Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE General Editor E.F.K. KOERNER (Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung, Berlin) Series IV – CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY Advisory Editorial Board Lyle Campbell (Salt Lake City) Sheila Embleton (Toronto) Elly van Gelderen (Tempe, Ariz.) Brian D. Joseph (Columbus, Ohio) John E. Joseph (Edinburgh) Manfred Krifka (Berlin) Martin Maiden (Oxford) E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.) Joseph C. Salmons (Madison, Wis.)
Volume 302
Gisella Ferraresi and Maria Goldbach (eds.) Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction
Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction
Edited by
Gisella Ferraresi Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main
Maria Goldbach University of Oxford
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Principles of syntactic reconstruction / edited by Gisella Ferraresi, Maria Goldbach. p. cm. -- (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV, Current issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763 ; v. 302) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Grammar, Comparative and general--Syntax. 2. Reconstruction (Linguistics) I. Ferraresi, Gisella. II. Goldbach, Maria. P291.P75 2008 415--dc22 2008034315 ISBN 978 90 272 4818 3 (Hb; alk. paper) © 2008 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 36224 • 1020 ME Amsterdam • The Netherlands John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA
Table of contents
Acknowledgments Foreword Giuseppe Longobardi Syntactic reconstruction: Methods and new insights Gisella Ferraresi & Maria Goldbach
vii ix 1
How much syntactic reconstruction is possible? Acrisio Pires & Sarah G. Thomason
27
Reconstruction in syntax: Reconstruction of patterns Alice C. Harris
73
Reconstructing complex structures: A typological perspective Ferdinand von Mengden
97
Competitive Indo-European syntax Rosemarie Lühr
121
Principles of syntactic reconstruction and “morphology as paleosyntax”: The case of some Indo-European secondary verbal formations Irene Balles
161
Syntactic change and syntactic borrowing in generative grammar Claire Bowern
187
Index
217
Acknowledgments The idea to develop a collection of papers on syntactic reconstruction was inspired by the debate between Lyle Campbell and Alice C. Harris, on the one hand, and David W. Lightfoot, on the other, in 2002 in the Journal of Linguistics. This debate can, to some extent, be traced back to the fruitful discussions at the workshop on syntactic reconstruction that took place at the 1999 annual meeting of the German Society of Linguistics held at University of Konstanz. Thus our thanks go first and foremost to the three scholars mentioned above and to the other participants in that meeting. Since the scientific outlook of Harris and Campbell lies more in the tradition of comparative-historical linguistics, whereas Lightfoot’s work is couched within the framework of generative syntax, we had the impression that their respective results were not sufficiently acknowledged across the spectrum of theoretical perspectives. Therefore we tried to bring together researchers from different linguistic subfields working on historical and diachronic syntax from various perspectives and research traditions in order to possibly find a more common denominator. Although we feel that we may not have fulfilled our intention entirely, we do hope that we have renewed the discussion on this matter. (Incidentally, the 2009 conference of the Indo-European Society – Die Ausbreitung des Indogermanischen: Thesen aus Sprachwissenschaft, Archäologie und Genetik – is scheduled to deal with syntactic reconstruction, too. It seems that there is a renewed interest in this topic occurring). In the process of preparing the present volume, researchers from different countries and schools have been contacted. It must be admitted that it took us some time to convince enough colleagues to work on this project. We would like to thank all the people who finally took part in it: first of all our authors who supported the project from the very beginning, but equally those who joined us at a later point. We would further like to thank Acrisio Pires, Sergio Neri and five anonymous referees for their valuable comments, and Giuseppe Longobardi for writing the Foreword to the volume. Our special thanks go to the series editor and to Anke de Looper at John Benjamins for her patience and assistance with all editorial and technical matters. Frankfurt a. M. and Oxford May 2008
Gisella Ferraresi Maria Goldbach
Foreword Giuseppe Longobardi
The publication of a volume of coordinated essays focusing on the problem of syntactic reconstruction is an extremely welcome initiative on the part of Gisella Ferraresi and Maria Goldbach, two scholars who have brilliantly participated for some years now in the effort of renovation of historical concerns within the framework of modern theories of grammar. The importance of this initiative in one of the most relevant, but least studied, subfields of historical syntax can hardly be overestimated: this is especially true in view of the contingent emergence of new insights, along with some misunderstandings and confusions, all beginning to surface neatly in the discussions of this volume, whose contributions range from the skeptical to the optimistic side of the debate over syntactic reconstruction. But I want to stress that, at this stage of the scientific research on language, there also exist deep epistemological reasons to seriously ask to what extent reconstruction is possible in syntax. Reconstruction of past stages in order to explain the present is one of the most crucial tasks in any historical science: it is precisely by addressing such issues that historical syntax may cease to represent a relatively peripheral and somewhat outlandish subdomain of independently successful scientific paradigms, such as traditional historical linguistics or formal theories of grammar; rather, it may achieve a central and guiding role within a new paradigm of ‘cognitive history’, built as the intersection of historical (linguistic, anthropological, etc.) studies and the modern cognitive sciences. In fact, traditional historical linguistics, centered around lexical comparison and phonological change, has often regarded syntax as a field less able by itself to contribute significant generalizations to the most genuine of its concerns (comparison and reconstruction, indeed); while, within formal theories of grammar, historical syntax has been at best occasionally invoked to corroborate descriptive models of language variation and acquisition. However, it is often the case that purely theoretical developments in one field enable that field to better serve the purposes of several related historical investigations, sometimes with exceptional advancements. For example, one of the most spectacular cases of such virtuous relation between progress in theoretical science and benefits for historical research has been the use of molecular discoveries in evolutionary biology and population genetics.
Giuseppe Longobardi
Now, two main developments have reshaped theoretical linguistics over the past decades, especially affecting syntax, and historical linguistics must come to terms with them and take advantage of their potential: one is the development of the abstract biolinguistic framework advocated by Chomsky and Lenneberg, among others, since the 1960s and 1970s; the other is the more specific hypothesis about language acquisition and the form of linguistic universals proposed by Chomsky around 1980 and called the Principles & Parameters model. As put by Chomsky (1995), the latter “[…] is in part a bold speculation rather than a specific hypothesis. Nevertheless, its basic assumptions seem reasonable […]”. In particular, it seems reasonable that such assumptions may be tested with respect to their capacity to capture historical syntactic generalizations and thus, perhaps, independently corroborated as a historically realistic model of grammatical variation. Both developments may contribute to raising new obvious questions and proposing ways of resolution in the domain of historical comparison and reconstruction. A proper start to introduce this important volume and help clarify the issues it aims to address seems precisely to be a brief overview of these conceptual contributions. The most relevant consequence of adopting the abstract biolinguistic framework is the focusing on the biologically conditioned process of acquisition of individual linguistic competences, so called I-languages, rather than on the much vaguer and scientifically hardly definable idealization of E-languages, i.e., languages somehow shared by a community, in the more ordinary sense of everyday speech. It is mostly David Lightfoot who has developed all the consequences of this shift of focus for historical syntax in a series of books over the past 25 years, since Lightfoot (1979), along with a radical epistemological critique of the teleologism of certain long-term ‘explanations’ embedded in theories based on so scarcely manageable a notion as E-language. The new approach must instead exclude, for instance, the causal relevance of temporally non-local factors in the shaping of any particular I-language. It remains to be discussed, then, whether the foundational concepts of historical linguistics, in particular those relevant for syntactic reconstruction (genetic kinship, derivation of a language from another, even at a great chronological distance), can indeed be satisfactorily defined in terms of the primitives of the biolinguistic framework, namely I-languages and the entities logically pertaining to the problem of their acquisition. Thus, the biolinguistic framework is crucially inspired by the logical problem of language acquisition, a particular case of the philosophical paradox of human knowledge, pointed out several times in the history of Western thought from Plato down to Russell and Chomsky:
Foreword
(1) How can any child exposed to an insufficient and highly individual sample of utterances (a primary corpus) develop intricate linguistic knowledge (an I-language) both complete and relatively uniform with respect to that of other members of his/her community?
The described situation (poverty of stimulus with respect to the acquired knowledge) suggests the existence of a rich, innate, and universal mental organ, often called LAD (Language Acquisition Device), connecting the two types of descriptive primitives of synchronic linguistic theory, namely primary corpora and I-languages. Crisma and Longobardi (to appear) argue that the same concepts are sufficient as primitives to ground historical work in linguistics as well. However, historical linguistics cannot obviously focus just on a single I-language, since it implies, virtually by definition, the comparison between at least two individual languages, sometimes remote in space and time, whose similarities are neither universal nor due to chance: so they must be the residue of a historical relation, an event of convergence between two I-languages or of partial divergence of one from another. Thus, historical linguistics apparently needs to be founded on two basic notions: (1) I-language; (2) historically significant relation between I-languages (henceforth H-relation). Now, can the latter notion be defined from acceptable primitives without additional recourse to vague concepts such as E-language? The answer proposed by Crisma and Longobardi is affirmative and relies on a set of definitions like the following: (2) L2 derives diachronically from L1 if and only if a. L2 is acquired on a primary corpus generated by L1 or b. L2 derives from L3 and L3 derives from L1
(2b) is a recursive clause, correctly allowing an indefinite iteration of the relation of diachronic derivation. (2a) alone, instead, defines the notion of immediate derivation (diachronic contiguity). These definitions were then generalized to finally capture the notion of H-relation:
(3) Two linguistic objects (I-languages or their fragments) X, Y are in a H-relation if and only if one derives from the other or there is a Z from which both derive.
As can be seen, the definition of H-relation suggested by Crisma and Longobardi (hence, the conceptual foundation, among other things, of historical comparison and reconstruction in linguistics) is based on independent primitives of synchronic linguistic theory and, most importantly, does not appear to require
Giuseppe Longobardi
resorting to E-language. Thus, the adoption of the basic tenets of the biolinguistic framework does not hinder a coherent formulation of the issues involved by the study of syntactic reconstruction. The rise of the Principles & Parameters framework affects even more directly the theory and practice of syntactic reconstruction, because of the revolutionary model of grammatical variation it proposes. This model attributes to variation of grammar, as opposed to the lexicon, at least the following fundamental characteristics, the first two of which are virtually analytic in the definition of parameter:
(4) a. discreteness (i.e., the values of each parameter form no continuum and in the ideal case just amount to two) b. finiteness c. deductive depth (i.e., a limited number of quite abstract distinctions produce the many ones appearing on the surface: several superficial differences turn out to cluster together at the appropriate level of analysis).
This model provides a completely new and extremely manageable sort of theoretical entities for the procedures of syntactic comparison and reconstruction, namely parameter values. In fact, one of the causes of the mentioned minority status assigned to syntax by traditional historical linguistics had certainly to do with the difficulty of identifying precise comparanda and reconstruenda in syntax. A crucial condition for historical linguistics to exist is being able to establish, at least hypothetically, some precise correspondence (i.e., a postulated H-relation) between two entities (words, phonemes, rules, etc.) of two different I-languages. On this crucially rely the comparative method, reconstruction, scientific etymology, and, ultimately, the very idea of phylogenetic kinship. However, in traditional approaches it is often unclear what are the entities of a syntactic theory (rules, constructions, word sequences …?) and whether they really form a discrete and finite set, comparable across languages like, e.g., lexical units or the distribution of sounds within them. Thus, one may naturally wonder if Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and English ‘passive’ or ‘predication’ do instantiate the ‘same’ entity in the sense and to the extent that we think Lat. iugum, ζυγόν, Skt. yugám, ModE yoke do. It is obvious how parametric theories can solve the problem: parameters and parameter values should in principle not only form a finite set of discrete entities, but even a universal one, from which I-languages choose their configurations of values. Thus, parameter values appear to provide perfect comparanda to establish syntactic correspondences across languages and, in the same sense, also make perfect reconstruenda for proto-syntaxes, thus solving in principle the long-standing problem of correspondence sets in historical syntax. In principle, this opens the path to syntactic comparison and to comparative reconstruction of proto-syntaxes, as keenly pointed out by Roberts (1998). But Guardiano and Longobardi (2005) and Longobardi and Guardiano (to appear)
Foreword
even take a further step, suggesting that this path may also lead to parametric linguistics as a tool for reconstructing phylogenetic relations among languages. Whether these exciting developments may eventually be successful is an empirical question, and one of the most far-reaching challenges of historical linguistics for the next years. But another type of principled question needs to be addressed, namely if syntactic comparison and reconstruction can be founded on comparanda other than parameter values. Interestingly, Alice Harris in this volume and in other publications has suggested that a well definable notion, suitable for setting up syntactic correspondence sets, is that of pattern, a less abstract object than parameter values, more similar to the traditional notion of ‘construction’. As remarked by Roberts (1998), patterns are configurations which may be generated by different parameters in different languages, i.e., there is no necessary universal biunique relation between a certain parameter value and a certain pattern. Rather, it is increasingly clear that, owing to the enormously complex interaction possibilities among parameters, the set of surface constructions triggering a parameter value may be very rich and proteiform across languages. For this reason, it is highly unlikely that one may reconstruct an I-language by simply comparing scattered patterns. A serious empirical question is, however, whether by this procedure (which amounts to running the risk of establishing correspondence sets whose members are superficially alike but are determined by different mental objects in different languages) we may ever safely reconstruct fragments of E-language. In principle this possibility arises and has obvious successful parallels in phonology: by comparing a sufficient number of Italian and French words we would certainly be able to reconstruct the Latin accent of virtually every item (in most cognate words in the three languages the same syllable is accented); but the prosodic principles generally determining the placement of the accent in Latin, French and Italian are, synchronically, radically different rule systems, as is pretheoretically obvious to any Italian student learning Latin or French. In such cases the generalization historically connecting the three systems can be easily formulated at the level of primary corpora, i.e., of the generated E-language, not of speakers’ mental structures (I-language). However, it is conceivable that in many cases what is historically persistent and profitably comparable in a set of sister languages is rather a parametric value, in spite of the fact that slightly different ‘patterns’ may manifest it in each of them, owing to the interaction with their other syntactic or morphological properties. Reconstructing a parametric value this way will probably be less immediately useful to write, say, stories about horses and sheep in the protoE-language (unless we are able to control for all the other morphosyntactic variables affecting its surface manifestations), but will directly target a deep feature of the proto-I-language.
Giuseppe Longobardi
The latter possibility, namely that parameter values exhibit a significant degree of persistence across time and through the storms of language transmission, is tentatively suggested by the recent attempts to use parametric linguistics for reconstructing phylogenetic kinship among languages, rather than the structure of a protolanguage, as mentioned above. The two tasks are different in goal, of course, but also in method. Recognizing this difference is important in order to avoid some frequent misunderstandings. The classical historical-comparative method applied to the sound shape of lexical items is normally held very suitable for reconstruction both of protolanguages and of phylogenetic relations. Indeed, it is often claimed that some degree of reconstruction of the protolanguage is necessary to prove that two or more daughter languages are actually related. In other words, success at reconstruction is taken to be implied by assumed success at proving phylogenetic kinship. Other methods explicitly deny such implication: Greenberg’s mass comparison method is claimed to be able to identify degrees of phylogenetic relationship without necessarily (and practically) reconstructing a single word of the postulated protolanguages. This is so because the supposed evidence of kinship is based on the stacking of several relatively similar lexical items in many languages, in order to reduce the probability of chance similarity, without any chance-proof demonstration that two items make a safe etymological pair, as can instead often be assessed by the classical method through precise sound correspondence sets. Whatever the (dubious and highly controversial) results of Greenberg’s actual comparisons, the point is not methodologically incorrect: a statistically sufficient amount of similarity between two languages may in principle speak in favor of some genetic kinship, even if we are not always in the position to decide which exactly of the similarities can be attributed to the protolanguage. This is precisely one aspect of the reasoning behind parametric comparison, as advocated by Longobardi and Guardiano (to appear): no coincidence in any single parameter value alone may speak for kinship between two languages, but coincidence in a (probabilistically definable) huge number of them may. It follows that we can be relatively confident in assessing a degree of relation between languages on the grounds of the comparison between sets of parameter values, without necessarily being able to hypothesize for each of these parameters how it was set in the protolanguage. Therefore, reconstruction of the latter is not always a necessary precondition to deciding issues of kinship. This is another reason why the two goals, reconstruction of protolanguages and of phylogenetic relations, must not be confused in historical syntax. Syntactic reconstruction of phylogenetic kinship offers us the opportunity to briefly return to the parameters vs. patterns controversy, to simply notice that, if the same parameter may be responsible for the co-variation of several distinct surface pattern, then measuring the syntactic distance (hence the probability of
Foreword
relatedness) in terms of patterns rather than parameter values might be arithmetically somewhat misleading from the viewpoint of a phylogenetic enterprise (let alone for a sound typological theory). In this sense, at least, it seems that an abstract parametric analysis is not dispensable in a serious historical approach to syntax. An introduction to the issues of reconstruction in historical syntax and its conceptual backgrounds could hardly be complete without mentioning a third recent idea, which appears quite promising for a sound epistemological foundation of the study of syntactic change: the notion of Inertia, stemming from Edward Keenan’s brilliant intuition at the beginning of the 1990s. The relevance of Inertia for syntactic reconstruction derives from the fact that proper reconstruction depends on a restrictive theory of possible changes. An example from phonology, again, is helpful: just comparing Germanic f-, Latin p-, Armenian h-/Ø-, Celtic Ø-, or any similar array of data, one would hardly reconstruct anything other than PIE p-, even in spite of the majority rule. This is so because a sufficiently restrictive theory of phonological change considers highly improbable a change f > p or h > p, let alone Ø > p, as opposed to the reverse changes. In principle, the same should be true for syntax. Now, Keenan’s notion of Inertia provides precisely the potentially most restrictive framework for a theory of grammatical change. In Keenan (1994, 2000), the principle of Inertia is phrased in the following way:
(5) INERTIA: Things stay as they are, unless acted upon by an outside force or DECAY
Let us call this formulation absolute Inertia: if ‘decay’ in this formulation can be understood as a restricted class of sound changes (e.g., p > Ø, but not viceversa), the other major class of causes of change (‘outside force’) is essentially represented by interference factors, a major part of which is probably to be construed lato sensu as the inevitable heterogeneity of primary corpora. That interference, though important, cannot be regarded as the only primitive factor in language change, had already been assumed by the Neogrammarians, especially in the light of works like Winteler (1876), describing a putative isolated dialectal community, still affected, though, by some (perfectly regular) sound change. Therefore, it is improbable that we may ever achieve the most ideal theory of linguistic change, one where all primitives for change are just external factors, but – here lies in my view the revolutionary core of Keenan’s insight – one should try to limit internal unmotivated causes for change to the bare minimum. Pursuing this line, Longobardi (2001) has proposed a slightly less committing formulation, which could be considered a version of Inertia relativized to the
Giuseppe Longobardi
module of syntax, as viewed in particular in the minimalist program. It claims that, given two I-languages connected by a relation of diachronic derivation, as defined above, at least narrow syntax is actually completely immune to primitive changes. It should only change by interference or as a predictable reaction to changes taking place or represented at its interfaces: e.g., changes in phonological rules and in phonological or semantic representations of lexical items. Inertial hypotheses imply, of course, that the LAD is, at least in the relevant modules, an essentially deterministic machine: which, in isolation from disturbing factors, like other primitive changes and multiplicity of I-languages generating the relevant primary corpus, it should exactly replicate, in a new I-language, the syntax of the I-language from which it immediately derives. Theoretically, inertial theories, no matter how extensively applied, are similar to the Neogrammarian Ausnahmslosigkeit hypothesis: they are superficially challenged by a large number of observations, which one should try to reconcile with the hypothesis by reducing them to some of the affecting factors above (outside force, decay, or primitive changes in other modules …). Whatever the eventual feasibility of such a research program, it is clear that it strongly aims toward much higher restrictiveness for theories of diachronic change. From these general concerns, therefore, we may hope to anyway derive the discovery of many more local constraints on possible syntactic changes, analogous to the phonological cases just exemplified. If so, the whole task of syntactic reconstruction, both comparative and internal, could substantially benefit from a better apprehension of which previous unobserved conditions may or may not have given rise to a certain state of affairs in the syntax of attested languages. All these insights and questions lie behind the problem of syntactic reconstruction and are touched on, sometimes explicitly, in other cases more implicitly, as the careful reader will certainly notice, in the papers contained in this volume, which mark some definite progress in the depth of our understanding with respect to the state of the debate of only two or three decades ago, as laid on especially by Watkins (1976) and some of the essays in Ramat et al. (1980).
References Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Crisma, Paola & Giuseppe Longobardi. to appear. “Change, relatedness and inertia in historical syntax”. In press in Paola Crisma & Giuseppe Longobardi eds. Historical Syntax and Linguistic Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Guardiano, Cristina & Giuseppe Longobardi. 2005. “Parametric Comparison and Language Taxonomy”. Grammaticalization and Parametric Variation ed. by M. Batllori, M.L. Hernanz, C. Picallo & F. Roca, 149–174. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Keenan, Edward. 1994. “Creating Anaphors. An historical study of the English reflexive pronouns”. Unpublished manuscript, UCLA. Keenan, Edward. 2000. “An Historical Explanation of Some Binding-Theoretic facts in English”. Unpublished manuscript, UCLA. Lightfoot, David. 1979. Principles of Diachronic Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Longobardi, Giuseppe. 2001. “Formal Syntax, Diachronic Minimalism and Etymology: The history of French chez”. Linguistic Inquiry 32.2: 275–302. Longobardi, Giuseppe & Cristina Guardiano. to appear. “Evidence for Syntax as a Signal of Historical Relatedness”. In press in Lingua, spec. issue The Forests behind the Trees, ed. by John Neesanne & Tranz Maumi. Ramat, Paolo et al., eds. 1980. Linguistic Reconstruction and Indoeuropean Syntax. (= Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 19.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Roberts, Ian. 1998. Review of Alice Harris & Lyle Campbell, Historical Syntax in CrossLinguistic Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Romance Philology 51.363–370. Watkins, Calvert. 1976. “Toward Proto-Indoeuropean Syntax: Problems and pseudoproblems”. Diachronic Syntax ed. by Sanford B. Steever, Carol A. Walker & Salikoko S. Mufwene, 305–326. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Winteler, Jost. 1876. Die Kerenzer Mundart des Kantons Glarus in ihren Grundzügen dargestellt. Leipzig & Heidelberg: C.F. Winter.
Syntactic reconstruction Methods and new insights Gisella Ferraresi & Maria Goldbach
University of Frankfurt a.M./University of Oxford
1. The historical-comparative method1 In this introduction we want to relate the questions and methods of historicalcomparative linguistics with those of diachronic syntax research. We think that historical-comparative linguistics investigates questions that can be very fruitful for synchronic theoretical reasoning and that these questions, at present, are ignored, at least, by diachronic syntactic research at the rear of the generative syntactic school. The exposition starts with the description of some central matters of historical-comparative linguistics. The disquisition then turns to the questions if and how the subjects of traditional comparative linguistics can be transmitted to the field of syntax and if syntactic reconstruction is possible at all. Section 2 gives an overview about the research debate on syntactic reconstruction. In section 3 we set out how the analysis of historical syntactic material can be squared with the principles of the syntactic model of generative grammar in the sense of Chomsky (1981). Furthermore, we compare the generative hypotheses with those of typological scholars in the wake of Greenberg (1966). Section 4 presents the six articles collected in this volume with their different viewpoints concerning syntactic reconstruction and syntactic change. In the tradition of historical-comparative linguistics, central issues are the identification of genetically related languages, the reconstruction of a common proto-language, and the detection of systematic, non-arbitrary form (or: primarily phonetic/morphological) – meaning relations between the lexical elements of the languages that are presumed to be genetically related (cf. Meillet 1954: ch. 1). Two languages are ‘genetically related’ if they “genug gemeinsame Züge aufweisen, dass sowohl die Wahrscheinlichkeit einer in jeder der beiden Sprachen unabhängigen Entstehung dieser Züge als auch die Wahrscheinlichkeit einer
. We would like to thank Acrisio Pires, Sergio Neri and five anonymous referees for very valuable comments.
Gisella Ferraresi & Maria Goldbach
Entlehnung (sei es aus einer der beiden Sprachen in die andere oder aus jeweils einer dritten Sprache) minimal ist” (Cowgill & Mayrhofer 1986: 12).2 The first step in the historical-comparative method is determining correspondence sets (consisting for instance of 100 or 200 core linguistic items, cf. Rankin 2003) of two or more languages under examination. The correspondence sets include elements that are assumed to be unlikely to have been borrowed. If one can find regular lexical, inflectional, derivational-morphological and/or phonological correspondences in these sets, which are pervasive and systematic, the languages under consideration are assumed to be genetically related, i.e., they are either of common origin (they are daughter languages of the same protolanguage), or one language is descended from the other. In addition, going beyond the initial correspondence sets, the historical-comparative method can take into account phonological and/or morphological variation within one grammatical system (cf. Fox (1995: ch. 7); also Lass’ (1997: 233) examples of Lat. sg. nom. vōx, gen. vōcis – ‘voice’ vs. sg. nom. nox – gen. noctis [sic!] – ‘night’, where the author reconstructs in proto-Latin sg. nom *nocts).3 This type of reconstruction is called internal reconstruction. Subsequently, the phonological and/or the morphological systems of the genetically related languages (and their lexical inventories) are compared in order to reconstruct the system of a common ancestor language.4 Thus, the comparison of Anc. Gr. πατήρ, Lat. pater, Sanskr. pitár-, Got. fadar, Engl. father, Germ. Vater yields Proto-Indo-European (PIE) *ph2tér- by external reconstruction and, what is more important, a part of the sound change rule known as Grimm’s Law, or the First Germanic Sound Shift: PIE /p/ > Germanic /f/ (in word initial position). Regular correspondences of this type do not consist only of phonological or morphological similarity. Rather, correspondence between phonemes must be present in any context, i.e., the absence of regular correspondence undermines the application of the comparative method.5 That is, in Germanic, PIE /p/ . “[…] if they show sufficient common traits to consider as minimal both the probability of these traits having developed independently in both languages and the probability of borrowing (either from one language to the other or from a third language)” (our translation). . According to Lass (1997), the change Pre-Latin sg. nom. *nokts > nox results from a phonological deletion rule that removes /t/ before /s/, since [ts] is not a legitimate coda cluster in Classical Latin. . To continue with Lass’ example, we consider Lat. sg. nōx, nōctis vs. Anc. Gr. Attic νύξ, νυκτόs vs. Sanskr. nákt-, vs. Hitt. sg. gen. nekuz to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European stem *nogw-t-/negw-t– ‘night, evening’. . Correspondence is more important than surface similarity, as Campbell (2003: 266f.) and Lehmann (2005: 382) stress. For example, Meillet (1954: 6, 31f.) shows by external evidence that Armen. erku – ‘two’ corresponds in a systematic way to Lat. duo, though superficially it is
Syntactic reconstruction: Methods and new insights
must be substituted by /f/ in all (compatible) contexts (for more details cf. Hock & Joseph (1996: 114ff.)). The goals of the comparative-historical method are, thus, to detect genetic relatedness between languages, to reconstruct the phonological and morphological system and the lexical inventory of a common (probably not attested) proto-language and to discover grammatical rules the application of which derives the grammatical systems of the (genetically related) daughter languages from the reconstructed proto-language. In principle, the methods of the historical-comparative school have been extraordinarily successful. The relationships thus discovered and the phonological reconstructions are acknowledged to be consolidated knowledge. However, researchers have become aware of several problems and limits of this approach. Meillet (1954: 13) points out that even in language families like the Romance languages where the common “proto-language”, Latin, is well known and abundantly documented, and where we have at our disposal numerous written records both of the medieval Romance languages and of Latin, it is impossible to reconstruct the Classical Latin future forms amābō – ‘I will love’, dīcam – ‘I will say’ by comparison of the respective Romance forms Fr. (j’) aimerai, dirai, Span. amaré, diré, Ital. amerò, dirò etc.6 A severe limitation of this method – more recently Lehmann (2005) emphasizes this well-known problem – is that it can provide evidence for genetic relatedness but cannot, on the other hand, prove the non-relatedness of languages. Lehmann (2005: 383) gives the example of languages which should be considered as isolated according to the historical-comparative method (since their relatedness cannot be proved on its basis) but which are probably related, like Japanese, Korean, and the Tungusic languages. According to Lehmann, the only admissible conclusion is that the linguistic split of these languages lies too far in the past for the historical-comparative method to be applicable in the case in question. There have been some attempts to overcome the obstacle outlined above by the sheer amount of data taken into consideration (the so-called large-scale comparison proposed by Greenberg 1987; but for a criticism of Greenberg’s method cf. Ringe (1992: 76)). There have even been suggestions of algorithms for calculating the quotient of linguistic relatedness. These are, however, rather controversial and can be applied only to lexical-phonological correspondences (cf. Kondrak 2002). This is because the comparanda in phonology, the phonemes, form only
not transparent how /erk-/ can be phonologically derived from /du-/dw-/ (or vice versa) in a systematic way. . It is only possible to reconstruct the intermediate forms amāre habeō, dīcere habeō, which are not attested in the Late Latin texts as true future forms (cf. Pires & Thomason, this volume).
Gisella Ferraresi & Maria Goldbach
limited correspondence sets and thus make possible the reconstruction of protophonemes. Since the method of comparison, notwithstanding its limitations, has been quite successful in providing a great deal of insight both into the relatedness and descent of languages and into phonological regularities, the development of similar methods for the other modules of grammar seems to be a reasonable endeavour. But this attempt meets with conceptual obstacles since in morphology the search for comparanda is far more difficult, although the inventory of morphemes in a given language is still quite limited. Should we consider only morphemes which correspond to each other formally and functionally, or is it sufficient to find a similarity of phonetic form?7 For a morpheme is traditionally defined as consisting of phonetic form, semantic content and grammatical function. Is, for example, the transition from a synthetic to an analytic verbal form to be taken as an instance of syntactic or of morphological change? Or, can we trace back a case form that has different meanings in different languages to a common proto-case form? The question is still more complex in syntax, also because there is no consensus among the different schools as to what syntax really is. Are the comparanda made up of sentences, clause patterns or of the syntactic realization of (corresponding) meanings? The discussion about the reconstruction of the syntax of non-attested linguistic periods is based on the premise that the languages under consideration are related and that languages of a common family can be traced back to a single language,8 while some even postulate all languages to be derived from one single proto-language (on the Nostratic hypothesis cf. Bomhard & Kerns 1994 a.o.). At an early stage of the discussion about syntactic reconstruction, superficial word order regularities were investigated, in particular, the so-called unmarked word orders (cf. discussion in Watkins 1976 and Lightfoot 1979 a.o.). But what does it mean for the abstraction of tangible data in ‘syntaxemes’ to consider the unmarked, more frequent word order? How does one then deal with the marked, less frequent variants?
. Compare for example mod. Port. past perfect indicative ama-ra – ‘I had loved’ with mod. Span. imperfect subjunctive ama-ra. They are phonologically similar but differ in their morphological features. Both descend from Lat. past perfect indicative ama-veram. . E.g. Harris & Campbell (1995: ch. 12); that is, in any event, before syntactic reconstruction corresponding to the method of Harris & Campbell (1995) is possible, the historical comparative method applied to phonemes must have proven the genetic relatedness of the languages under examination. That is to say that the method of Harris and Campbell has no syntactic means to detect the genetic relatedness of languages.
Syntactic reconstruction: Methods and new insights
All these questions, as can be seen from the following overview, are left open in the numerous studies on syntactic reconstruction.
2. Reconstruction in syntax: A historical overview Unlike the other modules of grammar, for example phonology and morphology, the discussion about syntactic reconstruction has resurfaced at regular intervals, but in the end one cannot claim the debate to have yielded any new results. A reason for this, at least at the early stage of the discussion among the Neogrammarians up to the 1870s, was their relative lack of interest in syntax, as witnessed by the rather meagre syntax section in historical grammars. Syntax basically consisted in word-order regularities. Delbrück (1878) reconstructs PIE as an SOV language on the basis of the SOV order prevalent in Vedic. Nearly a hundred years later, Lehmann (1974) – based on the new insights into typology due to Greenberg’s (1966a/1963) ground-breaking work – postulates the reconstruction of PIE as an inconsistent SOV language, which has evolved, due to the tendency of languages to be consistent, into its various daughter languages. Greenberg found, by means of a comparison of 30 languages, that languages show significant regularities concerning the order of elements within both the same and different constituents.9 The author assumes, for example, a correlation between the order preposition-noun and genitive-noun: “In languages with prepositions, the genitive almost always follows the governing noun, while in languages with postpositions it almost always precedes it” (Universal 2 in Greenberg (1966a: 78)).10 This type of correlation is conceived of as universal and has the form of an implication ‘if A, then B’. Such universals are called implicational. The starting hypothesis is that they are unexceptional and unilateral (Hawkins 1983: 59).11 . The languages investigated by Greenberg (1966a,b) are not all related to each other, because his goal was to compare languages spoken on different continents. . One anonymous referee points out that the above cited universal seems to be disconfirmed by the data collected in Haspelmath et al. (eds.) (2005). . In this respect, the endeavour of Greenberg’s programme resembles the working hypothesis of the exceptionless sound laws of the Neogrammarian school. Compare Greenberg (1966b: 9) with Osthoff & Brugmann (1878 vol. 1: 13): 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.
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Greenberg’s (1966a,b) research programme is chiefly concerned with synchronic generalizations. However, he mentions that this method may qualify for establishing connections between synchronic regularities and diachronic processes (cf. Greenberg 1966b: 10). In fact, Greenberg’s work influenced the research on syntactic change and syntactic reconstruction in the 1970s. Lehmann (1973) and Vennemann (1974, 1975) link Greenberg’s syntactic universals to word-order changes. These studies explore the assumption that the universals are constraints on syntactic changes into which grammatical systems tend to evolve in order to be (typologically) consistent.12 The typological approach to syntactic change and syntactic reconstruction has been exhaustively criticized, e.g., by Lightfoot (1979). Watkins (1976) criticizes the typological approaches to syntactic change for reducing syntax to word order. Moreover, he attacks the notion of typological consistency: this concept does not explain why some languages undergo radical changes concerning their syntactic type (Latin to Romance) while others (he mentions Turkic and Japanese) do not (Watkins 1976: 306). Watkins – in contrast to Lehmann – is rather pessimistic about the possibility of reconstructing the syntax of PIE or parts of it: This reciprocal pattern of leftward gapping in the first clause, rightward in the second, has absolutely nothing to do with ‘OV’ or ‘VO’ typology; it has to do with the elevated poetic style and the variation of grammatical parallelism (Watkins 1976: 324).
Dressler (1971) is less sceptical than Watkins (1976) as regards the application of typological universals to syntactic reconstruction. However, he completes this heuristics with a basic requirement for the reconstruction of Indo-European syntax – and presumably all reconstruction: the syntactic pattern obtained from this kind of reconstruction must be coherent with the theoretical requirements of the syntactic model in which the analysis and reconstruction are carried out. Dressler thus sees quite clearly that mere description is not sufficient for syntactic reconstruction. One must, in addition, apply a theoretical model in which the single reconstructed fragments form a coherent whole.13 The example used here by
. It seems that typologically consistent languages are taken to be just those whose structure is conform with the synchronically (and statistically) determined implicational generalizations. Thus, the problem of this concept of structural consistency is that it undermines the possibility of disconfirming the hypothetical implicational generalizations. Which evidence would be sufficient to refute an implicational universal? The concept of structural consistency seems to preclude the verification of the typological hypotheses. . Comparable problems have been discussed with respect to the reconstruction of the PIE phoneme inventory, especially concerning the reconstruction of the inventory of plosives. For an exhaustive re-evaluation of this debate compare Lamberterie (1998).
Syntactic reconstruction: Methods and new insights
Dressler illustrates the necessity of a syntactic theory, as expressed by the author himself when examining Greenberg’s universal 2 (see above). Among the old Indo-European languages, for example Hittite and Tocharian appear consistent, since they possess postpositions and prenominal genitives. Italic has both prepositions and postpositions, as well as pre- and postnominal genitives. The reconstruction derived by Dressler from these facts gives in PIE a prenominal genitive and a postponed adverb, since prepositions or postpositions have not yet developed from adverbs. This example shows clearly that a syntactic reconstruction based on Greenberg’s universals but operating without a consistent model of syntax is incomplete: Dressler has no description or explanation for the different positions of genitive DPs (since he lacks a strong hypothesis about the syntax of the DP, such as we have at our disposal today; cf. Giorgi & Longobardi 1991; Longobardi 1994). Within the generative syntax model one should examine whether the prenominal genitive elements are in the specifier of the determiner phrase, whether the DP/NP is head-final in the various languages etc. That is, the following structural hypotheses (1a-e, illustrated here with an example from Classical Latin) would have to be ascertained for the individual Indo-European languages:
(1) structural hypotheses on the NP and DP in Classical Latin (1.1) legis poena (Cic. fam. 1,9,20)
a. “the punishment ordered by the law” [NP [GenNP legis] [N° poena]] legis is the complement of poena, the NP is head-final b. [NP [Gen NP legis]i [NP [N° poena] ti] legis is the complement of poena, has moved from the position after the head to an NP-adjoined position c. [DP [SpecDP [GenNP legis]] [[D°] [NP poena]]] legis is in the specifier position of the DP, poena is the complement of D14 (1.2) contentio honorum (Cic. off. 1,87) “the contention about prestigious offices” d. [NP [N° contentio] [GenNP honorum]] e. [DP [D° [N° contentio]i] [NP [GenNP honorum] ti]
Both distributional and semantic aspects of the entire construction, such as reference (definiteness, specificity, singular or plural mass nouns, etc.) or the thematic relations involving deverbal nouns (as in (1.2)) have to be taken into consideration (do we have a genitivus subjectivus or a genitivus objectivus?). Only when we have . Determining what is in the head D of the DP requires an exhaustive examination of Latin DP syntax, which goes far beyond our discussion. We merely wish to remind the reader that Latin has no determiner system like the one that developed in the Romance languages.
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resolved these questions, can we perhaps better analyse the syntax of prepositions or postpositions and link Greenberg’s hypothesis 2 to more basic structures. Dressler (1971) makes use of Greenberg’s syntactic universals as convenient points of reference for reconstruction. At the same time he requires the reconstructed system to follow the principles of an explicit theory of syntax. We have illustrated above what has to be further investigated in the framework of such a syntactic model in order to render a more precise syntactic reconstruction. The studies on syntactic reconstruction have not only dealt with the questions whether syntactic reconstruction is possible at all, and, if this is the case, in which way, or by which method. There is also the problem which heuristic status a reconstructed system can have. This question is answered by Ramat (1976) as follows: “The product of linguistic reconstruction cannot be a real language with sociolinguistic depth. We have rather to do with a generator principle of algebraic nature” (Ramat 1976: 189). In Ramat’s view, the family-tree model shares this heuristic status. Schleicher’s family-tree model, on which the concept of linguistic relatedness among the IndoEuropean languages is based, is thus an abstraction without any corresponding historical reality. Lightfoot (1999: 27) points out that it is predominantly true that languages do not split spontaneously and definitely at a certain point of time. We add that the family-tree theory is also limited by the corpora of the single languages: Hittite, for example, is attested since 1500 B.C., while Albanian sources go back only as far as 1500 A.D. Since Albanian is not attested in earlier documents, we do not know if and how this language developed from Illyrian. And we hardly know anything about Illyrian, to which Albanian could possibly be believed to be traced back, apart from a few lexemes and names. Thus, we can fix neither Illyrian nor Albanian within the family tree of the Indo-European languages as exactly as we can, on the other hand, the Romance or Germanic languages. Ramat’s view is not shared by all linguists. Schleicher tried to write a narration in PIE, and Lehmann (1974) identified PIE as the real language spoken in 3000 B.C. by the peoples of the Kurgan culture to the north of the Black Sea.15 Here we have to take into consideration the fact that even in phonological reconstruction not single sounds but phonemes are reconstructed. Their realization in the spoken language is purely speculative. As we discussed above, the problem becomes even more complex in syntax, where there are no ‘syntaxemes’. Like Lehmann (1974), Szemerényi (1990) assumes the reconstruction to be historically real, although his ‘reality’ is not the same as Lehmann’s. A question
. Concerning the identification of the Indo-Europeans with the Kurgan culture cf. Gimbutas (1994, 1997).
Syntactic reconstruction: Methods and new insights
arising here concerns the purpose of reconstruction. What do we want to conclude from it, and what do we do with the product? Szemerényi (1990) holds, with the method of historical-comparative linguistics, two directions of research to be essential tasks in determining linguistic relations (and we agree with Longobardi (this volume) in that the two aims should be distinguished): on the one hand, when reconstructing the syntax of the proto-language, the direction of research is into the past, and on the other hand, by means of the reconstructed common language, the direction is into the future, when explaining the origins and early history of individual languages. In this sense, reality is ascribed to the proto-language. This means that reconstructing the proto-language, or rather its syntax, is not an end in itself but is conducive to exploring genetic relations and their nature on the one hand, and to gaining deeper insight into processes of syntactic change on the other. Therefore it is necessary to distinguish in syntax, too, between reconstructing the proto-language and determining genetic relationships (cf. Longobardi’s Foreword). The criteria and methods of both approaches have to be explicated for syntactic reconstruction. In addition, in our view the role of the relatedness of languages in the analysis of phonological or syntactic systems has to be clarified. One of the major problems for syntactic reconstruction is to find a concept analogous to that of the correspondence sets in phonological reconstruction. How can syntactic constructions in a given language be compared with those in another language? Jeffers (1976: 4) is sceptical here: “In syntax there does not exist a finite set of sentences occurring in a finite set of discourses which might serve as the basis for the establishment of ‘correspondence sets’”. Fox (1995: 192) points out, in addition, that in the case of syntactic variants which are identical only in their propositional meaning but not in the realization of their referents (determiner + noun on the one hand, pronoun on the other), the word order is determined not only by arbitrary syntactic rules but also by factors of communication. Harris & Campbell (1995: 347ff.) nevertheless insist on proposing syntactic correspondence sets. For this, they compare sentences from different languages which have the same propositional meaning, and the grammatical morphemes of which correspond to each other systematically; thus for them these sentences are cognates. Harris & Campbell’s aim is to discover generalizations about syntactic change. Their proposal for syntactic reconstruction presupposes that the relatedness of languages the syntactic constructions of which are to be compared has already been proved, namely by the classical historical-comparative method (i.e., by means of comparing phonological correspondences). Thus Harris & Campbell’s method does not primarily seek to establish genetic relations between languages. There are other studies which try to reconstruct syntactic structures (Delbrück 1893–1900; Dressler 1971; Kiparsky 1995b), and these have always investigated languages the relatedness of which was already underpinned by the historical-comparative method.
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The discussion on reconstruction often does not consider the limitations of the corpora. We necessarily have to deal with texts which perhaps have to be ascribed to a single author or a special genre or a regional variety. A corpus, however vast, is not considered to be representative for a language by many linguists, but characterizes it only as far as the text itself is concerned, i.e., only as the individual language of the writer and not that of the speech community. Thus we may argue that it is not possible to make statements about ‘principles’ on the basis on these limited corpora. We think that it is one of the tasks of linguists to make abstractions from the data and find generalizations which enable us to make tentative predictions when one of the properties bundled together (maybe as the result of a single parameter, see below in section 3) changes.16 Another major obstacle for the reconstruction of the proto-language and consequently also for the hypothesis about relatedness consists in areal pressures, which are difficult to take into account. The formulation of ‘rules’ of syntactic change in situations of language contact has not – at the present stage of research on linguistic contact – proceeded as smoothly as with phonological change. We can speak at best of tendencies here (cf. Thomason 2001). The problem of proving beyond doubt the relatedness of languages in such difficult cases is dealt with by Lehmann (2005). He designates two different kinds of similarity between linguistic systems: typological similarity and historical relationship between languages. How can we distinguish the latter from the former? For this, he falls back on Saussure’s notion of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign. He suggests that “the most grammatical structures of a language are […] the most arbitrary ones” (Lehmann 2005: 390). The proof of a historical relationship between two languages, in his view, is given on the basis of their common arbitrary structures. As an example of an arbitrary structure he quotes the two R phonemes /r/ and /R/ in Spanish and European Portuguese. These phonemes contrast in both languages only intervocalically. Word-initially /r/ is neutralized in both languages, in all other positions /R/ appears (syllable-internal and final position).17 The fact that both languages have these two R phonemes (this is considered to be phonologically marked), which are subject to the same neutralization in both languages, and that therefore Spanish and European Portuguese show a common arbitrary structure, suggests that there is a historical relationship and not simply
. As shown below, one property can change due to pressure coming from the interfaces with the core grammar (phonology and semantics), and this can cause a subsequent change of the entire parameter bundle. . As Acrisio Pires (p.c.) pointed out, the neutralization of the /r/ phoneme in Portuguese and Spanish is not really the same. However, this does not affect Lehmann’s line of argumentation.
Syntactic reconstruction: Methods and new insights
a typological similarity between them (although Lehmann does not go that far). In his conclusion Lehmann says that “a linguistic theory […] determines which properties are arbitrary and therefore historically contingent, […]”. Like Dressler (1971), he deems it necessary to have a linguistic theory to enable reconstruction. The school of generative diachronic syntax takes the syntactic theory as a starting point. As Lightfoot (1999) holds the view that the method of syntactic correspondences can be convincingly applied to the investigation of syntactic change only to a certain degree, he confines his endeavours to seeking to reconstruct grammar as a biological entity, thus adhering to Chomsky’s (1981) Principles and Parameters approach. Several advocates of this syntax theory have conceptualized syntactic change in terms of parameter (re)setting (e.g., Roberts 1993; Roberts & Roussou 2003; Vance 1997) on the basis of the reanalysis of the surface structure. In the studies of syntactic change within the framework of generative grammar, the questions of what relationship there is between syntactic change and language/ grammar acquisition, and of how grammar is represented within the individual, are prominent. They try to assign an underlying syntactic structure 1 to the surface form of a specific syntactic phenomenon and to express a structural change by means of a reanalysis of the surface phenomenon into a syntactic structure 2 (cf. discussion in Ferraresi 2005; ch. 1). They suppose that this reanalysis takes place in early acquisition and that it leads to a parameter setting that differs from that of the parent generation (cf. Lightfoot 1999; Roberts & Roussou 2003).18 The traditional questions of historical linguistics regarding the genetic relatedness of languages (or the contribution that the study of syntactic change could make here) and about syntactic reconstruction are no longer significant. The question whether there is anything similar to the phonological laws in syntax is no longer prominent. That means the traditional questions of historical linguistics, the answers to which . These studies of generative diachronic syntax do not usually make use of empirical data from language acquisition research. The question of acquisition therefore seems to be used mainly at a very hypothetical level. On the other hand, a functional approach to linguistic change such as the one in Haspelmath (2006: 19) assumes a correlation between language change and language processing: “In my view, the most interesting and convincing functional explanations are those that derive universal implications in language structure from scales of processing difficulty.” But his discussion does not show any detailed acknowledgment of studies in language processing either. A problem with the assumption that syntactic change results from acquisition or processing failures is to show how individual acquisition or processing failures can effect whole speech communities. And, at any rate, studies on grammatical change are only interested in changes that effect whole speech communities rather than in those that arise just in some individuals. The investigation of this matter would go beyond the methods of diachronic or historical syntax.
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should also be supported by a theoretical approach, are not dealt within the works of diachronic generative syntax, although there are no clear explanations or reasons for this gap. Two collections on historical linguistics appeared recently that both have reconstruction in their titles (Cravens 2006; Kiss 2005). The papers in these collections, however, do not deal with the questions we have based the present volume upon, so we shall not discuss them in detail here. The following section aims at exploring how the traditional questions can be reconciled with the model of generative grammar, and what role diachronic syntax can play for the synchronic grammar model.
3. Generative syntax meets historical linguistics Since Chomsky (1981), the model of generative syntax distinguishes between universal principles which hold across languages, and parameterized principles, or parameters for short, which bundle structural features; these can, as a group, be either present in or altogether absent from the grammatical system of a given language, due to the binary character of the parameters. In contrast to the typological universals in the Greenbergian sense, the universals and the parameterized principles of the generative model rely on structural assumptions. For example, one universal structural principle of the generative model is that syntactic operations always refer to the hierarchical structure of phrases or of sentences but not just to their linear sequencing. According to this hypothesis, there should be no natural human language that forms, for example, a sentence question in reversing the sequencing of the corresponding affirmative sentence. That is, “week next Marc meet will Andrew that knows Paul” (with the sense “does Paul know that Andrew will meet Marc next week?”) should not be a legitimate question formation which results from the derivation of the corresponding affirmative structure “Paul knows that Andrew will meet Marc next week”, in any natural human language. This universal principle that syntactic operations take place in accordance with the sentence structure excludes a bulk of other conceivable surface orders. For example, it predicts that in no natural human language a sentence question is formed from the corresponding affirmative sentence by putting all name expressions in the first place, all noun expressions in the second place, all verb expressions in third place etc. Thus, it excludes a surface order like *“[Andrew Marc Paul] [week] [knows meet will] [next] [that]”. I.e., the universal principles of the generative model are not typological generalisations but they are predictions/hypotheses about the natural syntactic module. They can be confirmed or disconfirmed, of course, by typological investigations. In a recent article, Kiparsky (2008: 5) emphasises that structural universals, in contrast to typological universals, are assumed
Syntactic reconstruction: Methods and new insights
to have no exceptions. Rather, structural universals should constrain syntactic change and typological universals. Thus, the just mentioned structural universal of the generative model predicts that no grammatical change will result in the formation of a sentence question by reversing the order of the corresponding affirmative sentence or by arranging the words according to their morphological classmembership into sentential position classes. Likewise, typological investigations should not find languages in which such a type of sentence question is attested. Therefore, true universals can be discovered by, among other things, the fact that they are immune to processes of linguistic change, language contact, acquisition or processing failures. Like the universal principles, the parameterized principles or parameters of the generative model refer to the syntactic structure. E.g. the structural property bundle of null subject languages that restricts the distribution of referential null subjects and zero expletive subject pronouns (like English it, there) makes reference to the morphological character of the syntactic category Infl(ection) (or Agr(eement)).19 Parameters are conceived of as hypothetical constructs which account for substantial aspects of grammatical variation among languages. In a recent article, Haspelmath (2006) critically sums up the results of generative syntax as concerns parameters. His survey draws the conclusion that there is neither a growing list of generally approved grammatical parameters, nor an undisputed bundling of grammatical features on even one parameter, and that the present development of theories in generative syntax does not at all facilitate the formulation of and the search for parameters. We do not want to question Haspelmath’s assessment. We would nevertheless like to explain why we do not follow his suggestion to give up the notion of parameter; we regard the application of the parameter concept worthwhile for synchronic and diachronic syntax. It is true we cannot yet quantify the minimal or maximal numbers of structural properties that can be bundled on one or each parameter. But let us suppose we should find a strong correlation between (just) two grammatical phenomena A and B. Then it would be predictable that any loss of A would result in a loss of B, and vice versa. Furthermore, we could predict – should we identify phenomenon A in the historical texts from a dead language, but find no evidence of B – that B must have been present as a grammatical phenomenon at the corresponding linguistic stage. Syntactic reconstruction could be carried out this way (cf. Mengden, this volume, concerning the reconstruction on the basis of typological universals). Longobardi (2003: 287) emphasizes another advantage of the notion of parameter: suppose we had discovered ten binary
. Compare the discussion of the so called null-subject-parameter (cf. Rizzi 1982).
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parameters, i.e., ten certain, independent bundles of grammatical features. There would then be 210 = 1024 possibilities of specification of these parameters in the grammar of a language. The probability of two languages having by chance exactly the same parameter setting for these ten parameters would be 1/1024. If we therefore found two languages with exactly the same anchoring of these parameters, we would be entitled to assume hat this similarity was not the result of chance but that the two languages were related to each other. Longobardi (2003) therefore proposes syntactic parameters to be the correspondence sets relevant to a historicalcomparative research of syntax. Stable grammatical parameters would thus permit syntactic reconstruction on the one hand and could prove the relatedness of grammatical systems on the other. Syntactic reconstruction would then involve the reconstruction of the structural properties bundled on a parameter. Relatedness of grammatical systems would have to be seen as agreement in the setting of various distinct parameters. Thus, the parameter concept of the synchronic model of generative syntax would permit the investigation of the very valuable questions of traditional historical comparative linguistics in the field of historical syntax which are, apparently, at present abandoned at least by the generative diachronic syntactic research. What can a structural correlation between grammatical phenomena look like in particular? How is the conception of a parameter different from that of universals (i.e., implicational universals) as proposed by Greenberg (1966)? Typically Greenberg’s implicational universals are not employed for demonstrating relatedness between languages, since Greenberg and others assume that universals emerge independently of the development of individual grammars (cf. Lehmann 2005). However, these implicational universals formulated in typology in the Greenberg tradition in fact resemble the conception of parameters in generative grammar (cf. also Haspelmath 2006) in their binary form. Greenberg’s universal 2 quoted above could be considered as a special case of the head parameter proposed in generative grammar, according to which heads and their complements are ordered in the same way across the phrases of different syntactic categories.20 It is clear that Greenberg’s implicational universals make statements about surface sequences. We have seen in discussing Greenberg’s universal 2 in (1) which structural hypotheses should be illuminated by a generative analysis in order to check the potentially implied correlation between the position of nominal
. I.e. case assigners like adpositions and nouns assign case alike either to the right or to the left, in a way that languages where the parameter option is head-right have prenominal genitive DPs and postpositions.
Syntactic reconstruction: Methods and new insights
genitive complements and the presence of prepositions and postpositions, respectively, before the formulation of a parameter can be tackled. Apart from the syntactic distribution, properties of reference, thematic relations, informational structure, but also segmental properties which permit conclusions about stress (cf. Longobardi 1994, 2001), would have to be taken into account here. This may show that it is not sufficient just to draw up implications about surface sequences like Greenberg’s universal 2 does in order to find structural parameters in the sense of generative grammar. Rather, a fundamental structural analysis and later on its integration into the overarching syntactic model are the prerequisites for the formulation of a generative parameter. The fact that at the present state of research there is no generally accepted set of grammatical parameters results from the intricacy to find the major structural correlations and potential interrelations between them. Therefore, there are generally relatively hypothetical assumptions about the nature and the mode of operation of grammatical parameters. We propose that this should be seen as a positive challenge in that it invites to specify the concept of parameters by future research in diachronic syntax. Longobardi (2001) suggests that syntactic change, which, as we have outlined above, should not involve real universals and which should concern, if at all, only parametrical principles, can be triggered exclusively by change(s) at the interfaces (Phonetic Form, Logical Form). Particularly since syntactic parameterization in the mean time has come to be supposed to refer solely to functional categories (like D, C, T; cf. Roberts & Roussou 2003 and the references quoted there), this means that – reconciling both hypotheses with each other – syntactic change occurs as a consequence of phonological and/or lexical-semantic change, to which the exponents of the functional categories are exposed (determiners, complementizers, auxiliaries, modals, etc.; cf. Pires & Thomason, this volume). We would like to outline, by means of an example of French diachrony, how these hypotheses can be applied to a specific process of change. Old French infinitival constructions show systematic differences from corresponding Old Spanish and Old Italian structures. While the latter can have a subject and be negated, this is not possible in Old French:
(2) Negation
a. per poterli levare da oste … e non li dare la terra (DC 3.17.104) (Old Italian) ‘in order to prevent them from fighting […] and not to give them the city (literally: territory)’ b. […] que acquello auien a fazer e non se tirar dello por ninguna manera (PcgE 37b50–51) (Old Spanish) ‘[…] that [they] had to do this and not to avoid it by any means’ Subjects
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c. e essendo l’uso della terra a simili raunate i cittadini sedere basso in su stuoie di giunchi (DC 1.20.101) (Old Italian) ‘and [it] being the custom of the city at similar meetings [that] the citizens sit down on their straw mats’ d. Grand cosa fue, Eneas, duna muger poder se deffender contra tantos enemigos (PcgE 42a41–42) (Old Spanish) ‘It was a considerable affair, Aeneas, that a woman could defend herself against so many enemies’
It is not at all obvious why Old French should have no negation and subject with the infinitive. Like Old Italian and Old Spanish, it stems from Latin, where there is an analogous structure, the Accusativus cum infinitivo (ACI; cf. (3), where te – ‘you’ is the subject (in the accusative case) of the infinitive arcessi (= pres. pass., ‘to be summoned’) and non the clause negation): 21 (3) … praedico, te non modo non arcessi a me, sed prohiberi (Cic. Att. 1,10,6) ‘[…] [I] signalize [that] you are not only not summoned by me, but [you] are prohibited [from coming] [by me]’
There is another phenomenon in which Old French differs from the other two languages named above: Old French avoids object clitics next to the infinitive. Goldbach (2008) states that in Villehardouin’s chronicle (13th c.) there is not a single object clitic next to the infinitive but only free object pronouns. These always appear preverbally. Old Italian and Old Spanish, by contrast, mainly prefer object clitics to object pronouns with the infinitive.22 Only from the Middle French period onward, and particularly in texts from the 15th and later centuries (cf. Martineau 1990), object clitics productively appear with the infinitive: (4) a. Quand il fut ou lieu ou l’on vouloit le avoir (CNNA 495/912, cf. Martineau 1990: 385) (Middle French) ‘When he was in the place where one wanted to have him’
b. car il va se coucher (CNNA 213/205, ibid.) (Middle French) ‘for he goes to sleep’
. We cannot, however, come to any conclusion yet as to what relationship the Old Italian and Old Spanish structures in (2) have with the Latin ACI construction like in (3). . For example, in Dino Compagni’s Chronicle there are 79 object clitics next to the infinitive versus 4 unbounded object pronouns; in this statistics the distribution of pl. gli vs. loro was not included since loro does not behave in the same way as the other unbounded object pronouns (cf. Goldbach 2007). Both in Old Italian and Old Spanish, the postverbal position of the object clitic with the infinitive is by far predominant.
Syntactic reconstruction: Methods and new insights
In the same texts, infinitival constructions with a realized subject of their own and clause negation begin to appear: 23 (5) a. faindant de ne s’en apparcevoir (CNNV 40/24, cf. Martineau 1994: 60) (Middle French) ‘alleging not to notice it’
b. Pareillement disoit avoir son pere beaucop de bons heritages (CNNV 25/51, cf. Martineau 1990: 448) (Middle French) ‘Likewise, [he] said [that] his father had a lot of good inheritances’
We assume the property of the infinitive to allow subjects and clause negation to result from its having object clitics, or even more precisely, its showing features of verbal inflection. Following Kok (1985) and Pearce (1990), we suppose that the Old French infinitive is rather of nominal character, or, in Pearce’s words, it has no Infl node. In Middle French it develops one with the appearance of object clitics, which we categorize as a feature of verbal inflection. This leads to finding subjects (in the specifier of Infl) and clause negation (dominated by Infl) with the infinitive. Before we assign the status of parameter to this bundle of properties (and give the parameter a name), we should check whether it is a strong correlation (infinitive plus verbal inflection features, subject and clause negation). So far, we have examined this correlation only in the Romance languages. In future studies, non-IndoEuropean languages in particular would have to be analysed in this respect. Is the change exhibited by the medieval French infinitivals to be traced back to a change at the interfaces? In Goldbach (2008) the change in the French infinitive construction is connected with a change in the paradigm of object pronouns, i.e., with a morpho-semantic kind of change: Old French, Old Italian and Old Spanish have two such paradigms, object clitics on the one hand and unbounded object pronouns on the other. While there are no homonymies between the two paradigms in Old Italian and Old Spanish, Old French has two forms, i.e., 2nd person pl. vous – ‘you’ and 1st nous – ‘we’, which can appear both as detached object pronoun and as object clitic. In the transition to Middle French, a third homonymy appears: in Joinville’s Chronicle (from the beginning of the 14th c.), 3rd person sg. obj. li is used both as a clitic and as a detached object pronoun, and the form lui, which functions as a detached object pronoun in Villehardouin’s Chronicle (from
. Modern French, too, has preserved negation with the infinitive; similarly there are still infinitives with a subject of their own (cf. Grevisse 1993: 1278): (i) C’est pour moi rigoler, mon Lou (Apollin., Lettres à Lou, 21 avril 1915) “It is for me to have fun, my Lou”
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the preceding century), hardly appears at all.24 Goldbach (2008) traces back the change in the French infinitival construction, i.e., the formation of an Infl system in infinitive structures, to the extension of the homonymy of forms between the two pronoun paradigms in Middle French. The syntactic change in French consists in the fact that infinitives can appear with their own subjects and clause negation (and are equally productive with object clitics) from the Middle French period onward. The morphological change to which we trace back the syntactic one consists in the extension of the homonymy of forms between the two pronoun paradigms. The syntactic functional category concerned here is Infl. On the basis of our example, we do not wish to maintain that the said morphological change is always the prerequisite for a change in the structure of the infinitive. We just make the assumption that a change in the structure of the infinitive is preceded by – or co-occurring with – a morphological change.25 How could syntactic reconstruction work on the basis of this result? Should we find out through future research that inflectional morphology, subjects and clause negation (or parts of these properties) in infinitival constructions form strong correlations, then we could, on the basis of data from a dead language which has infinitives with subjects of their own, assume that in that language infinitives could also have clause negation, independently of whether there actually is a corresponding structure in that document or not.26 We have outlined above that Longobardi’s (2003) proposal includes syntactic reconstruction on the basis of parameters and the demonstration of relatedness of grammatical systems. Why do we prefer the notion of parameter for syntactic reconstruction to Greenberg’s universals? We deem the notion of universals in the Greenberg tradition to be less specific for two purposes of diachronic comparative
. Goldbach (2008) finds only one single incidence of lui as detached object pronoun in Joinville’s Chronicle (Join. 104). Otherwise li is used as a detached pronoun in this early Middle French text. By contrast, in the texts from the 15th and early 16th centuries examined by Martineau (1990), only luy/lui appears both as object clitic and as detached object pronoun, but not li any more. At present we cannot say when and in which region luy/lui started to predominate over li (the latter no longer exists in Modern French). Villehardouin’s and Joinville’s chronicles are from the Champagne region, whereas Martineau’s (1990) texts are from Burgundy and Lorraine. . The morphological change concerning the paradigm of object pronouns outlined here can be interpreted as a semantic change – following Carstairs-McCarthy (1994) – if we consider paradigms as contrast-organizing units. . In contrast to the Indo-European languages, for many language families diachronic text corpora will never become available. In this case, diachronic syntax should be syntactic reconstruction.
Syntactic reconstruction: Methods and new insights
grammar, i.e., showing relatedness between grammatical systems and reconstructing syntax in order to perhaps discover general restrictions on grammatical change (cf. also Harris & Campbell 1995; Kiparsky (2008); Roberts & Roussou 2003), than the concept of parameter as used in generative grammar. Greenberg’s universals are considered suitable for syntactic reconstruction by some authors (cf. Dressler 1971 above, among others). On the other hand, Lehmann (2005) denies that relatedness can be investigated on the basis of the universals formulated in typology. Thus it seems that the concept of parameter of generative grammar is more viable to identify relatedness as well as to reconstruct syntax. Above all, typology studies have not determined yet whether their universals suit these purposes. We do not assert that the purposes of diachronic syntax we discuss above are the only ones. Undoubtedly it is still necessary to find universal principles in the sense of generative grammar as presented by Kiparsky (1995a, 2008). These principles, as Kiparsky emphasizes, are not expected to be influenced by linguistic change. Quite the opposite: they restrict language change. Furthermore, the discovery of typological universals according to Kiparsky (2008) is an important result because it can raise significant problems for (synchronic) investigation of language acquisition and processing. The goal of looking for confirmation for parameters established on the basis of synchronic research is not only a relevant supplement in diachronic research into syntactic change – thus stating more precisely and perhaps surpassing the universals proposed in typological research – but is of interest also for synchronic theories. Moreover, it is a promising basis of cooperation for studies involving language acquisition and processing. Still, the line of inquiry focusing on a search for parameters recommended here will have its limitations. Supposedly, it will be restricted in a way similar to the historical-comparative method for phonological correspondences: It may be able to work out relatedness, but it might possibly have no technique/means to definitely prove non-relatedness. In the following section we shall summarize how our central questions are taken up by the papers collected in this volume.
4. Issues of syntactic reconstruction in this volume In this collection we have gathered six papers dealing with the possibilities and limitations/problems of syntactic reconstruction. The authors discuss the topic from different perspectives. Balles’ article discusses the possibility of reconstruction of a Proto-Indoeuropean (PIE) predicative construction by comparing the shape of preterite/imperfect verbal forms of three Indo-European languages (Germanic, Latin, and Slavic) with
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the Old Indic cvi-construction. The reconstruction under discussion is couched in the manner of the historical comparative method, applied to morphological and syntactic elements. After summarizing the arguments put forward in favour of a reconstruction of a predicative construction in PIE, based on this comparison, Balles casts serious doubt on them. She concludes that the similarities of these structures are too shallow, thus preventing a sound reconstruction. Balles’ article is not very optimistic with respect to the possibility of reconstructing PIE syntax. She attributes the difficulties of the reconstruction in this case to two facts: the (hypothetical) proto-language is totally unattested, and the development from PIE to the attested IE languages is not documented. The author assumes that the research on diachronic syntax and syntactic reconstruction have to be supplemented with a theory of syntactic change. The consequences of syntactic borrowing and a method to detect it are discussed in Bowern’s paper. The author makes use, for example, of the method of internal and external comparison in order to discover borrowed syntactic structures. In her proposal, syntactic irregularity plays a special role. This method thus helps to uncover regular syntactic structures, which is a prerequisite for systematic syntactic reconstruction. On the other hand, Bowern does not consider very helpful a syntactic reconstruction on the basis of syntactic parameters as correspondence sets. Harris’ article demonstrates her method of syntactic reconstruction with two different language families, the Kartvelian family and the Nakh-Daghestanian family. In the former, she undertakes a reconstruction of the form of the yes/ no question and the shape of the sentence particle in the parent language on the basis of the comparative method presented in Harris & Campbell (1995). In the latter, the author reconstructs (the construction of) the structural ergativeabsolutive case in the parent language. In each case Harris specifies the criteria for her reconstructions which the results fulfil. Similarly the author stresses the necessity of analyzing structural relics in the application of the method of syntactic reconstruction. This paper emphasizes that the applied method is promising above all in those language families where there are still native speakers of the languages in question. Harris concedes that her method faces greater difficulties with language families (like Indo-European) whose single members have developed independently (and divergently) for too long a span of time. In addition, the author assumes that her method presupposes insights into the relatedness of languages that have been gained independently, and is (to be) supplemented by phonological reconstruction. Mengden’ paper argues against the assumption that syntactic reconstruction is possible on the basis of the historical-comparative approach. His main argument concerns the fact that the historical-comparative method relies mainly on
Syntactic reconstruction: Methods and new insights
paradigmatic relations, and that by contrast syntagmatic relations have to be analyzed for syntactic reconstruction. He suggests bringing in exactly the typological universals of implication in the Greenberg tradition, as further developed by Hawkins (1983), for syntactic reconstruction. Mengden is in favour of also assessing the results of studies in grammaticalization for this purpose. The author assumes that the latter can be traced back to the typological universals (pp. “ […] the two approaches […] may be considered two sides of the same coin”). The contribution by Pires & Thomason is guardedly sceptical about possibilities of syntactic reconstruction. The authors explain that in their understanding of a grammatical system – rooted in generative grammar – syntactic change and reconstruction of syntax mean that the internal (innate) grammar system of a preceding generation differs from that of succeeding generations and that the formal properties of the former (system) would have to be reconstructed on the basis of the properties of the latter. Therefore in their view one of the prerequisites for syntactic reconstruction is uncovering the formal grammatical properties (i.e., the feature specification of functional lexical items) of the daughter systems in question. Thus it is not sufficient for the authors to just compare surface sequences (cf. Harris & Campbell 1995 and Harris (this volume)) without having insights at the same time into structure-building processes that produce those surface structures. Pires & Thomason consider grammatical/syntactic change not as a monocausal result but believe that syntactic change results from a series of single events (or their cumulation, respectively). In addition, they call into question certain restrictions on syntactic change suggested by Longobardi 2001 a priori. With the example of the reconstruction of the animacy distinction in proto-Slavic by means of the comparative method applied to Old Church Slavic and four modern Slavic languages, Pires & Thomason show the limits of this method in the morpho-syntactic field. The prospects of the method are illustrated with the example of the formation of the synthetic Romance future. Since syntactic change is far less regular (or exceptionless) than sound change, the authors believe that the results of syntactic reconstruction are in principle less reliable than those of phonological reconstruction. Lühr surveys subordinate object clauses (i.e., finite and non-finite complement clauses with and without complementizer, which are embedded as a direct object of the matrix verb) in the Old Indo-European languages Hittite, Vedic, Iranian, Greek, Latin and Germanic. Since some Old Indo-European languages, such as Vedic, have no finite (subordinate) object clauses with a complementizer comparable to Modern English that or modern German dass, the author raises the question of what the embedding structure for subordinate object clauses in ProtoIndo-European might have looked like. In a way similar to Harris’ method, Lühr looks for the lowest common denominator among the analogous (or homologous) structures in the daughter languages she analyzes in order to reconstruct it for the
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proto-language. Lühr’s paper, in its optimistic outlook for the possibilities of syntactic reconstruction, goes slightly beyond the confidence displayed by Harris, in that Lühr considers the method promising in its application also to languages that have developed over a long span of time and geographical distance. She reconstructs two sentential object constructions for PIE, namely AcP and an explicative sentence. The author concludes that the verbs in whose complements explicative clauses occur originally subcategorized for an NP to which the explicative clauses were adjoined by means of a relative pronoun in the specifier of the CP. The reanalysis of these explicative sentences as object complement clauses is traced back to pragmatic mechanisms. In general, Lühr assumes her result to be a confirmation of Longobardi’s (2001) Inertia Theory. With the present collection, we hope to further stimulate the reflection on syntactic reconstruction and its role for diachronic and synchronic linguistics. To what extent can traditional questions and methods be taken up in this enterprise? Which insights provided by traditional studies can be regarded to be appropriate for the field of historical syntax? In addition, we would like to bring the concept of syntactic parameter in diachronic and synchronic syntax to the focus of discussion, taking into account both theoretical and psycholinguistic approaches. On the basis of diachronic syntax studies and led by the fundamental topic of syntactic reconstruction, we also wish to encourage a debate on the question of what extent interface conditions are relevant to language acquisition, language processing, and language change.
References Balles, Irene. 2008. “Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction and ‘Morphology as Paleosyntax’: The case of some Indo-European secondary verbal formations”. This volume. Beekes, Robert S.P. 1995. Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An introduction. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Bomhard, Allan R. & John C. Kerns. 1994. The Nostratic Macrofamily: A study in distant linguistic relationship. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Bowers, Claire. 2008. “Syntactic change and syntactic borrowing in Generative Grammar”. This volume. Campbell, Lyle. 2003. “How to Show Languages Are Related: Methods for distant genetic relationships”. The Handbook of Historical Linguistics ed. by Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda, 262–282. Oxford: Blackwell. Campbell, Lyle & Alice C. Harris. 2002. “Syntactic Reconstruction and Demythologizing ‘Myths and the Prehistory of Grammars’”. Journal of Linguistics 38. 599–618. Carstairs-McCarthy, Andrew. 1994. “Inflection Classes, Gender, and the Principle of Contrast”. Language 70. 737–88. Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.
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Cowgill, Warren & Manfred Mayrhofer. 1986. Indogermanische Grammatik. Vol. I. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Cravens, Thomas D., ed. 2006. Variation and Reconstruction in Comparative Linguistics. (= Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 268.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Delbrück, Berthold. 1919. Einleitung in das Studium der indogermanischen Sprachen: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und Methodik der vergleichenden Sprachforschung. 6th ed. (= Bibliothek indogermanischer Grammatiken, 4.) Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel. Delbrück, Berthold. 1878. Die altindische Wortfolge aus dem Çatapathabrâhma.na dargestellt. (= Syntaktische Forschungen, 3.) Halle/Saale: Verlag des Waisenhauses. Dressler, Wolfgang. 1971. “Über die Rekonstruktion der indogermanischen Syntax”. Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung 85. 5–22. Ferraresi, Gisella. 2005. Word Order and Phrase Structure in Gothic. Leuven: Peeters. Fox, Anthony. 1995. Linguistic Reconstruction: An introduction to theory and method. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Friedrich, Paul. 1975. “Proto-Indo-European Syntax: The order of meaningful elements”. (= Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph, 1.) Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man. Gimbutas, Marija. 1997. The Kurgan Culture and the Indo-Europeanization of Europe: Selected articles from 1952 to 1993. Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man. Giorgi, Alessandra & Giuseppe Longobardi. 1991. The Syntax of Noun Phrases. Configuration, Parameters and Empty Categories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goldbach, Maria. 2007. Pronominalisierung bei Infinitivkomplementen im Alt- und frühen Mittelfranzösischen im Vergleich zum Altitalienischen. Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang. Goldbach, Maria. 2008. “Morphological Developments Affecting Syntactic Change”. The Paradox of Grammatical Change: Perspectives from Romance ed. by Ulrich Detges & Richard Waltereit (= Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 293), 85–106. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966a [1963]. “Some Universals of Grammar with particular Reference to the Order of meaningful Elements”. Universals of Language ed. by Joseph H. Greenberg, 73–113. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966b. Language Universals. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter. Grevisse, Maurice. 1993 [1936]. Le bon usage: Grammaire française. 13th ed. Paris & Louvainla-Neuve: Duculot. Harris, Alice C. & Lyle Campbell. 1995. Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harris, Alice C. 2008. “Reconstruction in Syntax: Reconstruction of patterns”. This volume. Harrison, Sheldon P. 2003. “On the Limits of the Comparative Method”. The Handbook of Historical Linguistics ed. by Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda, 213–243. Oxford: Blackwell. Haspelmath, Martin. to appear. “Parametric versus Functional Explanations of Syntactic Universals”. The Limits of Syntactic Variation ed. by Theresa Biberauer. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Haspelmath, Martin, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil & Bernard Comrie, ed. 2005. World Atlas of Language Structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hawkins, John A. 1983. Word Order Universals. New York: Academic Press. Hock, Hans Henrich & Brian D. Joseph. 1996. Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship: An introduction to historical and comparative linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Gisella Ferraresi & Maria Goldbach Joseph, Brian D. & Richard D. Janda, eds. 2003. The Handbook of Historical Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell. Kiparsky, Paul. 1995a. “The Phonological Basis of Sound Change”. The Handbook of Phonological Theory ed. by John A. Goldsmith, 640–670. Oxford: Blackwell. Kiparsky, Paul. 1995b. “Indo-European Origins of Germanic Syntax”. Clause Structure and Language Change ed. by Adrian Battye & Ian Roberts, 140–169. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kiparsky, Paul. 2008. “Universals Constrain Change: Change results in typological generalizations”. Language Universals and Language Change ed. by Jeff Good, 333–356. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kiss, Katalin É. 1987. Configurationality in Hungarian. Dordrecht: Reidel. Kiss, Katalin É., ed. 2005. Universal Grammar in the Reconstruction of Ancient Languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Kok, Ans de. 1985. La place du pronom personnel régime conjoint en français: Une étude diachronique. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Kondrak, Grzegorz. 2002. Algorithm for Language Reconstructions. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto. Lamberterie, Charles de. 1998. “Méthode comparative et approche typologique: Regards croisés sur les deux disciplines”. La Linguistique 34: 1. 19–37. Lass, Roger. 1997. Historical Linguistics and Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lehmann, Christian. 2005. “On the methodological Bases of genetic Language Comparison”. Language Research (SNU) 41: 2. 379–404. Lehmann, Winfred P. 1973. “A Structural Principle of Language and its Implications”. Language 49. 47–66. Lehmann, Winfred P. 1974. Proto-Indo-European Syntax. Austin: University of Texas Press. Lightfoot, David. 1979. Review of Mechanisms of Syntactic Changes ed. by Charles N. Li, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977). Language 55. 381–395. Lightfoot, David. 1999. The Development of Language. Acquisition, Change, and Evolution. Oxford: Blackwell. Lightfoot, David. 2002a. “Myths and the Prehistory of Grammars”. Journal of Linguistics 38. 113–136. Lightfoot, David. 2002b. “More Myths”. Journal of Linguistics 38. 619–626. Lightfoot, David. 2006. How New Languages Emerge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Longobardi, Giuseppe. 1994. “Reference and Proper Names: A theory of N-movement in syntax and logical form”. Linguistic Inquiry 25: 4. 609–665. Longobardi, Giuseppe. 2001. “Formal Syntax, diachronic Minimalism and Etymology: The history of French chez”. Linguistic Inquiry 32: 2. 275–302. Longobardi, Giuseppe. 2003. “On Parameters and Parameter Theory”. Syntaxtheorien, Modelle, Methoden, Motive ed. by Elisabeth Stark & Ulrich Wandruszka, 273–290. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Lühr, Rosemarie. “Competitive Indo-European syntax”. This volume. Mallory, James P. 1991. In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, archaeology and myth. London: Thames & Hudson. Martineau, France. 1990. La montée du clitique en moyen français: Une étude de la syntaxe des constructions infinitives. Ph.D. Dissertation, University Ottawa.
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Meier-Brügger, Michael & Hans Krahe. 2002. Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft. 8th ed. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Meillet, Antoine. 1921. Linguistique historique et linguistique générale. Paris: Champion. Meillet, Antoine. 1954 [1925]. La méthode comparative en linguistique historique. 2nd ed. Paris: Honoré Champion. Mengden, Ferdinand von. 2008. “Reconstructing complex structures – a typological perspective”. This volume. Osthoff, Hermann & Karl Brugmann. 1878–1910. Morphologische Untersuchungen auf dem Gebiete der indogermanischen Sprachen. 6 vols. Leipzig: S. Hirzel. Pearce, Elizabeth. 1990. Parameters in old French Syntax: Infinitival complements. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Pires, Acrisio & Sarah G. Thomason. 2008. “How much syntactic reconstruction is possible?”. This volume. Ramat, Paolo. 1976. “Linguistic Reconstruction and Typology”. Journal of Indo-European Studies 4. 189–206. Rankin, Robert L. 2003. “The Comparative Method”. The Handbook of Historical Linguistics ed. by Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda, 184–212. Oxford: Blackwell. Renfrew, Colin. 1995 [1987]. Archaeology and Language: The puzzle of Indo-European origins. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ringe, Donald A. 1992. “On Calculating the Factor of Chance in Language Comparison”. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 82: 1. 1–110. Rizzi, Luigi. 1982. Issues in Italian Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris. Roberts, Ian. 1993. Verbs and diachronic Syntax. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Roberts, Ian & Anna Roussou. 2003. Syntactic Change: A minimalist approach to grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schleicher, August. 1861–1862. Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen. 2 vols. Weimar: Hermann Böhlau. (4th ed., 1876.) Schuchardt, Hugo. 1885. Über die Lautgesetze: Gegen die Junggrammatiker. Berlin: Robert Oppenheim. Szemerényi, Oswald. 1990. Einführung in die vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft. 4th ed. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Thomason, Sarah G. 2001. Language Contact: An introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Thomason, Sarah G. 2006. Syntactic Reconstruction”. Encyclopedia of Languages and Linguistics: Second edition ed. by Keith Brown et al., Tome VI, 339–346. Oxford: Elsevier. Tichy, Eva. 2000. Indogermanistisches Grundwissen. Bremen: Hempen. Vance, Barbara S. 1997. Syntactic Change in Medieval French: Verb-second and null subjects. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Vennemann, Theo. 1974. “Topics, Subjects and Word Order: From SXV to SVX via TVX”. Historical Linguistics ed. by John M. Anderson & Charles Jones, vol. I, 339–376. Amsterdam: North Holland. Vennemann, Theo. 1975. “An Explanation of Drift”. Word Order and Word Order Change ed. by Charles N. Li, 269–306. Austin: University of Texas Press. Watkins, Calvert. 1964. “Preliminaries to the Reconstruction of the Indo-European Sentence Structure”. Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Linguistics ed. by Horace G. Lunt, 1035–1042. The Hague: Mouton & Co.
Gisella Ferraresi & Maria Goldbach Watkins, Calvert. 1976. “Towards Proto-Indo-European Syntax: Problems and pseudoproblems”. CLS Parasession on Diachronic Syntax ed. by Sanford B. Steever, Carol A. Walker & Salikoko S. Mufwene, 305–326. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Watkins, Calvert. 1996. “Proto-Indo-European: Comparison and reconstruction”. The IndoEuropean Languages ed. by Anna Giacalone Ramat & Paolo Ramat, 25–73. London: Routledge.
How much syntactic reconstruction is possible?* Acrisio Pires & Sarah G. Thomason University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
This paper explores ways to synthesize methods from generative linguistics and historical linguistics to develop explanatory criteria that need to be satisfied by different attempts to carry out syntactic reconstruction. It addresses various questions such as (i) the need to define exactly what it means to reconstruct a language; (ii) characterizing the formal entities that count as the basic elements in the analysis of the empirical evidence for syntactic reconstruction, and whether the units of analysis and the elements that need to be reconstructed are formal entities of the same kind; (iii) whether it is possible to establish general principles for reconstructing syntax; (iv) to which extent the methodology adopted for the reconstruction of other properties of a linguistic system can be applied successfully to the reconstruction of syntax; and (v) identifying methodological criteria to assess the success of a syntactic reconstruction, and devise empirical tests for the reconstruction model.
0. Introduction An important debate relating formal syntax and historical linguistics concerns the question whether it is possible to reconstruct the syntax of a proto-language by comparing the syntactic properties of two or more of its daughter languages.1 This
*A preliminary version of this paper was presented at a University of Michigan Historical Linguistics meeting, and we would like to thank its participants for comments and suggestions, especially Steve Dworkin, Ben Fortson, Nick Pharris, and VerÓnica Grondona. Thanks also to Sam Epstein for his interest in this paper, and to Gerardo Fernández-Salgueiro for answering questions about Galician. The first author is especially grateful to Larisa Avram for her detailed answers about the Romanian future, and to Gisella Ferraresi and David Lightfoot for providing us with references relevant to our discussion. We are also grateful to Giuseppe Longobardi for detailed comments on the aspects of the paper that review some of his work. Any errors of course remain our responsibility. . The term ‘language’ is used in this instance without qualification, an issue we come back to below. We put aside questions regarding the possibility of internal reconstruction, given its more general limitations that extend beyond syntactic properties.
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paper addresses this question in detail, by focusing on several important empirical and methodological questions that we take to be crucial in this debate:
(1) a. The term ‘language’ has been used with many different, often imprecise meanings in the literature, and it is important to define exactly what it means when one refers to the attempt to reconstruct a language. b. Once one defines in a formal way what counts as a language for purposes of syntactic reconstruction, what are the formal entities that count as the basic elements in the analysis of the empirical evidence for syntactic reconstruction? Are the units of analysis and the elements that need to be reconstructed formal entities of the same kind? c. Once we define the basic formal entities that are relevant for any attempt to carry out a syntactic reconstruction, is it in fact possible to reconstruct any properties of syntax? d. Is it possible to establish any general principles for reconstructing syntax and, if so, how do these principles relate in general to formal properties of human language syntax? e. Can the methodology adopted for the reconstruction of other properties of a linguistic system be extended successfully to the reconstruction of syntax? f. Are there methodological criteria that enable us to assess the degree to which a syntactic reconstruction has been successful? If so, can one provide empirical tests for the reconstruction model, given these methodological criteria?
Some of these questions have been discussed in detail in the literature on syntactic reconstruction, but we think that there have not been widely accepted answers to them. For instance, a recent (and in our view unsettled) debate has focused on the general question whether syntactic reconstruction is possible at all, addressing especially questions (1b) and (1e) (Harris & Campbell 1995, henceforth H&C; Lightfoot 2002a,b, Campbell & Harris 2002, henceforth C&H). Whereas Harris and Campbell are very optimistic about the prospects for syntactic reconstruction, Lightfoot has long expressed strong reservations about attempts to reconstruct syntax, pointing out methodological hurdles that must be overcome in any successful model of syntactic reconstruction (see also Lightfoot 1979; Watkins 1976). Lightfoot (1979) presents a detailed criticism of attempts to reconstruct word order in PIE (as does Watkins 1976), and he argues that “caution is in order in undertaking any work in syntactic reconstruction by simply applying to syntax the traditional methods of phonological reconstruction” (1979: 155). Longobardi (2001, 2003) adopts a methodological perspective similar to Lightfoot’s, in that he uses the Principles & Parameters approach to syntactic theory (see e.g. Chomsky 1986; Haegeman 1994; Webelhuth 1995), but he is more optimistic about the prospects for syntactic reconstruction, addressing issues
How much syntactic reconstruction is possible?
related to questions (1c) and (1d) above. Regarding question (1d), Longobardi proposes that his approach, which he claims is simply the adoption of the Principles & Parameters approach to syntax, can overcome the well-known deficiencies in typology-based approaches to reconstruction. His approach, however, differs sharply from that of other generativists who have discussed these issues, including Lightfoot; it also diverges radically from standard methods in historical linguistics more generally. This is especially evident when he proposes to use parametric variation – specifically, as determined through counts of shared parametric values among proposed sister languages – as a means of establishing distant genetic relationships among languages (Longobardi 2003). He does not explain how this essentially typological measure can overcome the deficiencies in other typologybased proposals for discovering genetic relationships. Here he does not argue directly for the use of his technique for reconstruction, but he implies that this approach can reconstruct the parameter settings for the parent of a set of related languages.2 We do not find his specific approach promising, for the same basic reason that typological approaches to genetic linguistic classification have failed in the past: languages whose development is historically closely related (as far as we can tell bystandard methods) can and do share numerous typological features, but when a partly shared history is in fact responsible for shared typological features, distinguishing inherited from diffused features is no easy task. In
. Longobardi tells us (p.c. 2005) that his effort to reconstruct ‘phylogenetic relations among languages’ does not need to involve the reconstruction of any syntactic structures in the parent language of a proposed family. We understand his reservation here, and that he intends his use of the term ‘reconstruction of phylogenetic relations’ to exclude actual historical comparative reconstruction. But to a historical linguist, any claim that certain languages are genetically related, based on the evidence of shared syntactic properties, does indeed imply a measure of syntactic reconstruction (even aside from the fact that ‘reconstruction’ is only used in historical linguistics to refer to the construction of hypotheses about features of proto-language structure). One reason is methodological: a convincing demonstration of genetic relationship always includes showing that reconstruction is possible – and the only sure way of showing this is to do some reconstruction. The other reason is empirical: if the shared syntactic structures that Longobardi and his collaborators adduce as evidence for genetic relationship are not supposed to be shared inheritances from a common parent language, then what could they possibly be? It’s true that drift (linguistic change in response to inherited pattern pressures of various kinds) is taken to produce identical and similar changes in sister languages, but this phenomenon is largely concentrated in the first centuries after their divergence from their parent language. Longobardi’s focus is on distant genetic relationships, where drift is no longer very likely to be driving major alterations in a daughter language’s structure. Shared inheritance and diffusion are therefore the only likely explanations for shared structures; if shared inheritance accounts for them, then they must have been present in the parent language; therefore we believe that Longobardi’s proposed syntactic evidence for genetic relationship implies a claim about syntactic reconstruction.
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Gianollo et al. 2004; Longobardi and colleagues elaborate on his proposed method, arguing that trees based on the kind of syntactic evidence he proposes correlate well with trees based on the standard Comparative Method. Among other things, they appeal to a subset of parameters whose settings, they believe, are especially stable, not easily subject to parameter resetting either through internal change or through borrowing. They do not explain their criteria for identifying this subset, but in fact most or all of the parameters settings we can identify on their list can be shown to have been borrowed by one language from another sometime, somewhere.3 Longobardi and his collaborators do not seem to notice this difficulty.4 We will not discuss his approach to genetic classification in detail because it is only tangentially relevant to the question of syntactic reconstruction. In his 2001 article, however, Longobardi addresses issues of syntactic reconstruction more directly, arguing for a ‘very restrictive theory of language change’ (p. 300). Like other historical linguists, we are dubious about the prospects of a theory of change as restrictive as the one Longobardi aims for (but see fn. 4), and more especially about the prospects for a deterministic theory of change.5 The set of changes Longobardi (2001) considers includes, for instance, the shift of French chez from a noun to a preposition. Category shifts of lexical items are much more
. Neither Gianollo et al. (2004) nor Guardiano & Longobardi (2005) provide much discussion about the individual parameters they discuss, and some of their very abridged names are completely opaque; one cannot tell from the papers what they mean by (for instance) ‘contextually inflected As’, ‘gramm. prox. in D’ or ‘def spread on APs.’ . Other aspects of their proposal will also likely meet with considerable skepticism among historical linguists. For instance, they propose ‘the Anti-Babelic principle’, which states in part that ‘differences [among languages] can only be due to chance (i.e., no one ever confused languages on purpose)’ (p. 5). This is false on empirical grounds. A small but growing number of examples from various parts of the world shows that people can and do change their languages deliberately in structurally nontrivial ways, sometimes abruptly, often in order to differentiate their speech more sharply from their neighbors’ speech (see Thomason 2006a and sources cited there, and see also fn. 9 below). From the perspective of syntactic theory, the range of differences among languages is in fact expected to be significantly constrained by the human faculty of language (Universal Grammar); therefore, these differences are not entirely subject to chance variation. It is rather the re-setting of parameters of variation in the course of development of new grammars that is dependent on chance variation in the linguistic input learners are exposed to in order to set the properties of their grammars (see Hale 1998; Lightfoot 1999, 2006; Roberts & Roussou 2003, and references therein for relevant discussion). . However, in section 2 we do argue in a different way that a formal approach to syntax provides independent mechanisms that can impose restrictions on how syntactic change takes place. See also fn. 4 above.
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common than Longobardi seems to believe: would anyone really want to claim, for instance, that the English word Google, which entered the language a few years ago as a proper noun and has very recently also become a verb (as in I’ll google that and get back to you about it), had to undergo a category shift along the same lines?6 For these reasons, we are skeptical about the prospects for reconstructing parameter settings for parent languages in cases where the daughter languages do not agree in their settings. As we argue in detail below, there are important methodological limitations on the enterprise of syntactic reconstruction (along the lines of what is proposed by Lightfoot). However, especially given current developments in syntactic theory, more specifically within the minimalist approach to syntax (see e.g. Chomsky 1995, 2000, 2001; Lasnik 1999a; Epstein & Seely 2002b; Radford 2004 and references therein), we suggest ways in which syntactic reconstruction may be a feasible goal, albeit under strict methodological constraints that stem both from the formal properties of syntactic theory and from the Comparative Method, the methodology of reconstruction that has been developed by historical linguists especially on the basis of phonology and morphology. Where it is necessary, we frame the discussion about formal syntax using general properties of the Principles & Parameters approach to syntax, and where it is crucial, such as in Section 3, we appeal more specifically to properties of Minimalist syntax, also understood as a Principles & Parameters approach to syntax.
1. The object of inquiry The term ‘language’ has been used with many different, often imprecise meanings in linguistics, and it is important to define exactly what linguistic reconstruction stands for from different perspectives. Here we will take into account as much as possible the perspectives of both formal syntax and historical linguistics, to see to what extent their goals overlap regarding linguistic reconstruction. We take it to be the case that both research fields share one common goal, within the enterprise of investigating syntax from a diachronic perspective: that of understanding and explaining the linguistic phenomena corresponding to what historical linguists refer to as language change. However, at least from the perspective of formal syntax, both the term language and the term change need to be made precise.
. Bowern (this volume) argues for other potential problems in the conclusions Longobardi (2001) draws from the analysis of the development of chez.
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It is especially from the perspective of generative syntax that the term ‘language’ as a focus of scientific investigation needs to be restricted in very specific ways. We do not aim at discussing this matter in detail here (for seminal work, see Chomsky 1957, 1965, and for more recent and general discussion, Chomsky 1986, 1988; Jackendoff 1994; Pinker 1994). For generative linguistics, the central properties of human language correspond to the system of specialized rules and principles internalized by humans (their native, internalized grammar) that allows them to combine basic linguistic units (sound units or phonemes) into larger structures (morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences). This corresponds to a discrete system with infinite generative power (that is, discrete infinity), or with the infinite creative potential characteristic of human language. From this perspective, one can distinguish the internalized grammatical system of principles and rules of human language from the possible linguistic data that this system can generate. These have been taken as two different ways in which the term language can be understood. The first one, internalized grammars, is the main focus of the scientific investigation of human language syntax, but it is at most only indirectly accessible to detailed scrutiny, by means of hypotheses constructed by linguists on the basis of careful analysis of different sources of evidence. The second way in which the term language can be understood is in terms of the linguistic data that one can access to construct hypotheses about human language. Linguistic data, or linguistic outputs, in the form of naturally-occurring data/corpora and grammaticality judgments obtained from native speakers about stimulus data, are all relevant as indirect sources of evidence that can be used to construct hypotheses about the possible properties of internalized grammatical systems. Even though hypothesized internal grammars and linguistic outputs could a priori be taken to be two different aspects of human language, only the former constitutes a goal in the inquiry about the formal properties of human language. That is, hypotheses about the properties of human language are primarily hypotheses about grammars internalized by humans. Of course, successful hypotheses about the properties of internalized grammars also make testable predictions about what one should expect to find as linguistic outputs, or as linguistic evidence. In sum, the main notion of ‘language’ that we take to be of potential interest for both formal syntax and historical linguistics is one corresponding to the grammars internalized by humans, and about which we can construct hypothesis on the basis of different linguistic data. In what follows we will often use the terms language and proto-language, but these terms should in fact be understood as references to grammars, as formal systems internalized by humans and which can generate outputs corresponding to the languages in question (e.g., the grammars internalized by speakers of English, French, Chinese and so on). Of course, even though individuals may have internalized grammars that are different in subtle
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ways from the grammars of other individuals, these grammars are expected to have many properties in common, as the result of the fact that they instantiate a single human faculty of language. Furthermore, given that different individuals are often exposed to similar primary linguistic data, their internalized grammars can share more specific subsets of properties. The latter kind of similarity is one of the sources of the idealized notions of dialects and languages as shared by certain groups of individuals and not others, which plays an important role in the construction of hypotheses about language change. These are normally hypotheses about properties of grammatical systems as shared by communities, and which do not aim primarily at identifying or investigating subtle aspects of grammatical variation that are manifested in individual grammars.7
2. On the nature of syntactic change and reconstruction Turning back to the question of syntactic reconstruction, we first need to define how it relates to diachronic syntax as a field of inquiry and to the notion of syntactic change as a phenomenon. From the perspective of formal syntax, one goal of diachronic syntax should be to construct hypotheses about internalized grammars which have the appropriate properties to generate the linguistic outputs one finds in diachronic data. In this sense, the enterprise is not much different from that of synchronic syntax, insofar as one is interested in proposing successful hypotheses about human internalized grammars that would be able to generate certain linguistic outputs and not others. A second goal of diachronic syntax (and diachronic linguistics in general) should be to propose models that explain different phenomena of language change. Here we need to make precise what we mean by language change and, more specifically, syntactic change. 2.1 Syntactic change From the perspective of both formal syntax and traditional historical linguistics, statements of change (e.g., ‘the Proto-Indo-European labialized velar stop */kw/ became /k/ in Proto-Slavic’, and ‘the verb moved to a clause-second position in declarative clauses in Old English, but no longer does so in Modern English’) are shortcuts that refer to a sequence of independent events that correspond either to (i) the acquisition of different grammars by two or more generations (the formal syntax perspective; see e.g., Lightfoot 1999, and Pires 2005, for discussion along . The distinction between dialects and languages can be of little relevance in a context in which more fine-grained distinctions can or need to be made among individual grammars.
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these lines, and see also Hale 1998, and Roberts & Roussou 2003) or to (ii) the innovation and then the spread of the innovation among adults (the traditional historical linguistics perspective). In this paper we focus on the formal child-centered view, according to which every child with normal language faculty undergoes a process of language acquisition that results in the development of at least one internalized adult grammar. Within generative syntax, this process is taken to be the result of the interaction between the human language faculty and the properties of the primary linguistic data (henceforth PLD) that each child is exposed to. It is important to note, however, that the formal syntactician’s position on language change is compatible with the view that innovations in adult speech form the basis for some, many, most, or even all linguistic changes (see Thomason 2006a and sources cited there), provided these innovations serve as input for the acquisition of new grammars. Because our focus here is on syntactic change from the perspective of formal syntax, we will not address the question of how syntactic changes that may occur in adult grammars, or at least in adult speech, are to be integrated into a view of the individual’s grammar as internalized during the process of first-language acquisition. In all cases of systematic change in adult grammar and/or speech, we assume that whatever innovations the adults in a speech community introduce into their language will form part of the primary linguistic data for the next generation of child language-acquirers. In a generative approach, then, the child, once exposed to primary linguistic data, is able to identify in the data relevant properties that permit progress from an initial state unspecified for the properties of any individual language to a sequence of later states (and eventually a final state) in the course of which the properties of an adult grammar are acquired. Children with similar linguistic experience may converge on different adult grammars. This is often the case, given deficiencies, incompleteness and noise in the data children are exposed to (for detailed discussion see Gleitman & Newport 1995; Pinker 1994, 1995; Hornstein & Lightfoot 1981). More interestingly from the perspective of diachronic syntax, individuals may acquire grammars that are substantially distinct in their formal properties from the grammars of their ancestors, especially given variation in each individual’s linguistic experience – that is, variation in the PLD different individuals are exposed to. (see Lightfoot 1991, 1999; Hale 1998; Roberts & Roussou 2003 for different implementations of models along these lines.) Schematically, the different steps corresponding to the process referred to as language change are given in (2). A child from generation 1 is exposed to the PLD set y, acquiring grammar 1, as in example (2a). Children from a subsequent generation (generation 2) undergo the same development, with the difference that the grammar they acquire is distinct in certain ways from the grammar of generation 1. In order to consider the existence of a process of language change, there should be
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some plausible link between the two generations. As it turns out, a subset of the linguistic outputs X produced by generation 1 constitutes at least part of the PLD set x’ that individuals from generation 2 are exposed to. (2) a. Individual from generation 1: PLDy → faculty of language → Grammar 1 → set of outputs X b. Individual from generation 2: PLDx’ → faculty of language → Grammar 2 → set of outputs Z
According to example (2), language change corresponds to the innovative properties of Grammar 2 as compared to Grammar 1. These innovations arise in the grammar of an individual from generation 2 as the result of exposure to PLDx’, which can include, among others, a subset of the outputs X produced by individuals from generation 1. Notice that there is no point at which Grammar 1 and Grammar 2 relate directly, which should be expected, since these are part of the internalized mental systems of different individuals. Similarly, there is no direct causal relation between the properties of the outputs X and the properties of outputs Z, even though these outputs are exactly what constitutes the main source of evidence for research on language change. In other words, the sequence of independent acquisition events by different generations involved in diachronic change is connected only by means of the fact that the linguistic output produced by one generation functions as the primary linguistic data used by the next generation to construct hypotheses leading to the acquisition of their own grammars, which may or may not match properties of the grammars of previous generations. Under this view there is no such thing as diachronic change as a single, atomic event that links directly the structural source or object of the change (grammar 1), the description of the change, and the resulting changed object (grammar 2). Grammar 1 and Grammar 2 are part of the mental representation of different individuals, and as such do not come into any direct relation.8 This provides a solution to a problem raised by Longobardi
. This puts aside the question whether the grammars internalized by bilinguals interact in any direct sense, allowing for the possibility of effects of one grammar on the other. Another situation that is not directly relevant here is language development itself, by which a child’s grammar goes from So (the initial grammar) to Si (the grammar attained by adults) by going through a number of intermediate states; these intermediate states count as a set of steps corresponding to the acquisition of a single adult grammar. Therefore, although this development represents different stages in grammar acquisition, in this case by the same individual, it is not relevant from the perspective of diachronic linguistics.
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(2003: 283–4) in his interpretation of Lightfoot’s position (and see also Hale 1998). According to Longobardi, A priori, the ideally restrictive theory of language change should probably claim that there is no such a thing as diachronic change (also cf. Lightfoot 1999). This is so because, if diachronic change exists, we are faced with a dilemma: either one must assume that at least some primitive change is unmotivated, i.e., largely beyond the scope of scientific inquiry (which is something incompatible with the ideal theory) or one loses any understanding of why the previous synchronic state was possible at all.
Given that we characterize (syntactic) change not as a primitive, but as a result of a series of events corresponding to the acquisition of grammars by different generations, it is in principle possible to avoid the complication raised by Longobardi and others regarding the motivation for change, since that motivation is now seen primarily as a set of factors affecting the acquisition of grammars by new generations.9
. As indicated above, in the schema of (2), changes in the adult grammar – regardless of whether they are changes in the grammar acquired during childhood or comprise instead a partially parallel set of structures – will contribute to PLDx’, namely, the data available to the next generation of language-acquirers. There is no doubt that dramatic changes do occur in adult language. However, it is an open question whether these changes affect the grammar that the adult internalized during child language acquisition. The clearest cases are those in which processes of first-language acquisition can be ruled out as a significant factor in the change process. One type of example is found in instances of what appear to be deliberate, conscious changes, such as the change in gender assignment of nouns in Uisai (a dialect of Buin spoken in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea): all nouns that are masculine in other dialects of Buin are feminine in Uisai, and vice versa (Laycock 1982). This lexical change resulted in reversed gender agreement markers throughout the syntax, and even if comparable reversals were known in other languages, the very shallow time depth that separates Buin dialects rules out any possibility that this reversal proceeded by gradual, incremental steps. Another set of cases (which may or may not involve deliberate change) is the emergence and further development of pidgin languages, a process that, by definition, does not involve young children. The initial stages of pidgin genesis might not be considered to be language change at all; but for several relatively well-documented pidgins, such as Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea) and Chinook Jargon (Washington, British Columbia, etc.), syntactic changes can be traced in the later history of the pidgin, well before it was acquired by native speakers (see e.g. DeGraff 1999 and references therein). A third set of cases would be a small number of well-documented bilingual mixed languages, which combine grammatical subsystems of two different languages. Michif (Manitoba, etc.), for instance, consists of French noun phrases (with their phonology, morphology, and syntax) inserted into Cree sentential frames, which include fully inflected Cree verbs. Michif must have been created by fluent bilinguals, because there is little or no distortion in either of its components; it does not resemble anything reported from the numerous studies
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Longobardi (2003: 284) goes on to say that “Since it seems to be a fact that changes exist, the ideal (or perfectly minimalist) theory cannot be fully pursued.” Given the approach to language change we adopt here, we argue that in fact a theoretical approach to syntactic change can be pursued which is fully compatible with the tenets of formal syntax. 2.2 Syntactic Reconstruction: What one would need to reconstruct In syntactic reconstruction, the task of the analyst is to propose hypotheses about the grammars of previous generations (the grammars of speakers of the ancestral language) without having access to direct evidence in the form of outputs produced by those grammars. We thus seek empirical grounds for arguing that the distinct grammars acquired by subsequent generations (3b) (the grammars 2, 3, and 4 of individual speakers of the daughter languages) all resulted from exposure to a PLD set x that would have included at least part of the outputs X produced by individuals from generation 1 (the proto-language). In formal syntactic terms, Grammar 1 in (3a) corresponds to the set of grammars internalized by speakers from generation 1, and in historical linguistics terms, it corresponds to the proto-language. Grammars 2, 3, and 4 are the grammars of the daughter languages. Grammars 2, 3, and so on here are meant to represent the sets of grammars internalized by different speakers of each daughter language. So, for instance, Grammar 2 is likely to correspond to heavily overlapping grammars of different individuals, resulting from the fact that they constructed their grammars on the basis of very similar primary linguistic data. The analyst has access to outputs produced by individuals who acquired grammars 2, 3, and 4. These grammars need to be hypothesized on the basis of the available evidence in conjunction with what one knows about the human language faculty. This is not different from the study of synchronic syntax, which consists in constructing hypotheses about the grammatical system internalized by humans on the basis of indirect evidence. However, the analyst interested in syntactic reconstruction crucially needs to construct hypotheses about the properties of Grammar 1 (the grammar of the proto-language, underlined in (3a)), without access to actual outputs produced by individuals who acquired that
of bilingual first-language acquisition. Moreover, there is some evidence that it arose as a symbol of a new mixed-blood ethnic group, and young children do not have the social skills or motivations needed to create a language for such a purpose. Michif is now spoken almost entirely by people who know English and (in some cases) Chippewa, but not French or Cree, so its current independence from its linguistic roots is undeniable (see Thomason 2006a). In cases of all these types, we assume that whatever innovations the adults in a speech community introduce into their language, the next generation of children will receive as part of their PLD.
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grammar. That is, the analyst will make hypotheses about Grammar 1 solely on the basis of the outputs of Grammars 2, 3, and 4 (and also on the basis of the postulated properties of these grammars), which were by hypothesis acquired as the result of exposure of different individuals to a PLD set X that would have been largely produced (set of outputs X) by individuals with Grammar 1. (3) a. Individual from generation 1: PLDy → faculty of language → Grammar 1 → set of outputs X b. Individuals from one or more subsequent generations: PLDx → faculty of language → Grammar 2 → set of outputs W PLDx → faculty of language → Grammar 3 → set of outputs Y PLDx → faculty of language → Grammar 4 → set of outputs Z
This is of course a simplified picture of the empirical domain of reconstruction. In most actual cases the links between the outputs of an ancestral grammar and the acquisition of grammars by subsequent generations are much more indirect, mediated by a few or many generations between the ancestral grammar (Grammar 1) and each daughter language (Grammars 2, 3, and 4). In the vast majority of actual cases, we have only modern grammars, so that only two stages are relevant: one corresponding to the (reconstructed) grammar of the ancestral language, and the other one corresponding to the grammars of the daughter languages. Crucially, even though the only directly accessible evidence is in the sets of outputs W, Y, Z produced by individuals with grammars 2, 3, and 4, the task of the reconstruction involves multiple steps: (i) postulate for the grammars 2, 3, and 4 models compatible with constraints imposed by the human faculty of language and which could possibly yield the sets of outputs W, Y, and Z; (ii) provide empirical grounds for the proposal that grammars 2, 3, and 4 result largely from exposure of different individuals to a PLD set that would have been to a large extent produced by individuals who internalized an unknown grammar 1 (the grammar of the ancestral language); (iii) postulate, solely on the basis of the properties of the postulated grammars 2, 3, and 4, hypotheses about the properties that would have been part of Grammar 1 (without having access to any subset of the outputs produced by Grammar 1 which could be directly informative about the grammatical properties one wishes to reconstruct). In both syntactic change and syntactic reconstruction, as in formal synchronic syntax, the task of the analyst should then be to construct hypotheses about the internalized grammars of different individuals (the speakers of the proto-language, in the diachronic case) or, as is more often the case, about the overlapping properties of the grammars of different sets of individuals or, in more traditional but less precise terms, about the grammars of individual languages or dialects – American English, Quebec French, Classical Latin, Sanskrit, and so on, in more or less
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fine-grained ways. The endeavor has been quite substantial from the perspective of synchronic syntax but so far it has been only partially successful, despite the availability of rich sources of linguistic evidence corresponding to different grammars. The task is daunting for syntactic change (given the limited availability of evidence), and even more so for syntactic reconstruction, given the usually complete unavailability of direct evidence from the ancestral language.
3. The formal primitives of syntactic reconstruction Now that we have defined in a formal way what counts as a language for purposes of the reconstruction of syntax, and what the goals of inquiry about syntactic change and syntactic reconstruction are, we will now address other important methodological questions that may be the source of much of the controversy about whether syntactic change is possible: What are the formal entities that count as the basic elements for syntactic reconstruction? Are the units of analysis and the elements that need to be reconstructed formal entities of the same kind? In considering these questions, we will provide important background for a discussion about how feasible syntactic reconstruction may be. In section 2 we concluded that the task of syntactic reconstruction must involve the construction of hypotheses about the internalized grammars of different individuals, in this case the speakers of the ancestral language (here understood in an idealized way, abstracting away from variation within and across their different internalized grammars). Any specific hypothesis about a reconstructed grammar will then be a hypothesis about the formal entities that constitute that grammar, in the same way that hypotheses about synchronic syntax are hypotheses about the formal entities (features, rules, principles) that constitute internal, mental grammars of speakers and that can produce the kinds of output found in synchronic data. Given that to a large extent the formal properties of an internalized grammar are determined by the human language faculty,10 they may be universal properties that one must find in all grammars. In this respect, at least in this case, one need not appeal to the limited and extremely indirect evidence available for the task of reconstruction in order to be able to reconstruct properties of the grammar of an ancestral grammar. Assuming that the same universal properties identified on the basis of current linguistic evidence hold for any human language
. Note, however, that certain general, natural principles of organization in the physical world may impose restrictions on the organization of the human mind, hence determining some of the properties found in human language (as discussed recently in e.g., Chomsky 2004a, b).
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(the continuity hypothesis), one should expect that the grammar of any individual, a thousand or five thousand years ago, shared universal properties with human internalized grammars nowadays. For instance, consistently with most current theories of syntax, we can postulate without difficulty that every reconstructed grammar will have precise mechanisms of concatenation of lexical items in the syntax, including feature distinctions that constrain such concatenation (e.g., category, agreement, and Case features), locality constraints that restrict the ways in which lexical items can relate to different syntactic positions, predicate-argument distinctions that map in precise and restricted ways to syntactic positions, and so on. However, none of this should cause much excitement among historical linguists, since the existence of such properties simply predicts that core properties of human language remain the same, and do not change. In fact, given current models of syntactic theory, at least within the Principles & Parameters framework, even the areas in which one does find variation, and which should be the appropriate locus of language change as formalized above, are areas in which the range of possible settings is dramatically restricted by properties of the human language faculty. Widely discussed examples within earlier P&P approaches included the parameters in (4):
(4) a. the null subject parameter (e.g., lack of null subjects in English vs. their presence in the Romance languages). b. the head(-complement order) parameter (distinguishing e.g. V-initial, prepositional languages such as English from V-final, postpositional languages such as Japanese). c. a V-raising parameter that determines that the verb starts in a base position and may overtly move to the left – raising in a tree structure – in some languages (distinguishing e.g. English John often dances, in which the verb dances stays to the right of the adverb, from French Jean danse souvent, in which the verb danse ‘dances’ moves to the left of the adverb souvent; see Emonds 1978, and also Pollock 1989 for the first analysis of this phenomenon in minimalist syntax). Old English behaved like French in this respect, which indicates that overt verb raising was lost in Modern English grammars.11
The locus of parameterization of syntactic properties has in fact been taken, within the Principles & Parameters framework, to be in the specification of features of individual lexical items, more specifically, functional categories (inflection, tense,
. See e.g., Battye & Roberts 1995 for references regarding diachronic correspondents of the phenomenon, and see Lasnik 1999a, b and references therein for an alternative proposal involving overt verb movement in certain cases in Modern English.
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complementizers, determiners; see e.g. Borer 1984). Minimalism takes up this idea in detail and proposes an approach to syntactic theory in which operations in the syntax are massively, if not entirely, dependent on the interaction among features of lexical items. For instance, subject-verb agreement and nominative Case on a subject, as in She likes chocolate, results from the interaction, through partial or full identity, between the agreement (person, number) and Case (nominative) features of She and the inflectional head corresponding to likes. In this approach, the locus of syntactic variation is restricted to the properties of individual lexical items. If we adopt this feature-based approach, especially as developed recently in Minimalism, the task of syntactic reconstruction can then be restricted to identifying variation in the feature specification of (functional) lexical items that determine syntactic structure and syntactic variation. In the case of the verb raising contrast between English and French/Old English, the prediction is that the variation is determined by variation in the feature specification of the inflectional head which attracts the verb overtly in French but not in English. This inflectional head is the one that carries tense and or agreement (see e.g. Pollock 1989; Chomsky 1995). In this theory, a syntactic functional head – the locus of inflection (tense and/or agreement) – displays the feature specification (strong, in Pollock’s/Chomsky’s terms) which forces the verb to raise overtly to the inflectional head in French and Old English, but not in Modern English. Of course, this does not mean that it suffices to compare the forms of individual words to identify such feature distinctions. Given that many if not most formal feature distinctions do not map directly to morphophonological distinctions among individual lexical items that carry the feature distinction, one still needs to have access to purely syntactic evidence in order to postulate hypotheses about most of the lexical (formal) feature distinctions that are assumed to have effects on syntactic properties. Again, in the case of the French/English verb-raising example, the relevant evidence that has been used to show the distinction involves the surface position of the verb and inflection with respect to certain manner and frequency adverbs and to negation. Even this evidence is not sufficient, since one also needs to consider the base and surface position of the verb and its arguments as well, to determine, for instance, whether the language is V-final (SOV) or V-medial (SVO). Terms such as SOV and SVO characterize the surface order in the clause, but each one of them may correspond to multiple possibilities in terms of base/underlying order in the clause.12
. The analysis of word order presents additional complications, which we come back to below. For instance, in an SVO sentence, all three elements may have raised or not, once or more than once. The different possibilities need to be considered in detail, if one hopes to make
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Longobardi (2001, 2003) has suggested the possibility of the ideally restrictive theory relativized to syntactic change, namely the hypothesis that at least syntax, by itself, is diachronically completely inert and, thus, cannot be a primitive source of language change (the Inertial Theory of syntactic change) (2003: 284).
By ‘syntactic change’ Longobardi means “a change in the formal (non-phonetic, non-semantic) features FF of the items of the lexicon, including all the values of the parameters set for the particular language, taken to be encoded in the various entries, essentially along the lines of proposals by Borer (1984)” (2003: 284, fn. 6; see also Chomsky 1995: 6, 230–1). On this view, the set of formal features FF is the collection of features of lexical items that determine the set of steps going from the selection of lexical items from the lexicon and their assembly in the syntax to the submission of a syntactic object to the phonological interface. These features include, among others, categorical features (V, N, Tense, Determiner), agreement features (number, person, gender), and Case. On the one hand, we have argued in section 2 that diachronic change does not exist as a primitive, atomic operation, but rather is just a convenient way (a shortcut) to refer to the acquisition of distinct grammars by different generations and to the fact that the output of a set of grammars 1 can function as the input triggering the acquisition of a (maybe different) set of grammars 2. This should apply to the acquisition of grammars in general, and not just to syntactic properties. On the other hand, under this complex, multiple-event view of what constitutes change, nothing in principle prevents distinctions among the grammars of different generations from affecting the specification of formal features of lexical items, e.g., agreement, Case, and categorical features. In fact, most of the literature on morphosyntactic change deals precisely with the occurrence of such distinctions. The characterization of parametric variation is grounded on distinctions in the formal feature specification of different (functional) items, and such specifications are determined in the process of language acquisition, thus introducing this as the main, if not the only, source of crosslinguistic syntactic variation (therefore diachronic variation as well). In sum, one can deal with the phenomena of syntactic variation and change by allowing for the possibility of acquisition of different formal feature specifications for lexical items. By doing so, one is in fact manipulating features that have a direct effect on syntax, and which are normally understood to be syntactic features. Under this view, we can
any precise claims about the properties of the grammar that would have given rise to a surface order such as SVO.
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assume that in fact syntax is not inert in the case of syntactic change, as the latter is understood here. We reach two conclusions here. First, the investigation of syntax goes significantly beyond the observation of descriptive generalizations about surface patterns that one finds in linguistic data. Syntactic variation is determined by variation in the specification of features of certain lexical items, arguably only functional lexical items that affect the properties of other lexical items that they relate to in the syntax. For instance, variation in the feature specification of the inflectional head tense/agreement affects the syntactic operations that the verb and its arguments undergo. Second, given that variation in certain lexical features may yield crosslinguistic syntactic variation, syntactic properties (as determined by the interaction among features of lexical items) can also be the object of change as the result of the acquisition of grammars by different generations, contrary to what Longobardi appears to argue for. We also disagree with Harris & Campbell on the issue of the units of analysis for syntactic reconstruction. They argue (p. 344) in favor of the possibility of syntactic reconstruction, although they say there are clear limitations on the effectiveness in syntax of the comparative method (and also of internal reconstruction). In order to evaluate their proposal, we would like first to discuss the way in which they define syntactic correspondences (or equations). They cite various authors who have argued against the possibility of syntactic reconstruction, given the impossibility of establishing syntactic correspondences in a way similar to what is done in phonology and morphology. Two passages cited by H&C (p. 346) are especially relevant here: […]For sentences … acquisition by learning is most unusual … Sentences are formed, not learned; morphemes and simple lexemes are learned, not formed … Syntax deals almost exclusively with entities not learned, but constructed – or generated. (Winter 1984: 622–3) […] Or, to use a different terminology, comparative phonology and mor phology are interested in tokens and, through them, in types, whereas the domain of comparative syntax as practiced in recent years is exclusively that of types. (Jeffers 1976b: 6)
H&C then argue that: at least certain parts of syntax do have multiple “tokens” of a single “type”; although syntactic tokens are not memorized in the context of words, as phonological “tokens” are, they are often embedded in the context of a strictly limited syntactic pattern, which is the “type”. (p. 347)
As Jeffers points out, the focus of comparative syntax (and of formal syntax in general) is not on tokens, and this does not seem to be disputed by H&C. However,
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it is not clear from H&C’s discussion what exactly comprises their types. They say, and we agree, that “it could never be claimed that a particular sentence was replaced by another, except for formulaic utterances” (p. 347). They use the term syntactic patterns, but then they go on to make statements such as this: in the examples below, there are simple sentences in Mingrelian, the (a) examples, which correspond to sentences in Laz, the (b) examples. […] In these closely related languages, [fn. deleted], the paired Mingrelian […] and Laz […] examples are in an intuitively clear sense (see [their] section 12.2.3.2) cognate sentences, the “same” sentence in the two languages.” (pp. 347–8; emphasis in the original)
Like Lightfoot (2002a, 2002b), we don’t find H&C’s argument on this point convincing. Although the output of the grammar provides the empirical evidence for syntactic reconstruction, the notion of ‘cognate sentences’ is dubious, especially in the absence of cognate grammatical morphemes.13 The reason is that we cannot a priori consider that two sentences from different languages have related structures, without identifying precisely the grammatical structures that both sentences represent. The sentences found as part of linguistic data cannot be used directly to establish correspondences among different grammars. Only the internal properties of these grammars, which are identified by analyzing the linguistic data, can be used to establish such correspondences, and identifying such grammatical properties must be both a preliminary step (regarding the daughter languages) and an ultimate goal (regarding the ancestral language) from the perspective of syntactic reconstruction, as we argued above (section 2.2). This also answers a question we raised in our introduction, by showing that the elements of analysis (the linguistic data) and the elements that need to be reconstructed are not formal entities of the same kind. Under this view, the best chance for achieving viable (if limited) syntactic reconstructions, we believe, is to compare individual grammatical properties, as they are identified from different syntactic structures. This includes structures in which shared grammatical morphemes play a major syntactic role for the reconstruction at hand. (See section 6 below for further discussion of H&C’s approach.)
. Harris (this volume) attempts to define in a more precise way what could constitute examples of syntactic correspondence for syntactic reconstruction, appealing especially to cases of morphosyntactic reconstruction. In most respects her approach follows the one developed in Harris & Campbell (1995), although she attempts to clarify that approach in certain respects, for instance in her discussion of the notion of syntactic patterns, instead of sentences, as the object of syntactic reconstruction.
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To sum up, in scientific inquiry about diachronic syntax, surface linguistic outputs of the kind usually available for research in historical linguistics must be used as evidence for the development of models for (mental) grammars that could actually have been the source of such outputs (as discussed in section 2). That is, the task of syntactic reconstruction is not simply one of finding descriptive generalizations about surface patterns found in historical data, and how such generalizations connect. The need to construct models of mental grammars – if one wants to be successful in the investigation of formal syntax – imposes three important burdens on the task of syntactic reconstruction, which involves the construction of three types of hypotheses: (i) hypotheses about the properties of the mental grammars that could generate the outputs possible in the daughter languages; (ii) hypotheses about the properties of the mental grammars that could have been internalized by speakers of the ancestral language (the grammar of the proto-language); and (iii) hypotheses about how the different grammars of the daughter languages could have developed from the exposure of earlier generations to the output of the proposed ancestral grammar. This clarifies briefly what is at stake, that is, what one is supposed to reconstruct in attempting to reconstruct syntax. We can now consider whether the current methodology used in historical linguistics (especially for phonology) can be successful in attempts to reconstruct syntax. Lightfoot (1999, 2002a, 2006) raises questions as to whether this task can be successful in the different cases. Even though we mostly agree regarding the specific cases of dubious reconstruction he discusses, we will argue below that at least some limited hypotheses can be supported about the properties of reconstructed grammars.
4. Constraints on syntax and their extension to syntactic change This section addresses the question whether it is possible to establish general principles for reconstructing syntax, and if so how these principles relate to formal properties of human language syntax. Longobardi (2001, 2003) has argued that the task of syntactic reconstruction is a realistic goal and that the Principles & Parameters approach provides the necessary tools one needs to develop an appropriate discovery procedure. Nevertheless, he states that “current theories place very mild constraints on possible diachronic changes, something at odds with the trivial observation that actual ‘language change’ represents a tiny fraction of the variation made a priori available by Universal Grammar” (Longobardi 2003: 275). Even though the cases of language change that have been attested and investigated in detail may instantiate only a small part of the crosslinguistic variation that has been identified so far, it is not at all clear that possible diachronic change
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should in any sense be more restricted than the space of possible crosslinguistic variation made available by properties of the human linguistic system. If certain grammatical properties are possible, as verified by means of attested crosslinguistic variation, then it is a priori possible to identify a process of grammatical change that led to attested variants, even though there may be no direct historical data that can represent a source for these variants. The absence of historical correspondents for certain crosslinguistic phenomena is simply due to the absence of historical records, and cannot be assigned to restrictions imposed by the linguistic system, since such restrictions would not have a synchronic correlate.14 For this reason, we argue against the view that it is necessary to impose restrictions applying specifically to syntactic change, beyond the constraints that are imposed by the human faculty of language on properties that arise in the linguistic system from a synchronic perspective. Current theories of syntax do have the means to constrain what counts as possible diachronic changes, given that they narrow down the space of grammatical innovation to grammatical properties that can be learned by humans (more specifically, acquired by children) as part of the grammar of a natural language, on the basis of exposure to a minimal amount of linguistic input.15 The linguistic input provides the relevant triggers for the acquisition by the child of the properties that will eventually converge into her adult grammar, according to precise and restrictive boundaries imposed by the specialized linguistic system that only humans have. Longobardi (2001) also argues that: syntactic change not provably due to interference should not occur at all as a primitive – that is, unless forced by changes in the phonology, the
. An anonymous reviewer does point out that “there is reason to think there are restrictions on possible changes. […] for instance, English could not simply become a free word order language without first developing some case (or adpositional) marking.” We assume the reviewer is referring to the possibility of restrictions on change that would not be restrictions on linguistic variation. First, although it may be widely attested that a freer word order co-occurs with overt morphological marking (e.g., case or adpositions), it is not clear that dependence between the two is mandatory. Second, as we proposed, if it is indeed the case that a freer word order is dependent upon the existence of certain kinds of overt morphology, this dependence should follow from a restriction on the space of linguistic variation (e.g., freer word order would be restricted to grammars with certain kinds of overt morphology) and not be taken only as the result of a restriction on possible diachronic change. . Of course, this does not warrant the conclusion that it is only children acquiring their native grammar who can manipulate the linguistic system in ways that will lead to grammatical innovation. Research on language contact, in particular, provides examples of linguistic innovation that may not have been triggered directly in the process of language acquisition, although they may have been primarily the result of language contact among adults (see e.g. Thomason & Kaufman 1988 and references therein).
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semantics, or the lexicon, perhaps ultimately by interface or grammar-external pressures, […] (p. 275).
It is unclear to us what Longobardi intends by claiming that syntactic change that is not the result of interference needs to be treated in a different way from syntactic change that is due to interference. The standard meaning of the term ‘interference’ in historical linguistics is the transfer of structural features from the grammar of one language to another. However, from a formal perspective, it is not clear why syntactic change (i.e., innovation) resulting from interference should in principle have significantly different structural properties from syntactic change that does not result from interference. Here we would like to discuss Longobardi’s claim that syntactic change (not due to interference) has to be forced by changes in the phonology, the semantics or the lexicon. We focus on this point in the remainder of this section. One possible source of confusion has to do with defining what exactly should count as syntactic change. Within the Principles & Parameters/Minimalist approaches the locus of parametric variation has been taken to be restricted to properties of lexical items. More specifically, it has been argued that the locus of variation is restricted to features of functional lexical categories (such as inflection, complementizer and determiner, to cite a few functional categories that have been widely adopted). In a somewhat related way, within Minimalism, it has been argued that all the operations that take place in the syntax emerge from the manipulation of features of lexical items, including features that are relevant only for syntactic operations, but also features that are relevant for the phonological and semantic interfaces. If we adopt this approach, it is reasonable to assume that the properties of the syntactic system depend directly on the specified features of different lexical items, and in this perspective the source of grammatical innovation is expected to be dependent on changes in this feature specification. Furthermore, such innovations can arise in the specification of features that are relevant for syntax, for (morpho)phonology and for semantics. On this view, something else needs to be said about Longobardi’s argument that syntactic change “should not occur at all as a primitive – that is, unless forced by changes in the phonology, the semantics or the lexicon”. We argue that syntactic change is simply the result of changes in the features of lexical items, more specifically the features that directly affect the output of syntactic operations. These features may be (formal) features that are not manipulated directly either by the semantic or the phonological interface, provided they are manipulated as part of syntactic operations. One example may be illustrated by the contrast in (5), showing the loss of V-movement in English to a position to the left of negation. This change has been attributed to the weakening of formal features of V and of the inflectional head (Infl) in English. In an earlier stage, in the absence of auxiliary verb, the V had to move obligatorily to Infl to check a feature that is argued not to be interpretable
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by the phonological interface in Old English (thus the need for it to be checked or eliminated before any manipulation by the phonological interface). But this feature specification later changed so that the relevant feature was specified differently, and no longer needed to be eliminated or checked before the phonological interface, leading to the loss of overt V-movement to Infl in English, as in (5b).16 (5) a. *Mary speaks not Greek. b. Mary does not speak Greek.
In this case, the relevant features that led to the change in question are arguably not phonological or semantic features, even though their manipulation as part of syntactic operations affects the output of the phonological interface.
5. Can the Comparative Method be applied to syntactic reconstruction? Now that we have discussed briefly how the investigation of syntactic change relates to formal syntax, and what would be at stake in an attempt to reconstruct properties of syntax, we turn in this section to the evaluation of cases in which the standard methodology of historical linguistics is applied to (morpho)syntactic changes that have been described in some detail. We note first that those who propose methods for syntactic reconstruction, in particular Harris & Campbell (1995), have primarily used examples whose history is not independently known. There is therefore no way to evaluate the methodology directly; the fruitfulness test is of course available, but typically a good deal of time must elapse before the results of a substantial reconstruction have been widely applied in the daughter languages. For instance, in the case of Saussure’s 19th-century Laryngeal Theory – the most successful example to date of internal reconstruction – it took decades before enough results accumulated to convince skeptics. (It must be confessed, however, that the theory might still be controversial if the hypothesized consonants had not been discovered in newly-deciphered Hittite documents.) The reasons for adducing examples with unknown history have to do with the paucity of usable ancient syntactic attestations. Nevertheless, there are many texts in Ancient Greek and Latin, and in a number of other ancient languages in several language families, so the tests could be applied; but as far as we know, they haven’t been. Current proposals, both Harris & Campbell’s and Longobardi’s, therefore seem to us to be inconclusive.
. This example omits many details that are not directly relevant for the present discussion. See e.g. Kroch & Taylor 1997; Pintzuk 1999; Pintzuk et al. 2000 for different analyses and other references.
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We illustrate this potential pitfall in our evaluation of three different cases below. In one case, the problem of word order, we will point out flaws in different attempts to reconstruct the corresponding syntax of the earlier grammar. In two other cases we take phenomena that have been described with respect both to the daughter languages and to the ancestral language. We will begin by using subsets of the daughter languages as the only initial source of evidence, attempting to reconstruct the syntax of the earlier grammar. Then we compare the results we obtain with what is actually known about the syntax of the ancestral language. First, we examine a set of changes in the morphosyntax of noun declensions in Slavic, and conclude that no firm hypothesis can be supported about the ancestral grammar. For the second example, the development of synthetic forms of the future in Romance languages, we suggest that the reconstruction hypothesis we are led to in fact matches what is known about the ancestral grammar, but it is still only tentative, given that it ultimately appeals to notions of naturalness or directionality of change that have not been independently motivated. As we will argue, these results show that no a priori conclusion can be drawn about the prospects for syntactic reconstruction. We suggest that in some cases it is possible to construct interesting and potentially useful hypotheses about the properties of earlier grammars, especially when the relevant source of syntactic variation is grounded in morphophonological distinctions. However, contrary to what different proposals might lead one to believe, the complexities associated with the investigation of syntax make the prospect for successful syntactic reconstruction much more limited than we might wish, despite the success of the comparative method in other domains of the grammar (see Fox 1995 for a general discussion about reconstruction). One source of what we take to be a misunderstanding about the success of the enterprise of syntactic reconstruction lies in the fact that in the literature on syntactic reconstruction, it’s not always clear whether the authors are talking about the same thing. There appears to be some confusion about the nature of the enterprise. Lightfoot observes, for instance, that ‘if there are no principles of history, there would seem to be no basis for reconstructing proto-languages where the most archaic languages do not agree’ (2002a: 134); this view would rule out phonological, lexical, and morphological reconstruction as well as syntactic reconstruction. Longobardi (2001, 2003) apparently shares this view, at least with respect to syntactic reconstruction, since he argues for what appears to be a deterministic prediction of syntactic changes. But this approach does not correspond closely to what historical linguists have actually done in carrying out reconstructions over many decades; and, regardless of the general lack of historical principles that govern language change, especially outside the phonology, the achievements in this area have been very substantial. In historical linguistics, as elsewhere in the sciences, one methodological principle stands out: all things being equal, the simplest hypothesis wins, in efforts to
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account for sets of data. Observers can and certainly do disagree often about what the simplest hypothesis is and about whether all things are truly equal. Nevertheless, this principle guides much in reconstruction, often overriding considerations of ‘naturalness’ (which is a slippery concept, even in the area of sound change). The principle should apply to syntactic reconstruction as well as to other areas. Let’s turn now to the evaluation of different attempts to do syntactic reconstruction. 5.1 Why surface word order is not enough Reconstructing basic sentential word order is notoriously controversial, for a variety of reasons: in many languages word order is sufficiently free that the concept of one basic word order has much less relevance than in languages with more rigid word order patterns; more importantly, the same surface word order pattern in two different languages may result from very different grammatical structures; and the languages of a family may vary so much in this area of the grammar that there is no clear candidate for the simplest hypothesis. Proto-Indo-European is a case in point. Different problems for attempts to reconstruct word order in PIE were discussed in detail as early as Watkins 1976 and Lightfoot 1979. Some IndoEuropean (IE) languages have quite free word order; some IE languages are SOV, some are SVO, and others are VSO; and most of the ancient SOV languages were arguably in close contact with SOV languages, so that this easily-transferred syntactic feature could be the result of foreign interference (see also Thomason 2006b for brief review). No matter which word order one might select as the basic PIE word order pattern, numerous changes will be required in many daughter languages. The majority view (given the SOV pattern of most of the oldest attested IE branches) is SOV, but there is no general acceptance that this is the best historical hypothesis. In spite of the recent boom in research on historical IE syntax, the crucial test of the validity of a historical hypothesis has not been met here: no generally-accepted research results have shown any hypothesis about PIE word order to be scientifically fruitful, enabling historical linguists to explain things that are otherwise mysterious. But not all language families are like IE in this respect. Uralic, to take one example, is not. Of the three major branches of the Uralic, two are solidly SOV and the third, Finno-Permic, is mostly SOV (Harris & Campbell 1995, p. 364). But one sub-branch, Balto-Finnic, together with Lapp, has SVO word order. There is an explanation for this exception: the SVO languages, among them Finnish, have all been heavily influenced by Slavic and Germanic languages during their speakers’ westward movement, and their SVO word order is generally agreed to be the result of IE influence. Moreover, Finnish, at least, shows apparent traces of a former SOV word-order pattern (Harris & Campbell 1995: 365).
How much syntactic reconstruction is possible?*
In contrast, there is no contact or other explanation available to explain the SOV word order of the other Uralic languages. (Some of them may well have come under the influence of Altaic and other SOV languages in the past, but no contact-related hypotheses have been proposed to account for the Uralic SOV pattern.) It is therefore relatively uncontroversial to reconstruct SOV word order for Proto-Uralic. Does this mean that Proto-Uralic certainly had SOV word order? No, of course not. But it does mean that the simplest hypothesis promotes reconstructing SOV for the family as a whole: this would require only one word-order change, in the immediate ancestors of the Balto-Finnic and Lapp languages. Positing SVO or any other word order pattern would require at least three independent word-order changes, one in Ugric, one in Samoyedic, and one or more in non-Balto-Finnic sub-branches of the Finnic branch of the family. Furthermore, it is unclear whether the proposed SOV identified in the different branches and proposed for the ancestral languages corresponds to the same underlying grammatical properties across the different languages, showing that the task of reconstruction is both imprecise and incomplete here, along the lines of the discussion in section 2.2, since the observations about surface word order alone are restricted to the description of linguistic outputs, requiring additional investigation about the grammatical properties that may have yielded the surface orders in the different languages. 5.2 Reconstruction in the absence of precise criteria? Other examples, even without methodological discussions, are inconclusive. Kroeber’s impressive achievement, in his 1999 book on syntactic reconstruction of Proto-Salishan, is a compilation, comparison, and analysis of large amounts of syntactic data from most of the 23 Salishan languages. He does make proposals for reconstruction, but many of these are tentative. In discussing the pan-Salish morpheme -m, for example, he observes that All Salish languages have … [a] construction … used to mark reduced topicality of the agent of a transitive clause, and/or increased topicality of the patient. … [D]iscourse functions are analogous to…passives in European languages, but their morphological form in most Salish languages is rather different… (1999: 25).
Kroeber goes on to observe that the two most common forms of this A[gent] D[emotion] marker are -m and -t. In the Interior Salish branch of the family, -m is used with a 1sg or 3 patient, and -t is used with all other patients; in the Coast Salish languages, however, -m is used in main clauses and -it (or a similar suffix) in both nominalized and non-nominalized subordinate clauses (pp. 26–27). He then says that probably the Interior Salish distribution of -m and -t reflects the merger of two distinct AD paradigms, perhaps similar to Coast
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Salish: “at any rate, it is difficult to see how the Coast Salish distribution of -m and -(i)t could have evolved from the Interior Salish one” (1999: 27). But he also points out that Bella Coola, a one-language branch of the family generally considered coordinate with Coast Salish and Interior Salish, has a distribution of these two suffixes that closely resembles the Interior Salish pattern; this has been suggested as one piece of evidence for a closer relationship between Bella Coola and Interior Salish (p. 27). An alternative possibility comes to mind: perhaps Bella Coola and Interior Salish are archaic in this respect, and Coast Salish has innovated the main clause/subordinate clause pattern. This seems the simpler hypothesis, in the absence of considerable other evidence in favor of a closer Bella Coola/Interior Salish link. In sum, the difficulty of imagining how it could have occurred cannot be criterial, especially given how ignorant we are about syntactic change generally. 5.3 When morphosyntactic reconstruction fails Harris & Campbell (1995) apparently wish to appeal to a syntactic analogue of the regularity hypothesis in sound change.17 They address this issue in detail, arguing that “syntactic change is indeed regular, in the sense that it is rule-governed, nonrandom” (p. 347; see also p. 326). But this is emphatically not the sense in which sound change is regular. According to the regularity hypothesis of sound change, if x changes to y in environment z in one word in language A, then x will change to y in that environment in every word of language A. Lightfoot (1979: 164, quoted by Harris & Campbell, p. 367), by contrast, argues that “[s]yntactic change is in large measure analogical”; Harris & Campbell counter by saying that the effects of analogy can be overcome when doing phonological reconstruction and therefore also in doing syntactic reconstruction. But this misses the point. Sound change does have analogic components. But where analogy affects sound change directly, it always depends on phonetic categories; a rather common example is the extension of a palatalization rule from the environment before a high front vowel to the environment before any front vowel, simplifying the palatalization rule. This kind of phonetic analogy presents no difficulties for comparative reconstruction. Morphosyntactic analogy affects only the results of sound change within paradigms. These distorting effects are overwhelmingly less prominent than the effects of regular sound change, so (as Harris & Campbell say) the problems they cause for comparative reconstruction can easily be . Longobardi (p.c. 2005) tells us that he has never argued for regularity of syntactic change, considering, for instance, that change of syntactic features may spread regularly and incompletely through similar lexical items.
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overcome. This simply is not true of morphological and syntactic change, where – as the Neogrammarians already knew in the 1870s – the primary mechanisms of change are to a large extent analogic. There is no foundation of non-analogic morphosyntactic change that can be used to sort out the effects of analogy; the effects of analogy are currently the whole picture, or close to it, for morphosyntactic changes that are not brought about by phonological change alone. The sense in which analogic change is regular (in Harris & Campbell’s terms) is apparently the same in both the morphology and the syntax. Here’s a typical example. In late Proto-Slavic, the domain of the grammatical category of ‘animacy’ was restricted to just one place in the elaborate noun declensional system, the accusative singular of masculine nouns in a single noun class, the o-stems. Specifically, in animate masculine o-stem nouns, the accusative singular suffix was identical to the genitive singular; in inanimate masculine o-stem nouns, the accusative singular suffix was identical to the nominative singular. The domain of grammatical animacy has expanded through analogic changes in most modern Slavic languages, though not in the same ways in each daughter language of Proto-Slavic. In Novi Serbo-Croatian, for instance, animacy is still restricted to the o-stems, but now it holds in the plural as well as in the singular – that is, the rule no longer specifies ‘singular’, as in (6b): (6) a. Late Proto-Slavic: o-stem masc. anim. acc. sg. = o-stem gen. sg. b. Novi Serbo-Croatian: o-stem masc. anim. acc. = o-stem gen.
In Modern Standard Russian, by a set of analogic processes that presumably began with a spread from the o-stem singular to the o-stem plural and from there to the plurals of other noun classes, the situation is more complicated, as in (7) and (8): (7) a. o-stem masc. anim. acc. = gen. b. o-stem masc. inan. acc. = nom. (8) a. anim. acc. pl. = gen. b. inan. acc. pl. = nom.
The o-stem masc.anim. plural is thus doubly specified; there’s no way to collapse the two rules into one, because the singular forms of the other noun classes do not show any animacy distinctions. Now, the rules for marking grammatically animate accusative forms are quite regular in Late Proto-Slavic, modern Novi Serbo-Croatian, and Modern Standard Russian, and the analogic changes that led to the current states of the two modern languages were regular in that they affected all nouns in the relevant class, case, and number categories. But they were not regular in the sense of regular sound change. The fact that regular sound change is blind to all considerations of morphological, syntactic, semantic, and
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discourse categories is precisely the source of its tremendous value for the comparative reconstruction of prehistoric linguistic states. Duality of patterning is crucial for tracking sound changes; as Harris & Campbell say (p. 349), there is nothing ‘quite like’ it in syntax. We would make it stronger: there may be nothing at all like it in syntax. In any case, a decision on the validity of Harris & Campbell’s attempts to use some concept of regularity in carrying out syntactic reconstruction will of course have to wait until their specific analyses either have been tested or have produced results that show them to be fruitful scientific hypotheses. The concept of testing a hypothesis about comparative reconstruction is rather straightforward: examine material from sister languages whose parent language is attested, carry out a comparative reconstruction, and then compare the results to the actually attested structures of the parent language. Admittedly, there are very few language families for which such tests can be carried out; but several branches of Indo-European are available for the purpose, together with a handful of other (sub-)families, among them Semitic. The most famous effort to test the Comparative Method is the partial reconstruction of Proto-Romance by Robert A. Hall, Jr. (1950). Hall found that, although some features of Vulgar Latin phonology could not be reconstructed because they were lost in all the daughter languages, overall the reconstruction was very successful. To illustrate the practice of morphosyntactic reconstruction, we will return to the history of the grammatical category of animacy in Slavic, a sub-branch of the Balto-Slavic branch of Indo-European, which has been attested for about a thousand years. The oldest extensive Slavic textual material is Old Church Slavic, comprising Bible translations and other religious writing. Old Church Slavic (OCS), which is attested from the 11th century CE, is recognizably South Slavic rather than East or West Slavic, but it is considered to have been very close phonologically and morphologically to late Proto-Slavic. Slavic languages are very closely related, with a time depth of perhaps 1500 years. There were certainly dialect differences among the three branches by the time OCS was written down, but they are easily identified and not very extensive. Interpreting Proto-Slavic syntax is much more difficult, because of the problem of translation: the extent to which the oldest texts – the Bible translations – were influenced by the Greek original from which they were translated is unknown, since we have no truly independent documentary evidence of early Slavic syntactic patterns besides these translations. We therefore focus on inflectional morphology here. We will not extend our analysis to interconnected syntactic patterns and changes, but of course inflectional changes have syntactic as well as strictly morphological consequences. Our goal is to see whether the known late Proto-Slavic source structures turn out to be recoverable through comparative reconstruction based on the daughter languages. To keep the
How much syntactic reconstruction is possible?*
example within manageable bounds, we will restrict our comparison to a small but representative subset of Slavic languages. Modern Slavic languages have a morphosyntactic category of animacy, which is expressed in noun declension and in adjectival agreement patterns. There is semantic variation in the modern languages with respect to the range of creatures that receive the lexical designation ‘animate’, but in most or all of the languages grammatically animate beings include at least humans, other mammals, birds, and other vertebrates, in at least some grammatical contexts. The animate/ inanimate system of noun classification co-exists with two other classificatory systems: a division into biologically-based categories of masculine, feminine, and neuter, and a partly cross-cutting set of declension types with no semantic content but with separate sets of case/number suffixes. This last set of declension types is traditionally designated by the last segment in the noun stem: o-stem, a-stem, i-stem and so forth. Most masculine nouns and almost all neuter nouns belong to the old o-stem declension; most feminine nouns belong to the old a-stem declension. In some of the modern languages the old i-stem declension contains both masculine and feminine nouns, and in others there are only feminine i-stems. In addition, there are a few masculine a-stems and a handful of irregular nouns that partially preserve other old declension types. These are found in all Slavic languages that have preserved substantial noun declension from Proto-Slavic. Only Bulgarian, Macedonian, and some southeastern dialects of Serbo-Croatian have lost declension almost entirely. Although the designations o-, a-, and i-stems are now anachronistic, we will use them below for convenience, as ways of referring to the different declensions. In most Slavic languages, only nouns in certain declensions are identified lexically as animate. In some languages only masculine nouns can be grammatically animate, while in others both masculine and feminine nouns show animacy distinctions. Neuter nouns are never grammatically animate in Slavic. In the examples given in Tables 1–4 below, accent marks are omitted – not because they’re unimportant, but because they don’t affect any of the animacy patterns. For the same reason, we give no examples from neuter nouns. Balto-Slavic languages preserve Proto-Indo-European (PIE) noun declension better than any other branch of IE. In addition to the two older noun classification systems, Slavic has preserved up to seven of the eight PIE cases: Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Instrumental, Dative, Locative, and – in a few languages only – Vocative. We omit Vocative from our partial paradigms below, since it has no direct connection with the animate/inanimate distinction. In tables 1–4, then, are four partial declensions from modern Slavic languages. A comparison of animate with inanimate forms shows where the two categories differ (see Thomason 1976 for a more detailed discussion).
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Table 1. Standard Serbo-Croatian noun declension (partial paradigms) Case/ Number
o-masc. anim
o-masc. inan
i-fem. anim/inan
a-fem. anim/inan
nom.sg acc.sg gen.sg inst.sg dat.sg loc.sg nom.pl acc.pl gen.pl inst.pl dat.pl loc.pl
‘priest’ pop-0 pop-a pop-a pop-om pop-u pop-u pop-ov-i pop-ov-e pop-ov-a: pop-ov-ima pop-ov-ima pop-ov-ima
‘table’ sto-0 sto-0 stol-a stol-om stol-u stol-u stol-ov-i stol-ov-e stol-ov-a: stol-ov-ima stol-ov-ima stol-ov-ima
‘thing’ stvar-0 stvar-0 stvar-i stvar-ju stvar-i stvar-i stvar-i stvar-i stvar-i: stvar-ima stvar-ima stvar-ima
‘fish’ rib-a rib-u rib-e: rib-o:m rib-i rib-i rib-e rib-e rib-a: rib-ama rib-ama rib-ama
Table 2. Novi (Čakavian) Serbo-Croatian noun declension (partial paradigms) Case/ Number
o-masc. anim
o-masc. inan
i-fem. anim/inan
a-fem. anim/inan
nom.sg acc.sg gen.sg inst.sg dat.sg loc.sg nom.pl acc.pl gen.pl inst.pl dat.pl loc.pl
‘priest’ pop-0 pop-a pop-a pop-on pop-u pop-i pop-i pop-i:h pop-i:h pop-i pop-o:n pop-i:h
‘roof ’ krov-0 krov-0 krov-a krov-on krov-u krov-i krov-i krov-i krov-i:h krov-i krov-o:n krov-i:h
‘bone’ kost-0 kost-0 kost-i kost-u:n kost-i kost-i kost-i kost-i kost-i:h kost-ami kost-a:n kost-i:h
‘cow’ krav-a krav-u krav-e: krav-u:n krav-i krav-i krav-e krav-e krav-0 krav-ami krav-a:n krav-ah
The tables are ordered according to the scope of animacy within the declensional system, from least to greatest. Inspection of the paradigms shows wide variation in the realization of the animacy category. Standard Serbo-Croatian distinguishes animate from inanimate nouns in just one place: the accusative singular of animate masculine o-stem nouns is identical to the genitive singular, while the accusative singular of inanimate masculine o-stem nouns is identical to the nominative singular (Table 1). The same contrast is found in Novi Serbo-Croatian, but here the o-stem plurals show the same pattern, although the plural endings themselves differ from the Standard Serbo-Croatian endings (Table 2).
How much syntactic reconstruction is possible?*
Table 3. Standard Russian noun declension (partial paradigms) Case/ Number
o-masc. anim
o-masc. inan
i-fem. anim
i-fem. inan
a-fem. anim
a-fem. inan
nom.sg acc.sg gen.sg inst.sg dat.sg loc.sg nom.pl acc.pl gen.pl inst.pl dat.pl loc.pl
‘wolf ’ volk-0 volk-a volk-a volk-om volk-u volk-e volk-i volk-ov volk-ov volk-ami volk-am volk-ax
‘table’ stol-0 stol-0 stol-a stol-om stol-u stol’-e stol-i stol-i stol-ov stol-ami stol-am stol-ax
‘horse’ lošad’-0 lošad’-0 lošad’-i lošad’-ju lošad’-i lošad’-i lošad’-i lošad’-ej lošad’-ej lošad’-ami lošad’-am lošad’-ax
‘bone’ kost’-0 kost’-0 kost’-i kost’-ju kost’-i kost’-i kost’-i kost’-i kost’-ej kost’-ami kost’-am kost’-ax
‘fish’ rib-a rib-u rib-i rib-oj rib-e rib-e rib-i rib-0 rib-0 rib-ami rib-am rib-ax
‘hill’ gor-a gor-u gor-i gor-oj gor-e gor-e gor-i gor-i gor-0 gor-ami gor-a:m gor-ax
Table 4. Literary Czech noun declension (partial paradigms) Case/ Number
o-masc. anim
o-masc. inan
i-fem. anim/inan
a-fem. anim/inan
nom.sg acc.sg gen.sg inst.sg dat.sg loc.sg nom.pl acc.pl gen.pl inst.pl dat.pl loc.pl
‘son’ sin-0 sin-a sin-a sin-em sin-ovi sin-ovi sin-ove: sin-i sin-o: sin-i sin-o:m sin-ex
‘castle’ hrad-0 hrad-0 hrad-u hrad-em hrad-u hrad-u hrad-i hrad-i hrad-o: hrad-i hrad-o:m hrad-ex
‘bone’ kost-0 kost-0 kost’-i kost-i: kost-i kost-i kost’-i kost’-i kost’-i: kost-mi kost-em kost-ex
‘woman’ žen-a žen-u žen-i žen-u: žen-e: žen-e: žen-i žen-i žen-0 žen-ami žen-am žen-ax
Like the two Serbo-Croatian dialects, Russian contrasts singular animate and inanimate nouns only in the o-stem masculine accusative. But unlike Standard Serbo-Croatian and Novi Serbo-Croatian, Russian carries the distinction through the plurals of all declensions, including both i-stem and a-stem feminine nouns (and also a-stem masculine nouns, not illustrated in Table 3). Finally, Literary Czech has a very different pattern, contrasting animate and inanimate masculine nouns – but never feminine nouns – in a number of cases. In the o-stems all the singular cases except the nominative and the instrumental show the distinction (Table 4); in the masculine a-stems (not shown in Table 4)
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the distinction appears in the singular only in the dative and locative, but in all the plural cases except the accusative. Now, if these were the only four Slavic languages, what would we reconstruct for Proto-Slavic animacy? There are two main options. One possibility is that animate and inanimate nouns were originally widely distinguished in the declensional system – perhaps as in Literary Czech masculine nouns – and then the distinction lost ground in the other three languages, most strikingly in Standard SerboCroatian, where it survived only in the masculine o-stem accusative singular. The other obvious possibility is that animate and inanimate nouns were originally distinguished only in the masculine o-stem accusative singular, perhaps as in Standard Serbo-Croatian, and then spread to the plural and/or to other cases and/or other declensional types in the other three languages. Of course there are numerous other possibilities as well: perhaps Novi or Russian is closest to the original system, with contraction in Standard Serbo-Croatian and expansion in Czech. The question is, do we have any grounds for choosing among the various possibilities? Even if we restrict our options to just the two most extreme possibilities, it’s not necessarily an easy choice. If we start with the Czech pattern for masculine nouns, we can consider the notion of drift, according to which closely-related languages undergo numerous similar or even identical changes as a result of inheriting the same set of pattern pressures from their common parent, in this case Proto-Slavic.18 The contractions in Standard Serbo-Croatian, Novi Serbo-Croatian, and Russian would be seen as variations on the same theme: loss of inflectional range of the animacy category. All the changes involved would be instances of analogic leveling. We could account for the fact that the only part of the pattern shared by all four languages – the animate accusative = genitive singular in the masculine o-stems – survives longest, thus retaining the distinction between nominative singular and accusative singular in this noun class: pragmatically, it is useful to distinguish accusative from nominative in languages which (like Slavic languages) have elaborate case systems and quite free word order, because an animate NP would be a plausible agent: that is, it would be hard to tell who did what to whom in a sentence like ‘Hit Bill John’. It’s also possible to devise a scenario whereby Standard Serbo-Croatian is closest to Proto-Slavic in its morphological realization of animacy. Pragmatically, it makes good sense that an innovative distinction between animate and inanimate . By referring to drift (Sapir 1921), we do not mean to imply that we have a theoretical account of such processes. We don’t. The notion is well-established in historical linguistics as a label for a large range of parallel developments (e.g., Crowley 1987: 189, and see also Trask 2000: ‘drift’ p. 98, and ‘independent parallel innovation’, pp. 160–1). There is no widely accepted theory of drift, though it is generally assumed to be connected with pattern pressures (or structural imbalances), and ultimately with ease of learning.
How much syntactic reconstruction is possible?*
nouns would arise in the first place to distinguish animate from inanimate masculine o-stem nouns: the reason is the same as the reason for (by hypothesis) retaining the distinction only in this part of this paradigm, as we just discussed. The other major declension class, the a-stems, already distinguishes nominative from accusative; the i-stems don’t, but there are relatively few of those, and even fewer animate i-stems. Analogic spread of the distinction from the singular o-stems to the plural and/or other cases and declension types would be a typical set of changes, all of them analogic extensions. Semantically, at least, one aspect of our reconstruction task seems easy: all four languages agree rather closely on the range of nouns to be identified as animate – roughly, all vertebrates – so we will confidently reconstruct that range for Proto-Slavic. Now, what did Proto-Slavic in fact have in this domain? First, the category is an innovation in Slavic; it does not exist in other branches of Indo-European. In fact, it is quite clear that it is a late Proto-Slavic innovation, because its occurrence is not quite consistent in the earliest Old Church Slavic texts. Where it does occur, as we noted earlier, it is identical to the Standard Serbo-Croatian pattern: in the masculine o-stems, animate accusative singular = genitive singular, while inanimate accusative singular = nominative singular. Most later Slavic languages – not just the ones in Tables 1–4 – expanded the category to other parts of the overall declensional system. Ironically, the one point on which we could feel confident about our reconstruction is dead wrong. In Old Church Slavic, only lexical items for free, adult, human males were grammatically animate; lexical items for slaves, children and animals (along with women, who were not designated by o-stem nouns in any case) were all grammatically inanimate. 5.4 Reconstruction of the Romance future? This section presents one brief case study suggesting that in certain restricted conditions and under certain restrictive assumptions about language change, it is possible to construct hypotheses about syntactic reconstruction that make testable predictions about earlier grammars. As in previous cases, the methodology we adopt here consists in selecting a phenomenon for which we have a reasonable amount of information corresponding to the grammar of the ancestral language. We then use only the syntactic properties of the daughter languages to evaluate whether different hypotheses about the relevant syntactic properties of the proto-language grammar make the correct predictions. The case in question involves the Romance languages. The synthetic forms of the simple future in most Romance languages are argued to have originated from a periphrastic structure in Latin in which an infinitive was followed by an inflected form of the verb habere ‘to have’, and which originally did not have a future interpretation (see Benveniste 1968; Bourciez 1946;
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Fleischman 1982). The change yielded the forms of the simple future tense in many Romance languages, as indicated in (9) for French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish:19,20
(9) Simple future forms derived from Latin: ‘sing’: stem+fut+person/number: person/number
French
Italian
Portuguese
Spanish
1sg 2sg 3sg 1pl 2pl 3p
chante-r-ai chante-r-as chante-r-a chante-r-ons chante-r-ez chante-r-ont
cante-r-ò cante-r-ai cante-r-à cante-r-emo cante-r-ete cante-r-anno
canta-r-ei canta-r-ás canta-r-á canta-r-emos canta-r-eis canta-r-ão
canta-r-é canta-r-ás canta-r-á canta-r-emos canta-r-éis canta-r-án
In these languages, especially French and Spanish, the future person/number morphemes are still almost entirely identical to the inflected forms of the verb ‘have’. The overlap between the two forms is indicated in boldface in 10): (10) Present tense of verb ‘have’21 person/number
French
Italian
Portuguese
Spanish
1sg 2sg 3sg 1pl 2pl 3p
ai as a avons avez ont
ho hai ha abbiamo avete hanno
hei hás há havemos heis hão
he has ha hemos habéis hán
Roberts & Roussou (2002: 36–45, henceforth R&R) present a proposal to explain how the periphrastic infinitive+habere Latin form gave rise to the synthetic forms of the Romance simple future. Following a standard view regarding this development (as presented, for instance, by Fleischman 1982) they claim that this change involved three steps:
. We’re using the spelling of the different forms. Although there are significant changes in pronunciation, especially in French, they are irrelevant for our analysis. . A similar development seems to have taken place in the case of the synthetic conditional forms, which display similar properties to the simple future. . The h in the spelling of the ‘have’ forms in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese is no longer pronounced. The Portuguese and Spanish forms of ‘have’ are no longer used as possessive verbs. The Portuguese forms are currently more restricted in their use than the Spanish counterparts.
How much syntactic reconstruction is possible?*
(11) a. habere, which did not have a future interpretation in Latin, was reanalyzed as a future auxiliary comparable to will [or shall] in Modern English;22 b. “the auxiliary habere, an autonomous word, was reanalyzed as a syntactic affix” (p. 37); c. the morpheme corresponding to habere was reanalyzed as a lexical affix attached to the main verb.
According to R&R, the last change (11c) took place almost immediately after the earlier ones in French (Languedoïl); slightly later in Occitan, Catalan and Northern Italian; and considerably later in Ibero-Romance (except Catalan). We consider here the question whether it is possible to make appropriate hypotheses about these different stages in the development of the Romance future forms from Latin by using only the modern Romance language data as evidence. We know a fair amount of detail about the original forms in Latin, so we should be able to evaluate different hypotheses about the reconstructed syntax of ProtoRomance. We construct two different scenarios. In the first scenario, we consider only the properties of the Romance simple future in French, Italian and Spanish (9), in which the forms of ‘have’ were completely reanalyzed as morphological affixes in the future tense forms. From only these languages, it would be impossible to reconstruct with certainty a periphrastic construction in earlier grammars, and we would end up with a synthetic form of the future in Latin, corresponding directly to the modern Romance simple future. The morphosyntactic reconstruction would
. According to Brinton (1991: 13), “Fleischman (1982: 58–59) […] recognizes three stages in the development from a meaning of possession through a “future-oriented modality” to a pure future. In the first stage, have has its full meaning of possession, but with a “nuance of obligation”, as in I have a letter to mail. At this stage, the construction is quite limited in its distribution (Benveniste 1968: 89–90). In the second stage, the possessive meaning of have is bleached and the obligative meaning comes to predominate, as in I have a letter to write. She points out, correctly, that one cannot actually possess an unwritten letter. There is gradual loosening of the selectional restrictions of have and wider distribution of the construction (Benveniste 1968: 90; Pinkster 1987: 207).” However, Brinton (1991: 13, fn. 18) further indicates that “Benveniste (1968: 90–91) argues that the Latin construction does not have a meaning of obligation; rather, it has a meaning of predestination, out of which develops a future meaning: ‘what is to happen’ becomes ‘what will happen’ .” The specific interpretations of the original complex forms, as suggested by Benveniste and Fleischman, may have played an important role in the ensuing change to a future periphrastic form, although there are other factors discussed by these and other authors that contributed to the change, including the structural properties of these forms and the availability of related grammatical forms in the grammars in question.
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therefore not be successful. However, the morphosyntactic similarity between the Romance simple future and the structure 〈infinitive V+pres ‘have’〉 would allow us at least to raise the hypothesis of a development relating both, between ProtoRomance and the modern Romance languages, even if we knew nothing about previous stages in the history of the modern Romance languages. A related source of evidence is the fact that the forms of the verb ‘have’ are used in the formation of many compound tenses in the languages in (9), such as the compound past tense in French (passé composé): (12) J’ ai /tu as /il a /nous avons/vous avez/ ils ont chanté I have/you have/he has/we have /you have/ they have sung ‘I/you/he/we/you/they sang.’
However, this morphological similarity between the conjugated forms of simple present ‘have’ (10) and the simple future inflectional affixes (9) in modern French, Italian and Spanish alone would be insufficient to support the hypothesis of a periphrastic source for the future in the structure 〈infinitive V+pres ‘have’〉. This is due mainly to the fact that none of these three daughter languages displays traces of the earlier stages (11a,b) in the path of innovation that led to the appearance of the modern Romance simple future. First, although a tense inflectional head may correspond in the lexicon either to a verbal inflectional affix or to a free morpheme (e.g., an auxiliary verb),23 we would still need to find some identity between the semantic interpretation of the future inflectional morpheme and specific forms of the verb have, across the grammars of the different daughter languages. Consider the possibility that we take this lexical form-meaning correspondence as a relevant criterion to support a reconstruction also in the syntax (but in a more precise way than the correspondences proposed by H&C, given that here we are not proposing correspondences between sentences or among patterns, as H&C later suggest, but specifically between individual lexical items). This form-meaning connection between the simple future inflectional morpheme and the auxiliary ‘have’, however, is not found in the modern Romance languages considered here, except for Romanian, which we discuss later. Second, one remaining, but important, question that also could not be answered on the basis of what is known about the current stage of these languages is why the present tense of ‘have’ would have become an inflectional affix in the simple future but, crucially, would not have yielded a similar development in other compound tenses, such
. This would be possible under a weak lexicalist approach to the representation of functional heads, in which inflectional morphemes are concatenated with their hosts in the syntax (e.g., Chomsky 1970; Lasnik 1999b).
How much syntactic reconstruction is possible?*
as the compound past (12). Clearly, one would need to find evidence in one or more of the daughter languages suggesting that the lexical verb (in its infinitival form) immediately preceded the simple present of ‘have’ in a periphrastic structure 〈infinitive V+ pres ‘have’〉 in the grammar of the proto-language. Structures in which 〈infinitive V + pres ‘have’〉 forms had future meaning could then have been input for the acquisition of synthetic simple future forms by new generations. However, this kind of evidence is also not present in modern French, Italian and Spanish, thus weakening further the hypothesis that the development in (11) would have taken place, if one considers only the data from these languages. Consider now a second scenario, in which we add data regarding future forms from two other modern Romance languages: Portuguese and Galician. In at least some dialects of Portuguese and Galician the future affix displays a hybrid behavior in which a pronominal clitic can be inserted or must be inserted between the verb stem and the person/number future suffix, in what is referred to as mesoclisis, a property that is found only in the simple future and simple conditional verb forms, as seen in (13b), as opposed to (13a), in which mesoclisis does not occur, due to the presence of negation in the clause.24 This has led to the proposal that the person/number future (and conditional) suffix has a special behavior in these grammars. R&R refer to it as a ‘syntactic affix’, as opposed to the ‘lexical affix’ status of the corresponding French, Spanish, and Italian forms. (13) a. Eu não lhe darei /daria esse livro. (Port.) I not him.cl give-fut.1sg /give-cond.1sg this book ‘I would not give him this book.’ b. Dar-lhe-ei /Dar-lhe-ia esse livro. (Port.) Give-him.cl-fut.1sg /Give-him.cl-cond.1sg this book. ‘I will give him this book.’/‘I would give him this book.’
Portuguese and Galician provide support for the relative independence of the person/number future suffix from the verb stem. Therefore, there is synchronic evidence, for this set of five Romance languages – French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Galician – for the status of the person/number future inflection as both a lexical affix and a clitic (syntactic affix, in R&R’s terms). What can the new data from Portuguese and Galician contribute to hypotheses about the development of the Romance simple future? If we consider simply the lexical affix vs. clitic/syntactic affix status of
. As mentioned before, the conditional forms apparently underwent a development similar to that of the simple future in most of the Romance languages under consideration here. Colloquial Brazilian Portuguese has lost the possibility of mesoclisis entirely. According to Gerardo Fernández-Salgueiro (p.c. 2004), colloquial Galician also no longer shows this possibility.
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the future person/number inflection in the two groups of languages, two directions of change are possible for the future inflection: (14) a. Hypothesis 1 (French/Italian/Spanish innovate): b. Hypothesis 2 (Portuguese/Galician innovate):
clitic > affix affix > clitic
According to hypothesis 1, French/Spanish/Italian would have innovated, whereas Portuguese/Galician would have at least partially kept the clitic status of the future inflection. Under hypothesis 2, Portuguese/Galician would have innovated, and an affixal form would have turned into a clitic. Neither development is unheard of, and although (14a) has been observed to be much more common, (14b) has been taken to arise in the case of the English genitive marker -s, analyzed as a clitic that developed from a morphological affix (Lightfoot 1999, and see also Allen 1995, 2002 and references cited there). Considering only the number of languages that would have innovated under either hypothesis, hypothesis 2 would be the simplest one, especially if Portuguese and Galician were taken to form a single branch in the family tree. This would be the wrong choice, given what is known to date about the development of the Romance simple future. What about hypothesis 1 (14a)? Here we would have to argue that French, Italian and Spanish innovated, possibly independently, but undergoing a common change, in the process known as drift (see section 5.3 and fn. 18). This hypothesis is supported by data from previous stages of Romance, as the summary in (11) indicated. However, the purpose of the case studies we consider here is to construct hypotheses on the basis of restricted subsets of the available data, in order to be able to evaluate them against the additional, larger data set. If we consider again the morphological similarity between the future inflection and the present tense of ‘have’, now in combination with the added facts about Portuguese/Galician, we find limited, fragmentary support for a development of the future along the lines of (11), and which would fit Hypothesis 1 (14a): (15) (i) Vinf +‘have’ > (ii) Vinf+clitic > (iii) Vinf+affix (cf. (11))
However, neither of the changes in (15) is overwhelmingly supported by what has been discussed so far regarding the Romance future. The languages we considered do not provide direct evidence for stage (i), aside from the formal similarity with the present tense of ‘have’. Furthermore, all the languages but Portuguese/Galician would have to have innovated in going from stage (ii) to stage (iii), a process that would have to be motivated from the perspective of syntactic change. In order to make a choice between the two hypothesis in (14), one might wish to invoke considerations of naturalness or directionality of change that would favor the change from clitics to affixes (hypothesis 1, the correct one), and not
How much syntactic reconstruction is possible?*
the other way around. In section 6 below we point out some problems with this approach. Before we close this discussion, let us consider whether the addition of data from another modern Romance language affects our conclusion. Modern Romanian, unlike the languages discussed so far, does not have a simple future form. Instead, it has only periphrastic forms for the future, and at least one of these makes use of a form of ‘have’, in combination with an infinitive (16a) or a subjunctive form (16b) (examples from Joseph 1983: 163):25 (16) a. am a mă duce la oraş. have.1sg prt 1sg.refl lead.inf to town ‘I will go to town.’ b. am să fac. have.1sg prt do.1sg.subj ‘I will do.’26
Interestingly, even though the Romanian data would not provide direct evidence for stages (i) and (ii) of the development in (11), it does provide relevant information that cannot be found directly in any of the other languages we considered – namely, for a periphrastic form of the future that uses the verb ‘have’ in combination with an infinitive or subjunctive form of the main verb. Even though this does not constitute direct evidence for the structure 〈Vinf+‘have.pres.’〉, which would have led to the stages of the development in (11),
. Modern Romanian usually displays subjunctive forms in the place of infinitives, even though it has been taken to still display infinitival forms in certain contexts (see Joseph 1983: ch. 6 and references cited there). . An anonymous reviewer cites Maria Jordan (p.c. to reviewer) as saying that (16a) is not in fact a future, but instead means ‘I have to go to the city/I am supposed to go to the city’; the reviewer goes on to say that “even deontic avea ‘have’ has fallen out of use, except perhaps regionally.” Other speakers of Romanian, however, interpret sentences like (16a) as a periphrastic future. Larisa Avram (p.c. 2004), for instance, indicates that at least one dialect of Modern Romanian has a periphrastic form of the future with the auxiliary avea ‘have’, and provides example (i) (For similar examples, also interpreted as futures, see Avram 1986, 1999; Dobrovie-Sorin 1994; and references therein). (i) am sa merg Have.1st.sg sa.subj go-1st.sg ‘I will go/I am going.’ The same reviewer also reports that Maria Jordan finds example (16b) ungrammatical as it stands, because it needs an overt object. Since this example comes from Joseph 1983, we have retained it; it is possible that there is interspeaker variation on sentences of this type.
Acrisio Pires & Sarah G. Thomason
it provides supporting evidence for a hypothesis that would reconstruct those stages. Furthermore, if the Romanian evidence, combined with the morphological similarity between the future inflection and ‘have’ in the languages that have a synthetic future, does constitute evidence for the existence of the first stage in (11a), it also supports the hypothesis that the development in the other Romance languages considered here would have been as in (14a)–(15).27 These results do not eliminate the need to address important methodological questions, in particular the ones that arise when competing hypotheses appeal to naturalness (or markedness). However, they do suggest that interesting and reasonable hypotheses about the syntactic properties of proto-language grammars can be established solely on the basis of properties of the grammars of the daughter languages.
6. Conclusion As noted just above, there are still methodological questions that must be considered in order to approach the task of doing syntactic reconstruction. Some of these considerations are common to research on language change in general. First, certain problems and questions arise if we use considerations of naturalness in choosing among different hypotheses. More directly relevant to the discussion about syntactic reconstruction, if considerations of naturalness (or, more specifically, directionality of change) may be invoked to choose among different hypotheses, it still remains to be explained from the perspective of the linguistic system (and its acquisition) what determines what kinds of processes do occur more naturally (e.g., the ones leading from a change from clitics to affixes, as discussed in section 5.4). Specifically in the grammars in which the change does happen, what would explain the change, that is, what would be the structural source in the linguistic system for the acquisition of the innovative grammar?28
. One might point out that the Romanian situation is in fact innovative, even with the ‘have+infinitive’ future cases in (16a). However, in the present case study, the fact that Romanian might be innovative is not known a priori, since we are introducing only the modern Romanian data into the discussion, in the attempt to further test the reconstruction hypotheses in (11) with access only to a limited set of data. . Roberts & Roussou (2003) attempt to develop a model that explains why this change is favored given complexity measures that come into play in the acquisition of new grammars.
How much syntactic reconstruction is possible?*
We still need to explain why the change happens, and why it happens only in some grammars, and not in others, as was the case in Section 5.4 for the last stage that gave rise to the Future inflectional affixes as lexical affixes in French/ Italian/Spanish, but not in Portuguese/Galician, at least until recently. Historical linguists are not optimistic about the prospects for making major advances in this area, however: the usual argument is that there are too many social and linguistic variables to be considered. If certain properties of human language (e.g., clitics) are expected to change naturally into something else (e.g., affixes), and thus disappear, why should such properties arise and remain stable in the grammars of many generations? (See also, regarding this question, Hale 1998). If the acquisition of some innovative properties in new grammars happens because they are more natural, how can the opposite development take place, as seems to have been the case in the change of the possessive marker -s from an affix to a clitic in English?29 An important question has to do with the tendency to connect what seems to be more common or probable with what is more natural. This introduces a methodological complication. The fact that certain phenomena are more common does not necessarily result from the fact that they are the most natural phenomena, especially when one has a limited or fragmentary amount of empirical data to appeal to. In any case, the best and possibly only certain approach to invoking notions of directionality might be to provide explanations based on the properties of the linguistic system for why certain phenomena tend to be recurrent, affecting more often the course of language change. There are further problems in extending to syntax the notion of naturalness. First, even in the case of phonological change, which is better understood than syntactic change, the notion of ‘naturalness’ is vexed. Sometimes the (apparently) most natural changes fail to happen; sometimes a change that might be considered highly unnatural – or at least very rare – does happen. The latter may have to do with notions of (un)markedness, taken to be the basis of ‘naturalness’. Marked things may be taken to be harder to learn. But pinning it down is another matter (see Thomason & Kaufman’s discussion of this issue, 1988: ch. 2). Second, our store of knowledge about syntactic change is so puny compared to what is known about sound change that most hypotheses about syntactic reconstruction are guesswork.
. As an anonymous reviewer points out, there are other examples of change from affix to clitic. The reviewer gives the Polish person markers as an example, citing Andersen 1987 and Witkoś 1998.
Acrisio Pires & Sarah G. Thomason
In morphophonological change there are many controversial claims, especially in the grammaticalization literature (see H&C for discussion). In this paper we have focused primarily on foundational and methodological questions that (in our opinion) must be addressed first in order to carry out any syntactic or morphosyntactic reconstruction successfully. (Below we will use the term morphosyntactic to cover both of these closely-related categories.) Here we will sum up our main conclusions about the feasibility of reconstruction in this domain. First, and most importantly, the greater difficulties inherent in morphosyntactic reconstruction by comparison to phonological reconstruction do not justify abandoning the attempt to reconstruct morphosyntax; they do, however, mean that the level of success will almost certainly remain lower than the level of success in phonological reconstruction. Similarly, given the state of current research, our confidence in the accuracy of the results of morphosyntactic reconstruction will probably always be less. A major reason for this pessimism lies in the fact that morphosyntactic changes are not regular in the same sense that most phonological change is regular: regular phonological change is blind to all considerations of meaning, while in morphosyntactic change, by contrast, analogy restricted by certain structural and meaning properties is a major non-phonological driving force. In other words, structural and meaning restrictions play a crucial role in morphosyntactic change but not in regular phonological change. Second, uniformity of surface forms in all the daughter languages at a particular structure point (e.g., sentential word order or yes/no question formation) permits the reconstruction of that surface form in the parent language, but always with the caution that more than one grammar might produce the same surface configuration. Third, where morphosyntactic patterns share cognate morphemes, as in the Slavic animacy and Romance future examples above, functional identity or overlap in these morphemes leads to useful hypotheses about the proto-language constructions that gave rise to the daughter-language patterns. In some cases, like the Romance future – where our analysis built on the fact that a clitic-to-affix change is much more widely instantiated than an affix-to-clitic change – directional probabilities contribute to the formulation of these hypotheses; in other instances, like the Slavic animacy category, no such directional probabilities can be adduced as supporting evidence for a reconstruction. (In that example, although morphological simplification is the norm in Indo-European languages, morphological elaboration is well known from other language families, typically families that start out with less elaborate inflectional systems than Proto-Indo-European had.) In all these cases the possibility of drift must be taken into account: because daughter languages inherit the same structures from the proto-language, they undergo many similar or identical changes as a result of pattern pressures (structural imbalances, hard-to-learn bits of grammar) in the inherited material.
How much syntactic reconstruction is possible?*
Fourth, efforts to reconstruct morphosyntax in the absence both of shared morphemes and of identity in surface forms in the daughter languages are much less likely to yield solid results. It is quite possible that further research will support directional probabilities, and these in turn may facilitate progress even here. Current approaches to reconstruction that rely on clusters of parameter settings are difficult to evaluate because they have not yet been systematically developed, or tested on data where the relevant proto-language constructions are known (such as our Slavic and Romance examples), or presented in conjunction with well-worked-out examples. Our initial reaction to these proposals, however, is that they are essentially typological, not historical: clusters of features do not, in themselves, carry direct historical implications. There is currently no proven metric that would show the extent to which chance might be responsible for any particular clustering; even if a historical connection can be established for such a clustering, no method has been worked out to distinguish inheritance from diffusion; and although a number of case studies have been published in this area, no general paths of change have been established for parameter settings.
References Allen, Cynthia. 1995. Case Marking and Reanalysis: Grammatical relations from old to modern English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Allen, Cynthia. 2002. “Case and Middle English Genitive Noun Phrases”. Lightfoot, ed. 2002c, 57–80. Andersen, Henning. 1987. “From Auxiliary to Desinence”. Historical Development of Auxiliaries ed. by Martin Harris & Paolo Ramat, 21–52. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Avram, Larisa. 1986. “A few Remarks on Futurity in Romanian”. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 31: 3. 203–7. Avram, Larisa. 1999. Auxiliaries and the Structure of Language. Bucharest: Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti. Battye, Adrian & Ian Roberts, eds. 1995. Clause Structure and Language Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Benveniste, Emile. 1968. “Mutations of Linguistic Categories”. Directions for Historical Linguistics ed. by Yakov Malkiel and Winfred P. Lehmann, 83–94. Austin: University of Texas Press. Borer, Hagit. 1984. Parametric Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris. Bourciez, Edouard. 1946. Eléments de linguistique romane. Paris: Klincksieck. Brinton, Laurel. 1991. “The Origin and Development of quasimodal have to in English”. Paper presented at the Workshop on the Origin and Development of verbal Periphrases, 10th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL 10), Amsterdam, August 16, 1991. http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/lbrinton/ Campbell, Lyle & Alice C. Harris. 2002. “Syntactic Reconstruction and Demythologizing ‘Myths and the Prehistory of Grammars’ ”. Journal of Linguistics 38: 599–618. Chomsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter.
Acrisio Pires & Sarah G. Thomason Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chomsky, Noam. 1970. “Remarks on Nominalization”. Readings in English transformational Grammar ed. by Roderick Jacobs and Peter Rosenbaum, 184–221. Waltham, MA: Ginn Press. Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Knowledge of Language. New York: Praeger. Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Chomsky, Noam. 2000. “Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework”. Step by step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik ed. by Roger Martin, David Michaels, and Juan Uriagereka. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chomsky, Noam. 2001. “Derivation by Phase”. Ken Hale: A life in language ed. by Michael Kenstowicz, 1–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chomsky, Noam. 2004a. “Beyond Explanatory Adequacy”. Structures and beyond: Current issues in the theory of language ed. by Adriana Belletti, 104–31. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chomsky, Noam. 2004b. “Three Factors in Language Design”. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of Linguistic Society of America. Boston, MA, Jan 2004. Crowley, Terry. 1987. An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. Suva, Fiji: Univ. of Papua New Guinea Press. DeGraff, Michel, ed. 1999. Language Creation and Language Change: Creolization, diachrony, and development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen. 1994. The Syntax of Romanian: Comparative studies in Romance. Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Emonds, Joseph. 1978. “The Verbal Complex V’-V in French”. Linguistic Inquiry 9. 49–77. Epstein, Samuel, D. & T. Daniel Seely, eds. 2002a. Derivation and Explanation in the Minimalist Program. Oxford: Blackwell. Epstein, Samuel D. & T. Daniel Seely. 2002b. “Introduction: on the Quest for Explanation”. Epstein & Seely, ed. 2002a. 1–18. Fleischman, Suzanne. 1982. The Future in Thought and Language: Diachronic evidence from Romance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fox, Anthony. 1995. Linguistic Reconstruction: An introduction to theory and method. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gianollo, Chiara, Cristina Guardiano & Giuseppe Longobardi. 2004. “Historical Implications of a Formal Theory of Syntactic Variation”. Paper presented at Diachronic Generative Syntax Conference (DIGS) VIII, Yale, June 2004. Gleitman Lila, R. & Mark Liberman, eds. 1995. Language: An invitation to cognitive science. 2nd edn. Vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gleitman Lila, R. & Elisa L. Newport. 1995. “The Invention of Language by Children: Environmental and Biological Influences on the Acquisition of Language”. Gleitman & Liberman, eds. Guardiano, Cristina & Giuseppe Longobardi. 2005. “Parametric Comparison and Language Taxonomy”. Grammaticalization and Parametric Change ed. by Montserrat Batllori, Maria L. Hernanz, Carme Picallo & Francesce Roca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Haegeman, Liliane. 1994. Introduction to Government & Binding Theory. 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell. Hale, Mark. 1998. “Diachronic Syntax”. Syntax 1: 1–18. Hall, Robert A., Jr. 1950. “The Reconstruction of Proto-Romance”. Language 26: 6–27. Harris, Alice C. & Lyle Campbell. 1995. Historical Syntax in Cross-linguistic Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Hornstein, Norbert & David W. Lightfoot, eds. 1981. Explanation in Linguistics: The logical problem of language acquisition. New York: Longman. Jackendoff, Ray. 1994. Patterns in the Mind: Language and human nature. New York: Basic Books. Jeffers, Robert J. 1976. “Syntactic Change and Syntactic Reconstruction”. Current Progress in Historical Linguistics: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Historical Linguistics ed. by Wıllıam M. Christie, Jr., 1–15. Amsterdam: North Holland. Joseph, Brian D. 1983. The Synchrony and Diachrony of the Balkan Infinitive. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kemenade, Ans van & Nigel Vincent, eds. 1997. Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kroch, Anthony & Ann Taylor. 1997. “Verb Movement in Old and Middle English: Dialect variation and language contact”. Kemenade & Vincent, ed. 1997. 297–325. Kroeber, Paul D. 1999. The Salish Language Family: Reconstructing syntax. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Lasnik, Howard. 1999a. Minimalist Analysis. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Lasnik, Howard. 1999b. Syntactic Structures Revisited: Contemporary lectures on classic transformational grammar. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Laycock, Donald C. 1982. “Melanesian Linguistic Diversity: A Melanesian choice?” Melanesia: beyond Diversity ed. by Ron J. May & Hank Nelson, 33–38. Canberra: Australian National University Press. Lightfoot, David W. 1979. Principles of Diachronic Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lightfoot, David W. 1991. How to Set Parameters: Arguments from language change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lightfoot, David W. 1999. The Development of Language: Acquisition, change and evolution. Oxford: Blackwell. Lightfoot, David W. 2002a. “Myths and the Prehistory of Grammar”. Journal of Linguistics 38: 113–136. Lightfoot, David W. 2002b. “More Myths”. Journal of Linguistics 38: 619–626. Lightfoot, David W., ed. 2002c. Syntactic Effects of Morphological Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lightfoot, David W. 2006. How New Languages Emerge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Longobardi, Giuseppe. 2001. “Formal Syntax, Diachronic Minimalism, and Etymology: The history of French chez”. Linguistic Inquiry 32: 2. 275–302. Longobardi, Giuseppe. 2003. “On Parameters and Parameter Theory”. Syntaxtheorien: Modelle, Methoden, Motive ed. by Elisabeth Stark & Ulrich Wandruszka 273–290. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Pinker, Steven. 1994. The Language Instinct: How the mind creates language. New York: W. Morrow. Pinker, Steven. 1995. “Language Acquisition”. Gleitman & Liberman, eds. 135–182. Pinkster, Harm. 1987. “The Strategy and Chronology of the Development of Future and Perfect Tense Auxiliaries in Latin”. Historical Development of Auxiliaries ed. by Martin Harris & Paolo Ramat 193–223. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Pintzuk, Susan. 1999. Phrase Structures in Competition: Variation and change in Old English word order. New York: Garland.
Acrisio Pires & Sarah G. Thomason Pintzuk, Susan, George Tsoulas & Anthony Warner, eds. 2000. Diachronic Syntax: Models and mechanisms. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pires, Acrisio. 2005. “Verb Movement and Clitics: Variation and change in Portuguese”. Grammaticalization and Parametric Change ed. by Montse Batllori, Maria-Luísa Hernanz, Carmen Picallo & Francesc Roca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1989. “Verb Movement, Universal Grammar and the Structure of IP”. Linguistic Inquiry 20: 365–424. Radford, Andrew. 2004. Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the structure of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roberts, Ian and Anna Roussou. 2002. “The History of the Future”. Lightfoot, ed 2002c. 23–56. Roberts, Ian and Anna Roussou. 2003. Syntactic Change: A Minimalist approach to grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Thomason, Sarah Grey. 1976. “Analogic Change as Grammar Complication”. Current Progress in Historical Linguistics: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Historical Linguistics ed. by Wıllıam M. Christie, Jr. 401–9. Amsterdam: North Holland. Thomason, Sarah Grey 2006a. “Language Change, intentional”. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., vol. 6, ed. by Keith Brown, 346–349. Oxford: Elsevier. Thomason, Sarah Grey 2006b. “Syntactic Reconstruction”. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edn., Vol. 10. ed. by Keith Brown, 397–401. Oxford: Elsevier. Thomason, Sarah Grey & Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Trask, Robert L. 2000. The Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Watkins, Calvert. 1976. “Towards Proto-Indo-European Syntax: Problems and pseudo-problems”. Papers from the Parasession on Diachronic Syntax ed. by Sanford B. Steever, Carol A. Walker & Salikoko S. Mufwene, 305–26. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Webelhuth, Gert, ed. 1995. Government and Binding Theory and the Minimalist Program: Principles and parameters in syntactic theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Winter, Werner. 1984. “Reconstructional Comparative Linguistics and the Reconstruction of the Syntax of Undocumented Stages in the Development of Languages and Language Families”. Historical Syntax ed. by Jacek Fisiak, 613–26. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Witkoś, Jacek. 1998. The Syntax of Clitics: Steps towards a minimalist account. Poznań: Motivex.
Reconstruction in syntax Reconstruction of patterns* Alice C. Harris
SUNY, Stony Brook In syntax, reconstruction is limited to patterns, that is, repeated surface forms paired with a consistent function or distribution. Comparative reconstruction is illustrated with the example of the pattern of yes/no questions in Kartvelian languages and the core case marking pattern in the languages of the NakhDaghestanian family. The method involves setting up correspondences among patterns in languages known to be related. Determination of the ancestral pattern may make use of syntactic relics, dialect data, phonological correspondences, the principle of economy, and identification of internal or external sources of innovation, among other resources. Co-occurrence of all parts of a pattern provides the required safeguards in reconstruction of syntax, just as co-occurrence of all parts of a word does in reconstruction of phonology. Reconstruction of syntax is more likely to be successful in language families with less time depth and in ones with complex morphology reflecting the syntax, than in families lacking these characteristics.
1. Introduction A recent book on linguistic reconstruction summarizes the position of its author regarding syntactic reconstruction as follows:
*This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants
No. BNS-8419143, BNS-871211, SRB-9710085, and BCS-0215523, and by the International Research and Exchanges Board under the ACLS-Academy of Science Exchange with the Soviet Union (1989). I am grateful to these orgaizations for their support. I am grateful to my Udi consultants, especially Luiza Nešumašvili and Dodo Misk’ališvili, and to consultants on the various Kartvelian languages, who contributed in a more indirect way to this particular paper. I would like to thank Gisella Ferraresi and Harald Knaus for organizing the Workshop and for inviting me to participate in it. I am grateful to those who participated in the Workshop for their helpful comments, especiallly Jost Gippert and David Lightfoot. I want also to thank Lyle Campbell, who has read and commented on more than one preliminary version of this paper.
Alice C. Harris
“But it does in any case seem clear that the syntax of languages is less easily recon structed than other areas by means of the Comparative Method”. (Fox 1995: 104)
The author reaches this conclusion after taking into consideration, on the one hand, the statements by some linguists that in syntax one can neither set up correspondence sets nor actually reconstruct, and on the other, demonstrations of the efficacy of both the Comparative Method and the method of internal reconstruction in the syntax of actual language families.1 I agree with the tone of Fox’s statement quoted above: I am convinced that syntactic reconstruction is a fruitful enterprise (which entails its being possible!), but I agree that in this area we face certain problems not encountered in phonological, lexical, and morphological reconstruction. In this paper I turn attention to how syntactic reconstruction can be done successfully and why it has been perceived by some as impossible. I focus here primarily on comparative reconstruction; however, most of the points made apply equally, mutatis mutandis, to internal reconstruction. I am not the first to observe that reconstruction of syntax is reconstruction of patterns, not reconstruction of specific sentences spoken in the past. It would be ridiculous for us to suppose that we could reconstruct sentences actually uttered, but we can reconstruct patterns. I take the view below that it is in part because we are reconstructing patterns, not specific strings of morphemes, that reconstruction of sentences is indeed possible. Section 2 suggests ways in which the Comparative Method can be applied in syntax, including subsections on the use of correspondence sets and on several ways of determining the ancestral form. In section 3 I address the question of what safeguards are needed on correspondence sets; that section also includes a discussion of the meaning of pattern as used in this paper. Reasons for some linguists to be less optimistic about reconstruction are discussed in section 4, and a summary is provided in §5. 2. The Comparative Method in syntax The two central steps in the Comparative Method are (i) the identification of comparable data and setting up of correspondence sets (also called equations) and (ii) the determination of which is the ancestral form. In section 2.1 I define syntactic . Fox (1995: 104) does not give examples of the “revival of interest in syntactic reconstruction”, but among examples familiar to me are Aristar (1991), Campbell (1990), Chung (1978), Gildea (1998), Harris (1985), Jacobs (1975), Lord (1973), (1976), (1993), Norman & Campbell (1978), Robertson (1980), and Watkins (1963), (1964), (1976), from a wide range of languages. Examples of statements that syntactic reconstruction is impossible or essentially so are cited in Harris & Campbell (1995, Chapter 12); sources they cite include Jeffers (1976a), (1976b), Lightfoot (1979: 8), and Winter (1984).
Reconstruction in syntax
correspondence, discuss characteristics of step (i) in syntax, and provide two examples of syntactic correspondence sets. One example is from the Kartvelian family, a small language family consisting of Georgian, Svan, and two closely related languages, Laz and Mingrelian. The languages of this family are spoken in the Republic of Georgia and in the northwest of Turkey, along the coast of the Black Sea. Old Georgian is an ancient form attested from the fifth century. The second example comes from the Lezgian subgroup of the Nakh-Daghestanian (North East Caucasian) family. The subgroup consists of ten languages, spoken mostly in Daghestan (in southern Russia) and in Azerbaijan. Once we have set up correspondence sets, the question arises of how we are to determine which pattern is ancestral.2 In section 2.2 I discuss several criteria, including known phonological correspondences, dialect data, and syntactic and morphological relics. 2.1 Correspondence sets The first step in the Comparative Method is the collection of comparable data and establishment of correspondence sets. In phonology, we examine many words and find patterns of equivalence. For example, we might find that words in language A contain the sound [a], while in sister language B the cognate words contain the sound [o] in the same positions. If we find this repeatedly, we can recognize it as a regular correspondence and represent it as (1). (1) Language A B a : o
A simple example will serve to show that correspondence sets can also be set up in syntax. We must first assemble recurrent examples of the syntactic pattern at issue, in this instance yes/no questions. In Old Georgian and in Svan, both languages of the Kartvelian family, the particle -a forms yes/no questions, as illustrated in (2) and (3), respectively. (2) Old Georgian3 sasumeli, romeli momca me drink which.rel he.give.it.me me.dat mamaman, ara father.nar neg
ševsua-a I.drink.it-ques
(John 18: 11)
‘The drink which (my) father gave to me, shall I not drink it?’
. This is not intended to imply that it must be one of those attested, though this is, of course, most likely. . Abbreviations used in the glosses in this paper include absl absolutive case, aor aorist, aux auxiliary, cop copula, dat dative case, erg ergative case, foc focus marker, gen genitive case,
Alice C. Harris
(3) Svan väi eser deš xokvay-a? woe quot neg you.say.it.him-ques ‘You couldn’t say vai?’
(Kaldani 1964: 228)
Examples (2) and (3) are representative of many actual examples in which the particle -a forms yes/no questions. In the sister language Mingrelian, on the other hand, the particle -o forms questions, and in Laz, -i does so. (3) and (4) represent many examples illustrating these patterns. (4) Mingrelian kiičinenk-o skani skuasi? you.recognize.him-ques your child ‘Do you recognize your child?’ (5) Laz k’ulani, si nosi va giγun-i? girl you sense neg you.have.it-ques ‘Girl, don’t you have any sense?’
(Bleichsteiner 1919: VIII,10,2)
(Asatiani 1974: 43, 31)
There are sufficient restrictions to insure comparability of these examples, even though none of the lexical material is shared.
(6) a. Each is a simple yes/no question. Comparison with non-questions reveals that it is the particle that makes these sentences questions. b. In each language the particles named above generally occur enclitic to the verb.4 c. In each language, stress falls on the syllable before the question particle.5 d. Mingrelian o is the regular reflex of CK *a, which has the reflex a in Georgian and Svan; however, the Laz reflex of CK *a is also o, never i (Gamq’reliʒe & Mač’avariani 1965; Schmidt 1962; Harris 1991).
With respect to (6a–c), all four languages are similar; however, the particles are not all sufficiently similar with regard to phonological shape, (6d). We must conclude that the Laz question particle -i does not correspond phonologically to the others,
lv light verb, n neuter gender-class, nar narrative case, neg negative, obl oblique, pl Proto-Lezgian, ptcpl participle, ques question marker, quot quotative marker, rel relative, sg singular. . There are a few exceptions to this in Old Georgian (Uturgaiʒe 1966: 214–5) and in Svan (Kaldani 1964: 228). . In Svan, when the question particle occurs enclitic to a question word, this being the entire sentence, stress falls instead on the particle itself; e.g., yär-á? ‘Who?’ (Kaldani 1964: 228).
Reconstruction in syntax
and therefore that it cannot be reconstructed syntactically to CK.6 The facts in (6) are sufficient to insure comparability of the question particles in Mingrelian, Old Georgian, and Svan, just as cognates insure the comparability of individual sounds for the purpose of phonological reconstruction (see further section 3). Examples (2–5) are, of course, only representative of many similar examples of these patterns. Having observed that yes/no questions are formed with these particles in Old Georgian, Svan, and Mingrelian, we can state that they are patterns and on the basis of these facts formulate the equation in Table 1. Table 1. Correspondences among question particles in Kartvelian Old Georgian -a
Mingrelian
Svan
-o
-a
Table 1 omits other question particles, which cannot be compared. Table 1 is not the statement of a phonological correspondence; the relevant phonological correspondence is given in Table 2. Table 2. Reflexes of CK *a Old Georgian a
Mingrelian
Laz
Svan
o
o
a
Table 1 is the statement of a syntactic correspondence; the particles named correspond, and – crucially – the syntactic constructions correspond. In this example, we can securely reconstruct a question particle *-a in Common Kartvelian and assign to it the properties in (7). (7) a. *-a formed yes/no questions. b. *-a occurred enclitic to the verb, and may have been restricted to this position. c. Stress must have occurred on the syllable before the question particle.
We assume that Laz acquired a new question particle, perhaps assigning to it the position and stress pattern that characterized the CK particle. A correspondence set in syntax, then, is a set of syntactic patterns which are related by virtue of descent from a common ancestral syntactic pattern. The pattern in each language is established by induction from many actual examples in that language. In most instances, both the syntactic function (meaning) and the . It is possible that the Laz question particle -i has been influenced by the question particle, -mI, in Turkish, with which it is in close contact. Jikia (1967) has established Turkish influence on Laz in other areas, including outright borrowing.
Alice C. Harris
form (structure) are similar across the sister languages, though one or both of these may change. It is not always easy to display the essential elements of syntactic patterns in a way that makes them easy to compare; Table 1, for example, does not show features (6a–c) above, even though they are relevant characteristics of the synchronic structure. We can take another example of syntactic equations from the basic case marking patterns in the Lezgian languages. All of the languages have a general ergativeabsolutive pattern of case marking, where the ergative case marks subjects of transitive verbs, and the absolutive case marks direct objects and subjects of intransitive verbs. Indirect objects are marked with the dative case. This is illustrated with examples from Rutul in (8) and (9). (8) gada XalG qherq’Gr boy.absl home arrive ‘The boy arrived (at) home.’
Rutul (Kibrik 1980: Fasc. 129: 25)
vGr (9) gad-ije-r rGš-es ečh boy-obl-erg girl-dat apple-absl give ‘The boy gave an apple to the girl.’
Rutul (Kibrik 1980: Fasc. 129: 25)
Similar examples illustrating the same patterns of case use in other languages of this subgroup are included in the Appendix; these are representative of an unlimited number of examples of these patterns from each language. The syntax of Udi differs from that of other languages in the group in several respects.7 While Udi has the case marking pattern illustrated in (8–9) for Rutul, it also has a second pattern in transitive sentences. (10) is an intransitive example in Udi with case marking parallel to Rutul (8); transitive (11) in Udi is parallel to (9) in Rutul; and (12) in Udi is distinct from general case patterns used in Rutul and other languages of the Lezgian subgroup. (10) γar mya ar-e-ne boy.absl here come-aor-3sg ‘The boy came here.’
Udi
(11) nana-n ta-ne-d-e ẹk ạyel-ax mother-erg give-3sg-lv-aor horse.absl child-dat ‘The mother gave a horse to the child.’
Udi
. In addition to the difference described here, Udi has developed the use of the ergative case (in some instances optionally) with a group of unergative verbs. The origin of this use of the ergative case can be explained as part of other changes (see Harris 2002). Table 3 is simplified for the purposes of presentation by omitting the secondary pattern described in this note.
Reconstruction in syntax
(12) nana-n ta-ne-d-e ẹk-ax ạyel-ax mother-erg give-3sg-lv-aor horse.dat child-dat ‘The mother gave the horse to the child.’
Udi
In Udi, the absolutive case is used for an indefinite direct object, the dative for a definite direct object (Harris 2002: 244–248). (13–14) illustrate another verb, with the direct object in a different position. (13) ạyel-en pạ ẹš a-ne-q’-e child-erg two apple.absl take1-3sg-take2-aor ‘The child took two apples.’
Udi
(14) ạyel-en pạ ẹš-n-u(x) a-ne-q’-e child-erg two apple-obl-dat take1-3sg-take2-aor ‘The child took the two apples.’
Udi
Internal reconstruction, together with the Comparative Method, enables us to explain the origin of the construction in (12) through the incorporation of an element, most commonly nouns, by a light verb, with the consequence that some constructions were reanalyzed; it is possible that this development was also influenced by languages with which Udi is in contact (Harris 2002: 248–251). The case marking patterns of Rutul, Udi, and other Lezgian languages illustrated in the Appendix can be summarized in Table 3. Table 3. Correspondences of general case marking in Lezgian languages
Lezgi Tabasaran Aghul Tsakhur Rutul Budukh Kryts Khinalug Archi Udi
Subj of Transitive
Subj of Intransitive
Dir Obj
Indir Obj
erg erg erg erg erg erg erg erg erg erg
absl absl absl absl absl absl absl absl absl absl
absl absl absl absl absl absl absl absl absl absl dat
dat dat dat dat dat dat dat dat dat dat
Table 3 is a summary of syntactic equivalences, a correspondence set. Like phonological correspondence sets, it is based on recurrent examples from each language, though only a few are given here and in the Appendix. Like phonological equations, it states in the simplest terms a regularity found in each language that occurs in the ‘same’ situation in the sister languages. Establishing such an equation is the first step in reconstructing. We can reconstruct the basic case marking pattern in (15).
Alice C. Harris
(15) a. ergative case for subject of transitive verbs b. absolutive case for subjects of intransitive verbs and direct objects of transitive verbs c. dative for indirect objects.8
In this instance we can be relatively certain that the ergative-absolutive pattern, not Udi’s ergative-dative pattern, is to be reconstructed to Proto-Lezgian for a number of reasons, including the fact that (i) the former, and not the latter, is found in other groups and subgroups of the Nakh-Daghestanian family, (ii) the ergative-absolutive case marking is mirrored in the Nakh-Daghestanian agreement system, which is clearly very old, (iii) the origin of the secondary case pattern of Udi is fully understood. It is related to the complex morphological structure of many of the verbs, originally consisting of a verbal portion and an incorporated direct object. Some of these complex verbs permitted a dative case adjunct, which was later reanalyzed as an external direct object. After reanalysis, this pattern was extended to some verbs that had not previously had it (Harris 2002: 248–251). In this subsection I have illustrated the use of equations in the structure of yes/no questions and in basic case patterns. Other examples of setting up syntactic correspondence sets include case marking and agreement patterns in Kartvelian languages (Harris 1985). There must, of course, be grammatical restrictions to insure the comparability of the data (see section 3). Syntactic correspondence sets in a group of languages that have already been shown to be related represent a determination that a set of syntactic patterns are descended from a shared ancestral pattern. 2.2 Determination of the ancestral form With a differential correspondence set (that is, one in which the items compared are not identical) reconstruction involves determining the ancestral form. This in turn entails ‘undoing’ diachronic change, so that the correspondence, with the differences explained, becomes, in effect, one of identity. For example, given the correspondence set in (16), (16) Language A B s : h
. This is a statement about the reconstruction of the syntax of case marking, not the morphology. Bokarev (1960) reconstructed the Proto-Lezgian (pl) case markers, including the ergative and the dative. (He ignored the absolutive, which is clearly to be reconstructed as zero.) The dative case form in three of the languages – Khinalug, Budux, and Udi – is not from the ancestral dative, but from a pl locative (see Bokarev 1960 for details).
Reconstruction in syntax
reconstruction is likely to consist of ‘undoing’ the change *s > h in language B, revealing the correspondence as (17). (17) Language A pre-B s : *s
In effect this means that *s is reconstructed for Proto-A-B. The procedure is the same in syntax, and most of the means by which we determine which is the older form are also the same. In the examples discussed in section 2.1, I have already illustrated three of the trusted means of determining the ancestral form in syntax. In Kartvelian yes/ no questions, Table 1, the key to reconstruction was the known phonological correspondence shown in Table 2. In the Lezgian case marking example summarized in Table 3, two methods converge. The first is that when the overwhelming majority provides strong evidence for one pattern, that pattern is reconstructed. This is, of course, because of the principle of economy; it is more likely that, in this instance, one of the languages would have instituted dative marking of the direct object than that all ten would independently have begun marking the direct object with the absolutive case. The second method used in reconstructing from Table 3 is the application of internal reconstruction in Udi. Because both an internal and an external explanation exist for adding a second pattern of marking the direct object in Udi, this is the language considered to have changed. Thus we have already seen examples of the use of three means of determining the ancestral syntactic form: phonological evidence, application of the principle of economy, and identification of an internal or external source of innovation in one of the compared languages. Some other methods used successfully in syntax are described below. 2.2.1 Relics Relics provide one important means for determining which is the older syntactic pattern. Syntactic relics often provide clues crucial to the success of comparative reconstruction of syntax. A relic in this sense is an archaic exception. Accepted methods for identifying this kind of relic, in particular distinguishing between innovation and archaism, are discussed in the context of syntax in Harris and Campbell: (i) “An archaism normally recedes over a period of time, whereas an innovation spreads … (ii) Relics often occur in the most commonly used expressions of a language … (iii) Relics are likely to be preserved in proverbs and proverb-like sayings” and other formulaic expressions (1995: 354–355; see also sources cited there). Meillet (1954: 27; 1964: 46) has emphasized the significance of relics in linguistic reconstruction, and this is now generally accepted among Indo-Europeanists. The importance of
Alice C. Harris
this general principle for syntactic reconstruction has been reiterated by Watkins (1976). An example of the use of syntactic relics in Kartvelian is briefly discussed below, and other examples from a variety of languages are included in Harris and Campbell (1995, Chapter 12). Regular case-marking in Kartvelian languages depends in part upon the morphological class of the verb; relevant aspects of this are set out in Table 4. (Verb classes are defined morphologically, but Class 1 corresponds approximately to the class of transitives, Class 2 to the class of unaccusatives, and Class 3 to the class of unergatives.) Table 4. Regular and exceptional case distribution in traditional Series II in three Kartvelian languages (Harris 1985)
Old Georgian (generally) Old Georgian relics Svan (generally) Laz (generally) Laz relics
Subj of Class 1
Subj of Class 3
Subj of Class 2
Dir Obj
nar
nar nom nar nar nom
nom
nom
nom nom
nom nom
nar nar
The fourth language of the family, Mingrelian, is omitted here because it is independently known that its case pattern in this tense-aspect-mood category is innovative, and its origin is easily identified. While all three of the languages in Table 4 use the so-called narrative case productively for the subjects of verbs that belong to morphological class 3, one or two verbs of this class permit nominative subjects. Both variants are illustrated in (18) from Laz, and (19) provides a naturally occurring example of the relic pattern. (18) a. bere-k isters γoǰ is child-nar s/he.play yard.dat ‘The child plays in the yard.’
Laz
b. bere-Ø isters γoǰ is child-nom ‘The child plays in the yard.’
Laz
(19) č’it’a čxom-epe-Ø istet’eenan little fish-pl-nom they.play ‘The little fish played.’
Laz (Asatiani 1974: 12, 149)
It is noteworthy that the pattern illustrated in (18b) and (19) is entirely ungrammatical with other Class 3 verbs, as illustrated in (20). (20) a. bere-k imgars γoǰ is child-nar s/he.cry yard.dat ‘The child cries in the yard.’
Laz
Reconstruction in syntax
b. *bere-Ø imgars γoǰ is child-nom ‘The child cries in the yard.’
Laz
The syntactic pattern of (18b) and (19) is deemed an exception because it has the following properties: (i) it is governed by a verb, ster ‘play’, which has the morphological properties of Class 3,9 and (ii) it does not meet the generalization stated schematically in the line labeled “Laz (generally)” in Table 4. Alone this relic does not provide enough evidence on which to reconstruct, but in combination with other types of evidence it is suggestive. In the example above, the relics were tokens of an entire sentence pattern; but in syntax, relics may alternatively take the form of a morphological index of a morphosyntactic pattern. An example comes from Lezgian gender-class agreement markers. All Lezgian languages except Lezgi, Aghul, and Udi have gender-class agreement. In this system, the verb agrees with its associated absolutive-nominal (subject of an intransitive or direct object), not in person and number, but in gender-class and number. The correspondences among the markers of gender-class III are displayed in Table 5. Table 5. Productive and fossilized markers of gender-class III in Lezgian languages*
Lezgi Tabasaran Aghul Tsakhur Rutul Budukh Kryts Khinalug Archi Udi
Productive
Fossilized
0 (b/v/f)** 0 b/m/v/V: v b/v b/v/p b/v/f/p/0 b 0
b b b
b
(Talibov 1960: 173) (Magometov 1965) (Magometov 1970: 58, 65) (Talibov 1961) (Jeiranišvili 1983: 350 (Alekseev 1994: 276–277) (Saadiev 1994: 423) (Kibrik 1994: 387) (Kibrik 1977: 79) (Jeiranišvili 1956)
*In some instances the allomorphs are more complex than they appear here. It is possible that additional Lezgian languages have fossilized gender-class markers. **Tabasaran has reduced the number of its gender-classes to two; b/v/f is the marker of the neuter, which is the reflex of gender-class III. In this and other languages, orthographic 〈v〉 may be [w] or [v].
. Membership of this verb in Class 3 is determined by morphological criteria stated in Harris (1985, Chapter 3).
Alice C. Harris
The fossilized markers in Lezgi, Tabasaran, Aghul, and Udi occur in the positions occupied by productive gender-class markers in the sister languages. (Tabasaran has both productive and fossilized markers.) From the point of view of reconstruction, the fossils are relics that serve as morphological indices of gender-class III and, by implication, the presence of a system of agreement in terms of gender-class of the sort briefly described above. Thus, relics are extremely useful in the reconstruction of syntax, as in other aspects of the grammar. 2.2.2 Dialect data Dialect data too may point to an earlier state. In the first example discussed in the previous subsection, dialect data from the Svan language point in the same direction as the relic data. In the Nakra-Lakhamula subdialect of the Bal dialect, Class 3 verbs have two syntactic patterns, illustrated in (21–22). (21) a. mare ädšwep’inal man.nom s/he.whistle
Svan
b. mare-m ädšwep’inal-e man-nar s/he.whistle-Ø ‘The man whistled.’
Svan
(22) a. čäž ädkinal däb-isga horse.nom it.run field-in
Svan
b. čäž-d ädkinal-e däb-isga horse.nar it.run-ˇØ field-in ‘The horse ran in the field.’
Svan
In the rest of the Bal dialect, only the (b) pattern is grammatical. In Nakra-Lakhamula, the verb form with the -e suffix requires the ergative case, while the verb form without it requires the nominative. The suffix and case selected do not change the meaning. The (a) pattern, restricted to this subdialect, provides evidence parallel to the relic evidence discussed in the preceding subsection; they are summarized together in Table 6. Table 6. Regular, exceptional, and dialectal case distribution in traditional series II in three Kartvelian languages
Old Georgian (generally) Old Georgian relics Svan (generally) Svan dialect Laz (generally) Laz relics
Subj of Class 1
Subj of Class 3
Subj of Class 2
Dir Obj
nar
nar nom nar nom nar nom
nom
nom
nom
nom
nom
nom
nar nar
Reconstruction in syntax
Dialect data of this sort can help to determine which syntactic patterns to reconstruct.10 (For completion of this reconstruction, see Harris (1985, Chapter 6).) 2.3 Summary We have seen above that one applies the Comparative Method in syntax essentially as in other parts of the grammar. The first step is collection of synchronic data, abstraction of a synchronic syntactic pattern, and setting up correspondence sets with known sister languages. In section 2.1 a syntactic correspondence set was defined as a set of syntactic patterns which are related by virtue of descent from a common ancestral syntactic pattern. There is no universally accepted form for the display of syntactic correspondence sets, nor even a single appropriate form appropriate for all types of syntactic constructions; however, the table format can be adapted for most purposes. The second step in the reconstruction is the determination of the ancestral form. We have seen that the methods for this determination include (i) use of phonological evidence (see Tables 1 and 2), (ii) application of the principle of economy, (iii) identification of an internal or external source of innovation in one of the compared languages (both in Table 3), (iv) use of relics (Tables 4 and 5), and (v) use of dialect data (Table 6). All means of reconstruction must be applied judiciously and based upon a thorough knowledge of the entire grammar of the languages compared. We can see from these examples that reconstruction in syntax is not restricted to correspondences of identity (in which all items compared are identical), as has sometimes been claimed, but in many instances can be accomplished with confidence also with differential correspondence sets. All reconstruction of differential correspondences, in all parts of the grammar, consists of projecting the correspondence back in time until it is, in essence, a correspondence of identity.
3. What do we require of a correspondence? A problem in syntactic reconstruction has been that we have had no established criterion for determining the degree and manner of correspondence we require in our correspondence sets. In phonology, a reconstruction is based on an equation which is abstracted from data. In general, it is required that the compared data be
. Other examples of the use of dialects in reconstruction are given in Campbell (1988) and Harris (1985).
Alice C. Harris
cognate; the cognate words are the patterns that are compared. Is this criterion to be applied also to syntax? In syntax, what corresponds? Harris & Campbell (1995: 348) present as a basis for establishing a correspondence set a group of example sentences from two Kartvelian languages in which the syntactic patterns corresponded and virtually every morpheme is cognate. These sentences are presented for the purpose of illustrating the notion ‘cognate sentence’ and in order to convince the skeptic that these data are properly comparable. But we argue there (1995: 349) that it is not necessary that every word in the sentence (or even in the relevant part of the example) be cognate. In syntax, a pattern can often be established without use of cognate words. As stated above, in order to apply the Comparative Method in syntax (unlike phonology), we must first establish the synchronic patterns by induction. It is the synchronic patterns that we compare in the Comparative Method, and logically it is the patterns that must be ‘cognate’, that is, descended from a shared ancestral pattern. Notice that ‘pattern’ is a flexible term, not one used in the analysis of syntax, such as ‘prepositional phrase’ or ‘relative clause’. A pattern in the sense intended here is a repeated form that is paired with a consistent function or distribution. Consider in this context the following statement: “The way the brain seems to achieve expressive variety is to store not whole sentences, but rather words and their meanings, plus patterns into which words can be placed” (emphasis in original, Jackendoff 1994: 12). We must reconstruct patterns, not grammars or rules, for two reasons. (i) First, the child learning a language has direct access to data, which contains patterns, but she has no direct access to grammars or rules. (ii) Second, a given surface pattern may be the result of different rules, of different grammars. For both reasons, we reconstruct patterns. Logically, because we are not reconstructing specific sentences, it is not sentences that need to be cognate. We are reconstructing syntactic patterns, and it is the patterns that must be cognate. Sentences, sometimes cognate sentences, are used only as examples of patterns, but that should not be mistaken as implying that sentences can be reconstructed. Let us compare this view of ‘pattern’ with the examples given above and consider whether it is necessary for words appearing in the example sentences to be cognate. In section 2.1, we examined data from yes/no questions in Kartvelian languages. The repeated form consists of three elements, (6a–c). The function with which this form is consistently paired is formation of yes/no questions. Where is cognate status relevant? The patterns must be cognate, and it was on the grounds that it was not cognate that the Laz question particle -i was discarded. The question of whether the verbs are cognate, for example, or the subjects is entirely irrelevant because this pattern occurs in principle with any verb, with any subject, etc.
Reconstruction in syntax
In our second example, the general case marking in Lezgian languages, we are concerned with a pattern, (15), which occurs even more frequently; indeed one of the two subpatterns occurs in almost every sentence. The transitive subpattern consists of three elements: (i) the transitive verb, (ii) the ergative subject, (iii) the absolutive direct object (as well as an optional dative indirect object). The intransitive subpattern consists of two elements, (i) the intransitive verb and (ii) the absolutive subject.11 Again, in the correspondence set the patterns must be cognate, but there is no need for the verbs, the subjects, or the objects to be cognate, precisely because the relevant subpattern is used with all relevant verbs, subjects, and objects. Consider the question now in the context of reconstructing a specialized case pattern in this same group of languages. While general case marking in the Lezgian subgroup is ergative-absolutive, as discussed above, there are several minor case patterns peculiar to specific verbs. One example, use of ergative subject and dative object, is set out as a possible correspondence set in Table 7, based on data illustrated in (23–28) quoted from Kibrik’s (1979–81) typological studies. Table 7. Possible correspondence of Ergative-Dative marking in Lezgian languages Subject Lezgi Tabasaran Aghul Tsakhur Rutul Budukh Kryts Khinalug
Object
erg dat erg absl erg dat erg dat erg dat erg dat No comparable construction. No comparable construction. No comparable construction.
Verb ‘wink’ ‘hit’ ‘hit’ ‘hit’ ‘hit’ ‘hit’
Udi and Archi are omitted from Table 7 because secondary developments prevent their shedding any light on the reconstruction.12 . In at least some of the languages, the subject or object or both may be left unexpressed if its referent is understood. . Archi has an Ergative-Dative pattern with some complex verbs, but this pattern is likely to have an origin different from that compared in Table 7. (i) zari towmus ex:Iuk ba’-bo I.erg him.dat cheek.loc kiss [lit. say ‘ba’] ‘I kissed him on the cheek.’ The Udi construction referred to in the text is discussed in section 2.1.
Archi
Alice C. Harris
(23) gada-di rGš-az ul.k’ač’na boy-erg girl-dat winked ‘The boy winked at the girl.’
Lezgi (Kibrik 1980: Fasc. 129: 39)
(24) gada-di rGš jana boy-erg girl.absl hit ‘The boy hit the girl.’
Lezgi (Kibrik 1980: Fasc. 129: 39)
(25) c˚u-c˚:u čuc˚:uz Rivnu brother-erg sister.dat hit ‘The brother hit the sister.’ čhijis jirx̯anaw (26) c˚huj-i brother-erg sister.dat hit ‘The brother hit the sister.’
ɨXIɨ (27) gade-: ič hi-s boy-erg girl-dat hit ‘The boy hit the girl.’ Rixir (28) gad-ije-r rɨšes boy-obl-erg girl.dat hit ‘The boy hit the girl.’
Tabasaran (Kibrik 1985: 281)
Aghul (Kibrik 1979: Fasc. 128: 26)
Tsakhur (Kibrik 1980: Fasc. 129: 4)
Rutul (Kibrik 1980: Fasc. 129: 25)
(Budukh, Khinalug, and Kryts have no Ergative-Dative construction.) Should we require that the words in the compared sentences be cognate? The reconstruction is based not on the comparison of sentences in sister languages, but on the comparison of sentence patterns. It is true, of course, that the patterns are established by induction from recurrent example sentences, but those we see are merely illustrative. As in the instances discussed above, reconstructing depends upon the compared patterns having a common ancestor, and in this instance the pattern consists of the parts in (29). (29) a. a verb with particular phonetic form and the meaning ‘hit’ (except in Lezgi, which arguably does not belong) b. an agent in the ergative case c. a patient (or goal) in the dative case.
The particular phonetic form and meaning of the verb are a crucial part of the pattern, in the sense that if a different verb were substituted for it (for example, the verb ‘love’ or ‘kill’), the resulting sentence would be ungrammatical. The lexeme of the agent and patient (goal), on the other hand, are irrelevant to the pattern, since substituting other noun lexemes for them would not make the sentence ungrammatical. Thus, in this instance, though not in the general case marking patterns in the same languages, the specific verb is part of the pattern and therefore must be cognate across the patterns compared. In the example
Reconstruction in syntax
presented here, and indeed in all examples with narrow lexical government of the pattern, reconstruction without sound-meaning isomorphism in the governing element would be unconvincing.13 Lexically governed patterns, such as Ergative-Dative here, require cognates for reconstruction because the governing element is part of the reconstructed pattern. (In this instance it would be problematic to construct the Ergative-Dative pattern with the verb ‘hit’ even with cognate verb status, since this pattern is found also in neighboring, unrelated languages and may be borrowed.) If the case pattern at issue were governed by a morphological class of verbs, in contrast to lexical government, the morphological class of the verb would be part of the pattern (the distribution). The pattern would be abstracted from many tokens of sentences with a verb in the morphological class at issue. It would thus not be necessary that verbs involved be cognate, only that they belong to the same morphological class. Clearly, however, this can become complex if there are changes over time in the morphological class in one of the languages. A concrete example of reconstruction of a case pattern found with a particular morphological class is found in Harris (1985). Problems remain with the precise correspondences required within a syntactic pattern. The proposal above is intended only as a first step toward making explicit a set of guidelines for required cognates.
4. Reasons for pessimism If reliable reconstruction is possible, why have so many scholars been convinced that it is not? If internal and comparative reconstruction can really be successful in syntax, why have some other researchers expressed a more pessimistic view? The critics cited above provide thoughtful analyses of the extent to which these methods can be used in syntax, and the difference between the examples discussed there and those treated here should be examined. Some researchers have focused exclusively on the Indo-European family, where the oldest attested stages – which must be the source of data for comparison – are not modern languages. This being so, it is impossible to get native speaker responses to the grammaticality of alternative constructions. In the two families I have drawn on for examples (Kartvelian & Nakh-Daghestanian), on the other
. This statement is not intended necessarily to apply to broader minor patterns, such as the so-called inversion verbs of both the Nakh-Daghestanian and Kartvelian languages. These categories have special characteristics, and what must be cognate in order to reconstruct them is still an open question.
Alice C. Harris
hand, only Georgian is a literary language with a long documented history.14 In its sister languages, the only available data are modern, and the linguist therefore can determine which constructions are impossible. A further consequence of the lack of speakers of dead languages is that corresponding data in some areas of syntax are difficult to obtain. Perhaps the most important factor that makes it especially difficult to reconstruct Proto-Indo-European is the relative separation of the major branches of the family and the amount of change various branches have undergone in the relatively greater time involved. Although extensive changes have been made in certain areas of the syntax of the families exemplified here (such as case-marking in Kartvelian), the time depth of division in this family is not so great as those in a number of other families. It is in part the close relationship which makes it possible to establish syntactic correspondences.15 Another reason for the pessimism of some of the skeptics cited above is that they have focused almost entirely on problems of word order reconstruction. As they have observed, reconstruction of this aspect of sentence structure involves special difficulties not encountered with some other areas of syntax. Problems are caused in particular by the fact that many languages have flexible, rather than fixed, word order, as well as by the fact that in a given language order may signal grammatical relations, topic, focus, or other features of sentence structure. However, reconstruction of word order is also possible in some cases, and examples of some procedures that work are given in Harris & Campbell (1995: 355–356, 357–358). Some areas of syntax seem to be especially well suited to reconstruction because (i) the patterns are complex, which can provide a means of ensuring comparability of the data, (ii) the syntax is directly reflected in morphology, and (iii) there is phonological correspondence.16
. Udi, too, is the inheritor of an ancient literary tradition, that of the so-called Caucasian Albanians whose alphabet dates to the fifth century A.D.; but this literary tradition is not continuously attested, and it is at present known only from a handful of inscriptions. Palimpsest texts in the “Albanian” script are currently being prepared for publication by a team of scholars in Georgia, Germany, and France. . These remarks are intended only as part of an explanation of why some Indo-Europeanists are particularly pessimistic about reconstruction. Of course, the richness of resources for the study of other aspects of diachronic syntax in this family more than makes up for any difficulties in reconstruction. . Fox (1995: 105) states that “the option of reconstructing via the phonological features of grammatical categories is not open to us”, but it is easy to see that this is possible in the structure of yes/no questions in Kartvelian (section 2.1).
Reconstruction in syntax
Thus, it seems that the pessimism expressed by other researchers is due in part to special difficulties of word order reconstruction and to characteristics of the language families under consideration. While reconstruction in these areas may be difficult or even impossible, linguists can reasonably take a more optimistic view of the future of syntactic reconstruction in general.
5. Conclusions In this paper I have argued that it is indeed possible to provide reliable reconstructions in syntax, though not, of course, in every instance. Syntactic reconstruction is not reconstruction of sentences, but of patterns, where a syntactic pattern is defined as a repeated form that is paired with a consistent function or distribution. The first step in any reconstruction is setting up correspondences; in syntax these are limited to patterns. As a preliminary proposal toward defining what kinds of identity is required in establishing correspondence sets, it has been suggested here that it is not necessary for all material (especially lexical items) to be cognate; rather, the syntactic pattern must be cognate. In reconstructing we are implicitly choosing among the patterns in a correspondence set, as well as from other patterns possibly ancestral to them. One means of making that selection is based upon syntactic relics; I have suggested that syntactic relics occur under much the same circumstances as do other linguistic relics. Certain exceptions may be identified as relics on the grounds that they have receded over time, and they occur in common expressions. Dialects can also provide evidence of archaisms. Relics and dialect data, together with established phonological correspondences, the principle of economy, and identification of external or internal sources of innovation, provide evidence of earlier stages and can be the basis for syntactic reconstruction. These kinds of evidence and their use in comparative and internal reconstruction of syntax is parallel to that in phonology. The success of reconstruction in syntax is restricted to sentence patterns, and these methods do not lead to the reconstruction of specific sentences. I have addressed the question, ‘If reliable reconstruction is possible, why have so many scholars been convinced that it was not?’ and have suggested that paradoxically reconstruction in Indo-European is more difficult because the time depth is greater, and the compared languages are no longer spoken. Many critics of syntactic reconstruction have focused primarily on word order, which presents special problems for reconstruction. I observed that conditions that favor reconstructibility include (i) the patterns that are especially complex, (ii) syntax that has a morphological correlate, and (iii) the existence of phonological correspondence. With careful comparison of appropriate material, syntactic reconstruction can succeed.
Alice C. Harris
I believe that the future is bright for the diachronic study of syntax and that we have a great deal of work in front of us. We approach that work with a theory of diachronic syntax, firmly rooted in traditions of the past and at the same time capable of responding to new insights into universal grammar. With the perspective on historical change in syntax that has developed in recent years, we can both study attested change and, in many instances, reconstruct with confidence in our methods.
Appendix This appendix provides additional examples of transitive and intransitive verbs from Lezgian languages other than Rutul and Udi, which are illustrated in section 2.1. (30) alfija-di maq˜ala kxˆe-na Alfija-erg article.absl write-aor ‘Alfija wrote an article.’
Lezgi (Haspelmath 1993: 294)
Lezgi (Haspelmath 1993: 338) (31) gada dide-di-n pataw qhfe-na boy.absl mother-obl-gen to return-aor ‘The boy returned to his mother. . . .’ (32) dadiji q’il Xaluji-z t:uvnu mother.erg salt.absl uncle.obl-dat give ‘Mother gave salt to uncle.’ hariʔ aqhnu (33) čhi sister.absl forest find.oneself ‘Sister found herself in the forest.’
Tabasaran (Kibrik 1985: 284)
Tabasaran (Kibrik 1979: Fasc. 128: 3)
čhi uthunaw (34) c˚huj-i brother-erg sister.absl beat ‘The brother beat the sister.’
Aghul (Kibrik 1979: Fasc. 128: 26)
kharq’ajɁa (35) č hi sister.absl work ‘Sister works, is working.’
Aghul (Kibrik 1979: Fasc. 128: 26)
ečh huva (36) gade-: ičhi-s boy-erg girl-dat apple.absl give ‘The boy gave an apple to the girl.’
Tsakhur (Kibrik 1980: Fasc. 129: 5)
(37) gade qhik’u boy.absl die ‘The boy died.’
Tsakhur (Kibrik 1980: Fasc. 129: 4)
Reconstruction in syntax
(38) adә-rә ugu gәdә-z fu jivәǯi father-erg self boy-dat bread.absl give ‘Father gave bread to his son.’ (39) gәdә vixiǯi boy.absl leave ‘The boy left.’
Budukh (Kibrik 1981: Fasc. 141: 15)
Budukh (Kibrik 1981: Fasc. 141: 14)
ʕäkh äǯi (40) bäji-r gädä father-erg boy.absl push ‘Father pushed the boy.’
Kryts (Kibrik 1981: Fasc. 141: 30)
ʕuxurǯi (41) gädä boy.absl come ‘The boy came.’
Kryts (Kibrik 1981: Fasc. 141: 30)
(42) šä buy-u yä pel läk’irätmä our father.dat I.erg money.absl give ‘I give money to our father.’ (43) gada kha-Rišämä boy.absl come ‘The boy came.’
Khinalug (Dešeriev 1959: 24)
Khinalug (Kibrik 1981: Fasc. 141: 3)
References Alekseev, Mikhail E. 1994. “Budukh”. The Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus, Vol. 4, North East Caucasian languages, Part 2, ed. by Rieks Smeets, 259–296. Delmar, N.Y.: Caravan Books. Aristar, Anthony R. 1991. “On Diachronic Sources and Synchronic Pattern: An investigation into the origin of linguistic universals”. Language 67: 1–33. Asatiani, Irine. 1974. Č ’anuri (lazuri) t’ekst’ebi. [Laz Texts]. Tbilisi: Mecniereba. Bleichsteiner, Robert. 1919. Kaukasische Forschungen: Georgische und mingrelische Texte. Wien: Forschungsinstitut für Osten und Orient. Bokarev, E.A. 1960. “Krekonstrukcii padežnoj sistemy pralezginskogo jazyka”. Voprosy grammatiki: Sbornik statej k 75-letiju Akademika I.I. Meščaninova, 43–50. Moskva: Akademija. Campbell, Lyle. 1988. “Syntactic Change in Finnish Dialects”. Historical Dialectology ed. by Jacek Fisiak, 85–110. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Campbell, Lyle. 1990. “Syntactic Reconstruction and Finno-Ugric”. Historical Linguistics 1987: Papers from the Eighth International Conference on Historical Linguistics (=Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 66) ed. by Henning Anderson & E.F. Konrad Koerner, 51–94. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Chung, Sandra. 1978. Case Marking and Grammatical Relations in Polynesian. Austin: University of Texas. Dešeriev, Ju. D. 1959. Grammatika xinalugskogo jazyka. Moskva: Akademija. Fox, Anthony. 1995. Linguistic Reconstruction: An introduction to theory and method. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Alice C. Harris Gamq’reliʒe, Tomas V. & Givi I. Mač’avariani. 1965. Sonant’ta sist’ema da ablaut’i Kartvelur enebši. [The System of Sonants and Ablaut in the Kartvelian Languages]. Tbilisi: Mecniereba. Gildea, Spike. 1998. On Reconstructing Grammar: Comparative Cariban morphosyntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harris, Alice C. 1985. Diachronic Syntax: The Kartvelian case. (= Syntax and Semantics, 18.) New York: Academic Press. Harris, Alice C. 1991. “On the History of the Kartvelian Languages”. The Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus: Kartvelian ed. by Alice C. Harris, 7–83. Delmar, N.Y.: Caravan Press. Harris, Alice C. 2002. Endoclitics and the Origins of Udi Morphosyntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harris, Alice C. & Lyle Campbell. 1995. Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haspelmath, Martin. 1993. A Grammar of Lezgian. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Jackendoff, Ray S. 1994. Patterns in the Mind: Language and human nature. NY: Basic Books. Jacobs, Roderick A. 1975. Syntactic Change: A Cupan (Uto-Aztecan) case study. Berkeley: University of California. Jeffers, Robert J. 1976a. Review of Proto-Indo-European Syntax, by Winfried P. Lehmann (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1974). Language 52: 982–8. Jeffers, Robert J. 1976b. “Syntactic Change and Syntactic Reconstruction”. Current Progress in Historical Linguistics: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Historical Linguistics, ed. by M. William Christie Jr., 1–15. Amsterdam: North Holland. Jeiranišvili, Evg. 1956. “Gramat’ik’uli k’lasis gakvavebuli nišnebi udur zmnebsa da nazmnar saxelebši”. [Fossilized markers of grammatical class in Udi verbs and deverbal nouns]. Iberiul-k’avk’aziuri enatmecniereba 8: 341–362. Jeiranišvili, Evg. 1983. C’axuri da muxaduri (rutuluri) enebi, II: morpologia. [The C’axur and Rutul Languages, II: Morphology]. Tbilisi: Universit’et’i. Jikia, Sergi. 1967. “Turkul-lazuri enobrivi urtiertobidan: 2. Turkuli sint’aksuri k’alk’ebi lazurši”. [On the Turkish-Laz Linguistic Relationship: 2. Syntactic calques of Turkish in Laz]. Orioni: Ak’ak’i Šaniʒes, 367–77. Tbilisi: Universit’et’i. Kaldani, Maksime 1964. “K’itxviti, gansazγvrebiti da gaʒlierebiti nac’ilak’ebi svanurši”. [Interrogative, Definite, and Emphatic Particles in Svan]. Iberiul-k’avk’asiuri enatmecniereba 14: 227–234. Kibrik, Aleksandr E. 1977. Opyt strukturnogo opisanija arčinskogo jazyka. Tom II, Taksonomičeskaja grammatika; Tom III, Dinamičeskaja grammatika. Moskva: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo Universiteta. Kibrik, Aleksandr E. 1979–1981. Materialy k tipologii èrgativnosti. Fascicles 126, 128, 129, 141, including the following articles: 0. “Teoretičeskoe vvedenie”, 1. “Arčinskij jazyk”, 4. “Tabasaranskij jazyk”, 5. “Agul’skij jazyk”, 6. “Caxurskij jazyk”, 7. “Rutul’skij jazyk”, 8. “Lezginskij jazyk”, 17. “Xinalugskij jazyk”, 18. “Buduxskij jazyk”, 19. “Kryzskij jazyk”. Moskva: Institut russkogo jazyka, AN SSSR. Kibrik, Aleksandr E. 1985. “Toward a Typology of Ergativity”. Grammar Inside and Outside the Clause ed. by J. Nichols & A.C. Woodbury, 268–323. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kibrik, Aleksandr E. 1994. “Khinalug”. The Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus, Vol. 4, The North East Caucasian Languages, Part 2 ed. by R. Smeets, 367–406. Delmar, N.Y.: Caravan Press.
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Lightfoot, David W. 1979. Principles of Diachronic Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lord, Carol. 1973. “Serial Verbs in Transition”. Studies in African Lingusitics 4: 269–296. Lord, Carol. 1976. “Evidence for Syntactic Reanalysis: From verb to complementizer in Kwa”. Papers from the Parasession on Diachronic Syntax ed. by Stanford B. Steever, Carol A. Walker & Salikoko S. Mufwene, 179–91. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Lord, Carol. 1993. Historical Change in Serial Verb Constructions. Amsterdam & Philiadelphia: John Benjamins. Magometov, Aleksandr A. 1965. Tabasaranskij jazyk. Tbilisi: Mecniereba. Magometov, Aleksandr A. 1970. Agul’skij jazyk. Tbilisi: Mecniereba. Meillet, Antoine. 1954 [1925] La méthode comparative en linguistique historique. 2nd ed. Paris: Honoré Champion. Meillet, Antoine. 1964. Introduction a l’étude comparative des langues indo-européennes. Alabama: University of Alabama. Norman, William M. & Lyle Campbell. 1978. “Toward a Proto-Mayan Syntax: A comparative perspective on grammar”. Papers in Mayan Linguistics ed. by Nora C. England, 136–56. Columbia: Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri. Robertson, John S. 1980. Pronoun Incorporation in the Mayan Verbal Complex. New York: Garland. Saadiev, Sh. M. 1994. “Kryts”. The Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus, Vol. 4, The North East Caucasian Languages, Part 2 ed. by Rieks Smeets, 407–446. Delmar, N.Y.: Caravan Press. Schmidt, Karl Horst. 1962. Studien zur Rekonstruktion des Lautstandes der südkaukasischen Grundsprache. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner. Talibov, B.B. 1960. “O nekotoryx okamenelyx i poluokamenelyx elementax v strukture lezginskogo jazyka”. Voprosy grammatiki: sbornik statei k 75-letiju akademika I.N. Meščaninova, 168–177. Moskva: Akademija. Talibov, B.B. 1961. “Sistema grammatičeskix klassov v c’axurskom jazyke”. Voprosy izučenija iberijsko-kavkazskix jazykov ed. by E.A. Bokarev, 214–226. Moskva: Akademija. Uturgaiʒe, T. 1966. “K’itxviti -a da -me nac’ilak’ebi kartulši”. [The question particles -a and -me in Georgian]. Iberiul-k’avk’asiuri enatmecniereba 15: 214–226. Watkins, Calvert. 1963. “Preliminaries to a Historical and Comparative Analysis of the Syntax of the Old Irish Verb”. Celtica 6: 1–49. Watkins, Calvert. 1964. “Preliminaries to the Reconstruction of Indo-European Sentence Structure”. Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Linguists ed. by Horace G. Lunt, 1035–45. The Hague: Mouton. Watkins, Calvert. 1976. “Towards Proto-Indo-European Syntax: Problems and pseudo-problems”. Papers from the Parasession on Diachronic Syntax ed. by Stanford B. Steever, Carol A. Walker & Salikoko S. Mufwene, 306–26. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Winter, Werner. 1984. “Reconstructing Comparative Linguistics and the Reconstruction of the Syntax of Undocumented Stages in the Development of Languages and Language Families”. Historical Syntax ed. by Jacek Fisiak, 613–26. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Reconstructing complex structures A typological perspective Ferdinand von Mengden University of Hamburg
Depending of the type of results we wish to achieve, different methods need to be employed in reconstructing proto-languages. In the first part of this paper I shall discuss the Comparative Method and elaborate why, I believe, this method is in principle not suitable for syntactic reconstruction. In the second part of the paper, I shall discuss alternative methods, which, although not unproblematic either, are, in my view, more promising for this purpose from a typological perspective. One is the use of implicational universals and the inferences on diachronic processes that can be drawn from them. In the second approach, cross-linguistic regularities of grammaticalization processes are used to reconstruct complex structures in proto-languages. Both these approaches have in common that they draw on crosslinguistic data, but both also display considerable differences.1
1. What the Comparative Method can do In this paper, I shall argue that, to some extent, the method of reconstruction and the purpose of a particular application of it (i.e., the type of results we want to achieve) are interrelated. In the first part of the paper (§1) I shall assess in how far the Comparative Method can be applied to the reconstruction of more complex linguistic structures (i.e., syntax rather than phonology and morphology). In the second part of this paper (§2), I shall make suggestions on methods to uncover proto-syntax other than the Comparative Method. Finally, there will be some concluding remarks on the types of results we may gain and on the extent to which these results may be employed in linguistic studies. This contribution will discuss syntactic reconstruction primarily from a typologist’s perspective. While different in many respects, what the two approaches I shall present in §2 have in common is the cross-linguistic dimension both approaches
. Thanks to Volker Gast, Florian Haas, Eva Remberger and Natascha Pomino for valuable comments and suggestions on an earlier draft version of this paper.
Ferdinand von Mengden
entail. Therefore, I am not going to present genuinely new ideas on syntactic reconstruction, but it is my aim to discuss ideas already expressed in a slightly different light. That is, I shall try to show, that typological issues and research questions traditionally ascribed to the field of Historical Linguistics are often closely related and may in many cases be regarded as two sides of the same coin. 1.1 Reconstruction vs. phylogenetic classification Although a distinction between ‘reconstruction’ and ‘genetic classification’ is intuitively clear, the two research questions have not always been kept apart. The reason for this is that the most successful method in establishing a phylogenetic taxonomy, the Comparative Method, has proved successful also for deriving statements on properties of unattested languages. No doubt the Comparative Method – if applied to phonology – has been an extremely successful means for establishing genetic relationships among languages. One result of such a classification is that the existence of unattested parent languages such as Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Finno-Ugric etc. could be postulated on a sufficient basis of data. These data – in the case of each of the major language phyla which we nowadays assume to exist – consist of a sufficiently large number of correspondences of sounds and/or morphs, so that the general genetic affiliation of a set of sister languages can be postulated. But in how far do the results of our comparison provide us with information about the postulated protolanguage itself? Without going into the details of the Comparative Method, I should like to discuss briefly the limits of the Comparative Method for reconstruction in general. Let me illustrate my point in the context of phonological reconstruction (§1.1) before I consider the consequences which we might have to draw for the reconstruction of syntax (§1.2). Lightfoot (2002b: 620–1) mentions the example of the words for ‘five’ in the modern Romance languages. Comparing them, we get the following set of data in (1): (1) a. Rumanian: b. Italian: c. Spanish: d. French:
Ÿ / twintwi/ Ÿ / twiŋkwe/ Ÿ Ÿ / θiŋko/, s-/ Ÿ / sε ̃(k)/
The first result we can achieve by comparison of the data in (1) is that, according to the regular correspondences in each phonotactic slot of the sample, the four languages are genetically related and, in other words, that the four languages are all derived from the same parent language, which we call ‘Proto-Romance’. This primary result, the establishment of the genetic relationship of the languages examined in (1) can be verified by numerous other sets of data from the same
Reconstructing complex structures: A typological perspective
languages, where we would find matching regularities in the way the phonemes in each phonotactic slot correspond to each other within this sample of languages. Our next step would be the reconstruction of the word for ‘five’ in the common parent language. For this purpose, our sample in (1) proves to be insufficient, as we can see from the data of Latin, a language closely related to Proto-Romance.2 With our knowledge of the Latin form spelled 〈quinque〉, we do not have great difficulties postulating a change /kw-/ > /tw-/ > /s-/, /θ-/. However, without the data from Latin, a reconstruction by means of the Comparative Method would lead us to postulate some front fricative or affricate – a sound phonetically quite distinct from the Latin labiovelar. While the primary result of our comparison – the genetic relationship of the languages in (1) – remains unchallenged, this example shows that when it comes to the reconstruction of the actual properties of a proto-language, we can postulate a systemic entity – a phoneme – which develops into /tw/, /s/, or /θ/ in the respective daughter languages, but we cannot even make an approximate statement as to the realisation of that very phoneme in the parent language.3 Before moving on to the next step – the Comparative Method and its usefulness for syntactic reconstruction – I should like to point out that where there are attempts to establish a phylogenetic classification among a set of languages by a method other than the Comparative Method, the results still need to be checked against the Comparative Method in order to be verified. For instance, Longobardi’s (2003) suggestion to draw on syntactic patterns rather than on phonological units is – if it will prove to be applicable – promising as it would enable us to employ
. I shall leave unconsidered whether Latin is a predecessor of Proto-Romance (cf. e.g., Balles, this volume) or whether the two languages are actually sisters (cf. e.g., Hall 1974: 9–17 and 1976: 9–12). . As for more debated cases I would infer from this example that it is only of secondary importance to identify the ‘real’ phonetic values of the reconstructed entities. Take for instance the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European stops: both models on the stops of the ProtoIndo-European system, the traditional analysis and the one postulated originally by Hopper and by Gamkrelidze/Ivanov (cf. the discussion in Fox (1995: 253–60)), assume three sets of four stops for Proto-Indo-European and – although not as far-reaching as a precise assignment of phonetic values to each of the twelve sounds – this alone is a statement which categorises the Proto-Indo-European system in the range of cross-linguistically attested consonant systems. And this alone gives us insight into how the consonant systems of the various daughter languages came into being. A similar issue has been solved much more in line with our considerations: in Indo-European Linguistics it has become conventional to simply index the three laryngeals postulated for Proto-Indo-European (i.e., h1, h2, h3) instead of trying to assign (if only approximate) phonetic values to them. What matters is the postulation of an entity and of its position in the system rather than its precise value.
Ferdinand von Mengden
a completely different kind of data, i.e., patterns of elements rather than linguistic segments. Longobardi suggests to determine degrees of genetic relatedness by quantifying the extent to which ‘parameter settings’ in different languages agree or disagree. However, as Longobardi points out himself (2003: 88) his results need to be “check[ed] if the same tree results as on lexical grounds.”4 For the time being, this means that the Comparative Method is taken as a reliable (and, to my knowledge, the only undisputed) method for establishing phylogenetic classifications. 1.2 The Comparative Method and syntactic reconstruction If we now apply the Comparative Method to syntactic structures (as e.g., suggested by Harris & Campbell 1995), we shall see that the difficulties we have discussed in the previous section (difficulties which, admittedly, were partly due to my adopting a particularly tricky example) will multiply. Cf. the data in (2): (2) a. Romanian: b. Italian: c. Spanish: d. French:
Ai cumpǎrat (un) cîine? Hai comprato un cane? Has comprado un perron? As-tu acheté un chien? aux.2sg buy.ptc indf dog “Have you bought a dog?”
Harris & Campbell (1995: 327–8) postulate ‘sentence patterns’ as corresponding types, equivalent to phonemes in phonology. The set of data in (2) is such a set of corresponding sentence patterns in the sense of Harris & Campbell. In all the examples we have a periphrastic (analytic) verbal structure marking perfect tense/ aspect that includes, preceding the main verb, a finite auxiliary bearing a person marker. Moreover, we have a nominal which is obligatorily marked for [+ count/ indefinite] in Italian, French and Spanish and an identical element in Romanian
. It should be noted in this context that the Comparative Method is primarily applied to the smallest distinctive units, i.e., to phonemes, but not to lexical units as Longobardi (2003) implies. To a considerable degree we may likewise employ the Comparative Method for morphemes, as morphemes are atomic in the sense that they constitute the smallest correlations between form and meaning/function. This, in turn, includes both grammatical and lexical morphemes, but not lexemes, as the latter could be complex formations such as compounds, phrasal expressions or idioms. Yet, because lexical morphemes can be reconstructed to a considerable number, the study of etymology has widely benefited from the Comparative Method.
Reconstructing complex structures: A typological perspective
which is optional. The structure resulting from a reconstruction by the Comparative Method would be the one in (3): 5 (3) Proto-Romance: *Habes compara-t-? un-? canis? aux.2sg buy-ptc-? indf dog “Have you bought a dog?”
We seem to be facing similar problems as we did in our phonological reconstruction above, as can be seen from the corresponding sentence in Classical Latin in (4): (4) Classical Latin: Compara-v-isti can-em? buy-pst-1.sg dog-acc.sg “Have you bought a dog?”
The structures in (3) and (4) differ in no less than three important grammatical features: the Latin verb is marked synthetically while the verbal structure in Proto-Romance is an analytic one. The indefinite marker which necessarily needs to be reconstructed for Proto-Romance is absent in Latin and, thirdly, the data in (2) show no indication of the accusative case marker on the Latin noun. As in the above case of phonological reconstruction, we can see more drastically that employing the Comparative Method for approximating the syntax of the parent language provides results that are potentially misleading. Apparently, it seems even more difficult to aim for approximate statements on the structure of a proto-language by mere comparison of ‘syntactic patterns’ than by comparing phonemes. But, as we shall see, there is an additional problem involved in applying the Comparative Method to syntactic patterns. Complex structures are much more liable to be influenced to contact induced changes than are individual morphemes and phonemes. While contact induced interferences with the linguistic system also provide difficulties to the Comparative Methods at all linguistic levels, these difficulties are more severe when it comes to comparing syntactic structures. This can be seen if we extend our sample in (2) by a few more languages; cf. (5):
. For the sake of convenience I restrict myself to the syntactic structure and, instead of reconstructing the underlying proto-forms as well, I employ the Classical Latin morphemes.
Ferdinand von Mengden
(5) a. Rumanian: b. Italian: c. Spanish: d. French: e. English: f. Swedish:
Ai cumpǎrat (un) Hai comprato un Has comprado un As-tu acheté un Have you bought a Har du köpt en aux.2.sg buy.ptc indf “Have you bought a dog?”
cîine? cane? perron? chien? dog? hund? dog
Just like in (2), all the six sentence patterns in (5) are corresponding patterns in Harris & Campbell’s sense. Applying the Comparative Method to the data of (5) we would come to the result that the languages in (5e) and (5f) seem to be likewise genetically related to each other and to the languages of (5a-d).6 We could perhaps make an attempt to suggest a sub-division such that language (5a) represents an indivdual sub-branch because of the optionality of the use of un. Second, we would suggest that the languages of (5d-e) form a sub-branch of its own because of the overt expression of the personal pronoun. In sum, our results would come closer to an areal classification of the sample language than to a genetic classification. If we are looking for an adequate method to reconstruct syntax, we may find a clue in the question as to why the Comparative Method is inadequate for syntactic reconstruction. In the following section I shall briefly discuss one of the crucial properties of the Comparative Method which not only renders it inadequate for syntactic reconstruction but which also provides a key criterion for generally assessing methods for syntactic reconstruction. 1.3 Correspondence and diachronic identity One of the crucial misunderstandings between Lightfoot (2002a: 122–4) and Harris & Campbell centres on the notion of ‘corresponding patterns’. Campbell & Harris (2002: 606) admit that “[c]ognate sentences cannot, of course, be descended from a shared sentence (except in formulaic language, as in legal codes, proverbs, etc.)” in the same way as phonemes and morphemes of sister languages can be cognate. Nevertheless, they employ this notion to ‘syntactic patterns’: “[sentences] are examples of shared patterns descended from a pattern in the proto-language. […] In addition, the sentences in (1) are characterized by cognate lexical items.” (2002: 606–7.) If I understand Harris & Campbell correctly they extend the notion of ‘cognateness’ and ‘correspondence’ to instances where
. To simplify things, I leave lexical and phonological correspondences out of consideration and restrict myself to matters of syntactic patterns and their correspondences.
Reconstructing complex structures: A typological perspective
syntactic structures and their particular functions parallel each other in two or more languages under comparison. The problem seems to be that both ‘cognateness’ and ‘correspondence’ have a different meaning as prerequisites of the Comparative Method than in the way they are transferred to the domain of syntax by Harris & Campbell. In the Comparative Method, of two (or more) entities to be cognate (and thus to correspond) means that there is a diachronic identity between an item in a daughter language and an item in the parent language.7 Items in sister languages correspond if (and only if) they go back to one and the same item in the parent language. For example, irrespective of the exact phonological value of the initial consonant in the Proto-Romance expression for ‘five’, the initial consonants in (1) are all derived from one and the same systemic unit in the proto-language. Such a correspondence – correspondence in the sense of ‘diachronic identity’ – is impossible for sentences, simply because, sentences are not segments of a system but a potentially infinite number of recursively generated combinations of such segments. Because sentences (but also lower-level constructions like phrases, compounds etc.) do not have a well-defined position in a system, that is, in a systematic inventory of segments, they cannot correspond to each other in a way that would be required for the Comparative Method; cf. Lightfoot (1979: 163). In other words, we can establish diachronic identity between phonemes (and morphemes) of the parent language and one or more of its daughters but not between complex structures. Once variation occurs, a phoneme continues to exist as a systemic unit. It may vary in its phonological realisation, but it retains its distinction against the neighbouring unit in the system. Even in the case of a merger or a split, a phoneme in a daughter language continues to be identical with a phoneme in the parent language. The same applies (with some restrictions) to morphemes, but not to composite units, i.e., not to syntax, not alone because in complex structures, variation may occur at different segments of the structure. In this sense, the Comparative Method draws on individual segments of a system but not on complex formations comprising several such segments. Therefore the Comparative Method compares (and reconstructs) phonemes and also
. For the notion of ‘diachronic identity’ cf. C. Lehmann (2004: 156–7), but see also the more sceptical view in Dahl (2004: 141–2). I agree with Dahl that, for instance, layering or a phonemic split cannot be sufficiently described by the mere formula ‘x becomes y’. But the phenomenal aspect of such processes is exactly the fact that two entities are derived from one and the same source in a historically earlier stage of the system. Thus, without underlying the notion of diachronic identity there would be no way of describing phenomena like layering or phonemic splits.
Ferdinand von Mengden
morphemes. Syntactic reconstruction, in contrast, seeks to reconstruct complex structures. Whether or not we interpret the notion of ‘syntax’ in a wide sense and include any complex structure from an inflected form to the sub- and coordination of sentences is a different matter, fact is that syntax begins where the Comparative Methods begins to fail us, that is, at the point when two (or more) segments are being combined.8
2. Reconstructing proto-syntax My conclusion that it is generally impossible to reconstruct the syntax (or, for that matter, the grammar) of a proto-language by means of the Comparative Method does not mean that we should not look for other methods for reconstructing syntactic structures of unattested historical stages of a language. If we wish to uncover proto-syntax, we need to employ methods which, other than the Comparative Method (and also other than Internal Reconstruction) grant access to complex structures (syntagmatic relations) rather than segmental units (paradigmatic relations). In the remaining part of this paper, I should like to discuss two methods of reconstruction. One way to successfully access complex structures of protolanguages is to draw diachronic inferences from synchronic data on correlations of particular grammatical features. The second is linked with the unidirectionality of linguistic change, in particular of grammaticalization processes. I shall discuss the advantages and disadvantages in the following subsections. 2.1 Implicational universals The proposal to identify a specific diachronic relation between two syntactic features by inference from implicational universals is not new and attempts to employ implicational universals in linguistic reconstruction have been widely discussed. The underlying idea if we employ typological considerations for the reconstruction
. Moreover, we saw above that completely parallel syntactic structures, are not necessarily diachronically identical. What Harris & Campbell refer to as ‘correspondences’ in ‘syntactic patterns’, are in fact parallels, independent of how they came into being, i.e., independent of whether or not they are diachronically identical. In other words, a reconstruction drawing on parallel ‘syntactic patterns’, indeed on parallel complex structures in general, entails the risk of comparing analogues, whereas the Comparative Method requires the comparison of homologues. Therefore, before making statements on complex structures (of whatever kind) of a proto-language, the genetic relationship of the languages on which our reconstruction is based needs to have been established already. Cf. also the discussions in Jeffers (1976: 4–6), Winter (1984: 618) and Pires & Thomason (this volume: §3).
Reconstructing complex structures: A typological perspective
of earlier stages of a language is quite simple: if there are certain constraints with respect to a possible structure of a language, then language change is restricted in a way that both the source and the target of a particular development can only represent a possible (attested) language type.9 On the basis of Greenberg’s (1963) study, clusters of co-occurrence sets – basically concerning operator–operand co-occurrences, such as the observation that OV-languages tend to have postpositions and noun-adjective order while a significant number of VO-languages have prepositions and adjective-noun order – have been employed for drawing inferences on the structure of a protolanguage. In the early attempts to employ typology for linguistic reconstruction (e.g., W.P. Lehmann 1974; Vennemann 1974; Friedrich 1975), the focus had been on a postulated ‘strive towards consistency’. Where a language is typologically inconsistent in that it does not conform to one ideal type (e.g., co-occurrence of VO-order and postpositions), it is hypothesised that this language is in the process of developing from one consistent type to the other. Typological inconsistency is accordingly an indicator of linguistic change and the way in which a language displays inconsistencies allows conclusions on previous stages, i.e., consistent stages from which that language is developing away. The weakest point in this reasoning, it has been argued, is that if we assume typological constraints to be valid at all times in history, then they should be valid for proto-languages, too. In other words, if attested languages all show typological inconsistencies in one or the other respect, then we cannot assume that a protolanguage is necessarily entirely consistent. Another problem with this approach is the fact that many of the universals originally formulated by Greenberg (1963) showed exceptions. The universals were therefore statistical universals but not absolute universals and once exceptions defied the validity of a statement any inference drawn from this statement is itself weakened in its validity.10
. For a theoretical discussion of the diachronic character of implicational universals cf. also Plank & Schellinger (2000). . However, with respect to Lightfoot’s (2002b: 624) remarks it should be noted in this context that a ‘statistical universal’ is an “almost-universal”, i.e., a property that is found in almost all languages (of a sample), and that counter-examples are attested only in a statistically negligible number. A statistical universal is therefore not about a “less common” or a “more common” property – as Lightfoot implies – but about a statistically insignificant number of exceptions. Although potentially counter-evidence to a universal statement, a 2%-type (as opposed to a 98%-type) calls for an explanation and is phenomenal for this reason. In contrast, a cross-linguistic statement made on the basis of, say, a share of 70% versus 30% of the sample languages, is insignificant and certainly not a statistical universal.
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It seems that, when Hawkins (1983) presented a considerably revised version of the typological approach – taking into account the relevant points of criticism – a series of critical assessments of the early typological approaches of the 1970’s had already made the pendulum swing in the opposite direction. The typological approach was held to be suitable for reconstruction only in a very limited way and as such to be not very promising.11 While Hawkins’ study was highly acknowledged in the field of linguistic typology, his suggestions for syntactic reconstruction presented in the final chapter of his book were of secondary importance for synchronically oriented typologists. And linking typology with syntactic reconstruction, it seems, was no longer on the agenda in the eighties and early nineties.12 Yet, Hawkins improved the method in several respects.13 First, he expanded the original Greenbergian sample on which the reconstructionists of the 1970’s had drawn. Second, while Greenberg (1963: 110–3) formulated implicational statements containing two arguments, Hawkins’s implication often contain three, sometimes four arguments (i.e., ‘if a, then b’ is expanded to ‘if a, then if b then c’). Although some of the universals with which Hawkins operates are statistical, by including several factors to an implication Hawkins could dispose of a considerable number of statistical universals and replace them by absolute statements. The most significant improvement in Hawkins’ chapter on syntactic reconstruction (1983: 261–79) is that he deduces diachronic statements from implicational universals. That is, the way Hawkins tries to gain access to unattested stages of a language is not primarily by assuming a ‘drive towards consistency’, but by rendering implicational statements into diachronic predictions (i.e., backward predictions, for that matter). The idea is based on implicational universals of the form ‘if a, then b’. While synchronic in character, such a statement logically has a diachronic implication. It entails that we have four different types of languages that are logically possible: {〈a, b〉; 〈a, –b〉; 〈–a, b〉; 〈–a, –b〉}. If the two features a and b are in an implicational relation to each other such that the existence of a presupposes the existence of b, then, of the four logically possible language types, only three are attested: {〈a, b〉; 〈–a, b〉; 〈–a, –b〉}, but type *〈a, –b〉 does not exist. Even if there were no known cross-linguistic constraints on possible linguistic changes,
. Among the most frequently quoted critics are Jeffers (1976); Watkins (1976); Lightfoot (1979); Campbell & Mithun (1983); Vennemann (1984); Winter (1984). . Typological considerations, however, played an increasing role in phonological reconstruction in the late eighties and early nineties, though not in the reconstruction of syntax; cf. Fox (1995: 253). . Before publishing his 1983 study, Hawkins develops his theory in earlier papers; cf. Hawkins (1979) and (1980).
Reconstructing complex structures: A typological perspective
we would be able to deduce from the synchronic evidence a diachronic statement specifying that if a language has both features, a and b, then b must have existed at a historical stage previous to the emergence of feature a.14 A synchronic implication based on empirical cross-linguistic evidence is thus converted into a diachronic generalisation that is likewise cross-linguistically valid. While the claim that languages strive towards an ideal type, in which theoretically all operator-operand-orders conform to each other is retained (and re-formulated by Hawkins as a principle of ‘Cross-Categorial Harmony’), ‘consistency’ as a factor for reconstruction is limited to the generally accepted idea that a reconstructed proto-language cannot represent an otherwise unattested type (Hawkins 1983: 263). Thus, Hawkins does not reject the notion of ‘typological consistency’. The difference is that he employs it as an explanans for word order change, but not as a factor sufficient for predicting change. Hawkins (1983: 263–4) applies this principle to what he refers to as “Late Common Germanic”, i.e., Common Germanic of the period between ad 200 and 600. The Germanic of this period is attested only in a number of short runic inscriptions. They contain possessive pronouns, demonstratives and adjectives all following the noun. They also contain prepositions but they lack postpositions. Finally, the inscriptions do not contain any relative clauses. In preceding chapters of his study Hawkins has identified the following implicational universal – all but one of the form ‘if a, then b’, one of the form ‘if a, then if b, then c’ (6a) – which he then employs for deducing statements on syntactic properties of Late Common Germanic: (6) a. NPoss ⊃ NA (Hawkins 1983: 109) b. NDem ⊃ NA (Hawkins 1983: 81) c. Prep ⊃ (NA ⊃ NRel) (Hawkins 1983: 74) d. NDem ⊃ NRel (Hawkins 1983: 84) e. NPoss ⊃ NRel (Hawkins 1983: 111)
From these implicational statements we can logically deduce that relative clauses in Late Common Germanic were postposed to the noun. So far, the existence of varying types within one language is not considered. Hawkins therefore includes the possibility of synchronic variation between two opposing properties (i.e., both a and –a exist in one and the same synchronic variety) into his implications. Again on the basis of purely logical deductions, Hawkins
. Theoretically, this includes the possibility of both features emerging at the same time, but since contemporaneousness in language change is difficult to measure, we may disregard this possibility here.
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(1983: 264) postulates a “law of reconstruction” which he labels “The Reconstruction of Doubling Innovations”: Given: (a) a set of synchronic implicational universals of the form ‘if P then Q’, where P and Q represent one or more linguistic properties; and (b) the earliest records of a language L (L may be extinct, or else a contemporary language with no recorded history); Then: (1) if L has exclusive P word orders and doubling on Q (i.e., P & –Q/Q), deduce that Q is the more recent innovating doublet, and –Q the historical relic; (2) if L has doubling on P and –Q word orders (i.e., –P/P & –Q), deduce that –P is the more recent innovating doublet, and P the historical relic; (3) if L has doubling on P and exclusive Q word orders (i.e., –P/P & Q), exclusive –P word orders and doubling on Q and (i.e., –P & –Q/Q), deduce nothing.
Applying this principle, as a first step, Hawkins (1983: 265) refers to the following two implicational universals which he has identified previously: first, the constituent order noun–possessive pronoun is universally attested to presuppose noun– genitive order (7a), and second, in prepositional languages noun–adjective order is cross-linguistically attested to presupposes noun–genitive order (7b). (7) a. NPoss ⊃ NG (Hawkins 1983: 110) b. Prep ⊃ (NA ⊃ NG) (Hawkins 1983: 66)
Now, Late Common Germanic is attested/reconstructed to have noun–possessive order and noun–adjective order, but varies in the order between noun and genitive (8): (8) Late Common Germanic (Hawkins 1983: 265): a. NPoss b. NA c. NG/GN
On the basis of the data in (7) and (8), Hawkins (1983: 265) deduces that, of the two word order types attested for ‘Late Common Germanic’, genitive–noun and noun–genitive, the genitive–noun order cannot be an innovation but must be older than the noun–genitive order. In the following Hawkins (1983: 265–78) develops a couple of other diachronic implications and offers reconstructions of word order co-occurrences in Germanic, Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Bantu. Because his deductions are all quite complex, i.e., because the implications all involve a number of interrelated arguments, they are all on a methodologically safe basis. However, being a considerable advantage compared to the typological approaches of the 1970’s with respect to methodology, the complexity of Hawkins’ implications is at the same time a major disadvantage. Very close scrutiny of the data and a careful assessment of whether the logical implications apply to the languages under comparison
Reconstructing complex structures: A typological perspective
is needed if this method is employed in syntactic reconstruction. This, in turn, requires a profound knowledge of the (earliest stages of) the daughter languages under comparison including knowledge on the historical background of the records that provide us with the linguistic data. It should also be noted that Hawkins’s ‘Reconstruction of Doubling Innovations’ predominantly refers to the relative chronology of doublets or of two variants rather than to the reconstruction of an unattested (synchronic) grammar. But given the difficulties involved in (and the generally pessimistic view on) the reconstruction of proto-syntax, this alone is probably a great achievement. I am inclined to believe that it is the complexity of the implications, requiring both detailed data of the languages under comparison and a whole set of implicational universals that are likewise drawn on a sound methodological and empirical basis, that is responsible for the fact that – as far as I am aware – there have not been any attempts to reconstruct syntactic structures according to Hawkins’ method. Irrespective of this, Hawkins’ approach represents a considerable improvement on the early attempts to employ typology in linguistic reconstruction. Moreover, in contrast to the Comparative Method, Hawkins’ method is not dependent on the ‘diachronic identity’ between a feature in a recorded language and its predecessor in a parent language, which, as we said above, is one of the methodological obstacles in the Comparative Method for reconstructing syntax as proposed by Harris & Campbell (cf. §1.3). Yet, as we shall see in the next section, there are particular kinds of linguistic changes which allow operating with diachronically identical elements for syntactic reconstruction. 2.2 Grammaticalization and syntactic reconstruction There have been attempts to reconstruct complex structures of unattested languages by referring to regularities in language change, particularly assumed regularities that can be observed when lexemes or conventionalised constructions acquire grammatical functions, as for instance in the case of the Romance future marker dormire habeo > French dormirai; Italian dormirò or English going to > gonna. If cross-linguistic regularities in the development of constructions into grammatical markers can be identified, then these regularities would theoretically have a potential for being employed in syntactic reconstruction. Such changes have commonly been subsumed under the label ‘grammaticalization’ and since there is no better term at hand I shall employ it here. It should be conceded, however, that the notion ‘grammaticalization’ is problematic in so far as it is nowadays employed for several considerably different types of changes. Even if we delimit the discussion to those changes that affect complex constructions, a closer look will reveal that there are slightly different changes going on in the
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individual instances. Take, for instance, the two examples given above. In the former case the Latin verb habere first becomes an inflected part of an analytic structure and then develops into an inflectional affix while the main verb dormire never changes its shape or its status as a lexical verb. In the case of English going to > gonna, in contrast, both elements fuse together and become one grammatical marker. Even if we disregard the univerbated form gonna, once the construction going to is used as a TAM-marker, it can be analysed as one grammatical marker and the fact that it consists of two elements is relevant only from an etymological perspective. In the following, I shall largely disregard the problems that emerge from employing the notion ‘grammaticalization’ in a rather wider sense, i.e., as comprising several changes which in one way or another affect the grammar of a language. What matters for our discussion is that there are types of linguistic change in which complex structures (whether inflected forms, phrases, idioms or even larger syntactic constructions) develop into segmental items such that they can synchronically be analysed as morphemes. Although not operating with the term grammaticalization – its potential for reconstructing syntagmas of proto-languages has first been discussed by Givón (1971). More recently, Givón (2000: 114–9) explicitly includes the notion of grammaticalization for his reconstruction. He identifies analytic verb structures of Proto-Bantu from idiosyncrasies in the use of Swahili verbal infixes. Actually illustrating Internal Reconstruction, his main argument draws on pathways of grammaticalization from main verbs to modals (and further to TAM-markers). While Internal Reconstruction explains a synchronic idiosyncrasy as an historical relic, Givón (2000: esp. 116–7) applies well attested grammaticalization processes (TAM-markers from modality verbs) to deduce a hypothesis on the lexical source of the idiosyncratic affix (modal verbs taking complements) and, hence, on the respective syntactic construction in Proto-Bantu (modal verb + complement). Particularly the famous slogan concluding Givón’s (1971) paper – “Today’s morphology is yesterday’s syntax” (Givón 1971: 413) – indicates that his approach is a universal one in the sense that the underlying assumption is that every grammatical morpheme once was either a free form or a complex structure. The idea is intriguing, particularly for reconstruction, because if this is the case, all that is left for us is to identify the respective sources. C. Lehmann (2002 [1982]: 17) presents a very optimistic view on this matter: “Given two variants which are related by the parameters of grammaticalization […], we can always tell which way grammaticalization goes, or must have gone. The significance of this for the purpose of internal reconstruction is obvious […].” In another contribution, C. Lehmann again points out the significance for grammaticalization studies in reconstruction, but at the same time argues against the use of reconstructs for the identification of grammaticalization processes: reconstructions, C. Lehmann argues, are hypotheses based on our knowledge of, among other things, cross-linguistically
Reconstructing complex structures: A typological perspective
observable pathways of change (cf. below §3). To infer from those reconstructions on patterns of change, would be circular (C. Lehmann 2004: 156). Although not implausible, as long as we cannot be sure that every grammatical morpheme has developed on a grammaticalization path, identifying the source (whether a lexeme or a complex structure) first requires evidence that the alleged target morpheme is actually a grammaticalized form. Lightfoot’s remark (2002a: 127) – that “[i]f languages did progress the way that grammaticalization theory suggests, then one might reconstruct more or less ungrammaticalized proto-systems […]” – overlooks the possibility that proto-systems may have had other grammatical elements which in the meantime have eroded down to zero – a scenario well considered in studies on grammaticalization. On the other hand, it is exactly this radical idea expressed by Lightfoot which leads Heine & Kuteva (2002b) to reconstruct languages at an early stage of the evolution of mankind. They assume that these early instances of human language did consist of concrete words only (2002b: 390–1). Thus, according to them, we only have to travel back the assumed pathways of grammaticalization in order to reconstruct what we might call ‘palaeo-languages’. As many attempts to reconstruct the linguistic past, Heine & Kuteva’s approach will remain hypothetical. The crucial point here is that they suspend a claim which has become fundamental to present-day Historical Linguistics, and, particularly to linguistic reconstruction: that languages of the past represent the same types of structures that are attested for the languages of today. In contrast to this, Heine & Kuteva (2002b: 394) explicitly assume that palaeo-languages are typologically distinct from contemporary languages. This is as such quite feasible since human language must necessarily have begun in a more primitive shape with less complex structures. However, the problem is that such an assumption would also affect the known principles of language change. Current theories of language change have been developed under exactly this presupposition, i.e., that natural languages are typologically consistent across time. This applies to one of the most frequently attested principles of language change, viz. grammaticalization, a concept based on the identification of cross-linguistically parallel pathways of linguistic change. To draw on the principles in order to reach a stage much further back in history and to suspend at the same time one of its fundamental underlying assumptions bears the danger of logical inconsistency. Considering this, we shall live on a safer ground if we try to reconstruct proto-languages rather than palaeo-languages. There are two properties of grammaticalization which make this type of linguistic change generally attractive for syntactic reconstruction: one is its inherent unidirectionality, the second is the erosion of form involved in this process. The latter allows to identify complex structures in proto-languages with segmental items in attested languages. The grammaticalization processes relevant for
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syntactic reconstruction can be taken as a morphosyntactic analogy to what is a split in phonological change (cf. my remark above in fn. 7). This particular kind of diachronic identity makes reconstruction through grammaticalization processes a close neighbour of Internal Reconstruction. Both methods use language internal data as a basis for reconstruction. There is, however, one fundamental difference between the two. Internal Reconstruction compares regularities with idiosyncrasies in the paradigms of a daughter language, whereas grammaticalization ‘compares’ elements in a daughter language with target categories of cross-linguistically salient pathways of change. This particular kind of ‘comparison’ is possible under the assumption that these cross-linguistically observable processes are unidirectional. A short remark on the notion of unidirectionality in linguistic change is needed at this point since there have been some misunderstandings about the role of unidirectionality in grammaticalization and in linguistic change in general (cf., for instance, the contributions in the 2001 volume of Language Sciences and – on the other side – the discussions in Haspelmath (1999; 2004) and C. Lehmann (2004: 170–81). As I see it, the assumed unidirectionality of grammaticalization processes is trivial because as long as it is accepted that ‘grammaticalization’ (irrespective of the problem that it should be defined more precisely; cf. above) involves the development of lexical material into grammatical elements – or, as many add, of grammatical elements to even ‘more grammatical’ elements – then any grammaticalization process is naturally unidirectional because it is so defined. This does, of course, not entail that other types of linguistic changes may go in another direction, “up the cline” from the grammatical domain to the lexical domain. But these processes have nothing to do with grammaticalization and should be seen in the light of different forces at work. The fact that they run in the opposite direction of grammaticalization does not say anything about grammaticalization processes and their (inherent) direction. Dahl (2004: 144–5) illustrates this point by referring to ski jumping: although nobody would deny that ski jump always and exceptionlessly goes into the same direction, i.e., downwards, there must still be a way for the ski jumper to get on top. To modify Dahl’s example: simply because there are several ways for me to get from street level to the fourth flour, there is no reason to deny that gravity (causing me to fall downwards when I jump out of the window at the fourth flour) is not a universally valid, unidirectional and exceptionless physical law. To come back to reconstruction: although grammaticalization processes may in theory serve as a clue in the reconstruction of complex structures in unattested languages, there are considerable methodological difficulties involved. One is that the postulated cross-linguistic ‘pathways’ need to be substantiated not only by a larger sample of languages than it is commonly done. We also need more profound background information on the (pragmatic and sociolectal) circumstances in
Reconstructing complex structures: A typological perspective
which the data were collected and edited. A collection of cross-linguistic pathways of grammaticalization as has been provided in Heine & Kuteva’s (2002a) World Lexicon is a good reference list to get an overview on possible semantic changes across the lexical/grammatical divide. But to serve as a basis for examining deterministic patterns of change – and thus to serve as a means of comparison in reconstruction – the postulated pathways are too superficial – both in their empirical basis and in the way they are formulated. Let us now look at a case of successful reconstruction in the context of a grammaticalization processes that does not operate with the unidirectionality-based target/source relations. Longobardi’s (2001) reconstruction of a construct state construction for Proto-Romance is a case where the principles of grammaticalization and Internal Reconstruction go hand in hand.15 In contrast to grammaticalisation approaches of the type exemplified by Heine & Kuteva, it is not the identification of the diachronic source which is in the focus. Longobardi raises the question as to why the development from the count noun casa ‘house’ to the preposition chez took place in French but not in the Romance sister languages. He draws parallels with construct state construction in older Romance varieties (otherwise known from Semitic languages) in which the noun ‘house, home’ occurs with a possessor where the loss of a possessive marker has caused an immediate adjacency of ‘house, home’ and possessor. Cf. (9):
(9) Hebrew (Longobardi 2001: 283):
a. ha-bayit šel ha-more art-house of art-teacher ‘The teacher’s house’ b. beyt ha-more house art-teacher ‘The teacher’s house’
Longobardi shows that there have been construct state constructions of the type exemplified in Old Catalan and in Old Tuscan – though with retention of the determiner – as in (10). (10) Old Tuscan (Longobardi 2001: 284): in casa il nonno prep house art grandfather ‘in grandfather’s house’
. Although examining and, what is more important, explaining an unambiguous case of grammaticalisation it is noteworthy that Longobardi uses the term ‘grammaticalization’ only once in his article (2001: 295).
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Furthermore, some Northern varieties of Italian as well as Modern Catalan still have equivalent constructions without determiner, i.e., even closer to the respective construction in Hebrew; cf. (11). (11) Northern Italian (Longobardi 2001: 285): a. Ho visit-ato Ca’ Garzoni have.1.sg.pres visit-ptc home Garzoni ‘I visited (the house of) Garzoni/‘Garzoni House’ Catalan (Longobardi 2001: 286): b. Ca’ l mestre house art teacher ‘The teacher’s house’
Longobardi shows convincingly that the development from casa to chez can only be explained by postulating that a construct state construction must have been conventionalised (at least in the context of Latin casa and its diachronic variants) at some stage in the pre-history of French. Attested cases of these constructions are scarce, but the fact that chez arose the way it did can only be explained by postulating a more widespread use of the construct state construction in early Romance.16
3. Conclusion I have discussed several approaches to syntactic reconstruction and I have argued that the Comparative Method is generally not applicable to the reconstruction of complex structures and hence to syntax. I have also argued that this is primarily because the Comparative Method – if used for reconstruction rather than for genetic classification – draws on segmental forms rather than complex structures. I then discussed two approaches which for the reconstruction of syntax, I believe, are theoretically more suitable than the Comparative Method. The two approaches were discussed quite independently from each other (§§2.1 and 2.2). There is however one aspect the two approaches have in common: they both draw
. Although I find that Longobardi presents his case very convincingly, I am sceptical as to whether the theoretical framework employed by Longobardi is crucial for his line of argument. ‘Inertial Theory’ – basically the idea that syntactic change does not occur unless triggered by a change in a different domain (phonology, lexicon) – contradicts the concept of reanalysis, which is often assumed to facilitate grammaticalization processes such as, for instance, English I’m [going]verb of motion [to X] > I’m [going to]TAM-marker Y > I’m gonna Y. It is questionable whether in this English example the phonological erosion precedes or even triggers the syntactic change, i.e., the reanalysis of the phrasal structure.
Reconstructing complex structures: A typological perspective
on cross-linguistic data. The first approach makes use of (synchronic) implicational universals between two linguistic properties and, on the basis of such an implication, deduces a diachronic relation between the two properties. The other, which I discussed here under the key word ‘grammaticalization’, is based on the assumption that there are cross-linguistically salient patterns of change. Both these methods are therefore not restricted to internal data – with ‘internal’ meaning here within the family, or within the continuum of varieties under comparison. Because both the Comparative Method and Internal Reconstruction (a method which I did not include into my discussion) draw on internal material in this sense, both these methods are dependent on the diachronic identity between the attested and the reconstructed form. Without any additional factor (as in the case of grammaticalization), a diachronic identity, we said, can only be established between simple forms, i.e., between segmental items, but not between syntactic constructions of two different historical stages of a language. Thus, in order to achieve valuable results that do apply to a regular, and hence, predictable development of complex structures, we need to resort to external data. Such external data are provided by cross-linguistic regularities. These regularities can be of different kinds: while the use of implicational universals refers to regularities in element order co-occurrences, any attempt to reconstruct linguistic features in the context of grammaticalization assumes regular pathways of change. This access on cross-linguistic data makes the two approaches – in contrast to those methods that exclusively draw on internal data – theoretically suitable for syntactic reconstruction. The use of cross-linguistic data is on the one hand the common property of the two approaches I have discussed, but at the same time it represents the fundamental difference between them. If we infer from implicational universals on a diachronic relationship between the two arguments of an implication, we draw exclusively on synchronic data – in spite of the diachronic outcome. The basis of this method is represented by our empirical knowledge on possible language types and on possible co-occurrences of grammatical properties at one point in time. In contrast, research on grammaticalization seeks to describe possible pathways of change that can be observed cross-linguistically and thus it seeks to describe a diachronic phenomenon. From this viewpoint alone the two approaches, the use of implicational universals and that of grammaticalization paths, may be considered two sides of the same coin (cf. Fox 1995: 250–1). Yet, as we have discussed briefly, employing our knowledge of grammaticalization processes presupposes that the form of the linguistic sign generally erodes. While I hope to have shown the theoretical advantages of the two crosslinguistic approaches for syntactic reconstruction, I am aware of the difficulties that remain. In the first case the huge effort required in collecting a representative
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sample of languages and in formulating implications that are complex enough to achieve sufficiently safe results seems difficult to get by. The methodological difficulties with the grammaticalization approach involve most of all the question of the certainty of a target/source relation in a particular grammaticalization process. I am also sceptical as to whether the difficulties can be overcome by employing formal approaches to syntactic reconstruction. With regard to the fundamental concepts underlying linguistic investigation formal approaches are generally related to typological approaches in that they draw on the idea that there are universally valid constraints on language types (“possible languages”) and, as a logical consequence, constraints on language change. Yet, I see a high potential for circularity in many formal approaches, often due to the generally axiomatic character of the underlying presuppositions. To give one example: if Longobardi claims that “the advantage over lexical comparison is the same as in the case of genetic polymorphisms: parametric theories provide precise comparanda virtually by definition, drawn from a list of finite biological (though culturally set) options, parameter values” (2003: 287 – italics original). If ‘parameter values’ are precise comparanda “by definition” this means that they are precise because they have been defined in exactly this way by a theoretical presupposition (i.e., ultimately by the proponent(s) of the theory). That is, it is not the empirical linguistic data which provide precise comparanda but the axiomatic model designed by the theorist. The results we gain may be methodologically sound, but they provide only theory-internal explanations of the phenomena under examination and are as such unverifiable from outside the theoretical framework. Apart from methodological issues, however, there also remains the question of the extent to which we can or cannot profit from our reconstructions. If we have come to a reasonable reconstruction – by employing whichever method is most suitable in the particular case – it will be extremely difficult to find supporting data (empirically or by way of deduction) to verify our results. Reconstructions, in most if not all cases, therefore potentially lack an essential prerequisite of scientific validity: the possibility to falsify the results. Lightfoot (1979: 165–6; 2002a: 115) has repeatedly drawn our attention to a statement by Antoine Meillet (1937: 41), who points out that the Comparative Method is not a means to excavate (parts of) an unattested language but only one to establish the genetic relationship among a group of languages; cf. the discussion above in §1. Meillet refers to the Comparative Method rather than to reconstruction in general and so does Lightfoot (2002a: 119). But I think that, ultimately, the underlying problem – the lack of verifiability – applies to all methods of syntactic reconstruction. There are probably only few cases of a successful reconstruction of a syntactic property which we can employ for further linguistic research. I nevertheless do not agree that “there is no particular reason to seek a proto-grammar” (Lightfoot
Reconstructing complex structures: A typological perspective
1979: 165). As long as we are aware that the result of our reconstruction will always have the status of a hypothesis, and, consequently, that a claim to (re-)construct a ‘linguistic reality’ is indeed not only trivial but also unrealistic, it is feasible that our reconstruction will allow inferences on the typological status of the protolanguage and to identify patterns of linguistic change on the way from the parent to the attested daughters (cf. the remarks in Fox 1995: 82). Although our hypotheses may turn out to be too weak or to not be based on safe enough ground for allowing such statements, there may still be a reasonable motivation to attempt to reconstruct at least some features of a proto-language or of an insufficiently attested language.
References Campbell, Lyle & Alice C. Harris. 2002. “Syntactic Reconstruction and Demythologizing ‘Myths and the Prehistory of Grammars’”. Journal of Linguistics 38.599–618. Campbell, Lyle & Marianne Mithun. 1981. “The Priorities and Pitfalls of Syntactic Reconstruction”. Folia Linguistica Historica 1.19–40. Dahl, Östen. 2004. The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity. (= Studies in Language Companion Series, 71.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Fisiak, Jacek. ed. 1984. Historical Syntax. (= Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs, 23.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Fox, Anthony. 1995. Linguistic Reconstruction: An introduction to theory and method. (= Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Friedrich, Paul. 1975. Proto-Indo-European Syntax: The order of meaningful elements. (= JIES Monographs, 1.) Butte: Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology. Givón, Talmy. 1971. “Historical Syntax and Synchronic Morphology: An archaeologist’s field trip”. Chicago Linguistic Society 7.394–415. Givón, Talmy. 2000. “Internal Reconstruction: As method, as theory”. Reconstructing Grammar: Comparative linguistics and grammaticalization ed. by Spike Gildea (= Typological Studies in Language, 43.), 107–59. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Greenberg, Joseph H. 1963. “Some Universals of Grammar with particular Reference to the Order of meaningful Elements”. Universals of Language: Report of a Conference held at Dobbs Ferry, New York, April 13–15, 1961 ed. by Joseph H. Greenberg, 2nd ed., 73–113. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Hall, Robert A. 1974. Comparative Romance Grammar I: External history of the Romance languages. (= Foundations of Linguistics Series.) Amsterdam: Elsevier. Hall, Robert A. 1976. Comparative Romance Grammar II: Proto-Romance phonology. (= Foundations of Linguistics Series.) Amsterdam: Elsevier. Harris, Alice C. & Lyle Campbell. 1995. Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistic Perspective. (= Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, 74.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haspelmath, Martin. 1999. “Why is Grammaticalization Irreversible?” Linguistics 37.1043–68. Haspelmath, Martin. 2004. “On Directionality in Language Change with Particular Reference to Grammaticalization”. Up and Down the Cline – The Nature of Grammaticalization ed.
Ferdinand von Mengden by Olga Fischer, Muriel Norde, & Harry Perridon (= Typological Studies in Language, 59), 17–44. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Hawkins, John A. 1979. “Implicational Universals as Predictors of Word Order Change”. Language 55.618–48. Hawkins, John A. 1980. “On Implicational and Distributional Universals of Word Order”. Journal of Linguistics 16.193–235. Hawkins, John A. 1983. Word Order Universals. (= Quantitative Analyses of Linguistic Structure.) New York: Academic Press. Heine, Bernd & Kuteva, Tanja. 2002a. World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heine, Bernd & Kuteva, Tanja. 2002b. “On the Evolution of Grammatical Forms”. The Transition to Language ed. by Alison Wray, 376–97. (= Studies in the Evolution of Language.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jeffers, Robert J. 1976. “Syntactic Change and Syntactic Reconstruction”. Current Progress in Historical Linguistics: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Tucson, Arizona, 12–16 January 1976 ed. by William M. Christie (= NorthHolland Linguistic Series, 31.), 1–16. Amsterdam: North-Holland. Lehmann, Christian. 2002 [1982]. Thoughts on Grammaticalization. Second, revised edition. (= Arbeitspapiere des Seminars für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Erfurt, 9.) Erfurt: Seminar für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität. Lehmann, Christian. 2004. “Theory and Method in Grammaticalization”. Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik 32.152–87. Lehmann, Winfred P. 1974. Proto-Indo-European Syntax. Austin, Tx.: University of Texas Press. Lightfoot, David W. 1979. Principles of Diachronic Syntax. (= Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, 23.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lightfoot, David W. 2002a. “Myths and the Prehistory of Grammars”. Journal of Linguistics 38.113–36. Lightfoot, David W. 2002b. “More Myths”. Journal of Linguistics 38.619–26. Longobardi, Giuseppe. 2001. “Formal Syntax, Diachronic Minimalism, and Etymology: The history of French chez”. Linguistic Inquiry 32.275–302. Longobardi, Giuseppe. 2003. “On Parameters and Parameter Theory”. Syntaxtheorien: Modelle, Methoden, Motive ed. by Elisabeth Stark & Ulrich Wandruszka (= Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik, 469.), 273–90. Tübingen: Gunther Narr. Meillet, Antoine. 1937. Introduction à l’étude comparative des langues indo-européennes. 8th ed. Paris: Hachette. Plank, Frans. & Wolfgang Schellinger. 2000. “Dual Laws in (no) Time”. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 53.46–52. Vennemann, Theo. 1974. “Topics, Subjects and Word Order: From SXV to SVX via TVX”. Historical Linguistics I: Syntax, Morphology, Internal and Comparative Reconstruction: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Edinburgh 2nd – 7th September 1973 ed. by John M. Anderson & Charles Jones (= North-Holland Linguistic Series, 12a.), 339–76. Amsterdam: North-Holland. Vennemann, Theo. 1984. “Verb-second, Verb late, and the Brace Construction: Comments on some papers”. Fisiak, ed. 1984. 627–36. Watkins, Calvert. 1976. “Towards Proto-Indo-European Syntax: Problems and pseudoproblems”. Papers from the Parasession on Diachronic Syntax, April 22, 1976 ed. by
Reconstructing complex structures: A typological perspective
Stanford B. Steever, Carol A. Walker & Salikoko S. Mufwene, 305–26. Chicago, Il.: Chicago Linguistic Society. Winter, Werner. 1984. “Reconstructional Comparative Linguistics and the Reconstruction of Syntax of Undocumented Stages in the Development of Languages and Language Families”. Fisiak, ed. 1984. 613–25.
Competitive Indo-European syntax Rosemarie Lühr University of Jena
In the following article I will analyse the different constructions of embedded object clauses in the older Indo-European languages. In quite a lot of modern Indo-European languages the standard realisation of the sentential object clause is a finite subordinate clause introduced by a complementizer corresponding to the English conjunction that. In contrast, in some of the older Indo-European languages, this construction is only rarely attested, e.g., in Vedic, and a variety of structures without that-complementizer are used instead (“that-clause competitors”). By cross-linguistic comparison I will reconstruct that two object clause constructions were part of the Proto-Indo-European syntactic structure and that one of them, the explicative clause, can be considered as the predecessor of the modern finite that-object clauses. Furthermore I will show how the relational element of the explicative clause, a wh-operator corresponding to English which, could change to a complementizer element like that.
1. Introduction Within the scope of the project “Competitive Indo-European Syntax” (Indogermanische Konkurrenz-Syntax) my team and I were studying constructions in older Indo-European languages which compete with finite subordinate clauses, for example infinitive or participial constructions, absolutives, gerunds, gerundives, supines or constructions including an abstract noun with or without a preposition. Our perspective is functional or onomasiological, for the data is structured to answer the following questions: Which of the mentioned constructions function as subject, object, adverbial or attribute? Which constructions could be used instead of a temporal, final or causal clause, etc.? Most other studies deal with subordinate clauses in a semasiological manner. One approaches a conjunction by examining its meaning. An example for such an investigation is Hettrich (1988), a very thorough study of conjunctions in the Rig-Veda. But having studied this book one does not know which functions, commonly expressed by conjunctions in other Indo-European languages, are not realized as such in Vedic. This is particularly regrettable because in the oldest stage of Vedic a very important conjunction function is hardly ever articulated as a conjunction: the conjunction that to
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be specific. Since the main domain of this conjunction in German or English is undoubtedly to subordinate finite object clauses, a serious question arises. What does the syntactic structure of languages look like, that do not have such a convenient conjunction to mark finite object clauses, as in German dass or in English that? What constructions are used instead of such clauses? In the following they shall be referred to as ‘that-clause competitors’.1 First it will be shown which competing structures are available. I restrict myself to the oldest attested Indo-European languages: Hittite, Vedic, Iranian, Greek, Latin and Germanic. The data is primarily taken from our Thesaurus of Subordination Competitors in older Indo-European (‘Konkurrenz-Thesaurus zur Subordination in der älteren Indogermania’).2 Among the Germanic languages Old Saxon was selected because of its abundant, uniform, indigenous record. In order to reconstruct which type of object clause or which syntactic competitor was used by the Indo-Europeans the next step is the determination of the least common denominator among the alternatives in the individual Indo-European languages. Supposing we have indeed determined the original Indo-European cognate of an object clause introduced by that, our task is then to elucidate such an object clause or its competing structure with respect to reconstructed adverbial clauses or relative clauses. At this point one must reiterate the question put forth in Hermann’s 1894 doctoral thesis in Jena, “Did Indo-European have subordinate clauses?” The answer is undoubtedly “Yes”, but are these clauses embedded or can the reconstructed object clause also support Kiparsky’s (1995: 155ff.) opinion that such clauses are only adjoined? Modern generative syntax will help us to find an appropriate answer. Following a step back to the precursor of Indo-European, we will concentrate on the well documented older Indo-European languages again. Based on the evidence that later Hittite, Avestan, Old Persian, Old Greek and Germanic do indeed have object clauses introduced by that, it is our intention to outline the development of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European object clause to the respective structure in the authenticated languages by means of one example. It will become evident that a typological change has taken place concerning subordination throughout the development of individual languages. The preceding approach makes obvious that we are reconstructing a protolanguage. Working according the principle that the presence of numerous firmly established equivalences within individual Indo-European languages can neither be explained by coincidence or borrowing, nor treated as if these data reflect universal aspects of human languages, we only consider the hypothesis of derivation . Cf. Lehmann (1980: 113ff.); Gippert (2004: 48ff.). . http://www.indogermanistik.uni-jena.de (Link: “Materialsammlungen”).
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from a common preliminary phase of these language groups to be a suitable explanation. In that we follow the classical linguistic comparative method keeping in mind that this method does not work equally well for grouping the IndoEuropean language family into chronologically deeper taxa. Moreover, we follow Dressler (1971: 6) in considering reconstruction as Wahrscheinlichkeitsschätzung (‘probability estimation’), which depends upon six factors: (a) the spreading of a language phenomenon in the Indo-European languages; (b) the conformity of its signifiants; (c) the conformity of its signifiants in the individual languages; (d) the results of the internal reconstruction; (e) the possibility of inserting an individual phenomenon in the frame of a reconstructed more extensive phenomenon; (f) the typological factor. Dressler 1971 complained that the last point is often overlooked, a statement which more than 30 years later is still valid in IndoEuropean linguistics, though there is a simple checking procedure: If a reconstruction is contradictory to observable data of all living languages in the world, it is improbable. The more parallels exist in living languages the more probable it gets. So a reconstruction is some sort of “quasi-universal” and probably accurate. But if a reconstruction proves to be a linguistic universal, it is accurate. In the case of the that-clause competitors the claims (a) to (f) are fulfilled. Firstly, it is definitely possible to establish correspondences in syntax between the older Indo-European languages, which can be reconstructed as parts of the syntactic system of a protolanguage. These are the subordination designating devices, namely conjunctions, mood, certain verbal forms. Secondly, all these devices have parallels in modern languages, too. The objection that real sentences, i.e., sentences in their full context, cannot be reconstructed is self-evident, cf. Dressler (1971: 5ff.). In addition one may not be able to verify that the reconstructed elements in a sentence all belong to the same historical phrase of a language. Historical linguistics has therefore been primarily interested in syntactic patterns. But once the patterns have been reconstructed, one might be able to consider what form the grammar of speakers at that stage must have had in order to produce such patterns, compare Harris & Campbell (1995: 372). With respect to language change the comparison of the syntax of the Indo-European language will demonstrate that syntactic change referring to subordinated propositions initially proceeds on the basis of syntactic variation, since speakers normally use multiple analyses during the period of actualisation (compare Harris & Campbell 1995: 83). The structure of that-clause competitors must only be able to designate an event containing an agent and some sort of verbal behaviour (“Verhaltensweise”), an activity, an event or a state. This constellation is universal, but not the means to express it. Secondly, it will be shown that our modern that-clauses arose by a pragmatic change. In this we follow Longobardi (2001: 278) who assumes that syntactic change only takes place if it is caused by
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another type of change: “linguistic change proper […] may only originate as an interface phenomenon”. 2. Analysis 2.1 Th at-clauses and that-clause competitors in the function of an object in the older Indo-European languages When examining that-clauses and that-clause competitors in the function of an object in the older Indo-European languages it is advantageous to concentrate on the denotation of actions, the agent or patient role of which are not included in the super-ordinate structure. Only in such cases are we dealing with a semantic assertion independent of the main clause. The following that-clause competitors are arranged according to their degree of inflection. Whereas abstract deverbal nouns constitute the lower end of the scale, subordinated structures with finite verbs differentiated for time and mode constitute the upper end. 2.1.1 Abstract deverbal nouns Among the languages considered only the Anatolian branch yields productive formation of deverbal nouns. If such nouns, especially those ending in -uwar and -atar, are combined with genitive elements to implement the function of a genitivus subiectivus or genitivus obiectivus complete propositions can result.
(1) Hittite KUB XIX 23 Rs. 13′ff.
DUTUŠI (13´) GIM-an-ma ŠA as soon-but-part gen-part det-sun-my
(14´) TI-tar iš-dam-ma-aš-šir na-at-kán life-acc.sg.n they heard-3.pl.ind.pret.act and they-nom.pl.c-part nam-ma ar-ru-ša UL [pa-a-ir] further pfx not they succumbed-3.pl.ind.pret.act (15´) ki-nu-un-ma GIM-an ŠA EN-YA har-ga-an now-but-part as soon gen-part lord-my death-acc.sg.c iš-dam-ma-aš-šir they heard-3.pl.ind.pret. act (16´) na-at nam-ma a-ru-ú-[ša] pa-a-ir and they-nom.pl.c further pfx they succumbed-3.pl.ind.pret.act ‘As soon as they heard of the life of the sun [genitivus subiectivus], they did not succumb. But now that they have heard of the death of my lord [genitivus subiectivus], they have succumb’ (‘Sobald sie aber von der Sonne Leben erfuhren, gingen sie nicht unter; jetzt aber, da sie von meines Herrn Umkommen erfuhren, gingen sie doch unter’)
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(2) late Hittite KBo V 6 III 5f.
(5) LÚMEŠ KUR URUMi-iz-ra-ma ma-ah-ha-an people-nom.pl country det-Egypt as soon (6) ŠA KUR URUAm-ka GUL-ah-hu-wa-ar gen-part country det-Amka destruction-acc.sg.n iš-ta-ma-aš-ša-an-zi they hear-3.pl.ind.pres.act ‘As soon as the Egyptians hear that the country Amka was destroyed’ (genitivus obiectivus) (‘Sobald aber die Ägypter hören, dass das Land Amka vernichtet wurde’)
In the other languages this construction only occurs occasionally, for instance in the conversion of a participle into a noun in Vedic. (3) Old Indian RV 3,38,9 vís´ve pas´yanti māyínah. kitā´ni ˚ all-nom.pl.m they see-3.pl.ind.pres.act magican-gen.sg.m deeds-acc.pl.n ‘All see the deeds of the magic adept’ (‘Alle sehen die Werke des Zauberkundigen’)3
2.1.2 Infinitive constructions As shown in Lühr (1993: 232ff.), infinitive constructions denoting whole propositions can be found beyond the Anatolian languages. Thus, the accusativuscum-infinitivo (AcI) is present in Indo-Iranian, Greek and Latin for verbs of ‘volition’:
(4) Old Indian RV I,129,4
asmā´kam . your-gen.pl.m
va índram part Indra-acc.sg.m
us´tmasīs. áye sákhāyam . we wish-1.pl.ind.pres.act-incite-inf.dat.sg.f friend-acc.sg.m vis´vā´yum … lifelong-acc.sg.m ‘We wish that Indra as our lifelong friend incites you’ (‘Wir wünschen, dass euch Indra als unser lebenslänglicher Freund gerne komme …’; Geldner; Disterheft (1980: 76f.))
. The genitive case depends on a verbal substantive here. It is equivalent to the agent (Lühr 1994).
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(5) Avestan Y 34,4
at tōi ātrә¯m ahurā ˜ then of your-gen.sg fire-acc.sg.m Herr-voc.sg.m aš. ā truth-instr.sg.n
aojōŋhuuan. tәm vigorous-acc.sg.m
usә¯mahī asīštīm we wish-1.pl.ind.pres.act impetuous-acc.sg.m
¯әmauuan. tәm stōi rapan. tē … strong-acc.sg.m be-inf supporter-dat.sg.m ‘We desire Thy fire, O Ahura, (which is) strong through truth, very vigorous (and) impetuous, to be a bright help to (Thy) supporter …’; Humbach (1991: 140). (‘Nun begehren wir, o Lebensherr, von deinem durch Wahrhaftigkeit starken Feuer, das gar schnell und durchdringend ist, dass es dem Freunde mit glanzvoller Hilfe diene …’)4
(6) Old Greek Od ρ 81
αὐτòν ἔχοντα σє` him-acc.sg.m keeping-prt.pres.act.acc.sg you-acc.sg.m bούλομαι΄ ἐπαυρέμεν, τινα I prefer-1.sg.ind.pres.med enjoy-inf.aor.act someone-acc.sg.m τω νδє of these-gen.pl.m ‘… I wish that you should keep and enjoy these things yourself rather than one of them’ (‘… so will ich lieber, dass du es, indem du es behältst, genießt als einer von diesen’)
(7) Latin Plautus, Amphitruo 980
volo deludi illunc5 I wish-1.sg.ind.pres.act be laughed at-inf.pres.pass the former-acc.sg.m ‘I want that he be ridiculed’ (‘Ich will, dass jener verlacht wird’)
It is present in Greek and Latin contingent on verbs denoting ‘belief ’, ‘opinion’, ‘knowledge’, ‘speaking’ and ‘hearing’.6
. More examples can be found in Disterheft (1980: 99f.). . In Latin the infinitive can also be absent; cf. volo te consulem – ‘I want [you] to be consul’ (Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 43). . Coleman (1985: 327); Hettrich (1992: 233).
Competitive Indo-European syntax
(8) Old Greek Od α 323
ὀíσατο γα`ρ θєòν єἰˆναι he believed-3.sg.ind.aor.med for god-acc.sg.m be-inf.pres.act ‘for he suspected this (individual) to be a god’ (‘denn er glaubte, dass es ein Gott ist’)
(9) Latin Plautus, Amphitruo 416
Egomet mihi non credo, cum i-1.p.nom.sg me-1.p.dat.sg not i believe-1.sg.ind.pres.act when illaec autumare illum this-acc.pl.n speak-inf.pres.act the former-acc.sg.m audio i hear- 1.sg.ind.pres.act ‘I do not believe myself, when I hear him speak in such a way’ (‘Höre ich den so reden, glaube ich selbst mir nimmer’) (10) Latin Plautus, Amphitruo 104 nam ego vos novisse for i-1.p.nom.sg you-2.p.acc.pl know-inf.prv.act credo iam ut I believe-1.sg.ind.pres.act already how sit pater meus were-3.sg.sbj.pres.act father-nom.sg.m my-nom.sg.m ‘for I believe that you already know, how my father be’ (‘denn ich glaube, ihr wisst schon, wie mein Vater ist’) (11) Old Greek Iliad A 521 … ĸαí τє´ μє´ φησι μάχη ˛ and part me-1.p.acc.sg she says-3.sg.ind.pres.act battle-dat.sg.f Tρώєσσιν ἀρήγєιν Trojans-dat.pl.m help-inf.pres.act ‘and she says that I am helping the Trojans in the battle’ (‘… und sie behauptet, ich würde im Kampf den Troern helfen’; Hettrich 1992: 232) (12) Latin, Plautus, Capitivi 511 dico eum esse i say-1.sg.ind.pres.act him-acc.sg.m be-inf.pres.act apud me by me-1.p.acc.sg.m ‘I say that he is with me’
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(13) Old Greek ἀĸούω
σє`
λє´γєιν
I hear-1.sg.ind.pres.act you-2.p.acc.sg speak-inf.pres.act ‘I hear (as gossip) that you speak’7
Even further the AcI is documented in Latin with verbs denoting ‘cognition’ and ‘vision’ and with the verba affectus: (14) Latin Plautus, Asinaria 438 nam vidi huc ipsum adducere for I saw-1.sg.ind.pfv.act here himself-acc.sg.m bring-inf.pres.act trapezitam Exaerambum money-changer-acc.sg.m Exaerambus-acc.sg.m ‘For I saw that Exaeambus himself brought the money-changer here’ (‘Denn ich sah, dass Exaerambus selbst den Wechsler hierher brachte’) (15) Latin Plautus, Mostellaria 796 sed ut maestust sese but how sad-nom.sg.m-he is-3.sg.ind.pres.act him-acc.sg hasce uendidisse! these-acc.pl.f have sold-ind.pfv.act ‘but how sad he is that he has sold this (house)!’ (‘aber wie betrübt er ist, dass er dieses (Haus) verkauft hat!’; Kühner & Stegmann 1955: 691)
The integration of increasingly more verbs into the domain of the AcI-construction bases on common semantic universals as can also be observed in the evolution of constructions in other languages of the world.8 Greek uses one and the same AcIverb є῎λπομαι ‘to expect, to hope, to mean’ as a verb of ‘volition’, of ‘belief ’ and of ‘opinion’. Furthermore, the fact that ‘to mean’ can substitute for ‘to say’ is evident in the meaning of Germ. meinen.9 If a speaker uses a factual verb of ‘speaking’ in the 1st person singular he is usually making a statement, if he knows that statement to be valid. Since the
. In contrast, the AcP has the sense of ‘I hear (from others the fact) that you speak’ (Bornemann & Risch 1973: 249). . Concerning the reverse direction in the spread of the ‘quotive’ constructions compare Saxena (1995: 359ff.). . The AcI construction in Greek was originally used with the verb ‘to say’ and then went on to cover more or less unproven statements while ‘say’ became bound as a factitive verb to the AcP construction or the that-clause competing with it.
Competitive Indo-European syntax
truth of the statement denoted by the verb complement is presupposed, verbs of ‘speaking’ + AcI can have an effect on the construction of factual verbs, namely verbs of ‘cognition’ and ‘perception’. The feature [+ factitive] develops to the point in Latin that the verba affectus also produces an AcI.10 If we also consider the Old Saxon evidence it is visible that the AcI-verbs constitute a uniform semantic group, namely ‘to know’, ‘to see’ and ‘to hear’. However these verbs are also used with that-clauses. 2.1.3 Participle constructions, constructions with predicative adjectives Participle constructions are common to all examined languages. Consider the following example from the Anatolian branch, where the accusative of the accusativus-cum-participio (AcP) construction must be extrapolated from the context: (16) Late Hittite KBo IV 4 III 71f. nu ma-ah-ha-an LÚMEŠ URUaz-zi e-ni-iš-ša-an now as people-nom.pl Azzi in such a way-adv pa-ah-ša[-nu-wa-an X] a-ú-e-ir protected-prt.pres.pass.acc.sg.c they saw-3.pl.ind.pret.act ‘As the people of Azzi saw that [the army] was in such a way […] protected …’ (‘Als die Leute von Azzi sahen, dass [das Heer] in solcher Weise [ge]schützt war …’)
And with the accusative expression: (17) Late Hittite KUB XIII 35 + III 17 am-mu-uk-wa-ra-an me-dat.sg-speech.part-him-acc.sg.c
ak-kán-ta-an dead/deceased-prt.pres.pass.acc.sg.c
IQ-BI he spoke-3.sg.ind. pret.act ‘to me he said that it [the horse] (is) dead’ (‘Mir sagte er, dass es (das Pferd) tot sei’)
Whereas the AcP is rather rare in Hittite and only occurs following the verbs ‘to see’ and ‘to say’ (Cotticelli-Kurras 1995: 98), it is to be found frequently in the oldest phase of Vedic. In particular with verbs of ‘vision’, of ‘hearing’, of ‘belief ’, and of ‘speaking’, in which the subordinated verbal action can be active or passive.
. It is commonly assumed that the AcI in the case of the verba affectus is influenced by the pattern of the verbs which express a wish, a hope or an expectation (spero, desidero) (Hofmann & Szantyr 1965: 358f.)
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(18) Old Indian RV 10,59,4 mó s. ú n.ah. soma mrtyáve ˚ not-part part us-acc.pl Soma-voc.sg.m death-dat.sg.m párā dāh. páśyema pfx deliver-2.sg.inj.aor.act we wish to see-1.pl.opt.pres.act nú sū´ryamuccárantam now sun-acc.sg.m-rising-prt.pres.act.acc.sg.m ‘Do not deliver us unto death, o Soma, we wish to see the sun rise again!’ (‘Gib uns ja nicht dem Tode preis, o Soma; wir möchten noch die Sonne aufgehen sehen!’) (19) Old Indian RV 5,32,12 evā´ hí tvā´m rtuthā´ ˚ thus-pfx for you-acc.sg punctually-adv yātáyantam maghā´ remunerating-prt.pres.act.acc.sg.m presents-acc.pl.n víprebhyo dádatam. skilled with words-dat.pl.m giving-prt.pres.act.acc.sg.m Śrn.ómi ˚ I hear-1.sg.ind.pres. act
‘For I hear, that you punctually remunerate by giving presents to the skilled with words’ (‘Denn also höre ich, dass du pünktlich vergiltst, indem du den Redekundigen Geschenke gibst’)
(20) Old Indian RV 1,84,17 kó mam.sate sántam who-nom.sg he may think-3.sg.ind.sbjv.med being-prt.pres.act.acc.sg.m índram. kó ánti Indra-acc.sg.m who-nom.sg.m present-adv ‘Who thinks that Indra is, who thinks he’s present?’ (‘Wer meint wohl, dass Indra ist, dass er gegenwärtig?’) (21) Old Indian RV 10,179,3
Śrātám manya cooked-prt.pret.pass.acc.sg.n I think-1.sg.ind.pres.med ū´dhani Śrātám agnaú utter-loc.sg.n cooked-prt.pret.pass. acc.sg.n fire-loc.sg.m sús´rātam manye tád well cooked-prt.pret.pass.acc.sg.n I think-1.sg.ind.pres.med this-acc.sg.n
rtám. náνīyah. ˚ right-acc.sg.n newer-comp.acc.sg.n
Competitive Indo-European syntax
‘I think she is boiled in the utter, she is cooked on the fire; I think that this newest (sacrifice) is well cooked, properly’ (‘Ich meine, sie ist im Euter gekocht, sie ist am Feuer gekocht; ich meine, dass diese neueste (Spende) gut gekocht, recht ist’) (22) Old Indian RV 7,33,13 táto ha mā´na úd iyāya from there-adv part Māna he came forth-3.sg.ind.pfv.act mádhyāt táto jātám from the midst-ABL.sg.n from there-adv born-prt.pret.pass.acc.sg.m r´s. im āhur vásis. t . ham ˚ R s. i-acc.sg.m they said-3.pl.ind.pfv.act Vasis. t . ha-acc.sg.m ˚ ‘From here (from the seed) came Māna, they said that from there R s. i Vasis. t . ha is born’ ˚ (‘Daraus (aus dem Samen) ging Māna hervor; sie sagten, dass daraus der Rs. i Vasis. t . ha geboren ist’) ˚
The common Indo-European verb ‘to see’ can be combined with an AcP in all other examined languages, in Avestan, Greek, Latin, and in Old Saxon: (23) Avestan Yašt 5,68 yat spāδәm pairi auuaēnat dūrāt ˜ ˜ ˜ as army-acc.sg.m pfx he saw-3.sg.ind.ipfv.act from afar aiiantәm rasmaoiiō advancing-prt.pres.act.acc.sg.m in battle formations-dat.pl.m ‘As he saw the army in the distance advancing in battle formation’ (‘Als er das Heer von fern her in Schlachtordnung anrücken sah’) (24) Old Greek Iliad Θ 278f. τòν δє` ἰδὼν him-acc.sg.m part seeing-prt.aor.act.nom.sg.m γήθησєν ἄναξ he was pleased-3.sg.ind.aor.act lord-nom.sg.m ἀνδρω ν 'Aγαμє´μνων/ τóξου ἄπο men-gen.pl Agamemnon-nom.sg.m bow-gen.sg.n with ĸρατєρου strong-gen.sg.n
Τρώων Trojans-gen.pl.m
ὀλє´ĸοντα destroying-prt.pres.act.acc.sg.m
φάλαγγας lines of battle-acc.pl ‘He was pleased when he saw him, the lord of men Agamemnon, as he with his strong bow destroyed the battalions of Trojans’ (‘Da freute sich, als er ihn sah, der Herr der Männer Agamemnon, wie er mit dem starken Bogen vernichtete die Reihen der Troer’)
Rosemarie Lühr
(25) Latin Plautus, Epidicus 435 quem [ego] huc whom-acc.sg.m i-1.p.nom.sg here advenientem conspicor? arriving-acc.sg.m I see-1.sg.ind.pres.dep ‘Whom do I see arriving here?’ (26) Old Saxon Heliand 4405f. Huan gisah thi man whom-acc.sg.m he saw-3.sg.ind.pret.act you-acc.sg man-nom.sg.m ênig/ bethuungen an any-nom.sg.m vanquished-prt.pret.pass.acc.sg.m in sulicun tharabun? such-dat.pl.m deficits-dat.pl.f ‘When did anyone see you vanquished by such deficits?’ (‘Wann sah dich irgendjemand von solchem Mangel bezwungen?’)
And in Greek the AcP occurs with the verb ‘to hear’, but also like in Old Saxon with the verb ‘to know’, whereby Greek can additionally expressly denote antecedent action in the participle:11 (27) Old Greek Iliad H 129 τοὺς νυν єἰ πτώσσοντας they-acc.pl.m now when cowering-prt.pres.act.acc.pl.m ὑφ’ Ἕĸτορι πάντας ἀĸούσαι below Hector-dat.sg.m all-acc.pl.m he hears-3.sg.opt.aor.act ‘And if he were to hear that these men are all now cowering before Hector’ (‘Wenn er nun hört, wie sich diese alle vor Hektor ducken’) (28) Old Greek Odyssee η 211f. οὕς τινας ὑμєîς ἴστє those of whom-acc.pl.m you-nom.pl you know-2.pl.ind.pres.act μάλιστ’ ὀχέοντας ὀïzὺν/ ἀνθρώπων … greatest-acc.sg.f bearing-acc.pl.m affliction-acc.sg.f men-gen.pl.m ‘those of whom you know that they bear the greatest affliction among mankind …’ (‘solche, von denen ihr wisst, dass sie am meisten Jammer tragen unter den Menschen …’)
.
Greek also displays the genitivus-cum-participio: Odyssee α 289. єἰ δє´ ĸє τєθνηωτος ἀĸούση ․ς if but part having died-prt.pfv.act.gen.sg.m you may hear-2.sg.sbjv.pres.act μηδ’ є῎τ’ є’ óντος … not longer living-prt.pres.act.gen.sg.m “And if you hear he is dead and no longer among the living …” (“Doch wenn du hörst, er sei tot und nicht mehr am Leben …”)
Competitive Indo-European syntax
(29) Old Saxon Heliand 5729ff. Hie giuuêt im thuo forð he-3.p.nom.sg.m he went-3.sg.ind.pret.act himself-refl then forth thanan/ gangan te them from there to go-inf to the-art.dat.sg.m thar hie where he-3.p.nom.sg.m that that-art.acc.sg.n
galgon, gallows-dat.sg.m
uuissa he knew-3.sg.ind.pret.act
godes barn, / hrêo God-gen.sg.m child-acc.sg.n body-acc.sg.n
hangondi hanging-prt.pres.act.acc.sg.n
hêrren Lord-gen.sg.m
sînes his-gen.sg.m
‘He went immediately forth to go to the gallows, where he knew that God’s child, the body of his Lord hung’ (‘Er machte sich alsbald auf, um zu dem Galgen zu gehen, wo er wusste, dass das Gotteskind, der Leichnam seines Herrn hing’) (30) Old Greek Odyssee ω 404f. ἢ η῎δη σάφα οἰδє part already clearly she knows-3.sg.ind.pfv.act πєρíφρων circumspect-nom.sg.f
Πηνєλóπєια/ Penelope-nom.sg.f
νοστη´σαντά σє δєυρ’ … having returned-prt.aor.act.acc.sg.m you-2.p.acc.sg hither ‘Does circumspect Penelope already know, that you have returned home …’ (‘Weiß es die umsichtige Penelopeia schon genau, dass du hierher heimgekommen …’)
Related to the AcP we find the use of different verbs with an accusative in conjunction with a predicative adjective in all the examined languages, because the participle of the verb ‘to be’ can be presumed: (31) Late Hittite KUB V 9 Vs. 4f. ti-ti-iš-ša-al-li-in-wa ŠA MU child-acc.sg.n-SPEECH.part gen.part year 3KAM ša-ak-nu-wa-an-da-an 3-det impure-acc.sg.c
IGI-u-en we have seen-3.pl.ind.pret.act
‘It is a three year old child we have seen soiled’ (‘Ein dreijähriges Kleinkind haben wir unrein gesehen’)12
. The Badal-construction is ignored here; cf. Friedrich (1960: 123f.); cf. Lühr (2002).
Rosemarie Lühr
(32) Old Indian RV 2,33,4 bhis.áktamam . best doctor-acc.sg.m
tvā you-2.p.acc.sg
bhis.ájām s´rn. omi . ˚ doctors-gen.pl.m I hear-1.sg.ind.pres.act ‘I hear that you are the best doctor of all doctors’ (‘Ich höre, dass du der beste Arzt der Ärzte bist’) (33) Old Indian RV 10,86,11 indrān.ī´m āsú nā´ris.u subhágām Indrān.i-acc.sg.f these-loc.pl.f ladies-loc.pl.f happy-acc.sg.f ahám as´ravam/ nahy àsyā I-1.p.nom.sg I heard-1.sg.ind.ipfv.act not-for her-3.P.gen.sg.f aparám caná jarásā . in the future part senility-instr.sg.m márate pátir he dies-3.sg.ind.pres.med spouse-nom.sg.m
‘Among these Ladies, I have heard Indran. i (to be) blessed, because her spouse will not die of old age in the future’ (‘Unter diesen Herrinnen, so hörte ich, ist Indrān ․i die Glückliche, denn nicht wird auch in Zukunft ihr Gemahl an Altersschwäche sterben’)
(34) Old Indian RV 8,33,17 índraś cid ghā tád abravīt striyā´ Indra even part that-acc.sg.n he said-3.sg.ind.ipfv.act woman-gen.sg.f aśāsyám mánah. / unteachable-acc.sg.n mind-acc.sg.n utó áha krátum. raghúm and certainly insight-acc.sg.m light-acc.sg.m ‘Even Indra has said that the mind of a woman is impossible to teach and their insight is too light (small)’ (‘Auch Indra hat das gesagt, dass der Sinn der Frau unbelehrbar, und ihre Einsicht zu leicht (gering) ist’) (35) Avestian Yasna 43,11 tat vәrәziieidiiāi hiiat mōi ˜ ˜ that-acc.sg.n to do-inf which-acc.sg.n me-1.p.dat.sg mraotā vahištәm you tell-2.pl.ind.pres.act the best-acc.sg.n ‘I want to do that about which you tell me that it is the best’ (‘ich will das tun, von dem ihr mir sagt, dass es das Beste ist’)
Competitive Indo-European syntax
(36) Old Indian RV 1,81,8 mādáyasva suté sácā intoxicate-2.sg.imp.pres.med pressed-loc.sg.m together with
śávase śūra r�dhase/ power-dat.sg.n hero-voc.sg.m generosity-dat.sg.n vidmā´ hí tvā purūvásum we know-1.pl.ind.pfv.act for you-2.P.acc.sg rich-acc.sg.m ‘Intoxicate yourself with pressed soma, O hero, with power and generosity, for we know that you are very wealthy’ (‘Berausche dich bei dem ausgepressten Soma, o Held, zur Kraft, zur Freigebigkeit, denn wir wissen, dass du güterreich bist’) (37) Avestian Yasna 28,10 aµt yә«n. g but-part those of which-acc.pl.m
a˘ṣāaµtcā with truth-ABL.sg.n
vōistā vaŋh�ušcā dāϑ�n. g you know-2.sg.ind.pfv.act good-gen.sg.n-and harmonizing-acc.pl.m
manaŋhō/ thought-gen.sg.n
әrәϑβәˉn. g righteous-acc.pl.m
‘(For those) of which you know that they agree with the truth and the good thought (and) are rightous’ (‘(Für die) von denen du weißt, dass sie übereinstimmen mit der Wahrheit und dem guten Gedanken (und) rechtschaffen sind’)
2.1.4 that-clause We are now approaching the finite end of the inflection scale. The structures corresponding to that-clauses with inflected verbs deserve our attention. They are to be found in late Hittite: (38) Late Hittite KUB XXI 38 Rs. 13f.13 [ki-nu-un?/GI]M-ya [now/as soon as]-and
I-DI ku-it-za he knows-3.sg.ind.pret.act that-refl.part
KURURUMi-iz-ri KUR URUHa-at-ti-ya 1EN KURTIM country-det-Egypt country Hatti one country ki-ša-ri it becomes-3.g.ind.pres.med ‘And [now/as soon as] I know that the country Egypt and the country Hatti will become one (single) country …’ (‘Und [jetzt/sobald] ich weiß, dass das Land Ägypten und das Land Hatti ein (einziges) Land werden …’)
. Some of the following examples are from Cotticelli-Kurras (1995: 87ff.).
Rosemarie Lühr
(39) Late Hittite KBo IV 4 IV 28f. URUAz-zi a-ú-e-ir ma-ah-ha-an-ma LÚ MEŠ as-but-part people-nom.pl. det-Azzi they saw-3.pl.ind.pret.act
URUDIDLI.HI.A BÀD-kán ku-it za-ah-hi ya-az kat-ta cities-PL fortification-part that battle-ABL.sg.c pfx da-aš-ki-u-wa-an subdue-SUPINE
te-eh-hu-un I began-1.sg.ind.pret.act
‘however as the people of Azzi saw that I began to take the fortified cities in battle …’ (‘als aber die Leute von Azzi sahen, dass ich feste Städte im Kampf einzunehmen begann …’)
In contrast to Vedic there are real that-clauses in Old Avestan. This is evident in the Old Avestan conjunction hiiatµ, which differentiates itself from later Avestan yatµ, and Vedic yád by its initial h-. It is apparently the result of the correlative unit Avest. ho yo ‘the one which’ (Vedic sá yáh.).14 (40) Avestan Yasna 46,15 haēcat .aspā vax․š iiā v� ˜ Haēcataspas-voc.sg.m I will tell-1.sg.ind.fut.act you-dat.pl ˜ spitama˚ˉŋhō hiiat dāϑ�n. g vīcaiiaϑā ˜ Spitamas-voc.pl.m that just-acc.pl.m you may separate-2.plsbjv.aor. act adāϑąscā. unjust-acc.pl.m ‘O Haēcat aspas, I will tell you, o Spitamas, that you must decide between the ˜ just and the unjust’ (‘O Haēcat aspas, ich werde euch sagen, o Spitamas, dass ihr zwischen Gerech˜ ten und Ungerechten unterscheiden sollt’)
that-clauses are also common to Old Persian. The conjunction is taya, a contraction of correlating ta ya ‘that which’ (Vedic tád yád).15 (41) Old Persian DB § 13 mātayamām xšnāsātiy, taya not-that-me-1.P.acc.sg he may discover-3.sg.sbjv.pres.act that adam naiy Bәrdiya amiy I-1.p.nom.sg not Smerdis I am-1.sg.ind.pres.act ‘that they not discover, that I am not Smerdis’ (‘damit sie nicht erfahren, dass ich nicht Smerdis bin’)
. A different opinion in Hoffmann & Forssman (1996:164). . Hoffmann (1975:74; 1976:406 note 5).
Competitive Indo-European syntax
In Greek that-clauses occur with verbs of ‘vision’, ‘cognition’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘speaking’, whereas Latin implements the AcI and the AcP with verbs of ‘vision’, as mentioned above. (42) Old Greek Iliad H 448f. oύχ ὁράᾳϚ ὅτı δή αὐτє кάρη not you see-2.sg.ind.pres.act that part again heads-acc.pl.n кoμóωντєϚ Ἀχαıοì/ τєıχοϚ long haired-nom.pl.m Achaeans-nom.pl.m wall ἐτєıχíσσαντο νєω ν ὕлєρ they built-3.pl.ind.aor.med ships-gen.pl because of ‘Don’t you see that the heads of long haired Achaeans have once again walled up a wall to protect the ships …’ (‘Siehst du nicht, dass nun wieder die am Haupte langgehaarten Achaier eine Mauer gemauert haben zum Schutz der Schiffe …’) (43) Old Greek Iliad Λ 408 oἰδα γὰρ ὅττı κακoì μ`єν I know-1.sg.ind.pfv.act for that bad ones-nom.pl.m part ἀлоíχονταı лоλє´μοıο they leave-3.pl.ind.pres.med fight-gen.sg.m ‘I know well that only the bad avoid the fight’ (‘Weiß ich doch, dass nur Schlechte aus dem Kampfe weichen’) (44) Old Greek Iliad P 655 єı’ лєıν ὅττı ῥά say-inf that part
oἱ лоλὺ φiλτατοϚ him-3.p.dat.sg.m much most loved-nom.sg.m
ὤλєθ ἑταıροϚ he perished-3.sg.ind.aor.med comrade-nom.sg.m ‘In order to tell (Achilles) that the companion far dearest to him is slain’ (‘um zu sagen, dass ihm der weit liebste Gefährte zugrundegegangen ist’)
Old Saxon displays the normal construction for that-clauses with all the mentioned verbs, so that examples are superfluous. 2.1.5 Main clauses The end of the scale of inflection is constituted by subordinated main clauses. Subordination can be marked by special words, as is the case with the so-called “quotative constructions”. Thus, in Vedic we have structures in the function of a sentential object delimited with a postpositional adverb íti ‘so’:
Rosemarie Lühr
(45) Old Indian RV 10,146,4 vásann aran. yānyā´m. sāyám being-prt.pres.act.nom.sg.m wilderness-loc.sg.f in the evining ákruks.ad he screamed-3.sg.ind.aor.act
íti quot
manyate he thinks-3.sg.ind.pres.med
‘Who ever is in the woods in the evening, thinks someone screamed (for help)’ (‘Wer des Abends im Walde weilt, meint, es habe einer (um Hilfe) geschrieen’) This usage is very common in later times. (46) Old Indian Br. hadāran. yaka-Upanis.ad 1.2.5
sá aiks. ata: yádi vā´ he-nom.sg.m thought to himself-3.sg.ind.ipfv.med when indeed
imám abhimam ˙syé, kánĪyó this one-acc.sg.m he will pursue-3.sg.fut.med less-acc.sg.n
’nnam. food-acc.sg.n
karis.ya he will get-3.sg.fut.med
íti. quot
‘He thought to himself, that were he to kill this one, not to have enough food’ (‘Er dachte bei sich, dass er, wenn er diesen tötete, an Speise zu kurz kommen würde’) (47) Old Indian Br. hadāran. yaka-Upanis.ad 1.3.2 té ha devā´ ūcur: these-nom.pl.m part gods-nom.pl.m they said-3.pl.ind.pfv.act hántā´surān part-Asuras-acc.pl.m
yajñá sacrifice-loc.sg.m
udgĪthénātyáyāméti Udgītha-instr.sg-m-let us outdo-pfx-1.pl.sbjv.pres.act-quot
‘The gods said: ‘Let us outdo the Asuras at the sacrafice by means of Udgῑtha’’ (‘Die Götter sagten: ‘Lasst uns die Asuras beim Opfer durch den Udgῑtha übertreffen.’’)
Similarly the comparable structure in Avestan with uiti: (48) Avestan Yašt 19,53 ušta ahmāi naire mainiiāi/ as desired-adv this-dat.sg.m man-dat.sg.m I think-1.sg.ind.pres.med uiti quot
mraot ahurō mazdā˚/ ˜ he spoke-3.sg.aor.inj.act Ahura-nom.sg.m Mazda-nom.sg.m
āi o-INTERJ
ašāum ašalike-voc.sg.m
zaraθuštra Zarathustra-voc.sg.m
Competitive Indo-European syntax
‘Good for the man, I think, thus spoke Ahura Mazda, o ašalike Zarathustra’ (‘Wohl dem Manne, denke ich, so sprach Ahura Mazda, o ašahafter Zarathustra’)16
In Anatolian, Greek and Latin we find ‘quotative constructions’ combined with verbs of ‘speaking’: wa(r), ἡ and inquit, inquam. For instance in Greek: (49) Old Greek Iliad A 215ff. … προσє´φη πόбαϚ pfx-he spoke-3.sg.ind.ipfv.act feet-acc.pl ’AχıλλєύϚ/ χρὴ μє`ν Achilles-nom.sg.m it is necessary part γє θєὰ part goddess-voc.sg.f
ὠκὺϚ quick-nom.sg.m
σφωíτєρόν both of your-adj.nom.sg.n
є῎ποϚ єıρύσσασθαı/ word-nom.sg.n respect-inf.aor.med
καì μάλα πєρ θυμω ι κєχολωμє´νον. and very part heart-dat.sg.m being angry-prt.prf.med.acc.sg.m γὰρ ἄμєıνον./ ὅϚ κє θєοıϚ ὡϚ so for better-acc.sg.n who-nom.sg.m part gods-dat.pl є’ πıπєíθηταı μάλα τ’ є῎κλυον pfx-he will obey-3.sg.sbjv.pres.med gladly so they heard-3.pl.ind.aor.act , H καì … αὐτου./ him-gen.sg.m he spoke-3.sg.ind.aor.act and ‘… quick Achilles spoke, ‘Both of your statements, o goddess, must be obeyed, even when angry at heart, for it is better, who ever obeys the gods, they are the ones the gods tend to hear,’ he spoke and …’ (‘… sprach der schnelle Achilleus: ‘Euer beider Worte, o Göttin, muss man gehorchen, wenn auch sehr im Herzen erzürnt; denn so ist es besser; wer den Göttern gehorcht, den pflegen auch sie zu erhören,’ sprachs und …’; Hock 1982: 62ff.).
Such constructions need not be further pursued here, however, because they are of no consequence for the question of whether the above competitors for the object clause function reflect underlying Indo-European syntax. They are far to diverse that a common Proto-Indo-European structure could possibly be deduced from them. It is also not justified to assume that the deverbal abstract formation in Hittite comes from Proto-Indo-European, because it only turns up in the Anatolian languages. The productive deverbal formation of abstract nouns is a process which can crop up in languages at any time, as can be seen in the case of Armenian (Lühr 1999).
. Rix (1979: 733ff.); Hettrich (1988: 396ff.).
Rosemarie Lühr
And the other way around we are prevented from assuming an infinitive object clause as a basic Indo-European element because it is missing in the Anatolian evidence. The only piece of Proto-Indo-European syntax available is a participle construction or a construction with a predicative adjective. These constructions can be found in all the older Indo-European languages we have treated. 2.2 The prototypical that-clause competitors 2.2.1 The accusativus-cum-participio/adjectivo construction Assuming that the AcP represents a basic Indo-European that-clause competitor in the function of a grammatical object, what does that tell us about the syntactic structure of Proto-Indo-European? What kind of assertion is denoted by the AcP in the old Indo-European languages we are considering? Before these questions can be dealt with in greater detail, a brief word about the status of Anatolian with respect to the rest of the Indo-European languages: recent research indicates that Anatolian did indeed diverge from the rest earlier, but not extremely long before the other languages. It would not be considered a ‘sister’ of Proto-IndoEuropean but rather the ‘eldest daughter’ (Zeilfelder 2001). In this case the meaning of individual grammatical categories in Anatolian can very well represent the more ancient linguistic data. With respect to the AcP this suggests that the functional meaning of the single participle in Hittite, which is formed with the suffix -ant, may well be old. For transitive verbs it is passive, for intransitive verbs it is active-intransitive (Friedrich 1960: 144). In the case that a passive participle with the meaning ‘protected’, ‘deceased’ exists in an AcP construction, as indicated by the case of participles formed with -ant in the Hittite examples or the case of passive participles with the meaning ‘cooked’ and ‘born’ forme with -tá- in the Old Indian examples or the case of the passive participle with the meaning ‘vanquished’ formed with -an in the Old Saxon example, then not only events like the ‘rising of the sun’ or transitory states like ‘hanging from a gallows’ can be denoted, permanent states like ‘being deceased/dead’ can also. AcP constructions can therefore contain stage-level or individual-level predicates.17 In contrast only permanent, inherent properties are denoted by the “accusative + predicative adjective” construction, because the participle of the verb ‘to be’ can be understood. Differentiating the AcP constructions as to whether they contain stage-level or individual-level predicates results in a dichotomy. Those constructions with
. Cf. Carlson (1980); Lühr (2002a, 2005). Modern English behaves differently since no individual-level predicates are permitted in participial complements. i.e., *John was being tall compared with John was being obnoxious (Felser 1998: 362).
Competitive Indo-European syntax
individual-level predicates belong to the class of examples in which the main verb is one of ‘speaking’, ‘opinion’ or ‘belief ’ and in Old Saxon of ‘vision’. The AcP generally involves a passive participle, as evident in the Hittite example (17): “to me he called him deceased” (“mir hat er ihn als gestorben bezeichnet”), or in the reformulation of the Old Indian examples (21) “I think that this newest (sacrifice) is a well cooked one” (“Ich halte diese neueste (Spende) für eine gut gekochte”) and (22) “they said that from there (from the seed) Rsi Vasist h is born” (“sie .. ˚. bezeichneten den Rsi Vasist h als einen daraus [aus dem Samen] Geborenen”). . . . ˚ Or in the translation of the Old Saxon example (26): “When did anyone see you vanquished by such deficits?” (“Wann sah dich irgend jemand von solchem Mangel bezwungen?”). Participles of intransitive verbs are also quite possible: the Old Indian example (20) “Who thinks that Indra is, that he be present?” (“Wer meint wohl, dass Indra ist, dass er gegenwärtig?”). The verbs of ‘vision’ and ‘hearing’ on the other hand display stage-level predicates if the participle is active. Consider the Old Indian examples (18), (19): “we wish to see the sun rise again” (“wir möchten noch die Sonne aufgehen sehen”); and “For I hear, that you punctually remunerate …” (“Denn … ich höre dich pünktlich vergelten …”). In such constructions the so called ‘simultanity condition’ applies. This means “the event or situation depicted by the participial complement must be interpreted as occurring simultaneously with the act of perceiving”, Felser (1998: 352). The classification evidence for the AcP with the main verb ‘to know’ varies. Greek exhibits an individual-level predicate – cf. (28) “those of whom you know that they bear the greatest affliction among mankind …” (“von denen ihr wisst, dass sie am meisten Jammer tragen unter den Menschen”).18 Old Saxon, however, has a stage-level predicate; cf. (29) “… where he knew that God’s child, the body of his Lord hung” (“… wo [am Galgen] er wusste, dass das Gotteskind, der Leichnam seines Herrn hing”). But for the most part one can delineate the two AcP construction alternatives by the semantics of their predicates. The individual-level predicate type belongs to the so called ‘small clauses’ (Staudinger 1997: 70) and the stage-level predicate type belongs to the ‘perception complements’.19
. The construction of ‘to know’ with AcI is a new development in Homer in any case, as proven by the fact that of the numerous occurrences of εἰδ�vαι only five are constructed this way (Chantraine 1963: 327). Starting from the factual verb ‘to know’, the Greek AcP went on to include further factual verbs, such as verbs of ‘reference’, of ‘narration’ and on to πoιειv in the sense of poetic presentation. . The conclusion that small clauses and related structures were used as complements in Indo-European is already reached by Miller (2002) on the basis of partly complementary data.
Rosemarie Lühr
No matter how these two types are to be differentiated within the framework of Chomsky’s ‘minimality concept’ (Felser 1998: 351ff.), they do have one thing in common. Just like the AcI constructions, they belong to those constructions for which one assumes exceptional case marking (ECM).20 That is, the case marking is provided by the main verb whereas the θ-role is supplied by the embedded predicate. In any case categories like “complementizer” (C) and infL are missing, so that small clauses and perception complements must be considered “bare verb phrases” (VP’s). 2.2.2 The explicative clause Until now we have shown that one of the characteristics of the Indo-European source language is that it has ECM-constructions and distinguishes itself by this feature from the contemporary Balkan languages, for example, which have replaced the AcI;21 compare: (50) Modern Greek ѳelω, ναhrѳeϚ ‘I want you to come’ versus (7)
Latin Plautus, Amphitruo 980 volo deludi illunc ‘I want that he be ridiculed’ (‘ich will, dass jener verspottet wird’)
And there is yet another syntactic curiosity. There were indeed that-clauses in the function of object complements in the Indo-European source language. Such subordinate clauses however carry a reference element, either a noun or a pronoun, so that they are actually attributive clauses. Consider the examples from the Vedic, Avestan and Greek with a noun as reference element:22 (51) Old Indian RV 5,31,6 prá te pū´rvān.i káran.āni vocam pfx of you-gen.sg early-acc.pl.n deed-acc.pl.n I tell-1.sg.inj.aor.act prá nū´tanā maghavan yā´ pfx newest-superl.acc.pl.n bounteous one-voc.sg which-acc.pl.n
. According to Felser (1998: 366), standard ECM complements differ from perception constructions in English in that they lack passive counterparts:
*It was seen snowing versus John was expected to draw a circle
. Compare Greekτelw, nα jαw; serb. želim, da jedem literally “I wish that I eat.” . Rix (1979: 733ff.); Hettrich (1988: 396ff.).
Competitive Indo-European syntax
cakártha/ śáktīvo yád you have done-2.sg.ind.pfv.act migthy-voc.sg that vibhárā ródasī ubhé you divided-2.sg.sbjv.pres.act23 world-acc.dual.n both-acc.dual.n. ‘I want to tell your early deeds, the newest that you, talented one, have done, that you, mighty one, divided the hemispheres’ (‘Deine früheren Taten will ich verkünden, deine neuesten, die du Gabenreicher getan hast, dass du Mächtiger beide Welthälften trenntest’) (52) Old Indian RV 1,131,4 vidús. ṭe asyá vīryàsya they know-3.pl.ind.pfv.act of you-gen.sg this-gen.sg.n deed-gen.sg.n pūrávaḥ / púro yád indra śā´radīr Purus-nom.pl.m. castle-acc.pl.f that Indra-voc.sg autumnal-acc.pl.f avā´tiraḥ you destroyed-2.sg.ind.ipfv.act ‘The Pūru’s know this deed of yours that you, Indra, destroyed the autumn castles’ (‘Die Pūrus kennen diese Heldentat von dir, dass du, Indra, die herbstlichen Burgen niederwarfst’) (53) Avestan Yašt 15,12 auuat āiiaptәm dazdi mē … yat ˜ ˜ this-acc.sg.n success-acc.sg.n grant-2.sg.imp.pres.act me-1.p.dat.sg that bauuāni aiβi vaniiā˚ vīspe I become-1.sg.sbjv.pres.act over victor-nom.sg.m all-acc.pl.m mašiiāca daēuua Daēvas-acc.pl.m humans-acc.pl.m ‘grant me this success, that I become victor over all Daēvas and humans’ (‘schenke mir diesen Erfolg, dass ich Sieger werde über alle Daēvas und Menschen’) (54) Old Greek Iliad A 411f. γνῳ δє` καì ’AτρєíδηϚ … he may know-3.sg.sbjv.aor.act part and son of Atreus-nom.sg ἣν ἄτην, ὅ τ’ἄρıστoν one’s own-acc.sg.f blindness-acc.sg.f that best-superl.acc.sg.m ν oὐδє`ν є῎τєıσє ’Aχaıω Achaeans-gen.pl.m not he honoured-3.sg.ind.aor.act
. The subjunctive refers to events in the past (Hoffmann 1967: 244).
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‘and (that) the son of Atreus may know his own error, and (the fact) that he in no way honoured the best of the Achaeans’ (‘und es erkenne auch der Atride … seine Verblendung, dass er den besten der Achaier für nichts geachtet hat’) And with a pronominal reference element: (55) Old Indian RV 1,116,5 anārambhan.é tád avīrayethām having no support-loc.sg.m that you accomplished-2.dual.ind.ipfv.act anāsthāné agrabhan.é bottomless-loc.sg.m having nothing which can be grasped-loc.sg.m samudré/ yád aśvinā ūháthur sea-loc.sg.m that Aśvins-voc.pl you led-2.dual.ind.pfv.act bhujyúm ástaṃ Bhujyu-acc.sg.m home ‘You accomplished that (deed) in the sea, that has no hold, no solid bottom, without handle, that you led Aśvins the Bhujyu home’ (‘Das vollbrachtet ihr als Heldentaten im Meer, das ohne Anhalt, ohne festen Grund, ohne Handhabe ist, dass ihr Aśvins den Bhujyu nach Hause fuhret’)
This construction is not restricted to the function of an object clause. It also occurs in the function of a subject clause. Consider the Hittite, Old Indian and Latin examples: (56) Hittite KBo IV 8 II 12ff. am-me-el ka-a-aš-pát 1-aš of me-gen.sg this-nom.sg.c-part only-nom.sg.c dam-me-eš-ha-aš ki-ya-an 1-an reproach-nom.sg.c this-acc.sg.n-her-3.p.acc.sg.c only-acc.sg.c
dam-me-eš-ha-an-nu-un-nu-un IŠ-TU É.GALLIM-pát-kán I punished-1.sg.pret.act from palace-part.part kat-ta u-i-ya-nu-un forth I send-1.sg.pret
ku-it that
‘this (is) my only reproach, with this alone have I corrected her, that I sent her forth from the palace’ (‘eben dies (ist) meine einzige Maßregelung, damit allein habe ich sie gemaßregelt, dass ich sie eben aus dem Palast fortgeschickt habe’) (57) Old Indian RV 1,93,4
ágnīs.omā céti tád vīryàṃ Agni-Soma-voc.du.m and-thus that heroic deed-nom.sg.n
Competitive Indo-European syntax
vāṃ / yád ámus.n.ītam avasám of you-gen.dual that you stole-2.dual.ind.ipfv.act food-acc.sg.n pan.íṃ gā´ḥ Pan.i-acc.sg.m cows-acc.pl.f ‘Agni and Soma, your heroic deed is famed, that you stole the food from Paṇi, his cows’ (‘Agni und Soma, bekannt ist diese Heldentat von euch, (nämlich) dass ihr dem Paṇi seine Nahrung, die Kühe raubtet’) (58) Old Indian RV 5,47,5 idám vápur nivácanam janāsaŚ / . . that-nom.sg.n miracle-nom.sg.n mystery-nom.sg.n people-voc.pl.m cáranti yán nadyàs tasthúr they wander-3.pl.ind.pres.act that river-nom.pl they stand-3.pl.ind.pfv.act ā´paḥ / dvé yád īm water-nom.pl.f two-nom.dual.f that part-him bibhrtó mātúr anyé / ˚ they carry-3.dual.ind.pres.act mother-abl.sg.f other-nom.dual.f ihéha jāté yamyā` here-here born-nom.dual.f twins-nom.dual.f sábandhū being of the same stem-nom.dual.f ‘That is a miracle, a mystery, you people, that the rivers wander, the waters stand still, that not his mother but two others carry him, born here and there and yet twins of the same tribe’ (‘Das ist ein Wunder, ein Geheimwort, ihr Leute, dass die Flüsse gehen, die Wasser stehen; dass ihn zwei andere als die Mutter tragen, die hier und dort geboren doch Zwillinge und von gleicher Sippe sind’) (59) Latin Plautus, Mercator 396 id illi vitiom that-nom.sg.n him-3.p.dat.sg.m deficit-nom.sg.n maxumst, quod nimis tardus greatest-superl.nom.sg.n.superl that too sluggish-nom.sg.m est is-3.sg.ind.pres.act ‘that is his greatest deficit, that he is too sluggish’ (‘das ist sein größter Fehler, dass er zu träge ist’)
To sum up so far, the apparently very modern construction principles – they are quite common in contemporary German – are certainly inherited from the Indo-European source language. In their function as object or subject clauses that-clauses must have a noun or pronoun as a referential element. In the case
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of the object function those verbs that semantically permit that-clauses must be specified with the feature [+ NP] in the lexicon. If however no explicative clause is chosen in the oldest Indo-European languages, the expressible content involved can be formulated as a coordinated clause or as a relative clause with reference to a marker of a person (noun or pronoun) counterpart in the main clause: (60) Old Indian RV 1,117,6 tád vām narā ´sám . . syam this-acc.sg.n of you-2.p.gen.dual lords-voc.pl.m to be told-acc.sg.n pajriyén.a kaks.΄ī vatā nāsatyā Pajriya-instr.sg.m Kaks.īvat-instr.sg.m Nāsatyas-voc.pl.m párijman/ Śaph΄ād áŚvasya during his trip-loc.sg.m hoof-abl.sg.m horse-gen.sg.m vājíno prize winning-gen.sg.m
jánāya satám . people-dat.sg.m hundred
kumbh΄ān asiñcatam mádhūnām jugs-acc.pl.m you poured-2.dual.ind.ipv.act sweet drinks-gen.pl.n ‘Kaks.ivat Pajriya must tell this (deed) of yours during his trip, you lords of Nāsatyas: You have poured one hundred jugs of the sweet drink from the hoof of the prize horse for his people’ (‘Diese (Tat) von euch muss Kaks.īvat Pajriya laut verkünden auf seiner Fahrt, ihr Herren Nāsatyas: Aus dem Hufe des preisgewinnenden Rosses schenktet ihr seinen Leuten hundert Krüge der süßen Getränke ein’) (61) Old Indian RV 5,85,5 imā΄m ū s.v ā`surásya Śrutásya this-acc.sg.f part well-part Asurian-gen.sg.m famous-gen.sg.m mahī΄m māyā΄m várun.asya prá vocam/ . great-acc.sg.f feat-acc.sg.f Varuṇa-gen.sg.m pfx I declare-1.sg.inj.aor.act m΄āneneva tasthiv΄ām antáriks.e ví ˙ yardstick-instr.sg.n-like standing-prt.pfv.act.nom.sg.m air-loc.sg.n pfx yó mamé prthivī΄m . ˚ who-nom.sg.m he has measured-3.sg.ind.pfv.med earth-acc.sg.f sū´ryen.a sun-instr.sg.m ‘I want to declare this great artistic feat of the famous Asurian Varun.a, who measured the earth with the sun by standing in the air like with a yardstick’ (‘Dieses große Kunststück des berühmten asurischen Varun.a will ich fein verkünden, der in der Luft stehend wie mit dem Messstabe die Erde mit der Sonne abgemessen hat’)
Competitive Indo-European syntax
Compare the evidence in the following table: Table 1. The distribution of that-clause-competitors in the Indo-European languages
Abstract de-verbal nouns AcI: with verbs of ‘volition’ AcI: with verbs of ‘belief ’, ‘opinion’, ‘knowledge’, ‘speaking’, ‘hearing’ AcI: with verbs of ‘cognition’, ‘vision’, verba affectus AcP: with verbs of ‘vision’ AcP: with verbs of ‘vision’, ‘speaking’ AcP: with verbs of ‘hearing’, ‘knowledge’ AcPpast: with verbs of ‘hearing’, ‘knowledge’ AcP: with verbs of ‘vision’, ‘hearing’, ‘belief ’, ‘speaking’ AcADJ: with verbs of ‘vision’ AcADJ: with verbs of ‘speaking’, ‘knowledge’ AcADJ: with verbs of ‘hearing’, ‘speaking’, ‘knowledge’ explicative clause
Early Hittite
Late Hittite
Old Vedic
√
√
√ √
√ √
√ √ √ √ kāš + kuit
demonstrative + main clause/relative clause that-clause: with verbs of ‘knowledge’, ‘vision’ that-clause: with verbs of ‘knowledge’, ‘speaking’? that-clause: with verbs of ‘vision’, ‘cognition’, ‘knowledge’, ‘speaking’ Quotative construction wa(r)
Avestian
Later Vedic
Old Persian
noun + yád, tád/ idám. + yád √ kuit
wa(r)
íti
íti
Greek
Latin
√
√
√
√
Germanic
Abstract de-verbal nouns AcI: with verbs of ‘volition’ AcI: with verbs of ‘belief ’, ‘opinion’, ‘knowledge’, ‘speaking’, ‘hearing’
√
(Continued)
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Old Persian
Greek
AcI: with verbs of ‘cognition’, ‘vision’, verba affectus
Latin
Germanic
√
AcP: with verbs of ‘vision’
√
√
√
√
AcP: with verbs of ‘vision’, ‘speaking’ AcP: with verbs of ‘hearing’, ‘knowledge’
√
AcPpast: with verbs of ‘hearing’, ‘knowledge’
√
√
AcP: with verbs of ‘vision’, ‘hearing’, ‘belief ’, ‘speaking’ AcADJ: with verbs of ‘vision’ AcADJ: with verbs of ‘speaking’, ‘knowledge’
√
AcADJ: with verbs of ‘hearing’, ‘speaking’, ‘knowledge’ explicative clause
noun + yat~
noun + o῞
id + quod
demonstrative + main clause/relative clause that-clause: with verbs of ‘knowledge’, ‘vision’
?
that-clause: with verbs of ‘knowledge’, ‘speaking’?
hiiat~
that-clause: with verbs of ‘vision’, ‘cognition’, ‘knowledge’, ‘speaking’? Quotative construction
√ taya ?
uiti
√ o῞τι
ἠ
√
inquit, inquam
The table shows the amount of syntactic variation; Vedic, Greek and Latin are the languages which have the most that-clause-competitors. But while Greek and Latin have real that-clauses, this sentence type does not arise before late Vedic. 2.3 The change in meaning from ‘what’ to ‘that’ Now the question is whether the explicative complex “reference element + thatclause” can be brought into harmony with the other constructions that exhibit a
Competitive Indo-European syntax
formal correspondent to the conjunction that. To this end let us examine the Vedic and Hittite data. Beside the obvious relative clauses Vedic displays subordinate clauses which must be considered adverbial clauses introduced by the conjunction yád. The conjunction has completely different meanings: ‘as’, ‘when’, ‘although’, ‘in order to’, ‘for’ and ‘because’. As in the case of the explicative clauses they can contain an element referring to the main clause: tád, ádha, áthā, ΄ā d, átra, átas, tátas.24 Because among these reference elements tád (the demonstrative counterpart to the relative component yád) also appears, it has been assumed that those Vedic adverbial clauses introduced by yád are derived from relative clauses.25 An explanation for the origin of ‘causal’, ‘intentional’, and ‘concessive’ adverbial meaning is basically to be found in the temporal accusative function (accusativus temporis) of tád ‘at that time’ (Abraham 1976: 41) which is picked up in the relative clause by yád. However, because TIME-clauses, as seen in many languages, do not necessarily require a reference element and may then retain an empty HEAD,26 yád can be used on its own temporally in the sense ‘at which time’, ‘when’.27 The same thing is the case with PLACE-clauses so that yád can also be used in the sense ‘at which place’, ‘where’. With respect to the temporal and positional use of accusative singular neuter pronouns consider Old Indian idám ‘now’, ‘here’. If, however, a subordinate clause is introduced by a word which may have the meaning ‘where’, then the dependent clause can be a conditional one. Consider the following: (62) Wo gehobelt wird, (da) fallen Späne. Wenn gehobelt wird, (dann) fallen Späne.
(Zaefferer 1991: 81)
The fact that such a change in meaning must be assumed for Vedic yád-clauses in adverbial function explains their distribution. For the majority of yád-clauses the introductory element can be translated as ‘when’ (Hettrich 1988: 346ff.). Assuming that the Vedic yád-clauses in adverbial function were originally TIME- and also PLACE-clauses, we must check to see if it is also valid for Hittite kuit. This word can not only be used like Old Indian yád in the meaning ‘that’ (dass). As the accusative singular neuter of the relative pronoun kuit also serves as the introductory element of clauses possibly considered adverbial. Thus kuit does appear in Hittite
. Hettrich (1988: 343, 356, 374, 412). . Cf. Rousseau (1984: 107ff.); Holland (1984: 609ff.); Harris & Campbell (1995: 26). . Thompson & Longacre (1985: 178f.). Concerning the use of nominal reference words as conjunctions consider Turc. zaman ‘when’ (past) < zaman ‘time’, Irish nuair ‘when’ < an uair ‘the hour’, Irish (s)an áit ‘where’ < sa an áit ‘at the place’, Welsh lle ‘where’ < lle ‘place’. . The assumption that yád originally took reference to a neuter noun like áhar ‘day’ (Delbrück (1900: 323); Lühr (1989: 162)) is not absolutely necessary.
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in the meaning ‘when’ (‘in the past’) and ‘since’, but most frequently in the meaning ‘because’. But because of the overwhelming preponderance of because-clauses we may not assume the adverbial TIME- or PLACE-clauses to be the source of the change in meaning from ‘what’, to ‘because’. On the contrary, we must rather assume the meaning ‘what’, as is the case in Latin quod: 28 (63) a. Hittite
ŠA ÉRINMEŠ-ma-mu ku-it … gen.part troops-pl-but-part-me-dat.sg because of what
ha-at-ra-a-eš you have written-2.sg.pret.act
‘Because of what you have written to me about the troops …’
b. Hittite MŞt. 75/112 Vs 17
ki-iš-ša-an-ma-mu ku-it in the following way-but-part-me-dat.sg because of what
ha-at-ra-a-eš you have written-2.sg.pret.act
‘Because of what you have written to me in the following way’ (‘Weil/was du mir folgendermaßen geschrieben hast’)29
. Cf. however Hofmann & Szantyr (1965: 572). . A correlative element is rather seldom; compare: Orakel KUB V 24+ I 29ff.: mKur (29) nu-za-kán dingirLUM-ma ku-it ka-ru-ú kaskal-ši and-refl-part det-Kur God-nom.sg-but because earlier time-adv ti-ya-at A-NA munus.l[ugal?] heˉappeared-3.sg.ind.pret.act to queen
(30)
k iš-an so A-NA to
me-ma-an har-ta spoken-part.pres.pass.acc.sg.n heˉhad-3.sg.ind.pret.act dingirLIM ku-it za-an-ki-la-tar Ú-U[L God-dat.sg because penance-nom.sg not
nu and
(31) nu dingirLUM A-NA munus.lugal a-pí-iz and God-nom.sg to queen therefore kar-pí-iš-ta heˉisˉangry-3.sg.ind.pres.med ‘BecauseˉKur,ˉtheˉGod,ˉalreadyˉpresentedˉhimselfˉbeforeˉ(and)ˉhadˉspokenˉ theˉqueenˉandˉbecauseˉtheˉpenanceˉwasˉnotˉ[paid]ˉtoˉtheˉGod,ˉtheˉGodˉisˉ thereforeˉangeredˉatˉtheˉqueen’
Competitive Indo-European syntax
In summary, the meaning of the introductory conjunctions for adverbial clauses in both Vedic and in Hittite yád and kuit can be derived by a mechanism already known for relative pronouns. Now we must consider how a relative pronoun can assume the meaning ‘that’. It is in fact rather common, as seen in the following examples. (64) a. Il croit que trop de gens sont venus ‘He believed that many people have come’ (‘Er glaubte, dass viele Leute gekommen sind’) b. Igor skazal čto na stolje ne bylo knigi ‘Igor said that on the table there were no books’ (‘Igor sagte, dass keine Bücher auf dem Tisch waren’)
But is it really possible to presume a relative pronoun in the change of meaning from ‘what’ to ‘that’ in Hittite? In contrast to Vedic yád the Hittite form is kuit and as such obviously identical to the inherited interrogative pronoun kuit, which also survives in Latin quid. The point is that in many languages in comparable contexts interrogative pronouns and relative pronouns are used in exactly the same way. It is therefore possible to generalize one of the two forms. One would expect an interrogative pronoun in indirect questions and expect the relative pronoun to be in the subordinated clause for a verb of ‘speaking’ in the main clause, as in the case of Greek. (65) a.
Συμβoυλєυóμєqά soi, τí we ask advice-1.pl.ind.pres.med you-2.p.dat.sg what-acc.sg.n
χρη` ποιєiν it is necessary do-inf.pres.act
‘We ask advice what to do’ (‘Wir fragen dich um Rat, was zu tun ist’; Bornemann & Risch 1973: 285)
b.
’Aπóφηναι, ὅτι30 soi dokєi tell-2.imp.aor.med what you-dat.sg it seems-3.sg.ind.pres.act ‘Tell what seems right to you’ (‘Tue kund, was dir richtig erscheint’)
( ‘WeilˉKur,ˉdieˉGottheit,ˉaberˉschonˉfrüherˉeinmalˉerschienenˉistˉ(und)ˉzurˉKö niginˉsoˉgesprochenˉhatte,ˉ(und)ˉweilˉanˉdieˉGottheitˉdieˉSühneˉnichtˉgeleistetˉ war,ˉistˉdieˉGottheitˉderˉKöniginˉdeswegenˉböse’).
. ὃτı is the neuter of the pronoun ὃστıϚ. It functions as a generalizing relative pronoun ‘who so ever’ and as indirect interrogative pronoun. But ὃ- is the stem of the old relative pronoun Indo-European *io-.
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However, the relative pronoun in Old Indian can be used with interrogative verbs: (66) Old Indian RV 1,145,2 tám ít prchanti ná simó ˚ him-acc.sg.m part they ask-3.pl.ind.pres.act not he himself-nom.sg.m ví prchati svéneva dhī΄ro ˚ pfx he asks-3.sg.ind.pres.act own-instr.sg.n-like a wise one-nom.sg mánasā yád ágrabhīt understanding-instr.sg.n what he comprehended-3.sg.ind.ipfv.act ‘Him they ask, not he himself, what he comprehended on his own like a wise one’ (‘Ihn fragen sie; er selbst erfragt nicht, was er wie ein Weiser mit eigenem Verstand erfasst hat’) (67) Old Indian RV 1,164,34 prch´ā mi tvā páram ˚ I ask-1.sg.ind.pres.act you-2.p.acc.sg extreme-acc.sg.m ántam prthivy´ā ḥ prchā´ mi yátra ˚ ˚ boundary-acc.sg.m earth-gen.sg.f I ask-1.sg.ind.pres.act where bhúvanasya n´ā bhiḥ world-gen.sg navel-nom.sg ‘I ask you about the extreme boundaries of the earth, I ask you where the navel of the world is?’ (‘Ich frage dich nach der äußersten Grenze der Erde, ich frage dich, wo der Nabel der Welt ist?’)
Compare that to the case with interrogative pronouns: (68) Old Indian RV 4,18,6 et´ā ví prcha kím idám ˚ they-nom.pl.f pfx ask-2.sg.imp.pres.act what here bhananti kám they say-3.pl.ind.pres.act what
´ā po ádrim waters-nom.pl cliff-acc.sg
paridhíṃ rujanti weir-acc.sg they break-3.pl.ind.pres.act
‘Ask them [the waters], what they say, which cliff the waters break through?’ (‘Frage sie [die Gewässer] aus, was sie da reden, welchen Felswall die Gewässer durchbrechen?’)
Competitive Indo-European syntax
The opposite is the case with verbs of ‘speaking’ which exhibit derivations from the root of the interrogative pronoun, i.e., (69) Old Indian RV 10,129,6 kó addh´ā veda ká who-nom.sg.m certainly he knows-3.sg.ind.pfv.act who-nom.sg.m ihá prá vocat kúta here pfx he declares-3.sg.inj.aor.act where ´ā jātā kúta iyáṃ vísrṣṭiḥ ˚ born-prt.pret.pass.nom.sg.f where this-nom.sg.f creation-nom.sg.f ‘Who knows certainly, who can declare, where it came from, where this creation originated?’ (‘Wer weiß es gewiss, wer kann es hier verkünden, woher sie entstanden, woher diese Schöpfung kam?’)
Because interrogative pronouns and relative pronouns can substitute for one another in the surroundings of interrogative verbs and verbs of ‘speaking’, it is quite possible that in Anatolian languages the inherited relative pronoun may have been replaced by an interrogative pronoun. A direct comparison in this case can be drawn to Latin, with the exception that there the interrogative pronoun, used as a relative pronoun in the function of nominative/accusative singular neuter is modified to quod following a demonstrative pronoun *tod (cf. Old Latin topper < *tod-per) in the main clause (Leumann 1977: 470, 482). We can resultantly work with the presumption of a relative pronoun in the change of meaning from ‘what’ to ‘that’ in the Anatolian languages, just like in Latin although independent of it. What is left to explain is the context in which such a change of meaning is possible. It may have taken place in the direct neighborhood of verbs that because of their own meaning permit subordinate that-clauses as well as what-clauses. Those are the verbs of ‘vision’, ‘hearing’, ‘cognition’, ‘saying’, but also of ‘deliberation’. The detailed semantic analysis of such verbs with respect to their complements is extremely complicated (Bäuerle & Zimmermann 1991: 346ff.). But there is also an intuitive interdependence between that-clauses and what-clauses because for instance with the verb ‘to say’ the what-clause actually presupposes the content of the that-clause referring to the past, while in the that-clause this presupposition is no longer affirmed. Thus a reanalysis must be assumed; the mechanism depends upon surface ambiguity. The underlying structure of a syntactic pattern is changed without involving any immediate or intrinsic modification of its surface manifestation (Harris & Campbell 1995: 3, 61). The next step in its evolution to a genuine that-clause in the function of an object is the possibility of eliminating the reference word. This phenomenon is
Rosemarie Lühr
some sort of standardization, compare also Cuzzolin (1994). One of two homophonous words is eliminated, which is documented in later Vedic. (70) Old Indian Chandogya-Upanis. ad 4,10,5 vijānāmy aham, yat prān.o I understand-1.sg.ind.pres.act i-ı.p.nom.sg that breath-nom.sg.m
brahma Brahman-nom.sg.n
‘I understand, that the Brahman is the breath’ (‘ich verstehe, dass das Brahman der Hauch ist’; Debrunner 1948: 123)
But it is already to be found once in the Rig-Veda: (71) Old Indian RV 1,132,4 nū´ itth´ā te pūrváthā ca now just-part of you-gen.sg like earlier-adv and pravā´ cyam. yád áṅgirobhyó is to be proclaimed-nom.sg.n that Aṅgiras-dat.pl
’νrn.or ápa vrajám ˚ you uncovered-3.sg.ind.ipfv.act pfx fenced in herd-acc.sg
‘Now just as it was earlier it must be proclaimed of you, that you uncovered the fenced in herd for the Aṅgiras, o Indra’ (‘Jetzt ebenso wie auch früher ist von dir zu verkünden, dass du für die Aṅgiras die eingehegte Herde aufgedeckt hast’)31
The technically accurate description of the change from the relative pronoun ‘which’ to the conjunction ‘that’ looks like this: (72) [phrase+wh-operator] → [head-wh-complementizer]
The wh-phrase originally occupies the XP-position and therefore the specifier– position of a CP. Following the disappearance of the wh-feature, the original relative pronoun would then occupy the previously empty complementizer-position and so become the head of the CP.32 The evolution of the relative pronoun ‘which’ into the
. Compare however Hettrich (1988: 406). . Cf. Jenny asked [cpwhich of her rabbitsi [c-] [ip she should bring ti]] with Jan vertelde [cp waari [c-][ip hij ti naar toe gaat verhuizen]]; and with ‘double filled comp’: I woaß ned, wann daß da Sepp ookomma is (Bayer 1983/1984: 212ff.; Rizzi 1090: 54ff.).
Competitive Indo-European syntax
conjunction ‘that’ must be considered part of the Proto-Indo-European language because of the many explicative clauses documented in older Indo-European languages. By the way it is possible that Germanic dass-clauses are the descendants of primary relative clauses, too. The widely accepted theory is that of transposing clause boundaries as follows: (73) Old High German Otfrid II,2,8 joh gizálta in sar tház, thiu sálida untar ín was (Müller & Frings 1959: 12)
But this approach is improbable in the face of the numerous nominal and pronominal reference elements in the main clause, as seen in Old Saxon: (74) Old Saxon Heliand 4976f. endi starkan êð suîðlîco gesuôr, that he thes gesîðes ni uuâri. ‘and he swore a solemn oath, that he did not belong to that mob’ (‘und er schwur deutlich einen schweren Eid, dass er nicht zu jener Schar gehöre’; compare Lühr 1999a).
Such constructions can very well represent the original complex of ‘reference element + relative pronoun’. The fact that Germanic that not only serves as demonstrative pronoun but also as a relative pronoun is easily seen: (75) Old High German Otfrid II,9,87 Firnim … , thaz ih thir zálta … (Erdmann 1874: 77).
In this case a syntactic change took place which is caused by pragmatics. In a first utterance a speaker presupposes something, using a verb of ‘saying’ combined with a referential element and a that-clause in the meaning of a what/ which-clause. (76) a. I say that that (= which) he knows. b. I say that (= what) he knows. He continues speaking by making clear what the person knows. c. I say that that (= which) he knows that you want …
Then one of the two homophonous words is dropped. We recapitulate: Only explicative sentences are possible New High German that-clause precursors. On the contrary, AcP-constructions are out of the question because they lack complementizers. They do not have a bounding node such as IPs, for the verb of the main clause subcategorizes here for VP. The explicative sentence, however, lost one of the two homophonous that’s in the combination that, that … , that, what, and in sentences like (76) that ‘what’ is reinterpreted as ‘that’. For a presupposition was no longer asserted a pragmatic change occurred.
Rosemarie Lühr
3. Conclusion Only two of all the that-clause competitors in the function of objects found in the older Indo-European languages can be considered part of the basic Proto-IndoEuropean language. The possibilities were deverbal abstract nouns, the AcI, the AcP and the related construction with a predicative adjective, the that-clause with and without a reference element in the main clause and the coordinated clause as a ‘quotative construction’. One of these two is the accusativus-cum-participio/ adjectivo construction, differentiated according to individual-level or stage-level predicates – the verb of the main clause subcategorizes here for VP. The other one is the that-clause containing a relational element, that is the explicative clause. Because the introductory word of the explicative clause is identical to the relative pronoun, it was possible to show, how the relative pronoun ‘which’ could develop into the complementizer ‘that’, whereby reanalysis changes an underlying structure. If however the construction ‘nominal or pronominal reference element + that-clause’ occurs in the range of verbs that permit object clauses, then the consequences for the subcategorization frame of these verbs is that they subcategorize for NP’s but not for CP’s. This means that that-clauses in Proto-Indo-European, just like adverbial clauses, were adjoined and not embedded. In both cases they were apparently originally relative clauses connected to a reference word. The subcategorization frame of a verb requiring an object can change in the course of language development, if the reference word in the main clause is dropped, as is documented among the oldest Indo-European languages in late Hittite and even once in the Rig-Veda. This process has already been accurately described by Hermann Paul (1920: 145): “Ein wichtiger Schritt zur Erzeugung komplizierter Gebilde war, dass das Objektverhältnis auf einen Satz übertragen wurde”. But the question is whether the term kompliziert is appropriate here. For in Proto-IndoEuropean the accusativus-cum-participio/adjecitio construction and the adjoined explicative clauses in the function of objects simply represent a different syntactic type than modern German for instance. Last but not least a pragmatical change is responsible for the development into modern that-clauses, after dropping one of the two homophonous that’s. If a speaker no longer maintains a presupposition the meaning ‘what’ in a declarative sentence can develop into ‘that’.
References Abraham, Werner. 1976. “Die Rolle von Trugschlüssen in der Diachronie von Satzkonnektoren”. Opuscula slavica et linguistica: Festschrift für A. Issatschenko ed. by Heinz Dieter Pohl & Nikolai Salnikow, 11–73. Klagenfurt: Heyn.
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Bäuerle, Rainer & Thomas E. Zimmermann. 1991. “Fragesätze”. Semantik: Ein internationales Handbuch der zeitgenössischen Forschung ed. by Armin von Stechow & Dieter Wunderlich, 333–348. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Bayer, Josef. 1983/1984. “Comp in Bavarian Syntax”. The Linguistic Review 3. 209–274. Bornemann, Eduard & Ernst Risch. 1973. Griechische Grammatik. Frankfurt a.M.: Moritz Diesterweg. Carlson, Greg N. 1978. Reference to Kinds in English. Bloomington: Indiana University. Chantraine, Pierre. 1963. Grammaire homérique. Vol. II, Syntaxe. Paris: Klincksieck. Coleman, Robert. 1985. “The Indo-European Origins and Latin Development of the Accusative with Infinitive Construction”. Syntaxe et Latin: Actes du IIème Congrès International de linguistique Latine, Aix-en-Provence, 28–31 Mars 1983 ed. by Christian Touratier, 307–342. Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence. Cotticelli-Kurras, Paola. 1995. “Hethitische Konstruktionen mit verba dicendi und sentiendi”. Atti del II Congresso Internazionale di Hittitologia. Pavia, 28 giugno-2 luglio 1993 ed. by Onofrio Carruba, Mauro Giorgieri & Clelia Mora, 87–100. Pavia: Iuculano. Cuzzolin, Pierluigi. 1994. Sull’origine della costruzione dicere quod: Aspetti sintattici e semantici. Firenze: La Nuova Italia. Debrunner, Albert. 1948. “Indirekte Rede im Altindischen”. Acta Orientalia 20. 120–132. Disterheft, Dorothy. 1980. The Syntactic Development of the Infinitive in Indo-European. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publications. Dressler, Wolfgang. 1971. “Über die Rekonstruktion der indogermanischen Syntax”. Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung 85. 5–22. Erdmann, Oskar. 1874. Untersuchungen über die Sprache Otfrids. Vol. 1. Halle: Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses. Felser, Claudia. 1998. “Perception and Control: A minimalist analysis of English direct perception complements”. Linguistics 34. 351–385. Friedrich, Johannes. 1960. Hethitisches Elementarbuch. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Geldner, Karl Friedrich. 1951 (1957). Der Rig-Veda aus dem Sanskrit ins Deutsche übersetzt und mit einen laufenden Kommentar versehen. Part 1–3 (21978), part 4. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Gippert, Jost. 2004. “Indo-European Word Order in Main and Subordinate Clauses in a Diachronic Perspective”. Analecta homini universali dicata: Arbeiten zur Indogermanistik, Linguistik, Philologie, Politik, Musik und Dichtung. Festschrift für Oswald Panagl zum 65. Geburtstag ed. by Thomas Krisch, Thomas Lindner & Ulrich Müller, vol. I, 48–68. Stuttgart: Heinz. Harris, Alice C. & Lyle Campbell. 1995. Historical Syntax in Cross-linguistic Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hermann, Eduard. 1894. Gab es im Indogermanischen Nebensätze. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Jena. Hettrich, Heinrich. 1988. Untersuchungen zur Hypotaxe im Vedischen. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Hettrich, Heinrich. 1992. “Die Entstehung des lateinischen und griechischen AcI”. Rekonstruktion und relative Chronologie: Akten der VIII. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, Leiden, 31 August – 4 September 1987 ed. by Robert Beekes, Alexander Lubotsky & Jos Weitenberg, 221–234. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft. Hock, Hans H. 1982. “The Sanskrit Quotative: A historical and comparative study”. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 12. 39–85.
Rosemarie Lühr Hoffmann, Karl. 1975, 1976. Aufsätze zur Indoiranistik, vol. I-II, ed. by Johanna Narten. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Hoffmann, Karl & Bernhard Forssman. 1996. Avestische Laut-und Formenlehre. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen. Hofmann, Johann Baptist & Anton Szantyr. 1965. Lateinische Syntax und Stilistik. München: Beck. Holland, Gary B. 1984. “Subordination and Relativization in early Indo-European”. Berkeley Linguistics Society 10. 609–622. Humbach, Helmut. 1991. The Gāthās of Zarathushtra and the Other Old Avestan Texts in collaboration with Josef Elfenbein and P. Oktor Skjærvø. Part I: Introduction – Text and Translation. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Kiparsky, Paul. 1995. “Indo-European Origins of Germanic Syntax”. Clause Structure and Language Change ed. by Adrian Battye & Ian Roberts, 140–169. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lehmann, Walter P. 1980. “The Reconstruction of non-simple Sentences in Proto-Indo-European”. Linguistic Reconstruction and Indo-European Syntax. Proceedings of the Colloquium of the ‘Indogermanische Gesellschaft’, University of Pavia, 6–7 September 1979 ed. by Paolo Ramat, 113–144. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Leumann, Manu. 1977. Lateinische Laut-und Formenlehre. München: Beck. Longobardi, Giuseppe. 2001. “Formal Syntax, Diachronic Minimalism, and Etymology: The history of French chez”. Linguistic Inquiry 32: 2. 275–302. Lühr, Rosemarie. 1989. “Ist die Basiskategorie TEMPORAL als Ausgangspunkt für konjunktionale Bedeutungen ein Universale?: Zur Polyfunktionalität von Konjunktionen in indogermani schen Sprachen”. Historische Sprachforschung 10. 153–173. Lühr, Rosemarie. 1993. “Zur Umstrukturierung von agenshaltigen Sachverhaltsbeschreibungen in Komplementfunktion”. Historische Sprachforschung 106. 232–261. Lühr, Rosemarie. 1993a. “Infinite Konstruktion versus Subordination”. Syntax: Zur Subordination von Sätzen, Münstersches Logbuch zur Linguistik 3 ed. by Catrin van Lengen & Eckard Rolf, 43–65. Münster: Lit. Lühr, Rosemarie. 1999. “Zur ‘Aktualisierung’ in Grammatik und Wortbildung: Die Distribution von flektierbarem Infinitiv und Abstraktum in den altarmenischen vasn-Konstruktionen”. Compositiones indogermanicae in memoriam Jochem Schindler ed. by Heiner Eichner & Hans Christian Luschützky, 323–354. Praha: Enigma Corporation. Lühr, Rosemarie. 1999a. “Absolute und relative Begriffe: Zur Syntax von Abstrakta im Heliand”. Septuaginta quinque. Festschrift für H. Mettke ed. by Jens Haustein, Eckhard Meineke & Norbert R. Wolf, 219–237. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Lühr, Rosemarie. 2000. “Der Nebensatz und seine Konkurrenten in der Indogermania: Der altindische Relativsatz”. Historische Sprachforschung 113. 71–87. Lühr, Rosemarie. 2002a. “Badal-und Genitivkonstruktionen”. Historische Sprachforschung 115. 23–36. Lühr, Rosemarie. 2002b. “Konzeptionierungen des Prädikativums in der Indogermania”. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 21. 2–24. Lühr, Rosemarie. 2004. “Thematische Rollen und Kasus: Zu Agens und Patiens beim Passiv im Altindischen”. Grammatik und Kontext: Zur Interaktion von Syntax, Semantik und Prosodie bei der Informationsstrukturierung. Linguistische Arbeitsberichte 81 ed. by Anita Steube, 99–126. Leipzig: University of Leipzig.
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Lühr, Rosemarie. 2005. “Individuen-und Stadienprädikation im Altindischen”. Nomina agentis in den indogermanischen Sprachen: Linguistische Arbeitsberichte 83 ed. by Irene Balles & Rosemarie Lühr, 161–252. Leipzig: University of Leipzig. Miller, D. Gary 2002. Nonfinite Structures in Theory and Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Müller, Gertraud & Theodor Frings. 1959. Die Entstehung der deutschen daß-Sätze. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Paul, Hermann. 1920. Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte. Halle a.S.: Niemeyer. Rix, Helmut. 1979. “Abstrakte Komplemente im Urindogermanischen”. Festschrift for Oswald Szemerényi on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday ed. by Bela Brogyanyi, 725–747. (= Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science, IV 11.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Rizzi, Luigi. 1990. Relativized Minimality. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Rousseau, Anna. 1984. “Contribution a l’histoire de l’hypotaxe en Indo-Européen: Faits et hypothèses”. Bulletin de la société de linguistique de Paris 69. 103–130. Saxena, Anju. 1995. “Unidirectional Grammaticalization: Diachronic and synchronic evidence”. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 48. 350–372. Staudinger, Bernhard. 1997. Sätzchen: Small Clauses im Deutschen. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Thompson, Sandra A. & Robert E. Longacre. 1985. “Adverbial Clauses”. Language Typology and Syntactic Description ed. by Timothy Shopen, vol. II, 171–234. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zaefferer, Dittmar. 1991. “Weiß wer was? Wer weiß was? Wer was weiß … w-Interrogative und andere w-Konstruktionen im Deutschen”. Fragesätze und Fragen: Referate anläßlich der 12. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft, Saarbrücken 1990 ed. by Marga Reis & Inger Rosengren, 77–93. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Zeilfelder, Susanne. 2001. Archaismus und Ausgliederung. Studien zur sprachlichen Stellung des Hethitischen. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
Principles of syntactic reconstruction and “morphology as paleosyntax” The case of some Indo-European secondary verbal formations Irene Balles
University Friedrich-Wilhelm of Bonn The problem of syntactic reconstruction is addressed from the point of view of an Indo-Europeanist. After a short overview over the approaches to syntactic reconstruction in the field of Indo-European linguistics in the last 50 years, the article focuses on the “morphology-as-paleosyntax-method”. This approach assumes that by going backwards on the grammaticalization path from attested synthetic formations one can at least sometimes arrive at the unattested analytic formations underlying the synthetic ones. This is exemplified by way of some Indo-European secondary tense formations for which an analytic origin has been discussed. Unfortunately the idea has some serious drawbacks so that it cannot be made as plausible as one would wish. On the other hand it may be hoped that future research will yield more and resilient results also in the field of Proto-Indo-European syntax.
1. Th e problem of syntactic reconstruction and Indo-European linguistics In view of the recent discussion between Harris & Campbell and Lightfoot (Journal of Linguistics 38 [2002]) it becomes clear that there is no communis opinio regarding the principal question: Is syntactic reconstruction (especially that of unattested language stages) possible at all? If the answer to this basic question is positive, the next question to be raised is: to which extent? First, it is necessary to clarify some preliminary and corollary questions. What exactly is syntactic change? The recent discussion has shown that this is not entirely clear. So Longobardi (2001) seems to imply that there is no primitive syntactic change at all, but that syntax is changed only as a consequence of primitive changes in phonology and/or semantics.1 If this view is correct, every description . This opinion could meet Lightfoot’s view, according to which syntactical changes can only occur if there are local causes (Lightfoot 2002a: 134).
Irene Balles
of a syntactic change also requires the information which phonological or semantical change has triggered the syntactical one. This hypothesis is further corroborated by new approaches in the study of language acquisition which suggest that the acquisition of syntactic means − like e.g., the article − depends on the setting of parameters in phonology and prosody (cf. Lleó 1998 and 2000 as well as Ferraresi & Goldbach in the Introduction to this volume). It is clear that it is not Indo-European linguistics by which elucidation of such questions is to be expected in the first place. On the other hand, also in Indo-European linguistics there exist treatises on syntactic change. Time and again it has been tried to reconstruct at least certain single phenomena of Proto-Indo-European syntax. Most prominent in the 1970s was the question which has been the basic word order of the unmarked ProtoIndo-European sentence (Lehmann 1974; Friedrich 1975; Miller 1975). Much has changed since then, and actually it is no longer the question if PIE has been SOV or something else, but recent research has revealed that this can only be answered in the frame of a pragmatically based approach taking into regard also information structure (see Matić 2003 for such an approach to Ancient Greek word order, Klein 1991 for Vedic, Isaac (in press) for Celtic).2 Furthermore, as Watkins rightly has stated, syntax is more than word order, and not every phenomenon of word order is in any sense syntactical (cf. Watkins 1976: 305 and 307). This found more attention in the 80s and 90s, when not only some more studies on Proto-Indo-European word order, especially on “Wackernagel’s law” in the generative framework appeared (Hale 1987; cf. Krisch 2002), but also other syntactical issues have been examined like the relative sentence (Seiler 1960; Lehmann 1984), the syntax of cases (see Hettrich 2002a and 2007), the syntax of preverbs and adpositions (Hettrich 1991, 1993 and 2002c as well as Hackstein 1997), absolute constructions (Keydana 1997; Ziegler 2002) or subordination (Hettrich 1988; Lühr in this volume). Furthermore, there is at present a research team (Hettrich; García Ramón; Panagl; Mumm; Krisch and others) working on the overdue syntax-volume of the Indogermanische Grammatik (Kuryłowicz 1968; Watkins 1969; Cowgill & Mayrhofer 1986; see Hettrich 2002a for the ongoing research towards this volume). Certain issues of Indo-European syntax are also
. Already Dressler (1971: 17ff.) emphasizes correctly that there are of course rules of textcoherency which allow inital predicate if the sentence in question is embedded in a larger textual context, not to speak of topicalization phenomena. Sometimes it is assumed that the “unmarked word order” of Proto-Indo-European has been SOV, but even this goes not without serious difficulties, as an anonymous referee kindly points out to me: For example, Hittite was never C-final (like Japanese), and true verb-final languages would never allow the verb in sentence-initial position, as must have been possible in PIE to judge e.g., from the development of the Celtic languages (see McCone 1979a).
Syntactic reconstruction and “morphology as paleosyntax”
dealt with in the papers in Crespo & García Ramón (1997) and of course in many more articles, published in different places. Another, but limited way to find out Proto-Indo-European syntactic structures may be the reconstruction of phraseologisms that may preserve archaic syntactical vestiges (exemplified by Watkins 1995 & Janda 1997).3 Except for those few scholars who work explicitly in the generative framework like e.g., Hale, Krisch or Lühr, in Indo-European linguistics theories − if used at all − are often adopted without much comment. This is of course so because in Indo-European linguistics methodology is fairly different from synchronic linguistics and also from diachronic linguistics in, say, Romance languages. Here former and later stages of the language are both attested; one has only to recognize in which way and why the language has changed. In Indo-European linguistics, however, at least in so far as it is concerned with the reconstruction of the IndoEuropean proto-language, not only the development but also the previous stages of the language lie completely in the dark (cf. the picture of the two black boxes given below). In this rather uncomfortable situation it is completely understandable and acceptable if some linguists deny the possibility of reconstructing the syntax of unattested stages of language at all.4 While in phonology and morphology the comparative method, completed by the tool of “internal reconstruction”, yields remarkable results, things in syntactic reconstruction are rather different: Identical or similar patterns need not by all means rely on genetic kinship, but can almost always be understood as typological correspondences, telling nothing about the genetic relationship of two languages. This may ultimately corroborate the notion of universals of grammar (i.e., the principles of “UG”), but for the reconstruction of previous syntactic stages neither similarities nor identities can be taken as such.
. Cf. Watkins (1976: 317): “It is in the nature of proverbs and proverb-like utterances to preserve frozen syntax, that is to preserve syntactic constructions that may have been given up in ordinary discourse”. But Dressler (1971: 6) rightly points out that the relics of Proto-IndoEuropean poetic language give us the chance to grasp parts of the Proto-Indo-European parole. Syntactical reconstruction, however, aims at the langue, i.e., structures, patterns and rules of the language. Some more examples for phraseologisms reconstructed by the “morphology-aspaleosyntax”-method are given by Dunkel (2000) and Hackstein (2002). . So we can not at all blame those scholars who would call the reconstructed Proto-IndoEuropean language a “myth”, but cf. McCone (1986: 261): “A standard, more or less uniform Indo-European may be a myth, but it is a methodologically indispensable one in a discipline that knows no reality beyond actually attested forms, which it must then seek to relate and explain in the neatest and most economical way feasible”.
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Therefore the comparative method alone seems not to be the appropriate tool to reconstruct the syntax of unattested language stages in a satisfactory way. So it is yet open to discussion if syntactic reconstruction is possible at all, syntactic reconstruction actually in the sense required for Indo-European linguistics, namely finding out which rules, patterns and structures (or, in the generative paradigm: which parameter settings) are to be assumed for Proto-Indo-European. This question cannot be answered by a simple “yes” or “no”. Both answers would be wrong. Indeed, it seems that some success in the reconstruction of ProtoIndo-European syntax may be achieved. But surely, it will never be possible to reconstruct the whole system of the Proto-Indo-European langue, not to speak about the parole. So the task for Indo-European linguistics for the next few years will be to apply the comparative method as proposed by Harris & Campbell as well as to make use of the parameter model as exemplified by Longobardi & Gianollo. The combined results of each method may ultimately clarify the question which one of these two approaches turns out to be the more promising one, at least for Indo-European linguistics. I for my part would rather refrain from coming to a final decision at this stage.
2. T ypology, grammaticalization theory and “morphology as paleosyntax” As said above, the use of the comparative method in reconstructing syntax is very limited. On the other hand, the pitfalls of internal reconstruction are well-known, too: There is no really independent, objective touchstone for evaluating the plausibility of a solution proposed. Therefore reconstruction sometimes seems to be rather a matter of personal preferences and believing (or not) in a theory or hypothesis. Of course, a reconstruction is always a matter of probability (a Wahrscheinlichkeitsschätzung in Dressler’s words). However, there are factors to be analyzed (Dressler 1971: 6) in a way as objectively as possible. The relevant factors, according to Dressler, are: 1. The diffusion of the phenomenon in question in the languages concerned, 2. the formal identity or similarity of the linguistic material, 3. the identity or similarity of content and meaning, 4. the compatibility with the results of internal reconstruction (this means conformity with a solid theory of grammaticalization), 5. the coherence of the single phenomenon within a broader frame (within the whole system of, e.g., nominal morphology), and last, but not least, 6. the typological factor.
Syntactic reconstruction and “morphology as paleosyntax”
Of course language typology alone can never prove or disprove a theory (as it is not possible, neither, to prove any phenomenon to be universal, cf. Harris & Campbell (1995: 330)), but it is a fairly solid support. For, as Dressler (1971) points out, if a reconstruction stands in contradiction to the facts observable in all living languages of the world, it will be very improbable. The more parallels exist in living languages, the more probable it will be. If the reconstruction corresponds to a linguistic near-universal, probably it is correct. If the reconstruction corresponds to a linguistic universal, its correctness can be taken for sure (Dressler 1971: 7). Many (also Indo-European) linguists would perhaps add one more factor: the compatibility of the explanation with a certain theoretical framework, be it the generative theory, some version of dependency grammar, optimality theory, or any other theoretical approach.5 Similar criteria for the evaluation of a syntactic explanation are given by Hackstein (2004: 265). He numbers three conditions that have to be satisfied for syntactic reconstruction to be plausible: recoverability, naturalness, and explanatory power. The first demand (for recoverability) means that the prototypes claimed to be the forerunners of a particular construction must either be attested, or at least be plausibly recoverable. Otherwise one takes the risk of the so-called marker/structure-fallacy, i.e., the assumption that the structure in which a certain element is found is identical with the source structure of that element which is by no means always the case. The second proviso, naturalness, can be equated with Dressler’s typological factor. The explanatory power is an additional recommendation for a solution proposed, because it makes it all the more convincing, if it can also account for certain morphological or syntactical anomalies. A quite good example for a linguist reconstructing diachronic syntax in the generative framework is Longobardi (2001, 2003). He assumes that the nearness of genetic relationship between two languages can be shown to correspond with the number of identical parameter settings:6 French and Italian display nine identities
. Cf. Rosén (1994: 46): “Comparative syntax of Indo-European is possible, provided we use all the resources of our advanced syntactical methods to discover and recover the grammatical categories, which are pertinent and operative in the earliest, but historically attested, stages of Indo-European”, and id. (1994: 27): “[ … ] no comparative Indo-European syntax can effectively be formulated without due account of the distinction of dependency grammar and valency.” − For a discussion of some recent linguistic models for explaining diachronic morphosyntactic change see Fykias (2002) (e.g., in Hale 1998); for an approach to grammatical change in Optimality Theory cf. Bermúdez-Otero (1996) (grammatical change is here seen as re-ranking of one or more single constraints). . In the generative grammar it is assumed that the “universal grammar” (UG) underlying every existing language consists of some universal principles plus a finite set of (presumably
Irene Balles
(out of a subset of eleven parameters concerning the DP), French and English five, and French and Greek only four (cf. Longobardi 2003: 288). A more elaborate version of essentially the same approach can now be found in Gianollo et al. (in press). Here a set of 38 parameters relevant for the DP is checked in a sample of 22 languages. In a second, modified version this set of parameters is reduced to 21, which are assumed to be the more stable ones and for which it can be supposed with some plausibility that correspondences here are due to genealogical rather than areal relation or correspondence by chance. The result of Gianollo’s study is in accordance with the known genetic relationships between the languages examined: So genetically very close languages like Irish and Welsh show the same parameter setting in all 21 cases examined, while e.g., French and its ancestor language Latin have 13 parameter settings in common, Classical Greek and Russian 11, and English and the West-Atlantic language Wolof (spoken in Senegal) only six. If Longobardi and Gianollo are on the right lines with their approach, it should be a promising task to reconstruct the relevant parameters for Proto-Indo-European syntax by comparing identical and different parameters of the older Indo-European languages. Of course, much empirical work remains to be done in this area before, because many questions are yet open, e.g., (cf. Longobardi (2003: 279) for these and some more questions): 1. Are there restrictive conditions on possible parameters? 2. Are all parameters really binary? 3. How many parameters are to be assumed? 4. Which are the more stable (“deeper”) parameters and which are the more “shallow” ones (i.e., more easily resettable)? This is also of importance for diachronic parameter research, since the more stable ones can be predicted to be more resistant to historical resetting. 5. How is the “clustering” of parameters to be judged, i.e., the fact that some parameter settings seem to be triggered by another parameter setting? 6. Is all grammatical variation indeed parametric? specially of interest for a parametric syntax in Indo-European linguistics may be E the following diachronic questions, also raised by Longobardi:
binary) parameters which has to be filled. In child language acquisition a specific corpus of data (the input) triggers the specific parameter setting of the language to be learned. Part of the universal system of principles is the so-called LAD (Language Acquisition Device) which is responsible for the evaluation of the primary data. It consists of certain principles; one example for such an acquisition principle may be the device “minimize feature content” as exemplified in Longobardi (2001: 294) for the categorial shift from N (noun) to P (preposition) in the diachronic development of French chez (see Longobardi 2001 for the details).
Syntactic reconstruction and “morphology as paleosyntax”
7. Which conditions exist on diachronic parameter resetting, or: when and how comes it to syntactical change?, and: 8. Is it possible to reconstruct significant portions of the parameter values of unattested languages like Proto-Indo-European by means of internal and comparative reconstruction?7 These or similar questions could of course also be raised by linguists working outside the generative paradigm. In any case it becomes clear at once that typological research is indispensable in reconstructing the syntax of unattested languages: Only then it will be possible to make solid statements about parameters, their nature (e.g., stableness or shallowness) and their characteristics. Or, reformulated for non-generative linguists: to make solid statements about syntactic changes and their naturalness which is indespensable to establish the patterns of an unattested language stage. However, for Indo-European linguistics as well as for other diachronic syntax research the description of syntactical phenomena alone is not sufficient. There is also need of a thorough survey of the syntactical changes occurring, their conditions and their reasons, in short: a typology of syntactic change. Only upon such a broad empirical basis syntactic reconstruction in earlier stages of language will be possible, regardless of operating in the generative framework or otherwise. In the last two or three decades, internal reconstruction has been given some more attention under the label of “morphology as paleosyntax” (Givón 1971, 1979; Dunkel 2002).8 The idea behind this approach is very simple: If grammaticalization theory tells us what changes do actually take place, and if grammaticalization usually is unidirectional,9 it should – at least sometimes – be possible to pursue
. It may be noted in passing that the “Parametric Comparison Method” of Gianollo et al. (in press) ultimately combines and therefore reconciles the classical linguistic comparative method with the Chomskyan Principles and Parameters Model. . Of course, this idea was not at all new, but has been quite prominent in the initial stages of historical linguistics where nearly every ending and every suffix has been suspected to be a former lexeme (see Eichner 1994 for details and some examples). . The usual development is from less to more grammaticality and, simultaneously, from more to less (or zero) lexical content (cf. e.g., Hopper & Traugott 1993: 94ff.). Of course, there are also examples of degrammaticalization, like the back-forming of lexemes out of a suffix or a second member of compound in the case of Ism (commun-ism) or bus (from omni-bus; cf. Ramat 1992, 2001); but it is out of question that the normal and by far the most common case is a development from lexeme to compositional member to suffix. Cf. Ramat (2001: 396): “It may be that degrammaticalization is statistically insignificant when compared with the large number of grammaticalization processes”, and Giacalone Ramat & Hopper (1998: 7): “Even though the (relatively) few examples going in the opposite direction of change should warn us against
Irene Balles
the way of development backwards until prior stages of the language and find out which analytical construction is underlying a synchronically synthetic form. A famous example for applying this method successfully is the Romance future: French je chanterai “I will be singing” goes back to an analytical (periphrastic) Vulgar Latin formation **ego cantāre habeō.10 Indeed, almost all analytical constructions claimed for Proto-Indo-European can only be reconstructed by projecting backwards certain complex formations in attested languages for which such an origin can be made probable (cf. Balles 2004).11 If such a method were considered not to be legitimate, it would turn out that Proto-Indo-European had possessed not a single reconstructable periphrastic construction at all. Since this is not a very plausible assumption, the “morphology-aspaleosyntax”-method seems to be a quite legitimate tool in the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European.12 Indeed, for explaining form and structure of forms reconstructed by means of the comparative method for Proto-Indo-European with some plausibility, “morphology-as-paleosyntax” is perhaps the only way for advancing further and shedding at least some light on the Proto-Indo-European past.
making a strong claim of unidirectionality, we may still expect that certain narrowly defined types of changes are unidirectional”. Cf. Harris & Campbell (1995: 330ff. and 361ff.) for discussion. I cannot generally follow Lightfoot (2002a: 128n6) in his view that “there are no sustainable generalities about the directions of change”. . Two asteriscs “**” indicate that the syntagm is a transponate, not a real reconstructed sentence or verbal phrase. It need not have existed as such at any time, but is result of projecting the French form back into Latin time. For the term “transponate” cf. Eichner (1988: 30f.), for the use of two asteriscs in similar fashion cf. Schumacher (2004: 160). − For more details about the French future cf. Fleischman (1982), Roberts (1993); on grammaticalization in general cf. Lehmann (1995), Heine, Claudi & Hünnemeyer (1991), Hopper & Traugott (1993), Heine (1993). . There is, in sum, only one hypothesized PIE periphrastic construction with a certain reliability, that is the syntagm consisting of the passive verbal adjective in -to- plus fientive copula verb (expressing the resultative state of the object) as proposed by Meiser (2004). This is attested in almost every older IE language except Hittite as such, i.e., as an analytical construction (having become synthetic only in Old Irish, see Schumacher (2004: 79)), similar in shape and meaning. But here again, it is not possible, to prove the PIE age of this construction as a periphrasis in the strict sense. It could be as well an independent innovation in the individual languages. See Balles (2004) for more details and discussion. . Without much explicit discussion this point of view seems to be taken by most scholars in IE linguistics.
Syntactic reconstruction and “morphology as paleosyntax”
3. Some secondary Indo-European verbal formations and their origin In this section I want to show possibilities and limits of syntactical reconstruction by way of some secondary verbal formations in older Indo-European languages. The formations concerned here are the Germanic dental preterite, the so-called Latin b-tempora (imperfect and future), and the Slavic imperfect.13 For all of these three formations a periphrastic origin has been postulated. This periphrastic construction has been supposed to survive also in the so-called Old Indic cvi-construction, a copula-predicative-construction for ingressive adjectival and substantival predication.14 Although quite a number of older as well as recent studies has been devoted to detailed problems of phonology, morphology and semantics of this comparison,15 no broadly accepted communis opinio about the suggested periphrastic origin has been achieved. Instead, considerable doubts have been raised about it. So, it is still rather a matter of believing or not believing in one or another of the explanations available. But for a scientist this is a rather uncomfortable situation, and since there is not much hope onto new data, it seems appropriate to seek for theoretical and methodological means to review and evaluate the prevailing hypothesis of a common periphrastic origin of the formations involved. 3.1 Some Indo-European secondary verbal stems First, I will give the most important facts about the relevant constructions in the individual Indo-European languages. 3.1.1 The Germanic dental preterite is typical for all secondary verbs which lack an old perfect and aorist built by means of ablaut and reduplication. It consists of the verbal stem, a dental which is always identical with that of the respective verbal adjective, and personal endings:
. For more details and literature see Balles (2006) where the afore-mentioned formations are shortly dealt with. . The terminus cvi-construction was coined by the Old Indic native grammarians and has been adopted by Indo-European linguistics for reasons of simplicity. This quite remarkable construction is dealt with thoroughly in Balles (2006). . See, for example, Lühr (1984) and Rasmussen (1996) (on the Germanic dental preterite), Rix (1983) and Gippert (1999) (on the Latin b-tempora), Lühr (1999) (on the Slavic imperfect), and Jasanoff (2003) on all of them, all pleading for a periphrastic origin and giving older literature.
Irene Balles
(1) a. Gothic salbō-da ‘I/he/she anointed’ (infinitive: salbōn) b. Gothic soki-dēdum ‘we sought’ (infinitive: sokjan) c. Gothic habi-da ‘I/he/she raised’ (infinitive: hafjan) d. Gothic wraki-dēdun ‘they pursued’ (infinitive: wrakjan)
3.1.2 The Latin imperfect is built on every verbal stem. However, the complete lack of extra-Italic correspondences makes it clear that it is a younger formation that has its starting point most probably in the secondary verbal classes,16 from where it spread to all verbs. Its characteristic feature is a labial element -bā- which is supposed to go back somehow to the Proto-Indo-European copula *bhu̯ah2-17 (cf. Rix 1983; Gippert 1999 and Rix 2003). (2) a. Latin laudā-bam ‘I praised’ (infinitive: laudāre) b. Latin tacē-bās ‘you were silent’ (infinitive: tacēre) c. Latin audī-bat ‘he heared’ (infinitive: audīre) d. Latin vituperā-bant ‘they blamed’ (infinitive: vituperāre)
3.1.3 The Slavic imperfect has a characteristic element -ax- which may go back to PIE *ēs- (with a special but non unparalleled development of *-ē- to -a-). Although every Slavic verb can build this imperfect, there is again good reason to assume that this new formation has first arisen in secondary or “weak” verbs (cf. note 16
. In Latin, these younger and therefore “secondary” verbal classes can roughly be equated with the thematic verbal stem classes. From an Indo-European point of view we deal here mostly with denominative verbs. . I don’t agree with Jasanoff (2003: 112f.) in that *bhuh2- was an invariant root without any ablaut variations, neither do I accept (for reasons that will become clear below) his explanation of the b-imperfect given in (1978: 121) and repeated in (2003: 155ff.), although it is extremely attractive at first glance.
Syntactic reconstruction and “morphology as paleosyntax”
for a more precise description) lacking an inherited Proto-Indo-European perfect and aorist. (3) a. OChSl mьně-axъ ‘I meant’ b. OChSl glagola-aše ‘you/he/she said’ c. OChSl xval’a-axomъ ‘we praised’ d. OChSl kryja-axǫ ‘they covered’
3.1.4 All tense formations just described have two characteristic features in common: First, there is an element between stem and ending which may go back to one of the Proto-Indo-European copula verbs *h1es- (in the case of Slavic), *bhuah2(Latin) or *dheh1- (Germanic). In addition, the stem preceding this element ends in a long vowel (*-ā-, *-ō-, or *-ē- respectively). This vowel has been compared with the -ī of the Old Indic cvi-construction which shows up with all three of the copula verbs claimed here (for the inner-Indic substitution of *dheh1- see below). The difference in vowel colour was usually held to be negligible in face of some variance of this vowel also in Old Indic itself18 and in face of the compounded Latin verb-type of calēfaciō “I make warm”/calēfiō “I am getting warm” whose first element, calē-, seems to represent another candidate for the nominal form in long vowel. But it has to be seen if this comparison can really stand up to a closer scrutiny and a serious methodological examination. 3.2 The Old Indic cvi-construction 3.2.1 The copula-predicative-construction called cvi-construction is mostly productive in Classical Sanskrit. It consists of an adverbial form in -ī and an intransitive or transitive copula verb. The copula verb has ingressive meaning and therefore perfective aspect. The adverbial form can productively be built on almost every nominal stem, but by far the most common case is a thematic noun as its basis (substantives as well as adjectives, both typically with “adjectival” semantics).19
. Of course, the cvi-construction strictly never shows another form than that in -ī. But besides, there are some additional predicative constructions with the same copula verbs (but also with zero copula) and a nominal form ending in -ā or -ū, cf. Hoffmann (1952). . “Adjectival” semantics comprises in the first place properties, inherent as well as accidental ones, human propensities, but also other words classifying the head noun.
Irene Balles
The copula verbs used are bhū- “to become” for the intransitive (fientive) (the optative being substituted by as- “be”), and kar- “to make, do” for the transitive (factitive) meaning. The latter can be shown to be an inner-Indic substitute for PIE *dheh1- “put; make; do”. Beside this construction also the unmarked predication with unchanged nominal basis (substantive or adjective) and ingressive copula stands at disposal. In this case the predicative shows congruence with its head noun (subject or object). The pragmatic function of the cvi-construction can be shown to be a marked variant of this latter which is underlined by the fact that the cvi-construction comes pre-eminently into use in narratives about changing one’s body, being transformed and in poetic similes. Examples: (4) a. kathā - “story”: kathīkar – “to change into a story”20 b. gaja - “elephant”: gajībhū - “to become an elephant” c. siṁha - “lion”: siṁhībhū - “to become a lion” d. tr̥ṇa - “blade of grass, straw”: tr̥ṇīkar - lit. “to take for a blade of grass”21 e. maṇḍala - “ring”: maṇḍalīkar - “to make into a ring or circle”, maṇḍalībhū - “to become a ring or circular, to become round”22 f. mukula - “bud”: mukulīkar - “to form a bud (with one’s fingers)”23 g. dhūmra - “smoke-grey”: dhūmrīkar - “to colour grey”24 h. sita - “white, bright”: sitīkar - “to make bright” i. śakala - “splinter”: śakalīkar - “to split”, śakalībhū - “to splinter, burst”25
. The past participle kathīkr̥ta - “being changed into a story” is equivalent in meaning to “being dead”. Cf. Kalidāsa, Kumārasambhava 4.13: avagamya kathīkr̥tam . vapuḥ priyabandhos tava niḥphalīdayaḥ “Your dear comrade will consider getting up fruitless, when hearing that your body has become a story”. . This means “to think little of something or someone”.
̥ atsaṁhitā 34.1 saṃ mūrchitā ravīndvoḥ kuraṇāḥ pavanena maṇḍalībhūtāḥ/ . Cf. Br h nānāvarṇākrt̥ ayas tanvabhre vyomni pariveṣāḥ “When the condensed rays of sun and of moon having become a circle through the wind,/then the halos, having manifold colours and forms [come into being], the sky being slightly clouded”. (after Lüders 1909: 202). . Cf. Kalidāsa, Kumārasambhava 5.63: athāgrahaste mukulīkr̥tām.gulau samarpayantī spha ṭikākṣamālikām “Then with the top of his hand, forming a bud out of his fingers, he grasped the crystal wreath”. . E.g., in the proverb-like saying from O.v. Böhtlingk’s Indische Sprüche No. 3778: niḥśvāsodgīrṇahutabhug dhūmrīkr̥ tānanaḥ/varamāśīviṣaiḥ saṅgaṃ kuryān na tveva durjanaiḥ “Better than with evil men it is to deal with snakes whose mouths are grey coloured by the smoke of the fire spewed out by their breath”. . Rāmayana 4.31.15: śilāś ca śakalīkurvan padbhyām “and crushing the rocks with his feet”; Rāmayana 7.26.56: murdhā tu saptadhā tasya śakalībhavitā tadā “His head, however, is going to break into seven pieces then”.
Syntactic reconstruction and “morphology as paleosyntax”
The substitution of the stem-final -a- by -ī in the cvi-form is usually understood as a regular Proto-Indo-European pattern of word formation. It occurs also in some other derivational categories; beyond this it is mysterious. 3.2.2 There are at least three different theories to explain the characteristical -ī of the cvi-construction. The most prominent one has been proposed by Jasanoff (1978: 120ff.) and Schindler (1980) and adopted among others by Eichner (1994) and Peters (1997: 211n12; 1999 and 2002: 101). According to this view the form in -ī represents an instrumental used predicatively. It belongs to the paradigm of an abstract noun in -i- that could be formed productively to thematic adjectives, e.g., *albho- “white” → *albhi- “whiteness” (concretized in Old Norse elfr “river” and, with an additional -t-, in Greek ἄλφιτ- “barley”, i.e., “the white [one]”). The meaning of the syntagm underlying the cvi-construction has been assumed to be “to be supplied with x (x = the noun in the instrumental)”, factitive “to supply [someone] with x”. This explanation has been taken as starting point for comparing the secondary tense stems presented above (examples (1)–(3)) and for reconstructing an already somewhat grammaticalized Proto-Indo-European copula-predicativeconstruction consisting of a nominal form ending in a long vowel (-ī, -ē, -ā, and -ō respectively, interpreted as predicative instrumentals of different stem classes) and an ingressive copula verb.26 3.2.3 If this reconstruction were correct, one would have discovered here a piece of Proto-Indo-European syntax by means of the usual methods of historical linguistics: 1. Comparing predicative constructions (analytic as well as synthetic ones) of some older Indo-European languages, 2. Tracing them back to their (assumed) common origin (a Proto-Indo-European syntagm of a nominal form ending in a long vowel plus copula verb), and 3. Applying the method of internal reconstruction (by determining the nominal form in long vowel as an instrumental).
. Of course, there are other theories available, e.g., Wackernagel (1908) (the form in -ī being a genitive); Bloch (1972) (inner-Indic origin); Schlerath (1988, 2000) (recycling Wackernagel’s idea); Tichy (1990) (the form in -ī being a neuter nom.-acc.-form of a collective): But with all these proposals, the comparison with the weak tense formations is not possible. Moreover, the alternative attempts have their own handicaps and therefore no more probability than Schindler’s (see Balles 2006 for the discussion of details).
Irene Balles
Differences in detail such as the varying colour of the long vowel as well as the divergent copula verbs have been explained by selection and generalization out of a once broader spectrum of available nominal forms and copula verbs in the yet ungrammaticalized syntagm. The use with almost every verb stem in Latin, Germanic and Slavic was assumed to be the result of reanalysis (of the nominal form, the old instrumental, as verbal stem) and its extension to other verbal stems as tense stem. This would represent just another case of the comparative method in diachronic linguistics applied to syntax, as advocated by Harris & Campbell (1995: 50), consisting of the only mechanisms accepted there, i.e., reanalysis and extension. (There is of course no chance of applying the third mechanism of syntactic change, namely borrowing, in this case, since no contemporary neighbour language is known.) 3.2.4 However, this proposal has by no means found general agreement. Although there is no alternative explanation with evidently more plausibility quite a lot of criticism and scepticism has been brought forward. Too many of the steps and assumptions in this reconstruction seem to be ad hoc: 1. There is no hint outside the Old Indic cvi-construction for an instrumental used predicatively with the copula verbs PIE *bhuah2- and *dheh1-. 2000) about the hypoth2. Doubts have been raised (e.g., Schlerath 1988 and esized pattern o-adjective → i-abstract noun which is essential in Schindler’s hypothesis for explaining the use of the otherwise strange i-stem in place of the normal and expected o-stem. 3. The comparison of the cvi-construction with other secondary verbal tense formations displaying a characteristic stem-final long vowel cannot be taken as an argument for the correctness of Schindler’s theory. This would be circular and therefore a pseudo-argument, as can easily be shown. 3.2.5 The cvi-construction is typically used for the transformation of an adjectival predication into the perfective aspect with ingressive Aktionsart (especially if the speaker wants to use a marked expression). Therefore, in Old Indic there is a narrow relationship between the cvi-construction and the whole system of adjectival predication. In my opinion, this is no matter of chance. Indeed, only in the larger frame of Proto-Indo-European adjectival predication it is possible to give a satisfying explanation for the presence of the synchronically completely opaque form in -ī. I assume that this form can only be understood as the relic of an old i-stem (as per Schindler), used for adjectival concepts, but not yet specified for being substantive or adjective. Only on the syntactical level there was such a distinction and one can
Syntactic reconstruction and “morphology as paleosyntax”
speak about distinct parts of speech (or word classes). In a later but still ProtoIndo-European epoch many of these underspecified property concept words have been re-characterized by suitable suffixes, some as abstract nouns, some as adjectives. The i-stems actually attested in the individual Indo-European languages are for the most part lexicalized and substantivized and therefore not re-characterized. Only in two dialect groups of late Proto-Indo-European at least some of the i-stems seem to have been classified as lexical adjectives: these branches are the Anatolian and the Italo-Celtic language families. The existence of a considerable mass of i-stem adjectives in these languages, standing in contradiction to their rareness in Indo-Iranian, Greek or Balto-Slavic, was a mystery until now. But in the light of the theory proposed here, it can be solved: I assume that in Greek and IndoIranian only few of the property concept i-stems have retained their (presumably very common) adjectival use and been categorized as adjectives without any further stem enlargement. Otherwise the property concept words have been enlarged by secondary suffixes like -mo-, -lo-, -ro- for the adjectival, -es-, -men- for the abstract noun function. The -ī of the cvi-construction can be understood as a form of the old property concept noun in -i- used adverbially and being not re-characterized (because of already being somewhat grammaticalized) in the special context of the marked ingressive predication. Whether the long vowel continues an old instrumental or another adverbial form is a question of less or almost no interest here. So, as we have seen, the role of the form in -ī can be understood only in the context of adjectival predication. But exactly this context is completely lacking in all the other weak stem formations compared. There is no trace of any closer connection between the weak preterites above and adjectival predication, and, regarding the characteristic long vowel, no relationship with i-stem abstract nouns at all. To say that this relationship could have been abandoned during the hundreds of years of development (with reference to the key word extension), is of course possible, but not sufficient to save the hypothesis: It is only a further adhoc-statement that weakens the whole theory. For, the relationship with i-stems is not only a formal one. Rather, the abstract nouns ending in -i- belong to the system of adjectival predication in Proto-Indo-European. So the extension of the predicative construction with nominal form in -ī to other nominals ending in -ā or -ō is not merely a formal generalization, but requires abandoning the original function and domain of this construction.27
. Only the Latin calefacio-type with a nominal in -ē has chances of having been a further member of the system of adjectival predication, because not only i-stems, but also certain consonantal stems (such as the root-nouns whose instrumental would have ended in -ē) play a role in this domain, known under the famous name “Caland-system” (Nussbaum 1976; 1999).
Irene Balles
3.2.6 It is true that in the other tense formations introduced above a long vowel is characteristic, too. But it has to be noted not only that this long vowel has nothing to do with adjectival predication, but that it also shows up in the present stem. Why, then, should one explain the long vowel of the present otherwise than that of the past tense? A way out of this dilemma has been to see in all stem vowels of Proto-Indo-European ā-, ō- and ē-verbs a reflex of a former instrumental (Jasanoff 1978: 120ff.;28 Peters 1999). But actually no evidence is available in favour of this reconstruction, except the cvi-construction itself. So it becomes a circular argument. 3.2.7 Of course, there are the same copula verbs showing up in the Old Indic cvi-construction as well as (with different selection and generalization) in the weak preterites of the individual languages. But even if the periphrastic explanation for these latter ones is correct (see especially Rasmussen 1996 for a very promising periphrastic approach to the Germanic dental preterite), the correspondence between the copula verbs used in periphrastic constructions in different IndoEuropean languages does not tell much: It is quite natural that copula verbs or “light verbs” play a role in periphrastic constructions. Since the roots *h1es-, *bhuah2- and *dheh1- are by far the most common Proto-Indo-European copula it is no surprise that exactly these copula verbs occur in different periphrasverbs, tic syntagms, even if these are genetically unrelated. 3.2.8 Concerning the instrumental supposed to be contained in certain late Proto-Indo-European secondary verbal stems, the following facts should be taken into consideration. The long vowel most prominent in secondary verbal stems of late Proto-IndoEuropean is -ā-, resulting from PIE -ah2-. This has probably been the most productive denominative suffix in late Proto-Indo-European (cf. Hitt. newahhzi “he renews” from the adjectival stem newa- “new”). These verbs often display instrumental semantics. But this must not by all means be traced back to a real instrumental case form. Typologically more usual and more trivial are morphologically underspecified verbal formations, cf. e.g., the German and English conversion verbs kräutern “to flavour with spices”, schlagzeilen “to use as a headline”, urlauben “to make holidays”, bomben “to throw bombs”, to scale, to trouser, to basket, to key etc. (Vogel 1996: 189).
. According to Jasanoff (1978: 124f.) such instrumentals have been reinterpreted as unmarked 3rd singular verb forms. Unfortunately, there is no typological evidence known to me, helping to evaluate the probability of this hypothesis that inside Indo-European linguistics remains somewhat speculative.
Syntactic reconstruction and “morphology as paleosyntax”
The instrumental semantics of these derivations is not given by any surface morpheme but supplied only by the extra-linguistic world knowledge and the empirically based knowledge of stereotypes, shared both by speaker and hearer (Vogel 1996: 187; Mayerthaler 1982: 30ff). Because of the extra-linguistic and grammarindependent ontological reality of the relationship between e.g., a chair and sitting on it, or trousers and putting them on or wearing them, it is no problem to interpret most zero-suffix denominative verbs unambiguously. The simplest assumption for the Proto-Indo-European denominative verbs in -ah2- is therefore that these are conversion verbs, too, to be interpreted by means of common sense knowledge. Since the presence of an instrumental ending -(e)h1 in these formations cannot be proved otherwise, it is more economic and more plausible to dispense with this element in the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European suffix. If then there is no instrumental ending contained in the Proto-Indo-European ā-verbs, there remains no reason to assume it in the secondary preterite tenses of the same verbs. It is more plausible to identify the vowel -ā- of the present and that of the past tense.29 3.2.9 Another group of Proto-Indo-European verbs with characteristic stemfinal long vowel are the fientives and essives in *-eh1-, present stem presumably PIE *-h1-ye/o- (Harđarson 1998; Neri 2003: 264f.n870). For these verbs, too, a “decasuative”, de-instrumental origin has been proposed (Jasanoff 1978: 120ff. and 2003: 156f.; Peters 1997, 1999). Formally, this is of course possible. But again serious doubts must be raised: 1. It would be unique in Proto-Indo-European verbal morphology to have case endings used as denominative verbal stems. I do not know of typological parallels, which would certainly be of great interest in this question. 2. Many of the verbs in question are not obviously built on nominal stems, but seem rather to be primary, or, at least, not denominative (Lat. tacēre “to be silent”). In favour of this hypothesis only Ockham’s razor (entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem) could be brought forward, because the morpheme of the instrumental and that of the fientives/essives is indeed of exactly the same shape. On the other side, in view of the restricted phoneme inventory for suffixes in Proto-Indo-European (Dunkel 2001), it can not be excluded that seemingly identical morphemes have different sources and functions.30
. This present stem is already of Proto-Indo-European age. Its ultimate origin lies in the dark. In any case, the denominative ā-verbs are quite old, despite the fact that they are secondary and cannot build perfect and aorist with ablaut like the “primary” verbs. . So, no one would reasonably argue for an identical origin of the 3rd singular active ending -t and the nominal suffix -t (whose function is not entirely clear). Or, the hic-et-nunc-marker -i
Irene Balles
So, it is by no means inevitable to see an instrumental in certain secondary verbal stems only because of the (unproven) idea that it is also an instrumental underlying the Old Indic cvi-construction. Rather, the long vowel of certain secondary verb categories is part of the stem and cannot be proven to be a former nominal case form (pace Jasanoff 1978; Peters 1999). The Old Indic cvi-construction, on the other hand, has only sporadically a verbal stem beside it. From a synchronous point of view, the basis is a noun without any exception.31 Therefore, it cannot be taken for granted that the long -ī of the cvi-form is indeed something comparable to the stem-vowel of certain secondary verbs. 3.2.10 We can summarize that there are several serious obstacles against comparing the Old Indic cvi-construction with other Indo-European weak tense formations. Furthermore, there is no clear evidence for the alleged instrumental behind it and behind other instances of stem-final long vowel. Every such hypothesis, even though irrefutable in the strict sense, remains more or less speculative. Neither the comparative method nor internal reconstruction can prove or make probable, at least, the instrumental hypothesis for the cvi-construction. Since there are other explanations available for the weak preterites of Germanic, Latin and Slavic,32 it seems to be wiser to dispense with the instrumental at all. 3.2.11 So we are left with a fairly trivial syntactic device established for ProtoIndo-European: A copula-predicative-construction whose nominal element could either be an adverbial form (like the one in -ī, but beside this many others also) or a noun inflected for case, gender and number and therefore exhibiting congruence with its head noun in the sentence. As copula verb several roots have been standing
occurring in many verbal endings as well as in the locative case need not have anything to do with the i-stems mentioned above denoting property concepts. . However, even if the interpretation as an instrumental case synchronically has to be rejected, the case form underlying the adverbial form in -ī ultimately may very well be an instrumental, for which I have brought forward further (mostly semantic) arguments (Balles 2006). . These explanations don’t work with a common Proto-Indo-European periphrastic syntagm, but assume certain analogical processes, perhaps acknowledging the additional influence of copula-predicative-constructions like the one found in the Old Indic cvi-construction. For the Germanic dental preterite a periphrastic syntagm consisting of the Proto-Indo-European verbal adjective in -to- and the factitive copula verb *dheh1- as proposed by Rasmussen (1996) is a very promising approach. The only feature that it has in common with the Old Indic cvi-construction is then the use of the copula verb *dheh1- together with a nominal predicative, which surely has been a Proto-Indo-European syntactic device.
Syntactic reconstruction and “morphology as paleosyntax”
at disposal: *h1es- or zero copula (in the 3rd person indicative present) for the stative, imperfective meaning, *bhuah2- for the ingressive, perfective meaning (both intransitive), and finally *dheh1- as the factitive counter-part in the ingressive, perfective meaning.
4. Conclusion In the previous section I have tried to show by the way of one rather vexed example in Indo-European linguistics that syntactic reconstruction is indeed possible, even that of phenomena in unattested languages like Proto-Indo-European. It has turned out that the reconstruction of a Proto-Indo-European periphrastic syntagm as the common source of the weak preterites of Latin, Germanic and Slavic remains possible, but cannot be proven unequivocally. Similarities in the synchronous guise of the tense stems in question may simply be founded on typological convergence or on the same inventory of prerequisites (like the copula verbs being at disposal) in the common Proto-Indo-European ancestor language. Even more serious are the objections to be raised against the comparison of those weak preterites with the Old Indic cvi-construction. So it may be wiser to refrain from this comparison. Our undertaking, therefore, has strongly confirmed the qualifications already made above, namely that there are indeed strong and serious limits for the gleaning in the unattested past. While historical linguistics in, e.g., Romance is dealing only with one black box, lying between (at least partly attested) Vulgar Latin and mediaeval and modern Romance languages, Indo-European linguistics (as well as many other branches of historical linguistics) is confronted with two black boxes. Every reconstruction that does not meet all the conditions required (cf. section 2 above for the criteria that have to be fulfilled by a syntactic reconstruction to be plausible) remains therefore more or less speculative and uncertain. However, I think that diachronic research is in principle possible. On the one hand, this has already been proved by the innumerable number of perfectly plausible phonological, morphological and semantic reconstructions. But it is possible for syntactic reconstruction, too. Of course, it will take much time and paper yet, until we will really be able to write the syntax chapter of Indo-European grammar. More research is urgently needed not only in the syntax of the older and younger Indo-European languages, but also the theories of syntactic change, be it in the generative framework or not, have to be discussed, tested, modified, refined and sometimes abandoned. In any case it is getting clearer more and more that Indo-European linguistics can not do without a strong, efficacious and sustainable
Irene Balles
Romance languages ↑ Black box ↑ Classical/Vulgar Latin Figure 1. The “one-black-box-situation” in reconstructing Romance from Latin.
Attested Indo-European languages ↑ Black box no. 2: Development from PIE to the IE languages ↑ Black box no. 1: State of affairs in Proto-Indo-European Figure 2. The “two-black-boxes-situation” in reconstructing Proto-Indo-European.
theory of change exactly because of the two-black-boxes-situation sketched above.33 Otherwise every reconstruct must remain mere speculation.34 . Here, despite so many studies, not very much has changed since Watkins’ statement over forty years ago: “Likewise absent in comparative grammars is any sort of dynamic conception of syntactic change through time, which we might set beside such conceptions of phonological or morphological change.” (Watkins 1963: 2) . This statement meets at least partially the criticism of Lightfoot (2002a: 127): “Reconstruction of earlier grammars or languages, where our most ancient records show variation, can happen only where we have a substantive theory of change”. − However, I do not follow Lightfoot in his rather pessimistic view, regarding the usefulness of grammaticalization theory
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References Balles, Irene. 2000. “Die altindische Cvikonstruktion: Alte Deutungen und neue Wege”. Indoarisch, Iranisch und die Indogermanistik ed. by Bernhard Forssman & Robert Plath, 25–36. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Balles, Irene. 2004. “Die Tendenz zum analytischen Sprachtyp aus der Sicht der Indogermanistik”. Die europäischen Sprachen auf dem Wege zum analytischen Sprachtyp ed. by Uwe Hinrichs, 33–53. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Balles, Irene. 2006. Die altindische Cvi-Konstruktion: Form, Funktion, Ursprung. Bremen: Hempen. Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo. 1996. Stress and Quantity in Old and Middle English: Evidence for an optimality-theoretic model of language change. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Optimality Archive ROA-136. Bloch, Alfred. 1960. “Kann der lateinisch-keltische Genetiv auf -ī der o-Stämme gleichen Ursprungs sein wie die altindische Präverbialform auf ī?”. Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung 76. 182–242. Campbell, Lyle & Alice C. Harris. 2002. “Syntactic Reconstruction and Demythologizing ‘Myths and the Prehistory of Grammars’”. Journal of Linguistics 38. 599–618. Cowgill, Warren & Manfred Mayrhofer. 1986. Indogermanische Grammatik. I: Einleitung und Lautlehre. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Crespo, Emilio & José-Luis García Ramón, eds. 1997. Berthold Delbrück y la sintaxis indoeuropea hoy. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. Dressler, Wolfgang U. 1969. “Theorie und Empirie in der Sprachwissenschaft”. Linguistische Berichte 4. 70–75. Dressler, Wolfgang U. 1971. “Über die Rekonstruktion der indogermanischen Syntax”. Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung 85. 5–22. Dunkel, George E. 2000. “Latin verbs in -igāre and -īgāre”. 125 Jahre Indogermanistik in Graz ed. by Christian Zinko & Michaela Ofitsch, 87–99. Graz: Leykam. Dunkel, George E. 2001. “The Sound-Systems of Proto-Indo-European”. Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference ed. by Martin E. Huld, Karlene JonesBley, Angela Della Volpe & Myriam Robbins Dexter, 1–14. Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man. Dunkel, George E. 2002. “*eĝō and *áĝō, *eĝH-óh1 and *h2éĝ-oh1: Preservation and the primary thematic ending *-ō”. Hettrich, ed. 2002a. 89–103. Eichner, Heiner. 1988. “Sprachwandel und Rekonstruktion”. Akten der 13. Österreichischen Linguistentagung ed. by Christian Zinko, 10–40. Graz: Leykam.
for reconstructing earlier phenomena of grammar, although it has to be admitted that there was achieved indeed not so much success until today. But this may very well be altered in future linguistic research. Cf. again Lightfoot (2002a: 127): “Linguists have sought such theories for the last 150 years with no success, and grammaticalization theory fares no better. My own view has been that the search is misconceived; there is no theory of change to be had independent of theories of grammar and acquisition”. − An attempt to give such a theory of grammar and acquisition can be found in Lightfoot (1999).
Irene Balles Eichner, Heiner. 1994. “Zur Frage der Gültigkeit Bopp’scher sprachgeschichtlicher Deutungen aus der Sicht der modernen Indogermanistik”. Bopp-Symposium 1992 der HumboldtUniversität zu Berlin ed. by Reinhard Sternemann, 72–90. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Fleischman, Suzanne. 1982. The Future in Thought and Language: Diachronic evidence from Romance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Friedrich, Paul. 1975. Proto-Indo-European Syntax: The order of meaningful elements. (= Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph, 1.) Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man. Fykias, Iohannis. 2002. “Linguistische Modelle für den morphosyntaktischen Wandel”. Hettrich, ed. 2002a. 209–227. Giacalone Ramat, Anna & Paul Hopper. 1998. “Introduction”. The Limits of Grammaticalization ed. by A. Giacalone Ramat & P. Hopper, 1–11. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Gianollo, Chiara, Cristina Guardiano & Giuseppe Longobardi. In press. “Historical Implications of a Formal Theory of Syntactic Variation”. Paper presented at DIGS VIII, Yale, June 2004. To appear in Syntactic Variation and Change ed. by Dianne Jonas & Stephen Anderson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gippert, Jost. 1999. “Das lateinische Imperfekt in sprachvergleichender Sicht”. Studia Celtica et Indogermanica. Festschrift für Wolfgang Meid zum 70. Geburtstag ed. by Peter Anreiter & Erzsébet Jerem, 125–137. Budapest: Archaeolingua. Givón, Talmy. 1971. “Historical Syntax and Synchronic Morphology: An archeologist’s field trip”. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society 7. 394–415. Givón, Talmy. 1979. On Understanding Grammar. New York: Academic Press. Hackstein, Olav. 1997. “Präverb, Post- und Präposition im Tocharischen: Ein Beitrag zur Rekonstruktion urindogermanischer Syntax”. Tocharian and Indo-European Studies 7. 35–59. Hackstein, Olav. 2002. “Uridg. *CH.CC > *C.CC”. Historische Sprachforschung 115. 1–22. Hackstein, Olav. 2003. “Apposition and Word-Order Typology in Indo-European”. Language in Time and Space: A festschrift for Werner Winter on the occasion of his 80th birthday ed. by Brigitte L.M. Bauer & Georges-Jean Pinault, 131–151. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Hackstein, Olav. 2004. “From Discourse to Syntax: The case of compound interrogatives in Indo-European and beyond.” Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference ed. by Karlene Jones-Bley, Martin E. Huld, A. Della Volpe & M. Robbins Dexter (= Journal of Indo-European Monograph Series, 49), 258–298. Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man. Hale, Mark. 1987. Studies in the Comparative Syntax of the Oldest Indo-Iranian Languages. Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. (UMI 87–11520.) Hale, Mark. 1998. “Diachronic Syntax”. Syntax 1. 1–18. Harđarson, Jón Axel. 1998. “Mit dem Suffix *-eh1- bzw. *-(e)h1-ye/o- gebildete Verbalstämme im Indogermanischen”. Sprache und Kultur der Indogermanen ed. by Wolfgang Meid, 323–339. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Innsbruck. Harris, Alice C. & Lyle Campbell. 1995. Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heine, Bernd. 1993. Auxiliaries: Cognitive force and grammaticalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heine, Bernd, Ulrike Claudi & Friederike Hünnemeyer. 1991. Grammaticalization: A conceptual framework. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Hettrich, Heinrich. 1988. Untersuchungen zur Hypotaxe im Vedischen. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Hettrich, Heinrich. 1991. “Syntax und Wortarten der Lokalpartikeln des Rgveda. I: ádhi”. Münchner Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft 52. 27–76. Hettrich, Heinrich. 1993. “Syntax und Wortarten der Lokalpartikeln des Rgveda.. II: antár”. Münchner Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft 54. 147–176. Hettrich, Heinrich. 1995. “Zur funktionalen Variationsbreite altindogermanischer Kasus: Der Ablativ im Rgveda”. Verba et structurae. Festschrift für Klaus Strunk zum 65. Geburtstag ed. by Heinrich Hettrich, Wolfgang Hock, Peter-Arnold Mumm & Norbert Oettinger, 53–72. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Innsbruck. Hettrich, Heinrich, ed. 2002a. Indogermanische Syntax: Fragen und Perspektiven. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Hettrich, Heinrich. 2002b. “Das Projekt einer Kasussyntax des Rgveda: Der Instrumental”. Hettrich, ed. 2002a. 43–63. Hettrich, Heinrich. 2002c. “Syntax und Wortarten der Lokalpartikeln des Rgveda. III: pári”. Novalis Indogermanica: Festschrift für Günter Neumann zum 80. Geburtstag ed. by Matthias Fritz & Susanne Zeilfelder, 215–242. Graz: Leykam. Hettrich, Heinrich. 2007. Materialien zu einer Kasussyntax des Rgveda. pdf-file, available under http://wwwalt.uni-wuerzburg.de/vergl-sprachwiss/Materialien.pdf Hoffmann, Karl. 1952. “Zum prädikativen Adverb”. Münchner Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft 1. 42–53. (Repr. in Hoffmann, Aufsätze zur Indoiranistik, vol. II, 339–349. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1976.) Hopper, Paul & Elisabeth Traugott. 1993. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Isaac, Graham. In press. “Die Urgeschichte der verbalen Morphosyntax im Keltischen: Eine Schnittstelle zwischen Grammatik, Semantik und Pragmatik”. To appear in Pragmatische Kategorien. Form, Funktion und Diachronie ed. by Elisabeth Rieken & Paul Widmer. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Janda, Michael. 1997. Über “Stock und Stein”: Die indogermanischen Variationen eines universalen Phraseologismus. Dettelbach: Röll. Jasanoff, Jay H. 1978. Stative and Middle in Indo-European. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Innsbruck. Jasanoff, Jay H. 2003. Hittite and the Indo-European Verb. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keydana, Götz. 1997. Absolute Konstruktionen in altindogermanischen Sprachen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Klein, Jared. 1991 “Syntactic and Discourse Correlates of vero-ininas Sentences in the Rigveda”. Studies in Sanskrit Syntax: A volume in honor of the centenary of Speijer’s Sanskrit Syntax ed. by Hans Henrich Hock, 123–143. Delhi: Motilal. Krisch, Thomas. 2002. “Indogermanische Wortstellung”. Hettrich, ed. 2002a.249–261. Kuryłowicz, Jerzy. 1968. Indogermanische Grammatik. II: Akzent, Ablaut. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Lehmann, Christian. 1984. Der Relativsatz. Typologie seiner Strukturen, Theorie seiner Funktionen, Kompendium seiner Grammatik. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Lehmann, Christian. 1995. Thoughts on Grammaticalization. München: Lincom Europa. Lehmann, Winfred P. 1974. Proto-Indo-European Syntax. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.
Irene Balles Lightfoot, David W. 1999. The Development of Language: Acquisition, change and evolution. Oxford: Blackwell. Lightfoot, David W. 2002a. “Myths and the Prehistory of Grammars”. Journal of Linguistics 38. 113–136. Lightfoot, David W. 2002b. “More Myths”. Journal of Linguistics 38. 619–626. LIV = Helmut Rix et al. 2001. Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben: Die Wurzeln und ihre Primärstämme. 2nd, enlarged and revised ed. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Lleó, Conxita. 1998. “Proto-Articles in the Acquisition of Spanish: Interface between phonology and morphology”. Models of Inflection ed. by Ray Fabri, Albert Ortmann & Teresa Parodi, 175–195. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Lleó, Conxita. 2000. “The Interface of Phonology and Morphology: The emergence of the article in the early acquisition of Spanish and German”. Approaches to Bootstrapping: Phonological, syntactic and neurophysiological aspects of early language acquistion, vol. I, ed. by Barbara Höhle & Jürgen Weissenborn, 23–44. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Longobardi, Giuseppe. 2001. “Formal Syntax, Diachronic Minimalism, and Etymology: The history of French chez”. Linguistic Inquiry 32: 2. 275–302. Longobardi, Giuseppe. 2003. “On Parameters and Parameter Theory”. Syntaxtheorien: Modelle, Methoden, Motive ed. by Elisabeth Stark & Ulrich Wandruszka, 273–290. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Lüders, Heinrich. 1909. “Sanskrit muktā-, muktāphala, phala”. Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung 42. 193–206. Lühr, Rosemarie. 1984. “Reste der athematischen Konjugation in den germanischen Sprachen”. Das Germanische und die Rekonstruktion der indogermanischen Ursprache ed. by Jürgen Untermann & Bela Brogyanyi, 25–90. Amsterdam& Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Lühr, Rosemarie. 1999. “Das slavische Imperfekt. Chronologie einer Periphrase”. Gering und doch von Herzen: 25 indogermanistische Beiträge Bernhard Forssman zum 65. Geburtstag ed. by Joachim Habisreitinger, Robert Plath & Sabine Ziegler, 167–182. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Lühr, Rosemarie. 2008. “Competitive Indo-European Syntax”. This volume. Matić, Dejan. 2003. “Topic, Focus, and Discourse Structure”. Studies in Language 27. 573–633. Mayerthaler, Willi. 1982. “Das hohe Lied des Ding- und Tunwortes bzw. Endstation ‘Aktionsding’: Eine Wortstudie im Rahmen der Natürlichkeitstheorie”. Papiere zur Linguistik 27. 2. 25–61. McCone, Kim R. 1979a. Aspects of Indo-European Sentence Patterns and Their Role in the Constitution of the Old Irish Verbal System. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Oxford. McCone, Kim R. 1979b. “Pretonic Verbs and the Absolute Verbal Endings in Old Irish”. Ériu 30. 1–34. McCone, Kim R. 1986. “From Indo-European to Old Irish: Conservation and innovation in the verbal system”. Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Celtic Studies (Oxford 1983) ed. by D. Ellis Evans, John G. Griffith & Edward M. Jope, 222–266. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Meiser, Gerhard. 2004. “Die Periphrase im Urindogermanischen”. Per aspera ad asteriscos. A Festschrift for Jens Elmegård Rasmussen on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday ed. by Adam Hyllested, AndersRichardt Jørgensen, Jenny Helena Larsson & Thomas Olander, 343–354. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Innsbruck. Miller, Gary. 1975. “IE: VSO, SOV, SVO, or all three?”, Lingua 37. 31–52. Neri, Sergio. 2003. I sostantivi in -u del gotico: Morfologia e preistoria. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Innsbruck.
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Syntactic change and syntactic borrowing in generative grammar1 Claire Bowern Yale University
This paper explores three issues in the reconstruction of syntactic borrowing. First, I discuss the scholarly traditions which have shaped historical phonology and historical syntax. I point out some of the incompatible assumptions which the two fields make, and examine the role of speakers’ individual grammars in language change, along with the effects that traditions within generative syntax have had on framing historical syntactic questions. I then move to an investigation of calquing and the reconstruction of syntactic borrowing, and a discussion of the work of Minimalism in historical syntactic research (in particular, Longobardi (2003)). I argue that any detailed account of language change (no matter what the framework) must address the role of language contact. I argue that real progress in syntactic reconstruction requires a theory of borrowing that does not treat loan constructions as simply ‘noise’ in the data.
1. Introduction The study of historical syntax has occupied an uneasy place between “traditional” historical linguistics and synchronic generative grammar. Causes of the tensions include differences in the definitions of what constitutes an object of historical study and how the techniques of diachronic syntax relate to synchronic syntactic analysis. While several writers mention differences (e.g., Vincent 2001 and Fischer et al. 2000) the most important differing assumptions are often left unexpressed. Such differences are particularly relevant when we consider the treatment of language contact and borrowing. I here explore issues in the reconstruction of syntactic borrowing by examining the role of speakers’ individual grammars in language change and the effects that traditions within generative syntax have had on framing historical questions. I discuss these underlying assumptions and some of the ways in which the research . Thanks to two anonymous reviewers and Ilya Yakubovich for comments on an earlier version of this article.
Claire Bowern
traditions of historical phonology and synchronic syntax are orthogonal to one another. I then move to an investigation of calquing and the reconstruction of syntactic borrowing within generative grammar. Any detailed account of language change (no matter what the framework) must address the roles of language contact and grammar contact. The implications of contact are pervasive and fundamental to language change, whether the contact be between speakers of different languages or between those of different varieties of the same language. It could be said that even first language acquisition is a type of “contact” between the child and fluent speakers of the language which the child is acquiring. A theory of the effects of language contact is particularly important for modelling language change in the many parts of the world where more than one language is in daily use in the speech community. There is need of a theory of how loan syntax can enter the language, and a methodology for describing the results of language contact, ideally within current models of “mainstream” language change. I elaborate on some proposals in this article. This article has three parts. In Section 2, there is a discussion of the differences between techniques in analysing phonological change and syntactic change. I analyse why the two subfields are different, and what the different underlying assumptions are. Section 3 involves a discussion of borrowing, adult acquisition and the place of adult innovation in a study of language change. Finally, in Section 4 I return to analogies between the study of phonological and syntactic change and make some comments on how borrowings in syntax might be identified, and the problems inherent in doing so.
2. Historical syntax and historical phonology What do we study when we investigate historical syntax? One simple answer is, of course, that it is the study of changes in the grammars of languages over time in the same way that historical phonology is the study of changes in sounds and phonemes over time. The question is not so simple, however, as historical syntax and historical phonology have traditionally been concerned with rather different assumptions, different foci of study, and different interpretations of what constitutes a “result”. Indeed, differences between historical phonology and historical syntax as they are currently practised range over initial input data, assumptions about the nature and the locus of change, handling of rules in reconstruction, and treatments of language contact and borrowing. I expand on some of these differences in the following sections.2
. It is a fairly frequent charge that historical linguistics is a 19th Century field which has not progressed beyond the methods and data known at the time (see, for example, Lightfoot’s
Syntactic change and syntactic borrowing in generative grammar
2.1 The domain of study Historical generative syntax has traditionally focused on two areas of research.3 One is the synchronic syntax of ancient languages (such as Old English or Old High German). Here the researcher tries to discover the principles underlying the internal grammars of speakers of an earlier stage of the language. The object of study here has no element of change; the “historical” of “historical syntax” here is equivalent to the “historical” of the “historical record”. This type of research is not what historical phonologists tend to do. Studying the synchronic phonology of Old English, for example, is unlikely to be called “historical phonology”. The other dominant area of research is the comparison of earlier and later stages of the same language. Pintzuk (2003: 509), for example, defines diachronic syntax as simply this: the comparison of two stages of the same language, and thus a branch of comparative syntax. Under this view, there is little difference between the processes of studying Old English versus Modern English and Modern English versus Japanese. In each case, we are starting from synchronic analyses and detailing the differences between the two. In the former case we call the differences ‘changes’, whereas in the latter we do not. In this view, the two objects of comparison are not necessarily cognate constructions; we are dealing with phenetic comparison rather than phylogenetic comparison.4 This is an important methodological point; it does not follow that because Old English evolved into Modern English, that construction a in Old English changed into construction b in Modern English. For example, Old English bede is replaced by Modern English prayer, but it does not follow from this that the Old English word changed into the Modern English one.
2006: 184 barb about historical linguists and “the aging gentlemen at the end of the departmental corridor”). It is true that the Comparative Method has been used for nearly 200 years (its origins can be found in Rask 1818), and historical linguists tend to stress the longevity of their methods, particularly in contrast to more recent subfields of linguistics. Chemistry has a long history too, and just chemists who believes in phlogiston are hard to find these days, so too are historical linguists with 19th Century views of linguistic relationships. . The same point is made indirectly in Los (2005). . For the distinction and detailed discussion of phenetic comparison in linguistics, see the Introduction to Bowern and Koch (2004) and the references cited there. Pires and Thomason (this volume) also discuss the problems of using purely typological methods in linguistic reconstruction. Note that I therefore disagree with Balles (this volume) regarding the utility of approaches such as the one outlined in Gianollo et al. (2004). Time and time again ‘traditional’ historical linguistics has shown the danger of relying on phenetic approaches to language classification over reconstruction-based methods, and far from being the innovation that Lightfoot (2006: 181) claims, work such as Gianollo et al. (2004) and Longobardi (2003) are simply the latest variants of a long line of studies of questionable results based on more questionable methodology.
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The view that comparative and historical syntax involve identical techniques is closely related to the prevailing theory of change in generative historical syntax. That is, much formal historical syntax assumes the acquisition-based model of change first delineated in Lightfoot (1979) (see also more recent work, such as Anderson & Lightfoot 2002; Lightfoot 2003). In this model, languages change because children acquire a slightly different grammar from their parents’ grammar – that is, languages change because children set parameters triggered by exposure to slightly different data. A change appears in a language once sufficient numbers of speakers of that language have converged on the same new parameter setting (through chance, or through sociolinguistic factors such as prestige) to propagate the change through the historical record. Under this model, there is no real continuity in grammar, for each “grammar” is deduced afresh in the mind of each new speaker. The comparative/phenetic approach here is thus an understandable one. If there is no continuity between grammars we cannot strictly appeal to the idea of ‘genetic relatedness’.5 This theory of change is contingent upon our theory of acquisition, and “change” has little independent status. As Hale (1998: 3) notes, “change” in this view is just the set of differences between two languages which are related temporally. In historical phonology, however, change and the processes or stages of change have been studied extensively in their own right (cf. amongst others Blevins 2004; Labov 1994, 2001; Ohala 1993). It is not at all clear, however, why there should be such a difference in the way we approach the two areas of language. After all, a child’s acquisition of phonological contrasts is discrete and not strictly continuous too. The child must still analyse the speech stream for meaningful contrasts and abstract word boundaries, phonemes, and other phonological information. Phonological grammars are recreated with each generation in the same way that syntactic grammars are. The difference would seem to stem more from the research traditions of the two sub-disciplines than from either acquisition or change per se. 2.2 The ontological status of a ‘language’ A further difference between diachronic phonology and syntax arises from the conception of a “language”. It has been a frequently stated view in the generative literature that the idea of a named “language” – for example English, Hixkaryana or Thai – is epiphenomenal. Chomsky (1986: 27–31) provides a statement of the position. The reasoning goes like this: if the object of study is I-language (broadly . I leave aside for now the status of acquisition as the sole mechanism of change. Along with many historical linguists, I assume that child language acquisition is not the only locus of language change, although it is an important one.
Syntactic change and syntactic borrowing in generative grammar
characterised, a person’s linguistic competence, or their internal grammar), and if children learn Language by extrapolating from the patterns around them (or by setting parameters based on limited evidence), a ‘Language’ is just the set of individual Grammars and associated Lexicons which are mutually intelligible. It has no independent theoretical status. Thus the language ‘English’ in this framework (under the radical interpretation) is a convenient label given to a collection of individual grammars of individual speakers, all of which share a certain set of properties and lexical items which may or may not be shared by other “sets of grammars”. The “languages” themselves are not the object of analysis; what is under study are the properties of a particular system instantiated in a particular individual.6 This is perhaps the largest differences between synchronic syntax and historical phonology. Historical phonologists appear comfortable with the idea that they can define changes over sets of abstractions over a language as a whole,7 but syntacticians tend to think of grammars not as abstractions common to languages as a whole, but properly common only to a single speaker. (Further discussion of this point, particularly with reference of the definition of “change”, can be found in Pires & Thomason (this volume)). If one cannot define a ‘language’, this leads to multiple incompatibilities with traditional historical reconstruction. For example, if a ‘language’ has no status in one’s theory, the notion of language split is also epiphenomenal. Earlier and later stages of the same language would not seem to have special status either, for we could not adequately define what is the same language in comparison to different languages. We should note, however, that there is a gap between theory and practice. Languages are often treated within the formal analysis, and there is a literature on micro-parameterisation and dialect differentiation (see, for example, Kayne 2000 and Ledgeway 2000). The strong position is seldom followed by anyone involved in research which looks at real linguistic data, and the epiphenomenal status of a ‘language’ has not stopped various researchers in comparative syntax, such as Julien (2002) and Carnie and Guilfoyle (2000), from achieving results. The issue becomes problematic when we consider the fact that mutually intelligible grammars may be slightly different, but historical analysis and reconstruction usually involves properties which are common to all speakers of a language. For example,
. One could note that the same paradox applies to species, taxonomy and evolution, since genes are proper to individuals and change on an individual level, This has not, however, prevented the field of evolutionary biology from flourishing. . That is, the point does not appear to arise in the phonological literature as often as it does in the philosophy of generative grammar literature.
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there are no two individual grammars of English that differ only in that one allows WH-in situ and the other does not. The resolution of our data is not good enough to let us do more than that. We cannot reconstruct the minutiae of syntax of earlier stages of a language because we lack the introspective data and negative judgements needed to do so. 2.3 E-language and I-language Closely related to the definition of a language (in the generative literature) is the conceptualisation of the object of study in terms of a dichotomy between competence and performance, or E-language and I-language. Thus Hale (1998: 2–3) defines “change” as “the set of differences between two grammars G1 and G2” and makes the point that a question such as “how is V2 lost in the history of English?” is meaningless under this definition, as I-language refers to the internal grammar of an individual speaker. Under this definition, change has no temporal dimension, and thus questions framed in terms of temporal ordering have no meaning, a point which will be further considered below. Furthermore, questions of the type “how is V2 lost in the history of English?” involve an assumption that we are looking at a generalised grammatical competence of a generation of speakers, which is not our usual definition of I-language.8 Issues such as these only become a serious problem if we conflate two distinct notions of change. One is change in the competence of the individual speaker, whose grammar differs from the grammar(s) which produced their primary linguistic data (PLD). That is, that speaker instantiates a change because their grammar differs in some way from that of the grammar that generated the PDL on which they based their grammar. The second is the fate of that speaker-level change within the historical record. The difference can be characterised as the examination of change on the level of individual brains and instantiations of abstract systems versus the statement that at some point in time the set of mutually intelligible grammars which we call 〈English〉 have a particular property. 2.4 The meaning of patterns and the status of a correspondence set A crucial component of historical work is the comparison of related languages in order to reconstruct the parent language and the changes that the individual languages have undergone. This is usually achieved by application of the Comparative Method, that is, by the comparison of regular and meaningful similarities
. This argument is also pertinent to the previous section, since definitions of what constitutes a ‘language’ are also tied to questions of linguistic performance and language and identity.
Syntactic change and syntactic borrowing in generative grammar
between different related languages to determine proto-forms and shared innovations.9 Therefore a word is warranted on the Comparative Method, especially as it relates to historical syntax (see also Harris [this volume]). The comparative method is based on the assumption that recurring patterns of phonemes in lexical items are indicative of common ancestry. For example, given the data in (1), we can extract the correspondence sets in (2) and infer (on the basis of this and other data) the reconstruction in (3) (data are from Crowley 1997: 8810): (1) Tongan: ʔufi ‘yam’ Samoan: ufi ‘yam’ Rarotongan: uʔi ‘yam’ Hawai’ian: uhi ‘yam’ (2) ʔ : ø : ø : ø u : u : u : u f : f : ʔ : h i : i : i : i
(3) *ʔufi
Any data – in principle – can be the input for the comparative method. As Watkins (2001: 63) says, “the first rule of the comparative method is knowing what to compare”. In phonological reconstruction, the input data are lexical items from languages which are assumed to be genetically related. Thus in the example above, our input data are sound strings which have a particular meaning. In (1), the correspondence set would not be valid if we included Turkish ufak ‘small’, since although the word superficially resembles the Polynesian words, the language is not related to the others, the word means something unrelated to yam, and subsequent comparisons show that while Tongan initial /ʔ/ always corresponds to Samoan, Rarotongan and Hawaiian ø, no such correspondences can be established for Turkish. The comparative method relies on a hypothesis of genetic relatedness – the items under comparison must originate from the same Proto-language and
. For detailed discussion of the Comparative Method, see Fox (1995), Campbell (1999) or Hock (1990). . Note that on the basis of these data alone reconstruction of initial /ʔ/ is not supported, since Tongan could have added a glottal stop to historically vowel-initial words. However, the presence of words in Tongan such as ika ‘fish’ and isu ‘nose’ (corresponding to words in other Polynesian languages without initial glottals) imply that Tongan has preserved a distinction between #ʔV and #V that other languages have lost.
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continue the same material, and must be plausibly semantically related. That is, they must have been passed from one generation of language speakers to the next without interruption. This brings us back to the problem of continuity. Lightfoot (1979) argues that each grammar is created anew, that there are no correspondence sets because there is no continuity. But this view would also apply to phonology if taken strictly. Just as children acquire syntax, they also acquire the phonological categories of their language by abstracting meaningful distinctions from the speech signal. As discussed in Section 2.1 above, we find many authors arguing that historical syntax involves the same type of comparative work as comparing any two modern languages; as Pintzuk et al. (2001: 7) write, “historical syntax is comparing dialects that are related temporally”. There are, however, several differences between synchronic comparative syntax and diachronic comparative syntax. First, we need not only identify differences between the two systems under comparison; we must also demonstrate that one arose through a change in the other, and not through another mechanism, such as replacement. When comparing synchronic dialects, we do not know which (if any) preserves older forms and which are innovative. We give distributions and points of difference but claims of innovation or archaism are secondary. Thus when noting that speakers of Standard Australian English allow sentences such as (4), while speakers of Standard American English do not allow this agreement rule and prefer the sentence in (5), we make no claim about which dialect preserves the older pattern and which dialect has innovated.
(4) My team are going to win the Grand Final this year.
(5) My team is going to win the World Series this year.
When comparing two temporally related stages of a language, however, we know by definition what the prior stage was. We can therefore draw conclusions about the nature of change in this situation much more easily than in cases where we need to use the comparative method. To illustrate these differences further, consider the object of comparison in historical phonology. Crucially, in historical phonology, the Comparative Method is used on arrangements of phonemes in particular lexical items, and not on phonotactics or phoneme inventories alone. That is, the comparative method is applied to particular phonemes in context, and not to the rules that produce the environments for variation. Given only the following two hypothetical phoneme inventories in (6), we have no way of reconstructing the phoneme inventory of the ancestor language. (6) Language A: p t k s m n ŋ i a u Language B: p t k kj s m n nj ŋ i e a u
Syntactic change and syntactic borrowing in generative grammar
We cannot tell from these data alone whether Language A and Language B both continue *p as /p/; we cannot tell whether the distinction in Language B between kj and k continues an old distinction or is innovative. The presence of /e/ in Language B could be the result of any number of changes. We can only resolve these questions by examining the distribution of the different phonemes for evidence of splits or mergers. Likewise we do not usually directly compare phonological processes, such as voicing (e.g., just because Languages A and B share a subphonemic rule of intervocalic consonantal voicing, it does not follow that we can reconstruct this to proto-AB). Thus we compare lexical items (strings of phonemes in context) rather than a list of phonemes in the abstract because of the difficulty of otherwise recovering the temporal dimension and the uncertainty of whether items which appear to be the same are, in actuality, directly comparable. Applying the analogy to syntactic comparison and reconstruction would lead us to work more on morphosyntax and the syntactic properties of individual lexical items than on clusters of features in isolation. This is Campbell’s (1990) response11 to Lightfoot’s criticism of work on syntactic reconstruction. Campbell proposes that just as arrangements of phonemes in lexical items are properties of a language (and inputs for correspondences), so are – in so many words – the functional features associated with different items in the lexicon. For example, just as cognate words are properties of lexica of individual languages, a zero or overt copula is a property of a set of languages and can be used in a correspondence set.12 A further facet of the analogy of phonemes to syntactic objects is the issue of how abstract the matter dealt with is. Lightfoot (1979: Ch. 1), for example, has claimed that syntactic reconstruction by the comparative method is not possible because the items to be compared are rules, not concrete phonemes. But phonemes are still abstractions from the speech signal. Lexical items are chunks of speech signal with particular properties which may be viewed discretely. Those properties (“phonemes”) can be abstracted from the speech signal and used in comparisons over time. The same is true for lexical features.
. See also Harris (2003; this volume), and the exchange between Lightfoot and Harris and Campbell in Journal of Linguistics 38 (2002). . Care must be taken so the correspondences are not formulated simply as the presence or absence of certain features, since that would be the equivalent of comparing phoneme inventories without also comparing lexical correspondences. Campbell (and Harris [this volume]) propose syntactic correspondence sets that entail form-meaning-distribution correspondences.
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2.5 The status and locus of a change The view of language and change described in the previous sections has various consequences for our interpretation of methodology in historical linguistics. First, and most importantly, such a view diminishes the importance of the temporal dimension of change (see also Lightfoot’s [2006: 166] “synchronic approach” to language history). Much historical phonology has concentrated on quantifying and defining types of changes, ordering these changes through time, and using these results for linguistic classification, loanword identification, and other things (cf. Hock 1990 as an example). For example, the change known as ‘palatalisation’ is commonly defined as the shift in place of articulation of consonants from alveolar or velar to palatal; it is known to be very common in certain environments – particularly in the region of (high) front vowels – and can be described articulatorily as the result of overlapping lingual gestures, perceptually as the cue for the vowel being interpreted on the neighbouring consonant, or in feature terms as the spreading of a feature from the vowel to the neighbouring consonant. Syntactic change, however, has focussed on the acquisition of a formal system from the point of view of the data made available to the child from exposure to a language, and from the child’s innate language faculty (Lightfoot 1979; see also Fuß & Trips 2004: Ch. 1). Under this definition, the object of description for a theory of change is observed differences in the generalisations that learners make. The focus is not on which parts of the syntax tend to change, and what they change into. That is left to grammaticalisation theory, or dismissed as lepidoptery. Many others have made this point (see Kroch (2002: 701ff.) for references), although Andersen 1973 is one of the few to stress it in the context of phonological change. We do not tend to overtly characterise phonological change as primarily acquisition-driven. For example, the change of *s > h (as seen, for example, in the histories of Ancient Greek and Maori) is not generally thought to be the result of baby-talk or of children acquiring language who (for whatever reason) did not acquire the sound s. Instead, acquisition (or rephonologisation by children) is just one of the factors that feed into the phonology of languages and its change over time. Sound change can be the result of the acquisition of slightly different phonological targets, but it can also result from the emulation of prestige varieties, from language contact (which may affect children or adults, and may take many forms) (see Labov 1994, 2001, 2002; Pires and Thomason [this volume]). It is also known that change may begin in a small group of people and spread though a community, or that it may be spread as different pockets of a community converge on the same change
Syntactic change and syntactic borrowing in generative grammar
(cf. the contributions to Chambers, Trudgill et al. 2002). Language contact also has a strong place in phonological reconstruction, through analysis of loanwords, phoneme borrowing, and interference. Factors such as these have led various researchers to call for a more specific definition of the concept of ‘change’. Hale (2003), for example, draws a distinction between the initial change through grammatical acquisition (or, I would add, through change in the speaker’s grammar) and the actualisation of the change through the speech community. The two will show different patterns (in terms of regularity, for example), but both will feed into acquisition in future generations. Others seem to define ‘change’ purely at the acquisition moment (e.g., Fuß & Trips 2004) and leave anything else to be accounted for in sociolinguistics, rather than in historical syntax. It cannot be that simple, however. As Lass (1997: 370) puts it, “what the speaker does” (i.e., the acquisition “change”) and “what happens to their language” (the propagation of differences in acquisition) are related questions, but they are not the same question (see also Milroy 2006). 2.6 The theory of change Apart from the articles in Hickey (2003), the precise causes of language change have received little attention in the recent historical linguistic literature. As Pires and Thomason (this volume) note, the reason for this stems from a wide-spread view that there are too many factors to consider, and that the relationship between cause and effect is too indirect for us to assign causes with any degree of certainty. Furthermore, the study of the language faculty has not traditionally been the object of research of most historical linguists, who have tended to concentrate on recovering the properties of reconstructed languages and on the types of changes which languages have undergone, rather than what those changes tell us about the nature of the language faculty.13 For those who have a more general approach to the “cause” of language change, the immediate cause lies in acquisition (as noted above), itself triggered by different learners’ exposure to slightly different PLD. Minimally different input may cause children to come to different conclusions about the grammar of their language. Thus the changes that occur should tell us something about the nature
. Contra Lightfoot (2006: 166), far from a ‘failure’ of recent historical linguists to answer questions of cause initiated by their 19th Century predecessors, in fact historical research has largely not been concerned with the question at all. It is therefore unsurprising that traditional historical models are much less explicit about triggers than they are about processes of linguistic change.
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of the language faculty, by how its parameter settings change as a result of different input. However, since we have very little information about what the input actually was, and how it differed from the input for other learner’s grammars, it is unclear to what extent we can exploit this line of research. A more tractable description of the problem of “cause” is Blevins’ (2004: 32ff) approach to the causes of change in phonology. She outlines a set of types of changes rooted in the interface between perception and processing. The causes of the changes which we see reflected in the historic phonological record are caused by four different sources of change. Under Blevins’ model, sound change can occur from four different causes. These are summarised in (7) below:
(7) a. misperception (e.g., hearing [anpa] as [ampa] – that is, misperceiving the speech signal); b. misapplication of mapping in ambiguous inputs (e.g., speaker says [ʔaʔ] as the realisation of underlying /aʔ/; listener associates this form with underlying /ʔa/); c. i. choice of variant as prototype (listener is exposed to multiple variants and picks as a prototype a variant different from the underlying form in the grammar of the speaker) because of change in the frequency of variants; ii. choice of variant as prototype because of change in the set of variants; d. (no change)
We can draw parallels between these types of changes in phonology and changes in syntax. Discussion of change in the syntactic literature has concentrated on type c, that is, on the PLD shaping the grammar of the following generation. However, Blevins is right that other changes cannot be reduced to input changes alone, and there are examples of change in syntax which are better explained in terms of types a and b. Therefore, applying Blevins’ model to syntax would give us change in for the following reasons:
(8) a. misperception in the phonological signal (e.g., perceiving one word for another and generalising the syntax of the misperception; sound change eroding grammatical material, such as the loss of final vowels eroding case marking; = 7a) b. picking a different underlying form in the case of structural ambiguity (e.g., rebracketting, reanalysis of demonstrative as copula, tree pruning, etc; = 7b) c. generalising one variant because a change in the frequency of variants (e.g., WH-in situ becomes less common, therefore WH-raising becomes more common and is interpreted as the usual construction; = 7c.i.) d. generalising one variant because a change in the set of variants; = 7c.ii.)
Even in this model, the notion of “cause” is indirect; we still do not know what causes the initial misperception, the change in variant frequency, or the
Syntactic change and syntactic borrowing in generative grammar
fact of structural ambiguity and its reanalysis. That would seem to be the correct way to frame the cause of change. We cannot specify the causes of individual’s misperceptions or variant exposures with any degree of likelihood except in very limited circumstances. Note also that my list of causes of syntactic change cross-cuts Harris and Campbell’s (1995) typology of change; however the two are compatible. Harris and Campbell list three types of changes: reanalysis, extension and borrowing. It appears for the moment that reanalysis and extension could be the result of any of the causes of change listed in (7), although more research along these lines is needed. For example, a misperception in a lexical item could result in the reanalysis of underlying structure; structural ambiguity causes reanalysis, but it can also cause extension, if an ambiguous pattern is identified as belonging with another pattern. 2.7 The status of language contact Finally, let us consider the status of language contact in historical syntax. As Harris and Campbell (1995: 121–2) note, for a long time syntactic interference was considered either impossible or marginal.14 We must contrast this view with the other extreme, that all change is a type of (or alternatively a result of) language contact (e.g., Poussa 1982; Mufwene 2001). Within the generative tradition, borrowing or calquing is still frequently set aside. For example, Baker (1996: 484) discards a problematic construction in Chukchi because it might be a calque, and Longobardi (2001: 278) excludes interference from his theory with equanimity (although for an exception see Martins 2003). In diachronic phonology, rather than being excluded from the data set, loan phonology is an important area of study. For example, we know from examining the etymologies of words with /ʒ/ that the English phoneme /ʒ/ is not found in words inherited from earlier stages of Germanic, only in borrowed words (mostly from French). We know that there was a sound change in the history of English where *sk became /∫/ in many environments (Hogg 1992: 262–3), thus skirt is an exception and is likely to be a borrowing (especially when the existence of the expected reflex shirt and the presence of Old Norse skyrta are taken into account). In this case we have both a word showing the expected reflex elsewhere in the lexicon, and a source for the borrowing. Deductions of this sort, using the Comparative Method, allow us to build up a picture of loan phonology throughout the lexicon. The arguments rely not on pinpointing the precise point of transfer but . Compare Sapir’s (1921: 215–220) statement that we have no good examples of calquing in morphosyntax.
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on the fact of the loan (that is, ‘change’ in Hale’s (2007) second sense, not the first); the “cause” could be straight borrowing, code switching or interference, and the “cause” of the borrowing of the word in the first place is, of course, another matter entirely, one irrelevant to the reconstruction of the loan.15 This type of argumentation appears to be much less developed in syntax, and the questions that we asked for phonology are harder to ask for syntax. At present, whether a particular aspect of syntax is said to be borrowed or not often seems to comes down to the author’s personal belief in how common calquing and borrowing is. Thus Dench (2001) writes that in order to demonstrate shared inheritance, borrowing (along with chance and parallel development) must be ruled out. Others argue in the opposite direction, that borrowing should be invoked as an explanation only when all other possibilities have been exhausted. (Lass 1997: 207–209 discusses the positions, and Farrar and Jones (2002: 4ff.) characterise the latter position as the “‘if-in-doubt-do-without’ mentality”.) There is little methodological research in calquing in generative syntax and I outline some possibilities in Section 4 below. 2.8 Summary In the previous sections I have compared some of the views of mainstream historical phonology with recent work in historical generative syntax. We have seen several dimensions along which the fields of study vary in foci, including the input for reconstructions, the status of correspondence sets, and the extent to which adult grammars are permitted to change under influence from the speaker’s speech community. We have also seen that some problems raised for historical syntax should also strictly apply in historical phonology; we have also seen that the differences between the two fields of study arise both from initial assumptions and from methodology. If we are to maintain the strict position that the only appropriate objects of study are I-language and, indirectly, the language faculty, historical syntax cannot be done. Under this strict view, we do not have the data required for detailed study of microparameterisation in earlier stages of the language attested only through written materials of varying genres. Under this view, change in parameters is abrupt, and we cannot produce meaningful comparative reconstructions using the
. An excellent example of this type of deductive reasoning can be found for the Australian (Pama-Nyungan) language Kaytetye in Koch (1997). Note that we could not do this type of deduction using only phoneme inventories. For example, marginal phonemes are candidates for being introduced through loan words, however only an examination of the vocabulary itself would show that in English /ʒ/ is borrowed whereas /ŋ/ is native.
Syntactic change and syntactic borrowing in generative grammar
comparative method under this view, because the inputs of comparison are related only epiphenomenally. There is a substantial amount of work in historical generative grammar which takes the perspective that change occurs solely at acquisition (see the summary in the introduction to Fuß & Trips 2004), but the other component of change – the view of what happens to aggregated grammars, or “languages” over time – has been somewhat neglected. Certainly, we have a catalogue of changes from the wellattested languages of Western Europe, but other aspects of a theory of language change are missing. We have no set of principles for how to identify a loan construction or piece of syntax from an inherited one (whereas we have many tests for identifying loan vocabulary or morphology; see for example Koch 1996).16 We have an idea of some common types of grammaticalisation, but little coherent picture of changes outside grammaticalisation. What would a theory of historical syntax require? How should we progress? There are several components to a theory of change. Minimally, we need the following (compare also Harris (2003: 529) for a similar list): – an adequate definition of what constituents a ‘change’ in the data (which we have; cf. Hale 2003; Kroch 2002; Pires & Thomason (this volume)); – a consistent and systematic distinction between changes involved in individual speakers’ acquisition events and what happens to their languages over history, and an understanding of the relationship between the two; – a theory of what causes changes to be spread and adopted through a speech community (cf. Labov 2001); – a typology of change – that is, what types of change we find in human language (in the broad sense) and what are their characteristics; divided into: – system-internal changes (that is, changes which cannot be attributed to borrowing or calquing; cf. Section 2.6 for a suggestion) – properties governing borrowing or calquing between languages and dialects; – an understanding of the relationship between system-internal changes and calquing within a typology of change; whether in fact a distinction need be made at all for purposes of a theory of change. – a theory which explains differing rates of change and why some systems seem much more stable than others;
. Rankin’s (2003: 187) list of procedures for applying the comparative method is telling; six steps are given for phonological reconstruction, with a further two steps for reconstruction involving vocabulary items; reconstruction in syntax is listed but with no further elaboration.
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– an architecture of grammar in which to describe all of the above (that is, how to describe change in a particular model).
3. Calquing in generative syntax It is important to address borrowing in a theory of language change because of its implications for adult grammar change and the introduction of new structure into grammars. In this section I consider the history of calquing research in generative grammar. I then move on to a survey of what items in language can be borrowed, and a theory of how syntactic borrowing might occur. Some may argue that generative models of change do not actually need to address these questions – if generative grammar is concerned with the study of I-language and if the study of syntactic change in generative grammar involves making testable predictions about the human language faculty, then “language contact” is outside the scope of research.17 However, to do this is to miss my point, which is that as soon as we wish to bring a diachronic dimension to syntactic research, we introduce multiple types of change, and a crucial interplay between I-language and E-language. Since E-language phenomena (such as frequency) are a strong trigger for change in I-language, we cannot investigate the latter without including considerations of the former. 3.1 Longobardi and Inertial syntax As mentioned above, calquing is often set aside in generative approaches to syntactic change. Longobardi (2001: 278), for example, explicitly excludes it from his theory, “linguistic change proper (i.e., abstracting away from interference) may only originate as an interface phenomenon […]. In other words, I will tentatively assume that syntactic change should not arise, unless it can be shown to be caused […].” Inertial syntax may provide a mechanism for testing for calquing, as I explain in this section. Other authors in this volume have commented in detail on Longobardi’s assumptions and some of the problems with syntactic inertia; see, for example, Pires & Thomason (this volume). A detailed discussion of some of the consequences of the model can be found in Bowern (2005), on which this section is based. One aspect of Longobardi’s model is important here – that syntactic change does not occur unless it is caused by a change in the lexicon which forces a reanalysis.
. Indeed, an anonymous reviewer argued this forcefully.
Syntactic change and syntactic borrowing in generative grammar
Inertial syntax predicts that syntactic change should be possible through the borrowing of lexical items along with syntactic features. If syntax is inert, it should be inert in cases of borrowing too.18 That is, we should not expect to find cases of borrowing between grammars which target syntax, if Longobardi is correct. The only way that syntax could change as the result of calquing would be for accompanying lexical items to be borrowed and for the syntactic changes to be forced reanalyses from the lexical items (that is, exactly the same way that Longobardi describes for French chez). That is, “calquing” would only take place in the presence of lexical transfer.19 The PLD would just be data generated from a set of different grammars. We know of cases where borrowing has occurred where lexical transfer is not implicated (see Thomason & Kaufman 1988 for examples, and Bowern 2005 for detailed analysis in relation to Longobardi 2001). Therefore, the strongest position is simply false. However, we may be able to use a subset of the strong case to identify calquing, at least in theory. One theoretical consequence of using inertial syntax as a framework for investigating calquing is that categorical reanalysis must precede structural shift. If syntax is inert, some types of ultimately syntactic changes would have to proceed in a particular order. As an example, consider the reanalysis of demonstratives or pronouns as copulas. The modern Mandarin copula is shì, as illustrated in example (9) below (examples are from Trask (1996: 134ff.)): (9) hūa shì hóng flower be red “The flower is red.”
Archaic Chinese did not have an overt copula, and shì was a demonstrative, as seen from sentences such as (10): (10) zi yù [shì rì kū]DP Confusius at this day cry. “Confusius cried on this day.”
At some point, shì underwent a reanalysis from an anaphor in cleft constructions to a copula. At stage one, the structure would have been X, shì [be] Y (literally X, this [is] Y), while the construction following reanalysis would be X shì Y (literally X is Y). . It seems odd to me that Longobardi would claim that syntax is inert to change without a cause outside of syntax, but still appear to allow the possibility in cases of borrowing, unless the claim is a stipulation without an independent basis such as the nature of the language acquisition device. . See also King (2000) for a similar view.
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Under Longobardi’s model of syntactic change, the acquisition process which drove the change would have to have involved the child parsing shì as a verb and deducing from that that the structure of the string in (10). We could not have a scenario where the child expected an overt copula – on the basis of other facts about the language – and recruited shì to fill that function. Now, calquing is precisely the process that we just ruled out. It is the recruiting of structure – the behaviour of functional heads – from one language to another. So, if Longobardi is correct, we have a test for syntactic borrowing. Changes which could only occur in this way would have to be calqued. Of course, doing the reconstruction to determine which scenario is most likely will prove extremely problematic in most cases. The process I have just described could apply in several different situations, not just in calquing (it is only in calquing where it must apply). Grammar leakage (that is, interference of one grammar to another in the case of speakers with competence in more than one dialect) would be one case. Analogical extension within a single grammar would surely be another.20 3.2 What can be borrowed? Can speakers just borrow syntax, without accompanying morphology or lexemes? There are indications in the literature that the answer is “yes”. Compare, for example, Thomason’s (2003) study on rule borrowing, or Ross’s (1996, 1998) work on convergence under language contact conditions in Papua New Guinea. Emeneau (1964) provides similar results for India. There is also, of course, a vast literature on code-switching and language variation, and Myers-Scotton (1992) proposes codeswitching as a facilitating mechanism in borrowing of core structures between two languages in contact. Unfortunately there is little discussion of what might be called “grammar leakage” (or mixing of speakers’ different codes) in the generative literature, although for an exception see Halmari (1997). A survey of the literature on language contact reveals many different situations where borrowing can take place between languages. Very common, of course, is the borrowing of lexical items. Phonological patterns can also be borrowed. For example, retroflex consonants have been borrowed from Dravidian languages into Indic, although there are very few lexical borrowings from Dravidian languages in the oldest texts, and Uzbek has lost its inherited patterns of vowel harmony under the influence of Tajik. We also find situations where a lexical item has been borrowed without syntactic features. Some examples include: . However, presumably most analogical change would count as lexical change and thus be licit in an inertial model in any case.
Syntactic change and syntactic borrowing in generative grammar
– not marking gender on nouns [e.g., borrowings from Latin, Greek, and other language into English; psyche is not feminine in English, although ψυχή is in Greek] – borrowing words as a different word class [the phrase non sequitur is a verb phrase in Latin (lit ‘it does not follow’), but it is a nominal phrase in English] – not analysing morpheme boundaries [the Latin source of English cognate, cognatus, contains several morpheme boundaries; co-gnatus means ‘born (= gnat-) from the same (= co-) stock’; the Latin word is also a passive participle] Furthermore, there are cases where new features are added in the process of borrowing. For example, the English words stool and school have been borrowed into Ndebele with noun class features; they are Class 7 nouns and so istulo and iskulu have plurals iztulu and izkulu. There are further cases of borrowing where syntactic features are transferred along with lexical material. One example comes from the Turkic language Uzbek. Uzbek has several types of complementisers, including учун /ut∫un/, which is inherited from an earlier stage of Common Turkic and is used to mark purpose clauses. An example is given in (11). Учун, like all other inherited Turkic complementisers and adpositions, is head-final. (11) [Гулсум Oпa бу ӯиӯлaрдaн қутулиш учун] жӯрmmaгa Gulsum Opa bu o’ylardan qutulish uchun zho’rttaga G. O this thought-pl-ABL rid-CONV PURP intentionally бoшлaди. Қиличин ӯuӯлau Qilichin o’ylay boshladi. Q think-CONV begin-pst-3sg “In order to get rid of these thoughts, Gulsum Opa intentionally began to think about Qilich.” (Bodrogligeti 2003: 1245)
Uzbek (and its Classical literary precursor Chagatay) also exhibit a complementiser of the form ки /ki/. This is a borrowing from Persian. Interestingly, in Central Asian Turkic languages such as Uzbek21 ки /ki/ is phrase-initial; other complementisers follow the normal Turkic pattern of being strictly head-final. Example (12) is from Uzbek and (13) is from Chagatay.
. A complementiser of the form /ki/ is also found in other Turkic languages, including Turkish and Azeri. Compare, for example: (i)
Män fikr elädim [(ki) Ali Häsäni vırmadı]. 1sg thought do-pst-1sg [that] Ali Hasan-acc hit-neg-past.3sg “I thought that Ali did not hit Hasan.” (Dehghani 2000: 261
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(12) Mен ишoнmaн [ки сиз тилaгингизгa етaсиз]. Men ishonman ki siz tilagingiz-ga yetasiz. I believe-1sg that you desire-2pl.poss-dat reach-2pl “I believe that you will reach [the object of] your desire.” (Bodrogligeti 2003: 1222) (13) Qašïm čandān säning fikringni qïldï, [ki eyebrow-1sg so.much you-acc thought aux-3sg, that gayğudïn boyï ya teg egildi]. arrow-gen bow like body bend-3sg.pst “My eyebrow thought so much about you that from sorrow its body became bent like the bow of an arrow [sic].” (Bodrogligeti 2001: 379)
In this case the complementiser has been borrowed along with its head-initial phrase structure, thus leading to an interesting mismatch with the rest of Turkic syntax. For further examples within Turkic see Soper (1996) and Johanson (2002). Finally, we also appear to have cases of borrowing pieces of syntax. Examples come from several areas of the world, including Asia Minor Greek (Dawkins 1916), Amazonia (Aikhenvald 2003, 2004), Australia (Heath 1978), Papua New Guinea (Ross 1998), India (Emeneau 1964) and, of course, the Balkan Sprachbund. The case studies for Amazonia and Papua New Guinea are especially interesting for our purposes because of the lack of accompanying lexical borrowing. In the interests of space, however, further case studies will not be discussed here. 3.3 How does syntactic borrowing occur? We have little reason to assume anything other than that the same processes which lead to lexical (and other) borrowing also occur in syntactic borrowing. That is, there could be several ways in which a borrowing enters the language, and each may have several characteristics. Note here that I am talking about syntactic borrowing between dialects of the same language as well as between languages. Code-switching would be one way that such borrowing could occur. Myers-Scotton (1997), for example, discusses this possibility. Under this scenario, content from multiple input grammars would be reassigned as content from a single grammar. Children would inherit some of the code-switching patterns of their parents as items in a single grammar and at that point the originally borrowed patterns would be entrenched in the grammar of the language. We could call this process grammar-embedding.22
. Note that while Myers-Scotton (1990) treats code-switching as a type of borrowing, I follow Halmari (1997) and others in recognizing a difference between the processes, although with the acknowledgment that it may be hard to tell the two apart in some cases.
Syntactic change and syntactic borrowing in generative grammar
The solidification of adults’ second language practices in the speech of children would be a second path for syntactic borrowings to enter a language. Under this scenario, children would not identify utterances from their bilingual parents as containing mixed information – or they would assign material which is properly a code-switch to the same internal grammar. What would be a ‘foreign’ imported structure to the adults would be treated by the children as structures in a single grammar and would be learned accordingly. This scenario differs from the previous one in that the vector for introduction into the language is bilingual speakers in the first case, but second language speakers in the second. “Grammar leakage” would be a third possibility for syntactic borrowing. This is the shift to closely related grammars under influence from exposure in adulthood. That is, material proper to Gx would become part of Gy. In most discussion in the generative literature that addresses this issue, this is assumed not to happen. Hale (1998), for example, argues that adult language change involves the addition of new discrete grammars, not modification of existing ones. Under this scenario the change happens in the adults’ language and might be actualised either there, or in the grammar of the following generation. Trudgill (2004) provides examples from phonology and I see no reason why such a scenario would not also apply in syntax.23 A fourth vector for syntactic borrowing is borrowing in the context of extensive lexical transfer. Logically this could occur through code-switching, language shift, or indirectly through adstratum influence. Finally, borrowing could occur in the situation where more than one language is used in a speech community and children acquiring language are constantly exposed to multiple languages. Transfer is recorded in precisely this situation; see, for example, Müller (1998) and Romaine (1995); and for an example in phonology, compare Watson (2002). 4. Methodology of identifying syntactic loans In the final section of this paper I sketch out a methodology for identifying borrowings in syntax. Readers familiar with reconstruction in morphology and
. I have noticed several syntactic and morpho-syntactic changes in my own speech since moving to the USA from Australia. For example, “I’ll see you Tuesday” was not an utterance I would generate with the grammar I acquired growing up in Australia (which could be denoted by Goz) but I have caught myself saying it on more than one occasion in the last year. The utterance is embedded in material which is otherwise quite proper to my Goz grammar; therefore either there has been a modification to my Goz grammar, or in uttering such sentences I am unconsciously code-switching for single sentences without a shift in phonology.
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phonology will recognise these tests: after all, we have well-defined methodologies and sets of criteria for guidance in loan lexeme identification. We cannot proceed with this line of inquiry, however, if we focus solely on change at the point of acquisition in single speakers. As we have seen throughout this paper, there is implicit research on the “language” question as well as the “speaker” question; I am suggesting we examine this area more explicitly (following work such as Roberts & Roussou 2003 and, for contact reconstruction, Ross 2003). We could begin reconstructing loans by using the same pieces of evidence that we use for identifying phonological borrowings. In the following subsections I examine some of the grounds on which items in language are argued to be borrowings, and see to what extent they apply to syntactic reconstruction. 4.1 Irregular correspondences Irregular correspondences are an obvious area to examine when doing comparative syntax. For identifying correspondences in syntax see Harris and Campbell (1995: 348ff.) and Harris (this volume). One example of an irregular correspondence is the Turkic complementiser ki discussed in examples (11) and (12) above. We can reconstruct a complementiser *ut∫;un which specifies the partial phase structure [ IP __ ]C´; that is, it is part of a head-final construction. The same is true of most other Turkic complementisers. The presence of ki, with its [ __ IP]C’ phrase structure, is therefore irregular and a candidate for reconstruction as a loan. 4.2 Syntax associated with items known to be loans Syntax associated with lexical items known to be loans is also a good candidate for hypothetical loan syntax. Another example from Turkic is that lexical items borrowed from Persian have Persian izafet (that is, marking the modified head of noun phrases when the modifier is of a certain type). Persian izafet places the head and dependent in the opposite order from the native Turkish noun phrases. An example of the Turkic order is given in (14), while (15) shows the Persian order (examples are from Lewis 2000: 42, 48) (14) su donma-sı water freezing-IZAFET “the freezing of water” (15) Şura-yı Devlet council-IZAFET state “Council of State” Another example is the use of Spanish complementisers in Pipil (Campbell 1990).
Syntactic change and syntactic borrowing in generative grammar
4.3 Similarities to surrounding languages A common argument for reconstructing language contact comes from areal phenomena. In this case, unrelated languages (or not closely-related languages) have parallel structures where (more closely) related languages share something different. For example, the Turkic language Karaim is the only Turkic language which is not head-final (see Csató 2002), and it is spoken in Lithuania, surrounded by Balto-Slavic languages where speakers have been multilingual for generations. Asia Minor Greek is a variety of Greek which (unlike standard Greek) only uses the accusative for definite objects. In the Cappadocian dialects (Dawkins 1916: 94) the accusative ending is used only when the noun is definite (an exact parallel of the use of accusative case marking in Turkish). Other dialects have a similar rule involving the definite article, which is lost, except when used in the accusative. The material, however, is all Greek; the case marker is -ν and the article is usually τo; (plural τα – both from the neuter paradigm24). Harris and Campbell (1995) provide several case studies of this type, including American Finnish (p. 146–47) and Pipil (147–49). In these cases we reconstruct borrowing on the grounds that the exhibited convergence is unlikely to be accidental. 4.4 Exotic constructions Two types of reconstructed change fall into the category of ‘exotic’ construction. The first is counterexamples to known strong typological principles. For example, all languages which have a morphologically marked irrealis use it for potential events if they also use it in polite imperatives, negative imperatives and counterfactuals (Bowern 1998). The generalisation is robust; in a sample of approximately eighty languages balanced for language families, only one exception was found. This was Caddo, which has borrowed the relevant affixes from neighbouring Muskogean languages (Chafe 1995). The second type of ‘exotic’ construction involves exceptions within the language itself (such as the Uzbek head-initial complementiser mentioned above). Exceptions to our rules (such as Baker (1996: 484) ruled out for Chukchi) are in principle a good candidate for loans (although of course this depends on the quality of our description!). Studying minor, peripheral patterns which do not fit the larger established profile of the language may be instructive. An illustrative example comes from English compound nouns. Most of these items in English which have the structure
. Gender loss is another feature of many dialects of Asia Minor Greek (Dawkins 1916: 87).
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adjective + noun have the items in that order. Blackbird is an example. However, there is a small set of items in which the items occur in the opposite order: (16) governor general major general procurator fiscal
Our suspicions will be aroused when it is noted that governor, general, major, pro curator and fiscal are all loans from French (or from Latin, through French) and that the normal order for such compounds in French is noun + adjective. 4.5 Apparent discontinuities and rapid shift Ross (2003) argues for catastrophic change as a diagnostic of language contact. The most extreme cases of the ‘young people’s varieties’ of languages such as Dyirbal, Tiwi, Lardil and Warlpiri (Schmidt 1985; Lee 1987; Richards 2001; O’Shannessy 2005 respectively). All of these languages have undergone massive structural change, and in many cases convergence with English. Not all changes of this type are necessarily the direct result of interference, however. For example, Richards (2001) argues that some structures in New Lardil which differ from Old Lardil are not loans from English, but rather reflect shifts in the relative frequency of variants in Old Lardil. Both Bardi and Ngan’gityemerri underwent rapid syntactic change over one or two generations in the 20th century, but the changes did not bring the languages any closer to the contact language; on the contrary, the changes in both languages increased polysynthesis (Reid 2004; Bowern [in preparation]). The last speakers of Jingulu reanalysed their ergative case as a topic marker (Pensalfini 1999), but that is not under direct influence from English.25 4.6 Problems Most of the evidence cited in Sections 4.1–4.5 is already used in discussions of syntactic borrowing in the functional literature on language change, and I have shown how we might proceed to incorporate these insights into discussions of change in a generative framework. Inherent in identifying loans, however, are several problems which are discussed briefly here. There will be borrowings which will not be identified by any of these methods. For example, calqued material which already existed in the language in some
. Note that it is impossible to rule out language contact as causing shifts in frequency, which in turn leads to reanalysis. In this case the contact could be said to reinforce the frequency shift, and both would be a “cause” of the change.
Syntactic change and syntactic borrowing in generative grammar
form will not be identified in this method. If a particular construction increases in frequency under areal influence but already existed in an earlier stage of the language, only quantitative analysis will show this. This is the situation shown in Richards 2001. This is true of all methodologies, however – there will always be events that cannot be detected from the data, which simply highlights the importance of using several complementary methods. Another problem is that loan words do not necessarily show loan syntax, and that items may show syntax that have direct parallels neither in the donor language nor in the recipient language. A few examples were mentioned above, for Jingulu, Bardi and Ngan’gityemerri. Finally, while all the factors mentioned in Sections 4.1 to 4.5 are suggestive of loan syntax, they are not necessarily indicative only of loan syntax. Exotic counterexamples cannot always be attributed to loan constructions, and rapid language shift can occur in the absence of intensive language contact. Minor constructions need not be loans. For example, in some dialects of English resumptive pronouns appear in relative clauses where extraction is blocked (see McKee & McDaniel 2001 and the references cited there). (17) That was the place where I went to it last year.
However, we cannot appeal to language contact with Hindi or Romani (or other languages which have them) to explain the appearance of resumptive pronouns in these varieties of English.
5. Conclusions In this article I have surveyed some of the similarities and differences between standard approaches to historical phonology and syntax. Following Lightfoot, various scholars have argued that the primary triggering event of language change occurs in child language acquisition. I suggest, indirectly following Kroch, Trudgill and others, and contra Longobardi, that there are in fact several ways in which change may be introduced to a language: – different PLD resulting in the acquisition of a different grammar from that which produced the PLD; – resolution of ambiguity (cf. 7); – imperfect learning; – adult language foreign language/dialect learning, which introduces errors, substratum effects etc, which is solidified in the grammars of their children;
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– adult code-switching which is solidified in the grammars of their children – children exposed to stable multilingualism reassigning aspects of one grammar to another. These are the mechanics of change, that is, the way that initial differences in grammar emerge in speakers and are later propagated through the speech community. There are also principles of change that can be defined over linguistic objects, such as what types of changes are likely to occur, whether certain types of changes are unidirectional, whether there are paths of grammaticalisation (there are), what these might be and how they might come about. If we want a good model of change, we need to take into account all sources of language change. Borrowing can well interact with acquisition as a source of language change, as I suggested in Section 3. Our theory of syntactic change has implications for theories of genetic relatedness and what counts as a licit cognate set for comparison. For example, Gianollo et al. (2004) use parameter settings as cognate sets. I suggested, in agreement with Pires and Thomason (this volume) that such correspondences are not good correspondence sets to use in evaluating genetic relatedness. Furthermore, I have suggested that we can incorporate syntactic borrowing into our models of language change, and that borrowing is not ultimately so different from other types of language change. Finally, I suggest that we can, and should, use the architecture of formal syntactic modelling to identify borrowings, that such work is possible in principle in syntactic reconstruction just as it is possible in phonological reconstruction. We will never make progress if we continue to treat calquing and borrowing simply as noise in the data.
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Bowern, Claire. In preparation. “Syntactic Change in Modern Bardi”. Ms. Yale University. Bowern, Claire & Harold Koch, eds. 2004. Australian Languages: Classification and the comparative method. (= Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 249.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Bybee, Joan. 2003. “Mechanisms of Change in Grammaticization: The role of frequency”. The Handbook of Historical Linguistics ed. by Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda, 602–623. Oxford: Blackwell. Campbell, Lyle. 1990. “Syntactic Reconstruction and Finno-Ugric”. Historical Linguistics 1987: Papers from the 8th International Conference on Historical Linguistics ed. by Henning Andersen & E.F. Konrad Koerner (= Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 66), 51–94. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Campbell, Lyle. 1999. Historical Linguistics. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Campbell, Lyle & Alice C. Harris. 2002. “Syntactic Reconstruction and Demythologizing ‘Myths and the prehistory of grammars’”. Journal of Linguistics 38.599–618. Carnie, Andrew & Eithne Guilfoyle, eds. 2000. The Syntax of Verb-Initial Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chafe, Wallace. 1995. “The realis-irrealis Distinction in Caddo, the Northern Iroquoian Languages, and English”. Modality in Grammar and Discourse ed. by Joan Bybee & Susanne Fleischman, 349–365. (= Typological Studies in Language, 32.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Chambers, Jack K., Peter Trudgill & Natalie Schilling-Estes, eds. 2002. Handbook of Language Variation and Change. Malden, Mass. & Oxford: Blackwell. Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Knowledge of Language. New York: Praeger. Csató, Éva Ágnes. 2002. “Karaim: A high-copying language”. Jones & Esch, eds. 2002.315–328. Dawkins, Richard M. 1916. Modern Greek in Asia Minor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dehghani, Yavar. 2000. A Grammar of Iranian Azari, Including Comparisons with Persian. (= Lincom Studies in Asian Linguistics, 30.) München: Lincom Europa. Dench, Alan. 2001. “Descent and Diffusion: The complexity of the Pilbara situation”. Areal Diffusion and Genetic Inheritance: Problems in comparative linguistics ed. by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald & Robert M.W. Dixon, 105–132. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Emeneau, Murray B. 1964 [1956]. “India as a Linguistic Area”. Language in Culture and Society ed. by Dell Hymes, 3–16. New York: Harper & Row. [Repr. from Language 32.3–16.] Farrar, Kimberley & Mari Jones. 2002. “Introduction”. Jones & Esch, eds. 2002.1–18. Fischer, Olga. 2000. The Syntax of Early English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fox, Anthony. 1995. Linguistic Reconstruction: An introduction to theory and method. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fuß, Eric & Carola Trips, eds. 2004. Diachronic Clues to Synchronic Grammar. (= Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 72.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Gianollo, Chiara, Cristina Guardiano & Giuseppe Longobardi. 2004. “Historical Implications of a Formal Theory of Syntactic Variation”. Paper presented at Diachronic Generative Syntax Conference (DIGS) VIII, Yale University. Hale, Mark. 1998. “Syntactic Change”. Syntax 1: 1.1–18. Hale, Mark. 2003. “Neogrammarian Sound Change”. The Handbook of Historical Linguistics ed. by Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda, 343–368. Oxford: Blackwell. Halmari, Helena. 1997. Government and Codeswitching: Explaining American Finnish. (= Studies in Bilingualism, 12.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
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Index
A abstract noun, 121, 173–75 abstract de-verbal noun, 124–25, 139, 156 AcI, 16, 125, 128, 129, 137, 141, 142, 147, 148, 156 AcP, 22, 128, 129, 131–33, 137, 140, 141, 147, 148, 155, 156 acquisition, x, xi, 11, 13, 19, 33, 34–38, 42, 43, 46, 63, 66, 67, 162, 166, 181, 188, 190, 196, 197, 201, 203, 204, 208, 211, 212 adjectival predication, 174–76, 169 adverbial clause, 122, 149, 150, 151, 156 affix, 61, 62–64, 66–67, 68, 110 lexical affix, 61, 63 syntactic affix, 61, 63 agreement, 36, 40, 41–43, 55, 80, 83, 84, 194 ambiguity, 153, 198, 199, 211 analogic extension, 59, 204 analogic leveling, 58 analogy, 52, 53, 68, 112, 195 phonetic analogy, 52 anaphor, 203 animacy, 21, 53, 54–56, 58, 68 B baby-talk, 196 Balto-Finnic, 50, 51 Balto-Slavic, 54, 55, 175, 209 Old Church Slavic, 21, 54, 59 Proto-Slavic, 21, 33, 53–55, 58, 59 Slavic, 19, 21, 33, 49, 50, 53–55, 58, 59, 68, 69, 169–71, 174, 175, 178, 179, 209
Bantu, 108, 110 Proto-Bantu, 108, 110 biolinguistic framework, x, xii borrowing, 2, 20, 30, 77, 122, 174, 187, 188, 197, 199–207, 209, 210, 212 C calquing, 187, 188, 199, 200–04, 212 case marking, 73, 78, 79–81, 87, 88, 142, 198, 209 Catalan, 61, 113, 114 cause, 10, 40, 52, 197, 198–200, 203, 210 clitic, 16–18, 63, 64, 67, 68 code-switching, 204, 206, 207, 212 cognate, 44, 68, 75, 86, 87–89, 91, 102, 103, 122, 189, 195, 205, 212 cognate sentences, 44, 86 cognates, 9, 77, 89 cognitive history, ix community, 10, 34, 37, 188, 196, 197, 200, 201, 207, 212 Comparative Method, 1, 2–4, 9, 19–21, 30, 31, 43, 48, 49, 54, 74, 75, 79, 85, 86, 97, 98–104, 109, 114–16, 123, 163, 164, 167, 168, 174, 178, 189, 192, 193–95, 199, 201 compounds, 100, 103, 210 consistent language (see also inconsistent language, typological consistency), 5–7, 105, 111 continuity, 40, 190, 194 continuity hypothesis, 40 convergence, 179, 204, 209, 210 conversion verb, 176, 177 copula, 75, 168–74, 176, 178, 179, 195, 198, 203, 204
correspondence, 2, 4, 9, 14, 20, 44, 62, 74, 75, 77, 79–81, 85–87, 90, 91, 102, 103, 166, 176, 192, 193–95, 200, 208, 212 correspondence set, 77, 79, 80, 85–87, 91, 192, 193 correspondence sets, 2, 4, 9, 14, 74, 75, 79, 80, 85, 91, 193–95, 200, 212 differential correspondence sets, 85 phonological correspondence, 77, 79, 81, 91 syntactic correspondence, 9, 44, 75, 77, 80, 85, 195 cvi-construction, 20, 169, 171, 172–76, 178, 179 Czech, 57, 58 Literary Czech, 57, 58 D demonstratives, 107, 203 diachronic change, 35, 36, 42, 45, 46, 80 diachronic contiguity, xi diachronic derivation, xi, xvi diachronic identity, 102, 103, 109, 112, 115 diachronic syntax, 1, 11–13, 18–20, 22, 33, 34, 45, 90, 92, 165, 167, 187, 189 dialect, 36, 54, 65, 73, 75, 84, 85, 91, 175, 191, 194, 204, 211 dialects, 33, 36, 38, 55, 57, 63, 85, 91, 194, 201, 206, 209, 211 diffusion, 29, 69, 164 directionality, 49, 64, 66, 67 discontinuity, 210 drift, 29, 58, 64, 68 duality of patterning, 54
Index E economy, principle of, 71, 81, 85, 91 E-language, x, 192, 202 English, 13, 21, 31–33, 37, 38, 40, 41, 46–48, 61, 64, 67, 102, 109, 110, 114, 121, 122, 140, 142, 166, 176, 189, 190–92, 194, 199, 200, 205, 209–11 equations, 43, 74, 78–80 ergative, 20, 75, 78, 80, 84, 87–89, 210 explicative clause, 121, 142, 146–48, 156 extension, 18, 45, 52, 174, 175, 199, 204 F faculty of language, 30, 33, 35, 38, 46 feature-based approach, 41 features, 4, 12–14, 17, 29, 39–43, 47, 48, 52, 54, 69, 78, 90, 101, 104, 106, 107, 115, 117, 171, 195, 203–05 features of lexical items, 41–43, 47 Finno-Permic, 50 Finnish, 50, 209 French, 15, 16–18, 30, 32, 36–38, 40, 41, 60–64, 67, 98, 100, 102, 109, 113, 114, 165, 166, 168, 199, 203, 210 functional lexical categories, 47 G Galician, 27, 63, 64, 67 generative grammar, 1, 11, 12, 14, 15, 19, 21, 165, 187, 191, 201, 202 genetic classification, 30, 98, 114 genitivus obiectivus, 7, 124, 125 genitivus subiectivus, 7, 124 Germanic, 2, 8, 19, 21, 50, 107, 108, 122, 147, 148, 155, 169, 171, 174, 176, 178, 179, 199 Germanic dental preterite, 169, 176, 178 grammar contact, 188 grammaticalization, 21, 68, 97, 104, 109, 110–16, 161, 164, 167, 168, 180, 181
Greek, 21, 48, 54, 122, 125, 126–28, 131–33, 137, 139, 141–43, 147, 148, 151, 162, 166, 173, 175, 196, 205, 206, 209 Greenberg, Joseph H., xiv, 1, 3, 5–8, 12, 14–15, 18–19, 21, 105–06 H Hawkins, John A., 5, 21 Hebrew, 113, 114 historical syntax, 11, 14, 22, 187, 188–90, 193, 194, 197, 199–201 Hittite, 7, 8, 21, 48, 122, 124, 125, 129, 133, 135, 136, 139–41, 144, 147, 149–51, 156, 162, 168 H-relation, xi, xii I I-language, x, xi, xii, xvi, 190, 192, 200, 202 imperfect learning, 211 implicational generalizations, 6 implicational universal, 6, 107 implicational universals, 14, 97, 104–06, 108, 109, 115 inconsistent language (see also consistent language, typological consistency), 5, 105 individual-level predicate, 141 Indo-European, 2, 6–8, 17–21, 33, 50, 54, 55, 59, 68, 89–91, 98, 99, 108, 121, 122–24, 131, 139, 140–42, 145–47, 151, 155, 156, 161–71, 173–79 Proto-Indo-European, 2, 21, 33, 50, 55, 68, 90, 98, 99, 108, 121, 122, 139, 140, 155, 156, 161, 162–64, 166–68, 170, 171, 173–79 Proto-Indo-European syntax, 140, 161, 162, 164, 166, 173 Inertia, 22, 202 inertial theory, xvi, 42, 114, 204 infinitive construction, 17 innovation, source of, 47, 73, 81, 85, 91
interference, 46, 47, 50, 197, 199, 200, 202, 204, 210 internal change, 30 internal reconstruction, 2, 27, 43, 48, 74, 79, 81, 91, 104, 110, 112, 113, 115, 123, 163, 164, 167, 173, 178 internalized grammar, 32, 39 Iranian, 21, 122, 125, 175 irregularity, 20 Italian, 15–17, 60–64, 67, 98, 100, 102, 109, 114, 165 izafet, 208 K Kartvelian (family), 20, 73, 75, 77, 80–82, 84, 86, 89, 90 Georgian, 75–77, 82, 84, 90 Laz, 44, 75–77, 82–84, 86 Mingrelian, 44, 75–77, 82 Svan, 75–77, 82, 84 L language contact, 10, 13, 46, 187, 188, 196, 197, 199, 202, 204, 209–11 Laryngeal Theory, 48 Latin, 2, 3, 6, 7, 16, 19, 21, 38, 48, 54, 59–61, 99, 101, 110, 114, 122, 125–29, 131, 132, 137, 139, 142, 144, 145, 147, 148, 150, 151, 153, 166, 168, 169–71, 174, 175, 178, 179, 205, 210 Classical Latin, 2, 3, 7, 38, 101 Latin imperfect, 170 lexicon, 42, 47, 62, 113, 114, 146, 195, 199, 202 Lezgian (subgroup), 75–76, 78–81, 83, 87, 92 Aghul, 79, 83, 84, 87, 88, 92 Archi, 79, 83, 87 Budukh, 79, 83, 87, 88, 93 Khinalug, 79, 80, 83, 87, 88, 93 Kryts, 79, 83, 87, 88, 93 Lezgi, 79, 83, 84, 87, 88, 92 Rutul, 78, 79, 83, 87, 88, 92 Tabasaran, 79, 83, 84, 87, 88, 92 Tsakhur, 79, 83, 87, 88, 92 Udi, 73, 78, 79–81, 83, 84, 87, 90, 92
Index M markedness (see also naturalness), 66, 67 unmarkedness, 67 mesoclisis, 63 minimalist theory (/program/ approach), xvi, 31, 37, 47 misperception, 198, 199 morphology as paleosyntax, 161, 164, 167 mutual intelligibility, 191, 192 Nakh-Daghestanian (family), 20, 73, 75, 80, 89 naturalness (see also markedness), 49, 50, 64, 66, 67, 165, 167 noun declension, 55–57 O Old High German, 155, 189 Old Indic, 20, 169, 171, 174, 176, 178, 179 Old Saxon, 122, 129, 131–33, 137, 140–41, 155 P parameter (re)setting, 11, 14, 29, 30, 31, 69, 100, 162, 164–67, 190–91, 198, 212 parameters, 11–15, 18–20, 28, 29–31, 40, 42, 45, 47, 110, 162, 166, 167, 190, 191, 200 parametric theories, 116 participle construction, 140 patterns (see also syntactic patterns), 4, 43–45, 50, 54, 55, 62, 68, 73, 74–80, 84, 85–91, 99, 100–02, 104, 111, 113, 115, 117, 123, 163, 164, 167, 191–93, 197, 204, 206, 209 phonology, 3, 5, 10, 31, 36, 43, 45–47, 49, 54, 73, 75, 85, 86, 91, 97, 98, 100, 114, 161–63, 169, 187–91, 194, 196, 198–200, 207, 208, 211 phrase structure, 206, 208 phylogenetic, xii–xv, 29, 98–100, 189 PLD, 34, 35, 37, 38, 192, 197, 198, 203, 211 primary linguistic data, 33–35, 37, 192
polysynthesis, 210 Portuguese, 10, 60, 63, 64, 67 proto-language, 1, 3, 4, 9, 10, 20, 22, 27, 29, 32, 37, 38, 45, 59, 63, 66, 68, 69, 98, 99, 101–05, 107, 117, 163, 193 prestige, 190, 196 Principles & Parameters, 28, 29, 31, 40, 45, 47 Q quotative construction, 147, 148, 156 R reanalysis, 11, 22, 80, 114, 153, 156, 174, 198, 199, 202, 203, 210 reconstruction of phylogenetic relations, 29 regular sound change, 52, 53 regularity hypothesis in sound change, 52 relics, 20, 73, 75, 81–85, 91, 163 Romance, 3, 6–8, 17, 21, 40, 49, 54, 59, 60–66, 68, 69, 98, 99, 101, 103, 109, 113, 114, 163, 168, 179 Romance future, 21, 59, 61, 64, 68, 109, 168 Romanian, 27, 62, 65, 66, 100 Modern Romanian, 65, 66 Russian, 53, 57, 58, 166 Modern Standard Russian, 53 S Salish, 51, 52 Bella Coola, 52 Coast Salish, 51, 52 Interior Salish, 51, 52 Serbo-Croatian, 53, 55–59 Novi Serbo-Croatian, 53, 56–58 shift, 2, 30, 31, 166, 196, 203, 207, 210, 211 Slavic imperfect, 169, 170 sociolinguistics, 197 Spanish, 10, 15–17, 60–64, 67, 98, 100, 102, 208 stage-level predicate, 141 statistical universal, 105 subordinate clause, 52, 121, 149
Swedish, 102 syntactic patterns (see also patterns), 44, 54, 77, 78, 80, 84–86, 99, 101, 102, 104, 123 T teleologism, x that-clause, 121, 122–24, 128, 135, 140, 147, 148, 153, 155, 156 that-clause competitor, 140 tokens, 43, 83, 89 transfer, 47, 199, 203, 207 Tuscan, 113 Old Tuscan, 113 types, 37, 43–45, 55, 58, 59, 83, 85, 97, 100, 106–12, 115, 116, 142, 168, 196, 197–99, 201–03, 205, 209, 212 typological consistency (see also consistent/ inconsistent language), 6, 105, 107 typological universals, 6, 12, 13, 19, 21 typology, 5, 6, 14, 19, 29, 105, 106, 109, 164, 165, 167, 199, 201 U Uralic, 50, 51 variation, 2, 6, 13, 29, 30, 33, 34, 39–43, 45–47, 49, 55, 56, 65, 103, 107, 123, 148, 166, 180, 194, 204 V Vedic, 5, 21, 121, 122, 125, 129, 136, 137, 142, 147–49, 151, 154, 162 W word order, 4, 6, 9, 28, 41, 46, 49–51, 58, 68, 90, 91, 107, 108, 162 basic word order, 50, 162 word order types, 108 word order regularities, 4–5 world knowledge, 177 Y yes/no questions, 73, 75–77, 80, 81, 86, 90
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Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung, Berlin
[email protected] Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (CILT) is a theory-oriented series which welcomes contributions from scholars who have significant proposals to make towards the advancement of our understanding of language, its structure, functioning and development. CILT has been established in order to provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of linguistic opinions of scholars who do not necessarily accept the prevailing mode of thought in linguistic science. It offers an outlet for meaningful contributions to the current linguistic debate, and furnishes the diversity of opinion which a healthy discipline must have. A complete list of titles in this series can be found on the publishers’ website, www.benjamins.com 303 Torck, Danièle and W. Leo Wetzels (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2006. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, Amsterdam, 7–9 December 2006. viii, 293 pp. Expected December 2008 302 Ferraresi, Gisella and Maria Goldbach (eds.): Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction. xvii, 216 pp. + index. Expected December 2008 301 Parkinson, Dilworth B. (ed.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the annual symposium on Arabic linguistics. Volume XXI: Provo, Utah, March 2007. 2008. x, 206 pp. 300 Vajda, Edward J. (ed.): Subordination and Coordination Strategies in North Asian Languages. 2008. xii, 218 pp. 299 González-Díaz, Victorina: English Adjective Comparison. A historical perspective. 2008. xix, 252 pp. 298 Bowern, Claire, Bethwyn Evans and Luisa Miceli (eds.): Morphology and Language History. In honour of Harold Koch. 2008. x, 364 pp. 297 Dossena, Marina, Richard Dury and Maurizio Gotti (eds.): English Historical Linguistics 2006. Selected papers from the fourteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 14), Bergamo, 21–25 August 2006. Volume III: Geo-Historical Variation in English. 2008. xiii, 197 pp. 296 Dury, Richard, Maurizio Gotti and Marina Dossena (eds.): English Historical Linguistics 2006. Selected papers from the fourteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 14), Bergamo, 21–25 August 2006. Volume II: Lexical and Semantic Change. 2008. xiii, 264 pp. 295 Gotti, Maurizio, Marina Dossena and Richard Dury (eds.): English Historical Linguistics 2006. Selected papers from the fourteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 14), Bergamo, 21–25 August 2006. Volume I: Syntax and Morphology. 2008. xiv, 259 pp. 294 Frellesvig, Bjarke and John Whitman (eds.): Proto-Japanese. Issues and Prospects. 2008. vii, 229 pp. 293 Detges, Ulrich and Richard Waltereit (eds.): The Paradox of Grammatical Change. Perspectives from Romance. 2008. vi, 252 pp. 292 Nicolov, Nicolas, Kalina Bontcheva, Galia Angelova and Ruslan Mitkov (eds.): Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing IV. Selected papers from RANLP 2005. 2007. xii, 307 pp. 291 Baauw, Sergio, Frank Drijkoningen and Manuela Pinto (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2005. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, Utrecht, 8–10 December 2005. 2007. viii, 338 pp. 290 Mughazy, Mustafa A. (ed.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the annual symposium on Arabic linguistics. Volume XX: Kalamazoo, Michigan, March 2006. 2007. xii, 247 pp. 289 Benmamoun, Elabbas (ed.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the annual symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Volume XIX: Urbana, Illinois, April 2005. 2007. xiv, 304 pp. 288 Toivonen, Ida and Diane Nelson (eds.): Saami Linguistics. 2007. viii, 321 pp. 287 Camacho, José, Nydia Flores-Ferrán, Liliana Sánchez, Viviane Déprez and María José Cabrera (eds.): Romance Linguistics 2006. Selected papers from the 36th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), New Brunswick, March-April 2006. 2007. viii, 340 pp. 286 Weijer, Jeroen van de and Erik Jan van der Torre (eds.): Voicing in Dutch. (De)voicing – phonology, phonetics, and psycholinguistics. 2007. x, 186 pp. 285 Sackmann, Robin (ed.): Explorations in Integrational Linguistics. Four essays on German, French, and Guaraní. 2008. ix, 239 pp. 284 Salmons, Joseph C. and Shannon Dubenion-Smith (eds.): Historical Linguistics 2005. Selected papers from the 17th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Madison, Wisconsin, 31 July - 5 August 2005. 2007. viii, 413 pp. 283 Lenker, Ursula and Anneli Meurman-Solin (eds.): Connectives in the History of English. 2007. viii, 318 pp.
282 Prieto, Pilar, Joan Mascaró and Maria-Josep Solé (eds.): Segmental and prosodic issues in Romance phonology. 2007. xvi, 262 pp. 281 Vermeerbergen, Myriam, Lorraine Leeson and Onno Crasborn (eds.): Simultaneity in Signed Languages. Form and function. 2007. viii, 360 pp. (incl. CD-Rom). 280 Hewson, John and Vit Bubenik: From Case to Adposition. The development of configurational syntax in Indo-European languages. 2006. xxx, 420 pp. 279 Nedergaard Thomsen, Ole (ed.): Competing Models of Linguistic Change. Evolution and beyond. 2006. vi, 344 pp. 278 Doetjes, Jenny and Paz González (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2004. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, Leiden, 9–11 December 2004. 2006. viii, 320 pp. 277 Helasvuo, Marja-Liisa and Lyle Campbell (eds.): Grammar from the Human Perspective. Case, space and person in Finnish. 2006. x, 280 pp. 276 Montreuil, Jean-Pierre Y. (ed.): New Perspectives on Romance Linguistics. Vol. II: Phonetics, Phonology and Dialectology. Selected papers from the 35th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Austin, Texas, February 2005. 2006. x, 213 pp. 275 Nishida, Chiyo and Jean-Pierre Y. Montreuil (eds.): New Perspectives on Romance Linguistics. Vol. I: Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics. Selected papers from the 35th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Austin, Texas, February 2005. 2006. xiv, 288 pp. 274 Gess, Randall S. and Deborah Arteaga (eds.): Historical Romance Linguistics. Retrospective and perspectives. 2006. viii, 393 pp. 273 Filppula, Markku, Juhani Klemola, Marjatta Palander and Esa Penttilä (eds.): Dialects Across Borders. Selected papers from the 11th International Conference on Methods in Dialectology (Methods XI), Joensuu, August 2002. 2005. xii, 291 pp. 272 Gess, Randall S. and Edward J. Rubin (eds.): Theoretical and Experimental Approaches to Romance Linguistics. Selected papers from the 34th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Salt Lake City, March 2004. 2005. viii, 367 pp. 271 Branner, David Prager (ed.): The Chinese Rime Tables. Linguistic philosophy and historicalcomparative phonology. 2006. viii, 358 pp. 270 Geerts, Twan, Ivo van Ginneken and Haike Jacobs (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2003. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 2003, Nijmegen, 20–22 November. 2005. viii, 369 pp. 269 Hargus, Sharon and Keren Rice (eds.): Athabaskan Prosody. 2005. xii, 432 pp. 268 Cravens, Thomas D. (ed.): Variation and Reconstruction. 2006. viii, 223 pp. 267 Alhawary, Mohammad T. and Elabbas Benmamoun (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the annual symposium on Arabic linguistics. Volume XVII–XVIII: Alexandria, 2003 and Norman, Oklahoma 2004. 2005. xvi, 315 pp. 266 Boudelaa, Sami (ed.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the annual symposium on Arabic linguistics. Volume XVI: , Cambridge, March 2002. 2006. xii, 181 pp. 265 Cornips, Leonie and Karen P. Corrigan (eds.): Syntax and Variation. Reconciling the Biological and the Social. 2005. vi, 312 pp. 264 Dressler, Wolfgang U., Dieter Kastovsky, Oskar E. Pfeiffer and Franz Rainer (eds.): Morphology and its demarcations. Selected papers from the 11th Morphology meeting, Vienna, February 2004. With the assistance of Francesco Gardani and Markus A. Pöchtrager. 2005. xiv, 320 pp. 263 Branco, António, Tony McEnery and Ruslan Mitkov (eds.): Anaphora Processing. Linguistic, cognitive and computational modelling. 2005. x, 449 pp. 262 Vajda, Edward J. (ed.): Languages and Prehistory of Central Siberia. 2004. x, 275 pp. 261 Kay, Christian J. and Jeremy J. Smith (eds.): Categorization in the History of English. 2004. viii, 268 pp. 260 Nicolov, Nicolas, Kalina Bontcheva, Galia Angelova and Ruslan Mitkov (eds.): Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing III. Selected papers from RANLP 2003. 2004. xii, 402 pp. 259 Carr, Philip, Jacques Durand and Colin J. Ewen (eds.): Headhood, Elements, Specification and Contrastivity. Phonological papers in honour of John Anderson. 2005. xxviii, 405 pp. 258 Auger, Julie, J. Clancy Clements and Barbara Vance (eds.): Contemporary Approaches to Romance Linguistics. Selected Papers from the 33rd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Bloomington, Indiana, April 2003. With the assistance of Rachel T. Anderson. 2004. viii, 404 pp. 257 Fortescue, Michael, Eva Skafte Jensen, Jens Erik Mogensen and Lene Schøsler (eds.): Historical Linguistics 2003. Selected papers from the 16th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Copenhagen, 11–15 August 2003. 2005. x, 312 pp. 256 Bok-Bennema, Reineke, Bart Hollebrandse, Brigitte Kampers-Manhe and Petra Sleeman (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2002. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, Groningen, 28–30 November 2002. 2004. viii, 273 pp.
