed to perform all three functions, Tab is only used for textual and interpersonal–textual meanings. As for social factors, Tab is significantly more likely to be used by younger speakers than adults and also more likely to be used by females than males. This can be interpreted as an indication of ongoing change driven by young people, primarily females, towards the greater use of the innovative Tab. Given the evidence of linguistic change in Tab including semantic bleaching, pragmatic strengthening and phonological reduction, the study suggests that Tab has undergone advanced grammaticalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Umm Al-Qura University Journal for Languages & Literature is the property of Association of Arab Universities and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study clarifies the relaxation of selectional restrictions imposed on the subject of BE going to in relation to its increase in frequency from the 1820s to the 2010s by analysing the Corpus of Historical American English. To this end, BE about to is also analysed. Whilst the use of BE going to in the passive and there constructions is attested in the early stage of its grammaticalisation towards becoming a semi-auxiliary by previous studies, this study suggests that its use with the pronoun what in subject position was also a sign of an initial stage of grammaticalisation. It will be also shown that subjects composed of grammatical components with simple content appeared earlier than those with content-rich ones. This study also demonstrates that the frequency order of these subjects in current English corresponds to their chronological order of when the earliest token appeared in the corpus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present novel evidence for iconicity in core morphophonological grammar by documenting, describing, and analysing two patterns of tonal alternation in Tal (West Chadic, Nigeria). When a non-proximal deixis modifies a noun in Tal, every tone of the modified noun is lowered. When the nominal modifier is a proximal deixis, the final tone of the modified noun is raised. The tone lowering and raising are considered the effects of non-proximal and proximal linkers, which have the tone features [–Upper, –Raised] and [+Raised] as their respective exponents. The realisation and maximal extension of the non-proximal tone features are considered effects of morpheme-specific featural correspondence constraints. Similarly, the exponent of the proximal linker docking on the final TBU is due to the relative ranking of the proximal-specific correspondence constraints. The association of the tone features [–Upper, –Raised] and [+Raised] with non-proximal and proximal linkers, respectively, is in line with crosslinguistic patterns of magnitude iconicity. Given that the local and long-distance realisations of the proximal and non-proximal featural affixes respectively are perceptually similar to deictic gestures, the locality of the featural affixation is considered a novel pattern of iconicity. To motivate this pattern of iconicity, we extend the notion of perceptual motivation in linguistic theory to include the crossmodal depiction of sensory imagery. Consequently, Tal presents evidence for iconicity as a motivation for morphophonological grammar.

Eleven out of fourteen Estonian nominal cases are generally regarded as semantic cases, rather than grammatical, but some are more grammaticalised (i.e. less semantic) than others. These can be said to be (semi-)grammatical cases, carrying both semantic and syntactic functions. This study focusses on elative and allative case, which stand out among semantic cases in terms of multifunctionality and a higher degree of grammaticalisation. We investigate whether we can find evidence that the grammaticalisation of these cases is ongoing through an apparent time study. While previous approaches have used written data to investigate diachronic change in cases, the present study uses spontaneous spoken data by teenagers and adults to study the nature of grammatical change. This is the first study to diachronically investigate case characteristics related to multifunctionality and grammaticalisation through a quantitative distributional approach. Kokkuvõte. Mari Aigro, Virve-Anneli Vihman. Täitsa lambist: elatiivi ja allatiivi grammatiseerumise tõendeid noorte ja täiskasvanute suulises keeles. Neljateistkümnest eesti keele käändest peetakse ühtteist semantilisteks kääneteks, kuid mõned neist paistavad olevat teistest enam grammatiseerunud. Neid võiks ka pidada (pool)grammatilisteks, kuna nad markeerivad muuhulgas verbide argumente. Käesolev uuring keskendub elatiivile ja allatiivile, mis on varasemates uuringutes esile tõusnud multifunktsionaalsuse ja grammatiseerumise poolest. Uuringus võrreldakse elatiivi ja allatiivi distributsiooni spontaanses täiskasvanute ja teismeliste suulises keeles, et uurida pseudodiakroonilisel meetodil, kas nende käänete grammatiseerumine on eesti keeles aktiivne või on tegu funktsionaalselt passiivsete kategooriatega. See on esimene uuring, mis kvantifitseerib käänete multifunktsionaalsusega seotud distributiivsed omadused, et hinnata käändeid hõlmavate grammatiliste muutuste intensiivsust.

This article shows lexemes such as głupi (gwóźdź), debilne (zebranie), idiotyczny (ząb), nieszczęsne (dokumenty) (a stupid/foolish/ridiculous/wretched (nail/meeting/tooth/document)) as a subgroup of metapredicative adjectives with expressive and colloquial markedness. When they moved to the level of speaking about speaking, they lost some of the formal characteristics of typical adjectives (they are non-contrastive, non-negatable, nod-gradable among other features) and the meanings associated with mental impairment, illness, and other misfortunes have changed into the carrier of the evaluation 'it's not worth talking about'. This process falls into the research on grammaticalisation. This article provides an overview of dictionary entries of the analysed expressions and the author's preliminary hypothesis on their capability to reinforce assertion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventionally, the professional interpreter speaks in the first-person singular. Research in corpus-based discourse analysis has reported shifts from this norm towards first-person plural becoming the most frequent pronoun shift in political institutional interpreting, possibly signalling interpreter 'alignment with the institution'. Nonetheless, few studies have teased apart the simultaneous constraints of social, cognitive, and linguistic factors on institutional interpreters' preference for the plural. The present research adopts the usage-based theory to consider the three types of explanations together. It extends recent multivariate methodologies based on this theory to analyse 2,438 first-person cases in parallel interpreting and comparable speech corpora. Following robust context analyses and cross-linguistic prosodic transcription, this study weighs the strengths of 33 associates regarding the three explanations through regression analyses. The results show that first-person shifts are better explained by chunking effects when interpreters process complex forms and referents in the source and target speeches, and when they process zero-subject source inputs. The institutional alignment explanation fails to account for the extensive grammaticalisation of plural constructions in the interpreted speech. When all the interactive and additive effects are considered together, institutional alignment or monofactorial paradigms have little explanatory power. This study concludes by highlighting the relevance of usage-based multifactorial designs to interpreting research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eleven out of fourteen Estonian nominal cases are generally regarded as semantic cases, rather than grammatical, but some are more grammaticalised (i.e. less semantic) than others. These can be said to be (semi-)grammatical cases, carrying both semantic and syntactic functions. This study focusses on elative and allative case, which stand out among semantic cases in terms of multifunctionality and a higher degree of grammaticalisation. We investigate whether we can find evidence that the grammaticalisation of these cases is ongoing through an apparent time study. While previous approaches have used written data to investigate diachronic change in cases, the present study uses spontaneous spoken data by teenagers and adults to study the nature of grammatical change. This is the first study to diachronically investigate case characteristics related to multifunctionality and grammaticalisation through a quantitative distributional approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first- and second-person plural oblique pronuns in modern standard Italian are ci and vi; other varieties of Italo-Romance present ne (rarely ni) and ve. The pronominal clitics ci, ne and vi are often identified etymolo-gically with the local adverbs ci, ne and vi, reflecting Latin (*)hince, inde and ibi. According to a competing view only ci has an adverbial origin, whereas the pronominal clitics ne and vi reflect Latin nōs and uōs. In this study I present the material and analyse it historically. I conclude that the latter hypothesis is more plausible: it was precisely the accidental merger of pronominal ne and vi (from Latin nōs and uōs) with adverbial ne and vi (from Latin inde and ibi) that triggered the replacement of ne with ci (from Latin (*)hince). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the use and frequency of what I refer to as the K-suffixes - ō /- ū/-o in the Shirazi dialects, namely, Old and Modern Shirazi. It shows that the use of K-suffixes as definiteness markers is more highly developed in Modern Shirazi than in Old Shirazi. In Old Shirazi, the K-suffix, with its original evaluative meaning, demonstrated some degree of multi-functionality. This has mostly been lost in Modern Shirazi, and the suffix is now used to express definiteness. The high frequency of use of the K-suffix appears to be independent of genre, speaker, and speech setting. Data from a corpus of written texts in Old Shirazi, mainly comprised of poems, are quantitatively analysed, along with data from a corpus of spoken Shirazi narratives and data from a questionnaire answered by ten speakers. The results show that an evaluative suffix can develop into a definiteness marker by passing through a stage of combination with deictic markers, which paves the way for extending the use of the K-suffix to include non-deictic anaphoric tracking. This article concludes that the development of definiteness marking can proceed down a pathway that is distinct from the one normally assumed for demonstrative-based definiteness marking, even if the endpoint may be similar. The detailed documentation of this process presented here is a further contribution to Iranian studies, and augments the small group of well-documented cases of a non-demonstrative origin of definiteness marking cross-linguistically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the use of the shi...de construction, based on the analysis of structures with predicative adjectives in a 500,000-character corpus of spoken Mandarin assembled from transcripts of a popular Chinese chat show. Overall, de was omitted more than 40% of the time with a predicative adjective, a significantly higher rate than that found in previous studies. The data reveal a number of factors that may all play a role in determining the likelihood of de omission or retention: the time dependency of the adjective, the particular intensifier chosen to modify the adjective, the discourse function of the utterance and the presence of certain markers of epistemic modality. The findings also lend support to the hypothesis that shi is grammaticalizing to a bound morpheme in some so-called 'conventionalised forms' involving epistemic and evidentiality markers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Linguistische Treffen in Wrocław is the property of Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The present paper provides a methodological case study on how underlying incipient grammar change might be discerned even when frequencies of the incoming variant are apparently marginal and stable. Analysing the spread of tonic possessive pronouns in complements of locative adverbial constructions in European Spanish from a probabilistic perspective, more than 11,000 locative constructions from 1900 to 2004 were compiled, and probabilistic grammar change was operationalised as an interactive function between language-internal predictors and real time. The results reveal that numerous intralinguistic factors have been and are active in constraining the variation, with the innovation spreading significantly in spite of apparent stability in frequency. Crucially, the findings demonstrate that, even in a relatively standardised written language where the innovation has a considerably low frequency, the innovation grammaticalises along the same pathway as in colloquial vernaculars where the incoming variant is employed much more frequently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A partir d’informations que nous fournissent les grammaires et dictionnaires récents et contemporains, notre contribution a un double objectif : a. Nous analysons plus particulièrement l’histoire de comme afin de mieux comprendre les problèmes actuels concernant la classification des emplois du marqueur ; b. Nous comparons l’évolution de comme à celle de comment. Pour ce faire, nous présentons d’abord une classification des tours de comme et de comment, dont nous analysons ensuite l’évolution à partir de l’ancien français jusqu’au 18e siècle (lorsque la situation s’est enfin stabilisée). Ensuite, nous nous concentrons plus particulièrement sur la vive bataille qui a opposé comme à son plus vif concurrent, comment. Dans une dernière partie, nous étudions en détail l’impact du processus de grammaticalisation sur notre marqueur, afin de fournir une explication à l’histoire particulièrement mouvementée de comme qui est tracée tout au long de cette contribution.

Copyright of Pragmalingüística is the property of Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, Universidad de Cadiz and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Cuadernos de Filología Italiana is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Korean has diverse expressions denoting "wishes". Among them, this paper focuses on the periphrastic constructions of [-essumyen/-kilul + desiderative verbs], excluding the construction [-ko siph-]. Using the perspectives of grammaticalisation and pragmatics, the developmental paths of how the elliptical constructions -essumyen and -kilul realise the concept of the "wish" of the speaker in the optative mood are investigated. This paper will clarify the evolution of the optative markers of -essumyen and -kilul using the mechanisms of grammaticalisation and pragmatic strategies including specialisation, subjectification, intersubjectification, politeness, insubordination, and pragmatic inferences. The SFP (sentential final particle) optatives -essumyen and -kilul take stance-related functions, undergoing insubordination and inviting pragmatic inferences. A corpus analysis will provide usage-based implications of the constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study offers a quantitative and qualitative approach to the syntactic functions of the pronoun en from Archaic Catalan to Modern Valencian. In order to describe these, the functional behaviour of its predecessor, the Latin adverb ĭnde, is discussed, and its meanings are explained through grammaticalisation. A corpus of texts selected from the Corpus Informatitzat del Català Antic (CICA), the Corpus Informatitzat del Valencià (CIVAL) and the Corpus Informatitzat de la Gramàtica del Català Modern (CIGCMod) is analysed. The various occurrences of the pronoun en are identified, their syntactic functions are delimited and quantified, and the data are submitted to statistical analysis. The results show that the syntactic functions of en exhibit a high degree of continuity with respect to Latin ĭnde. The analysis demonstrates that partitives and lexicalisations constitute the very functional core of the pronoun en through time and they are the only functions that strongly survive in Modern Valencian. The progressive decay of the rest of the functions – a decay that in today's language is also affecting partitives and lexicalisations – provides a faithful picture of the pathway of the linguistic change affecting Catalan. The progressive recession of the functionality of en can be considered an exponent of this linguistic change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study "The Destruction of 'Mankind'" by Sami Uljas examines the phonological changes of the word "rmT" (person) in Ancient Egypt. It is shown that the spelling of the word, which had been established by the end of the Old Kingdom, could only be adapted to phonological changes with difficulty. This led to two changes in the grammatical gender of the word over time, from masculine to feminine and finally back to masculine. It is argued that the alleged word "rmT-t" (humanity) never existed and that the supposed evidence for this word merely represents solutions to the discrepancy between the traditional spelling and the spoken form of the word "rmT". [Extracted from the article]

In the present study, I argue that post-posed topic specification (PTS) across the Sahara is an areal phenomenon and that in the case of Southern Tamazight (i.e., Tuareg & Zenaga) it is an innovation generated by pattern replication. On the other hand, the required matter for PTS formation in Southern Tamazight is generally provided by Tamazight itself by means of system-internal developments involving the following predominant grammaticalisation track, that is, [*modality markers > topic specifiers]. I also show that full convergence has taken place in these Southern Tamazight languages, which has affected their linguistic typology on the morphological, syntactic, and pragmatic level. Moreover, the study accounts for the significance of the functional parameter of contrast in the development of these topic specifiers and hence confirms the importance of system-based factors in language change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study empirically investigates functional and social variation in the use of TAYYIB (‘okay, well, right’) in light of grammaticalisation. Thirty naturally occurring conversations of 60 Najdi Arabic speakers were recorded in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The analysis demonstrates that TAYYIB has two realisations: full Tayyib [tˁajjib] and reduced Tab [tˁab]. Drawing on the conversation analytic approach within a variationist framework, TAYYIB was used to perform multiple discourse-pragmatic functions: interpersonal, textual and interpersonal–textual. The statistical analysis reveals that variant choice is significantly conditioned by the pragmatic functions. While Tayyib is employed to perform all three functions, Tab is only used for textual and interpersonal–textual meanings. As for social factors, Tab is significantly more likely to be used by younger speakers than adults and also more likely to be used by females than males. This can be interpreted as an indication of ongoing change driven by young people, primarily females, towards the greater use of the innovative Tab. Given the evidence of linguistic change in Tab including semantic bleaching, pragmatic strengthening and phonological reduction, the study suggests that Tab has undergone advanced grammaticalisation.

Adverbials of truth or reality such as really (en.), wirklich (de.), verdaderamente (sp.) are cross-linguistically assumed to be a rich source for intensifiers (degree words) as in: (i) Peter is really nice. The epistemic adverbial is reanalysed as a modifier of a predicative adjective in a syntactically ambiguous sentence as in (i). At the same time the emphasis on the truth of the proposition invites the inference that the property in question is amply present. This view on the emergence of intensifiers from adverbials of truth is challenged by the German intensifier echt ‘really, lit. genuine/real’ as in: (ii) Peter ist echt nett ‘Peter is really nice’. In contemporary German echt is very popular as an intensifier, a proposition modifier, a speech-act modifier and a response particle. However, a diachronic analysis of the use of echt as an adverbial in New High German reveals that the intensifier reading develops much earlier than the reading as a proposition modifier, i.e. an epistemic adverbial. The article offers a discussion of the development of echt which sheds a somewhat different light on the relation between intensifiers and epistemic adverbials, and it suggests a unified analysis of the uses of echt in contemporary German which supports Traugott’s view of grammaticalisation as also encompassing an extension of structural scope.

Changes and transformations seen in languages are mostly carried out naturally by the speakers of that language. It is known that many changes have occurred in the Turkish language in terms of phonetic, morphological, lexical and semantic from the very beginning. The extent of these changes is sometimes at the level of dialect differences, and sometimes at levels that are not recognized and incomprehensible even by speakers of different dialects of the same language. Even if phonetic differences allow to recognize these structures, functional or semantic differences may not make it possible to understand or interpret language structures correctly. Grammaticalization examples, which are frequently encountered in Turkish, constitute a part of these differentiations. In general, the transformation of words from concepts and functions into grammatical units is defined as grammaticalization. One of the examples of grammaticalization, which is frequently seen in Old Anatolian Turkish, is "vardı". In the historical text studies examined, no recorded example of the "vardı" structure in its grammatical form and meaning was encountered. Therefore, in this article, the grammaticalization phenomenon and the grammaticalization of the "vardı" structure will be discussed, and the new meaning and function of the structure in question will be emphasized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Spanish construction lo que pasa es que 'what happens is that', 'the thing is' is used in a wide variety of contexts and with a range of different meanings. Linguistic research that has been carried out on this relatively common construction often fails to include empirically collected data and, as a result, the diasystematic markers thereof have only been described to a very limited extent. The main focus of this article is to investigate the use of the construction lo que pasa es que and its phonetically reduced forms lo que pasa que and lo que in two Spanish-language oral speech corpora collected in Getxo (Basque Country) and Barcelona (Catalonia). These data are used to carry out a quantitative and qualitative study of the presence or absence of this construction in both regions of language contact, something which has yet to be considered or systematically analysed in the relevant research. The study identifies a statistically relevant diatopic markedness of the forms lo que pasa es que, lo que pasa and pasa que while also providing empirical proof for the pragmatic use of these constructions within the varieties investigated. Furthermore, it confirms the use of additional reduced forms of said constructions and describes their development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lexical item raħ has undergone two phases of grammaticalisation, from a lexical item used as a lexical verb to a temporal-functional particle T-raħ, and further to a discourse-functional particle D-raħ. Syntactic diagnostics show that both T-raħ and D-raħ have developed properties of head status, adopting conventional Minimalist and Cartographic principles (Chomsky, 2000; Rizzi, 1997; Frascarelli & Hinterhölzl, 2007), where evidence is deduced from the fact that movement of a head is sensitive to intervention effects in the course of the derivation (Rizzi, 2006). The novelty about raħ is that, in its first phase of grammaticalised Traħ, while it has lost its φ-features input, in the sense that it doesn't spell out any agreeing suffix with the DP it marks, in its second phase of grammaticalised D-raħ, it has retained its φ-features, hence, an agreeing head. Further, this agreeing characteristic of D-raħ, with investigations of more articulated data, brings insight to the current research on discourse particles in that it goes against the widely-adopted characterization of discourse particles that postulates a non-agreeing property of discourse particles; discourse particles do not inflect for agreement. The syntactic properties shown by the grammaticalised raħ propose, on empirical groundings by movement considerations, that discourse particles externally merge in the course of the derivation, giving credence to the theory that the syntax of discourse particles has changed from Move to Merge (Hack, 2014). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adverbs of degree are prone to undergo change, and new adverbs frequently emerge through grammaticalisation. These adverbs tend to adhere to various syntactic and semantic restrictions that govern their usage depending on their degree of grammaticalisation (Klein 1998). During the grammaticalisation process, they first tend to expand in function and then become more specialised (Bolinger 1972, Klein 1998). This article provides documentation for the usage of the different adverbs of degree in Early Middle Dutch, and draws comparisons with Modern Dutch in order to shed light on the changes that led to the present situation. Using data from the Corpus Gysseling (2013), the present study focuses on eight adverbs. These include adverbs of high degree (harde, vele, sere, grotelike, utermaten), low degree (een deel, iewet), a negative polarity item (buere) and a modifier of comparatives. Some of these are still around in Modern Dutch, but with differences in distribution (veel) or in register (zeer), while others have disappeared (een deel). We present evidence that distributional patterns may be preserved even when the adverbs themselves are replaced by other expressions. We also found that the high degree adverbs show greater distinctions than those of low degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper qualitatively analyses the conceptualisations of the body part, head in Likpakpaln, an understudied Mabia (Gur), Niger-Congo language spoken on the North-Eastern corridors of Ghana. The analytical framework is a synthesis of grammaticalisation and conceptual metaphor theories. I establish that the head in Likpakpaln is unproductive for the grammaticalised, main pools of conceptual transfer. I examine the non-grammaticalised conceptualisation(s), too, under four salient semantic domains – luck, reasoning, emotion and personality traits. The head displays varying degrees of productivity for each of the four target domains. In all, I argue that the conceptualisations are filtered by lived-experiences, cultural construals and the language-specific lexical structure. The data provides further support for the embodied cultural prototype view of body part metaphor analysis. • Articles establishes that head metaphors feature in four type of clauses. • The head is not productive as grammaticalisation source for spatial , reference identity and numeracy functors in Likpakpaln. • Among the four domains of luck/fate, mental faculties , emotion and personality dispositions , the head is most employed in conceptualising personality disposition concepts. • The conceptualisation of the head are modulated by the lived-experiences of Likpakpaln speakers, their cultural construals and the inherent lexical structure of Likpakpaln as a language. • The Likpakpaln data support the embodied cultural protype view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the findings of a pilot research on the application of object classifiers and body parts in classifier predications referring to one designatum, i.e. the dog in the picture story Frog, Where Are You?. The research showed that the frequency of the classifiers in informants' texts varied. One classifier type prevailed when describing the majority of situations. Moreover, for each classifier type used in a given situation, there was a clear predominance of one of the possible shapes of hand, while the remaining ones were similar to it. From among body part classifiers, the least specific shapes of hand prevailed, which rendered the look of dog head to the smallest extent. These observations prove a high level of grammaticalisation of object classifiers and poorly specific body part classifiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates differences between Scottish Standard English (SSE) and Southern British Standard English (SBSE) in the semantic domain of strong obligation. Focusing on the modal verbs must, have to, need to and (have) got to, we use new corpus material from nineteen written and spoken genres in the Scottish component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-SCO) and corresponding texts from ICE-GB. Data are analysed using a mixed-effect multinomial regression model to predict the choice of verb. Language-internal factors include mode of production (written/spoken), grammatical subject (first/second/third person) and source of obligation (objective/subjective). Our results show that, as previous research suggests, SSE is much more likely to employ need to for the expression of strong obligation, and less likely to employ must and (have) got to. This general pattern remains essentially unaffected by language-internal factors. To account for our findings, we draw on the sociologically motivated process of democratisation and the language-internal process of grammaticalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the linguistic properties of a discourse variant of the temporal adverb .el.i:n, used in Haili Dialect of Najdi Arabic (HA). Maintaining the characteristic of co-occurring clause-initially, and examining lexical/discoursal articulated structures, .el.i:n has developed a conventionalized discourse use, turning its morphology into a discourse particle that expresses a degree of speakerfs attitude. .el.i:n has undergone a process of grammaticalisation, with morphosyntactic consequence: changing its phrasal status to a head one. Evidence supporting this direction derives from intervention effects (Rizzi, 2006)-.el.i:n inhabits movement of head-items in syntax. The immediate consequence of this morphosyntactic change has direct impact on the syntax of .el.i:n: occurring clause-initially and its phonology: being unable to bear high tone, unlike its temporal adverb counterpart. Implementing cartographic mechanisms, Rizzifs (1997) Split CP System, and holding to observations that inherently focused material wh-phrase le.. ewhyf merges in a position c-commanded by .el.i:n, it is established that the discourse instance of .el.i:n first merges at a discourse head, instantiating a discourse projection, PrtP, whence it semantically wide-scopes the propositional-TP. Constituents preceding .el.i:n are then argued to move and remerge at some Spec of a discourse phrase, C-TopP (Frascarelli & Hinterholzl, 2007). Mapping the CP-layer of HA, the PrtP headed by .el.i:n maintains a rigid order in syntax with respect to CP-items, which makes a possible, initial mapping to the left periphery of HA, calling for scrutiny of more structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adverbials of truth or reality such as really (en.), wirklich (de.), verdaderamente (sp.) are cross-linguistically assumed to be a rich source for intensifiers (degree words) as in: (i) Peter is really nice. The epistemic adverbial is reanalysed as a modifier of a predicative adjective in a syntactically ambiguous sentence as in (i). At the same time the emphasis on the truth of the proposition invites the inference that the property in question is amply present. This view on the emergence of intensifiers from adverbials of truth is challenged by the German intensifier echt 'really, lit. genuine/real' as in: (ii) Peter ist echt nett 'Peter is really nice'. In contemporary German echt is very popular as an intensifier, a proposition modifier, a speech-act modifier and a response particle. However, a diachronic analysis of the use of echt as an adverbial in New High German reveals that the intensifier reading develops much earlier than the reading as a proposition modifier, i.e. an epistemic adverbial. The article offers a discussion of the development of echt which sheds a somewhat different light on the relation between intensifiers and epistemic adverbials, and it suggests a unified analysis of the uses of echt in contemporary German which supports Traugott's view of grammaticalisation as also encompassing an extension of structural scope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A better description of discourse particles and discourse markers and their anchoring in grammar is undoubtedly a desideratum for many of the minor languages of the Uralic language family. In comparison with research traditions of Estonian or German, the lack of studies in which native speaker authors follow their intuitions about the meaning and function of so-called small words is particularly noticeable. In the present article, the author uses data from Komi, Udmurt, Mari, Selkup and Kamass to discuss some problems in connection with typical discourse particles functions such as the marking of mutual knowledge and epistemic support, as well as with questions of grammaticalization and language contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Messapic, like many ancient Indo-European languages, shows evidence for the existence of more than one coordinating conjunction. Alongside an inherited Indo-European clitic = ti , comparable to Lat. = que or Gk. = τε , Messapic has also grammaticalised an additional coordinator anda from a lexical source. Although the two conjunctions are found in some strikingly similar contexts, this paper argues that they also show noteworthy functional differences, which can plausibly be contextualised against a broader cross-linguistic understanding of how novel coordinators grammaticalise. In this way, the typological study of coordination has the potential to contribute further insights into this fascinating—and as yet insufficiently understood—epigraphic language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from the term "family of constructions", the present article investigates lexical and syntactic variation in a subtype of German concessive conditionals which is marked by was ('what') in combination with expressions of irrelevance like egal ('no matter'). 12,894 examples from the DeReKo corpus (Deutsches Referenzkorpus) are analysed manually for seven variables. Both the quantitative and the qualitative results suggest that combinations of was with an expression of irrelevance, or "[IRR was]" for short, form part of a recently entrenched constructional schema [IRR w-] of concessive-conditional subordinators which are emerging into the family of concessive-conditional constructions in present-day German. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The close cross-linguistic relation between the domains of space and time has been well described. The frequent emergence of Tense-Aspect-Mood (TAM) markers from deictic motion verbs in particular, has also been extensively detailed in the literature. This paper focusses on the less well-known link between associated motion, a category of functional morphemes expressing (deictic) motion events, and TAM, in a language contact situation. Specifically, it provides a synchronic and diachronic description of three associated motion prefixes, joo-, tóó- and koo-, found in the Tanzanian Bantu language Rangi, spoken in an area of high linguistic diversity. It proposes that the prefix joo- encodes movement towards a deictic centre, tóó- encodes movement towards a goal which is not the deictic centre, and koo- encodes movement away from a deictic centre. It further contends that while tóó- and koo- have maintained a purely deictic function, joo- has grammaticalised to assume an additional function whereby it encodes future tense, possibly aided by the absence of a dedicated future tense marker in the language. This three-way morphological encoding of spatial relations on the verb form is not a common characteristic of East African Bantu languages. However, this paper proposes that the system in Rangi can be accounted for on the basis of cross-linguistically widely attested pathways of grammatical change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the discourse-pragmatic functions of doze ... ('many thanks') in spoken Cantonese discourse. Two functions of doze were found which have not previously been described. The audio/video data comes from spoken corpora and consists of 107 instances. The study shows that doze is a multifunctional discourse marker: doze functions as a marker of response to tangible receiving, response to congratulations or a compliment, response for declining an invitation, and response to unexpected promise making. This study suggests that doze is originally a stative verb of expressing gratitude; it retains the meaning of thanking and encodes during conversational interaction the attitudes between the speaker and the listener toward the beneficial event. Some grammaticalization effects involving conventional inferencing are witnessed and demonstrate the evolution of a stative verb to a beneficial reception marker via conversational development. This paper also captures the subtle differences between doze and mgoi ... in Hong Kong Cantonese. It contributes to the understanding of grammaticalization, Emergent Grammar, and politeness in the Asian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses Biblical Aramaic (BA) performatives within a prototype approach. The authors demonstrate that BA performatives largely comply with the crosslinguistic prototype and its grammatical and extra-grammatical features. Crucially, although the two 'tenses' used, Suffix Conjugation (SC) and Active Participle (AP), exhibit similar frequency in performatives, they differ in distribution: the performative SC is more conventionalised/archaic/typical of Ezra while the performative AP is more productive/innovative/typical of Daniel. These differences reflect the gradual replacement of SC by AP in performatives due to the profound advancement of the two 'tenses' along their respective grammaticalisation paths: the resultative and imperfective paths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the discourse-pragmatic functions of the discourse marker (DM, hereafter) jijitsujoo (事実上 or 事實上) ‘as a matter of practice, practically speaking’ in comparison with another DM jijitsu (事実 or 事實) ‘in fact, the fact is’ in the history of Japanese. The gist of the survey results is that, while jijitsu serves to introduce telling evidence for the preceding statement, jijitsujoo reformulates the preceding statement with what the speaker regards to be relevant, while disregarding irrelevant information. In other words, jijitsujoo plays a more subjective role as a DM than jijitsu in that the former can provide the speaker’s own stance toward an immediate topic. These DM functions can be fully fulfilled in sentence-initial position, presumably because they are connective in essence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Korean discourse marker kisil(un) presents an interesting grammaticalisation scenario. It began its life as a borrowing from Chinese, a syntactic construction to mean ‘that/its fruit’ in Middle Korean, and developed into a single lexeme with more abstract meanings, e.g., ‘essence, reality, fact, truth’ and further grammaticalised into a discourse marker signalling the speaker’s diverse stances in discourse contexts. As it was a borrowing from Chinese, its initial uses carried pedanticism and became officially banned in Modern Korean as part of efforts for ‘language purism’. The journey of kisil(un) exhibits subjectification in meaning and intersubjectification in function. In particular, speakers use it to invite the interlocutor to some common ground. In discourse it also signals assertiveness and thus rarely co-occurs with hesitance markers. Unlike most discourse markers, kisil(un) does not have much positional freedom but occurs mostly between the subject and the predicate, bridging two contrasting propositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Never originated as a temporal adverb expressing universal quantification over time ('Type 1', e.g. he's never been to Paris). As Lucas & Willis (2012) report, it has developed non-quantificational meanings equivalent to didn't, starting with the 'Type 2' use which depicts an event that could have occurred in a specific 'window of opportunity' (e.g. she waited but he never arrived). Subsequently, a non-standard 'Type 3' use developed, where never can be used with other predicates (e.g. I never won that competition yesterday). To what extent does variation in the use of never in present-day English reflect the proposed historical development of the form? This study addresses this question by integrating syntactic theory into a quantitative variationist approach, analysing never vs. didn't in Type 2 and Type 3 contexts using speech corpora from three Northern British communities. The results show how syntactic–semantic constraints on never in Type 2 contexts persist in its newer, Type 3 uses, e.g. it is used at higher rates in achievement predicates. While Type 2 contexts are associated with the expression of counter-expectation, never has become pragmatically strengthened in its Type 3 use, where it is often used to contradict a previously-expressed proposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The received view that the differences among Sinitic languages are mostly limited to their phonology and, to a lesser extent, to the lexicon (Chao 1968), has been challenged in recent years, with plenty of studies showing that Chinese 'dialects' are, indeed, diverse at all levels, including morphology and (morpho-)syntax (see Chappell 2015a for an overview). Some major differences within the Sinitic branch follow areal patterns, in which contact is often claimed to play a crucial role. In our contribution, we would like to propose that there is an area within Northern China, spread over the Shanxi, Henan, Hebei, and Shandong provinces, in which we find Sinitic languages possessing some features not seen (or, at least, uncommon) elsewhere. These include: 1. reduced/nonconcatenative morphology (see Arcodia 2013, 2015; Lamarre 2015); 2. object markers based on speech act verbs (see Chappell 2013); and 3. structural particles with an l -initial (see Chen A. 2013, a.o.). Based on our own survey of a sample of 96 dialects, we shall discuss the distribution of these features, as well as their possible origins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The progressive periphrastic constructions are a well published topic in Afrikaans and Dutch. Various publications outlining the individual forms and functions of the three dominant periphrastic progressives in Afrikaans and Dutch, namely the PREP-, besig- (or busyconstruction), and CPV-constructions, as well as many publications comparing these constructions, among which the most prevalent is that of Breed, Brisard and Verhoeven (2017), and Breed and Brisard (2015), have taken a synchronic approach. The results of these publications indicated that whilst Afrikaans and Dutch share these three periphrastic constructions as markers of progressive aspect, there are numerous differences in the forms, functions and usage parameters of these constructions. Many of these differences are ascribed to divergent developmental circumstances due to the geographical placement of these language groups in the Netherlands and South-Africa. Since Afrikaans has its roots in 17th century Dutch it is assumed that these progressive periphrastic constructions in both languages originated from the same 17th century Dutch constructions. Therefore, the Afrikaans progressive periphrastic constructions are expected to be more similar to their Dutch counterparts in historical corpus data and that the differences that are currently visible have since developed due to grammaticalisation and language contact in South Africa. This article addresses the gap within the literature on this topic by following a diachronic approach to establish if these constructions were in fact more similar in late 17th century linguistic data from the Cape colonies than they currently are. A diachronic corpus study is undertaken in order to identify when these differences between the Afrikaans and Dutch progressive constructions became visible in the corpora over a period of nearly 300 years. The Tracing History Trust corpus (2011) consisting of handwritten dairy entries by the early Dutch settlers at the Cape, dating from the late 17th century to the late 18th century, is used as the primary corpus. The secondary corpus is the Historical corpus of Standard Afrikaans (2017) which is a stratified corpus containing Afrikaans texts from the 20th and early 21st centuries. Results show that, contrary to the expectation set forth by the synchronic publications, the progressive periphrastic constructions in Afrikaans and Dutch were not more similar in the 17th and 18th century than they currently are. Although many of the differences noted in synchronic studies were clearly visible in the corpora, it was found that some of these constructions had alternative forms in the past and some even had other functions and usage parameters than they currently have in either Afrikaans or Dutch. The dominant findings of each progressive periphrastic construction are: a) The aan het PREP-constructions were still primarily locative constructions and had yet to grammaticalise to aspectual markers denoting progressiveness, whilst the aan't-progressive was already becoming more specialised in the 17th and 18th century Cape-Dutch (or early Afrikaans); b) The besig met-construction was the most common progressive periphrastic construction in the 17th and 18th century and is most commonly spelled without the "z" characteristic of Dutch, whilst the popularity that the besig om te-progressive construction currently enjoys in Afrikaans is found to be a much more recent development than expressed in synchronic studies; c) Contrary to expectation, the CPV-progressive constructions do not commonly occur in the 17th and 18th century corpus data and take on a much more Afrikaans form than expected, especially considering that these are the most popular progressive periphrastic constructions in 21st century Dutch. This raises the possibility that the CPV-progressive constructions were incorporated into Dutch post 1652 via language contact in the Cape colony. This hypothesis provides interesting possibilities for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the verbal inflection chain of Siyuewu Khroskyabs, a Gyalrongic language (Trans-Himalayan). Siyuewu Khroskyabs goes against two general typological tendencies: first, as an SOV language, it shows an overwhelming preference for prefixes, which is rarely reported typologically; second, the inflectional prefixes in the outer slots are older than those in the inner slots, which is the reverse case of most languages. In this paper, I will first identify distinct historical layers within the inflectional prefixes, and then focus on two of the prefixes, də- 'even' and ɕə- 'q' whose evolutionary pathways are relatively clear. The essential part of the hypotheses is that the prefixes originate from enclitics which could be attached to the end of a preverbal chain, originally loosely attached to the verb stem. The preverbal chain later became tightly attached to the verbal stem and eventually became a part of it as a chain of prefixes. As a result, the original enclitics are reanalysed as prefixes. The integration of preverbal morphemes is responsible for the prefixing preference in Modern Siyuewu Khroskyabs. However, despite this superficial prefixing preference, Siyuewu Khroskyabs underlyingly favours postposed morphemes. By following the general suffixing tendency, this language finally managed to create a typologically rare, overwhelmingly prefixing verbal template. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides an analysis of various aspects of intensification in the English language (colloquial and newspaper), intensifying adverbs in particular. The processes of grammaticalisation and delexicalisation observed in the evolution of intensifying adverbs are described. The author also looks into the renewal and boundedness of intensifying adverbs, provides an overview of modern classifications of intensifying adverbs, and offers statistics on the frequency of occurrence of intensifying adverbs to illustrate their usage in spoken discourse and newspaper language. The findings assume that less intensification is used in written discourse whereas more intensification is employed in spoken discourse, which suggests that the decline in intensification is higher as the formality of the register increases, and vice versa.