{"title":"On the disappearance of the BE perfect in Late Modern English","authors":"T. McFadden","doi":"10.1080/03740463.2017.1351845","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03740463.2017.1351845","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Previous work on auxiliary selection in the history of English has revealed that perfect-like constructions in earlier stages of the language were quite distinct from those in the modern language, and furthermore that important changes in the construction with have around 1350 rendered it quite distinct semantically and syntactically from the one with be. While this led to a marked expansion of perfects with have, it did not effect a decrease in those with be, which remained quite stable up to around 1700. The current paper presents research based on more recently available corpus data, exploring what happened in the period after 1700, when the construction with be, which is no longer found in the contemporary language, finally did begin to recede. The most straightforward finding is that the inflection point of this change can now be dated to around the year 1800. Evidence is then presented showing that, contrary to appearances, the loss of be does not seem to be related to increasing lexical restrictions on the perfect construction. Finally, the mechanics of the change and its relevance for the syntactic distribution of participles are discussed, along with arguments that what underlies the loss of the be perfect is actually a restriction on the kinds of VPs that can build stative-resultative participial structures in the language.","PeriodicalId":35105,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Hafniensia","volume":"48 1","pages":"159 - 175"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83266323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Developing a new perfect: the rise of the Icelandic vera búinn að-perfect","authors":"Höskuldur Thráinsson","doi":"10.1080/03740463.2017.1357267","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03740463.2017.1357267","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Icelandic is basically a “straight-have-perfect” language, where constructions with be + participle are virtually restricted to stative expressions like er farinn “is gone”. But since around 1600, Icelandic has been developing a new perfect consisting of the verb “be” together with the adjective (or participle) búinn + infinitive. The word búinn normally means “finished, done” so it is not surprising that the earliest examples of this construction typically involved transitive telic predicates and animate agentive subjects and had a clear resultative reading. Gradually, the construction developed into a more general perfect, which today can be used with predicates of different types and have a universal and even to some extent experiential (existential) reading. This development is traced and the restrictions on this new perfect in the modern language are described. It is shown that this new perfect has been gaining ground for centuries and is apparently still on the rise, as can be seen from the fact that it is more popular among young speakers than with the older generations. It is also acquired early and apparently more frequent in child language than the standard have-perfect.","PeriodicalId":35105,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Hafniensia","volume":"3 1","pages":"118 - 142"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73058330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The have/be alternation in contemporary Faroese","authors":"C. Heycock, H. Petersen","doi":"10.1080/03740463.2017.1358071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03740463.2017.1358071","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper investigates the status of the alternation in Faroese between have (hava) and be (vera) as auxiliaries combining with the past participle/supine. We present the results of two online questionnaire studies and argue that the data indicate that in Faroese the have/be alternation is an alternation of perfect auxiliaries, like in Danish but unlike the other Scandinavian languages, where be can only be used to convey resultant state.","PeriodicalId":35105,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Hafniensia","volume":"57 1","pages":"143 - 158"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77036412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The regrammation of paradigms: the development of auxiliaries in Danish","authors":"Lars Heltoft","doi":"10.1080/03740463.2017.1385120","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03740463.2017.1385120","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article surveys the development of voice and tense auxiliaries in Scandinavian with a focus on Danish. Voice is the first category (documented indirectly by Gothic) to show periphrastic forms in paradigmatic cooperation with inflectional forms; and these periphrastic forms are modelled on predicative constructions. Modern Danish has introduced verbal constructions at the expense of all predicative morphology, and the Old Scandinavian auxiliary verbs hafa/hava ‘have’ and vera/wæra ‘be’, verða/wartha ‘become’ have undergone semantic changes, including specialisation and markedness shift. This regrammation process involves semantic changes that must be described in terms of paradigm (re)organisation and cannot be captured in terms of changes along the parameters of the cline of grammaticalisation. Two main types of auxiliaries are distinguished: inflectional auxiliaries, with predication scope (tense, mood and voice) as part of otherwise inflectional paradigms, and, constructional auxiliaries (copula verbs) with predicate scope. Modern Danish inflectional auxiliaries express perfect tense and active voice with transitive verbs (have ‘have’), perfect tense, active voice and telicity with intransitive verbs (være ‘be’ and have ‘have’), stativity (copula verbs være ‘be’ and blive ‘become, turn’) and passive voice and telicity in the periphrastic passive (være ‘be’ and blive ‘become, be’). Their meaning potentials differ according to the paradigms they are part of.","PeriodicalId":35105,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Hafniensia","volume":"24 1","pages":"255 - 285"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87188336","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The choice of the perfect auxiliary in contemporary spoken Danish","authors":"Anu Laanemets","doi":"10.1080/03740463.2017.1369689","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03740463.2017.1369689","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines the distribution and the usage pattern of the two perfect auxiliaries – have and be – in contemporary spoken Danish in order to investigate whether the choice between the two auxiliaries is undergoing systematic changes. To do so the LANCHART corpus of contemporary spoken Danish is used. First, the macro-level distributional pattern is established through quantitative apparent and real-time analysis. In the subsequent qualitative micro-level analysis, particular attention is paid to cases where the selection of the auxiliary deviates from what could be expected based on Sorace’s Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy and grammars of Danish. The investigation focuses on the verbs gå ‘go’ and komme ‘come’ – the two most frequent verbs of motion in the corpus. The apparent time analysis of gå indicates an increased use of have across generations. In real time, no change is registered, indicating that any change is stemming from generational differences. With komme – although unexpected examples with have are attested – no statistically significant change is registered neither in apparent nor in real time. The micro-level analysis shows that the variation in auxiliary selection largely conforms to expectations; however, deviations are registered and discussed.","PeriodicalId":35105,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Hafniensia","volume":"15 1","pages":"232 - 254"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78594954","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Loanword adaptation in Hungarian: unexpected vowel harmony in material of Latin and Slavic provenance","authors":"A. Hyllested","doi":"10.1080/03740463.2017.1341811","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03740463.2017.1341811","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In a 1992 article, Eugen Helimski showed that the accented vowel of Old and Middle High German, Medieval Latin and Pannonian Slavic lexemes governed whether they acquired front-vowel or back-vowel harmony when entering Hungarian as loanwords. While the German material appears exceptionless, some words of Slavic and Latin provenance exhibit unexpected back-vowel harmony. The present article submits that if a labial sound follows the originally accented vowel, front-vowel harmony is blocked. This conditioned rule applies without exception to both Slavic and Latin loanwords; it is thus an economical solution. It follows that variation in Slavic loanwords in Hungarian cannot serve as a testimony of Old Slavic accent shifts, but merely of the place of the original (pitch) accent; and that the Slavic language that provided loanwords to Medieval Hungarian must have been fairly uniform. As for Latin loanwords, it likewise renders an appeal to late accent shifts unnecessary. Helimski also discovered that a subset of Latin words containing a medial cluster *-CiV- could trigger front-vowel harmony even if the original accent fell on a back vowel. Here, I argue that the distribution of front and back vocalism in this type is further governed by the vowel of the initial syllable. This minor rule possibly applies to Slavic as well.","PeriodicalId":35105,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Hafniensia","volume":"1 1","pages":"1 - 11"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90831789","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Prototypical adverbs: from comparative concept to typological prototype","authors":"Pernilla Hallonsten Halling","doi":"10.1080/03740463.2017.1292801","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03740463.2017.1292801","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract While adjectives and their potential universality have been much debated, adverbs remain rather neglected in the typological and cognitive literature. From a typological perspective, adjectives can be dealt with using a comparative concept: rather than assuming from the outset the existence of a class of adjectives, a particular language-independent definition of adjectives is used as a heuristic for examining recurrent form-meaning combinations. In the present article, adverb is addressed as a comparative concept in the same vein: an adverb is a lexeme that denotes a descriptive property and can be used to narrow the predication of a verb. This comparative concept is applied to a sample of 41 languages from the whole world. The results show that although there are diverse structural possibilities in terms of different adverbial constructions of varying spread and productivity, simple adverbs are found in a considerable number of unrelated languages, even in some cases where adjectives cannot be found. Clear adverb subtypes reminiscent of semantic types of adjectives further emerge, leading to a discussion of whether the comparative concepts in this case allow us to uncover a substantial cross-linguistic prototype.","PeriodicalId":35105,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Hafniensia","volume":"15 1","pages":"37 - 52"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74636349","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From three genders to two: the sociolinguistics of gender shift in the Jämtlandic dialect of Sweden","authors":"Briana Van Epps, G. Carling","doi":"10.1080/03740463.2017.1286811","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03740463.2017.1286811","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The influence of standard language varieties on rural dialects is an important factor involved in dialect loss, which is widespread in Europe. In this study, we look at how the three-gender system in the Jämtlandic dialect of Sweden is changing under pressure from the two-gender system of Standard Swedish. The Jämtlandic dialect is an understudied Swedish dialect and an interesting object of study, in part because of the social and economic changes that have occurred over the past century. We performed a survey using profiled stimuli to elicit indefinite articles, definite articles and anaphoric pronouns for 36 target nouns. An analysis was conducted on the traditionalness of gender agreement in the material. We consider linguistic features (traditional gender and type of agreement), as well as sociological features (age, gender, education, geographical location, socioeconomic status, and language attitudes). The results show that most participants maintain the traditional three-gender system to a large degree. Age is the most significant predictor of traditionalness. While the youngest participants show the highest variability in gender assignment, they still retain the three-gender system to some degree. In addition, participants to whom the dialect is very important tend to use more traditional agreement.","PeriodicalId":35105,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Hafniensia","volume":"12 1","pages":"53 - 84"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81605017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
H. Haberland, A. Hansen, P. Nielsen, R. Bastiaanse, Jonas Nölle, Jonathon Lum, J. Schlossberg, William Mcgregor, Henrik Liljegren, Ditte Boeg Thomsen
{"title":"Bulletin du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague 2015-2016","authors":"H. Haberland, A. Hansen, P. Nielsen, R. Bastiaanse, Jonas Nölle, Jonathon Lum, J. Schlossberg, William Mcgregor, Henrik Liljegren, Ditte Boeg Thomsen","doi":"10.1080/03740463.2016.1260299","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03740463.2016.1260299","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35105,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Hafniensia","volume":"391 1","pages":"104 - 106"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85003950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On holistic properties of morphological constructions: the case of Akan verb–verb nominal compounds","authors":"Clement Kwamina Insaidoo Appah","doi":"10.1080/03740463.2016.1242331","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03740463.2016.1242331","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Akan verb–verb nominal compounds exhibit unusual formal and semantic properties, including extreme formal exocentricity, where the composition of two verbs yields a noun some of whose semantic properties may not be directly coded in the constituents, and argument structure suppression, where no argument of either constituent can occur in the compound. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, I delineate the membership of the class, showing that some of the constructions listed in the literature as verb–verb compounds do not belong to the class; they have formal features that betray them as affix-derived nominals. Secondly, I discuss the rather idiosyncratic properties of the compound. I argue that the form class is inherited from a meta-schema for compounding in Akan which bears a nominal output category. Again, it is a unique constructional property of Akan verb–verb compounds that, unlike other verb-involved compounds, they do not allow any argument of the constituents to become part of the compound. These extra-compositional holistic properties can be accounted for straightforwardly in a framework like Construction Morphology which does not assume that every property in a construction must emanate from its constituents. This study provides evidence for the view that constructions can have holistic properties.","PeriodicalId":35105,"journal":{"name":"Acta Linguistica Hafniensia","volume":"26 1","pages":"12 - 36"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79617069","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}