Chapter 7

Grammatical, Semantic and Lexical

Change

Commentary on Crowley

Part I – Morphological Change

The world is full of variety, and grammatical systems are no exception.

Morphological systems: Type A, B, C, D, ...

Syntactic systems: Type A, B, C, D, ...

In Historical Linguistics, we study how such variety arises, and we find that each system evolves from another.

Typological Dance

A

D B

C

7.1 Typology and Grammatical Change

Morphological types (4)Accusative and ergative languagesBasic constituent orderVerb chains

Morphological types

ISOLATINGINFLECTINGAGGLUTINATINGPOLYSYNTHETIC

Morphological typesISOLATING

INFLECTING AGGLUTINATING

(The fourth type, polysynthetic, will be discussed later.)

Morphological typesISOLATING

morphological reduction phonological reduction

INFLECTING AGGLUTINATING morphologial fusion

English as isolating language.

English: I already gave it to her. (six words)

Turkish: (one word easily divided into morphemes) =Agglutinating language

Tagalog as (mostly) agglutinating language

Nakapagtataka. ‘Surprising’ (Tagalog Verb or Adjective)

taka ‘surprise’ (Noun)ma- ‘happen to’; na- past tense of ‘happen to’pag- class markerCV- Reduplication (ta) ‘continuous aspect’

Note: the ma- na- replacement showing tense is inflectional, not agglutinative, since it involves morphological fusion.

Tagalog song: “Nakapagtataka”

Latin as inflecting language

Marcellus amat Sophiam.Sophiam Marcellus amat.Amat Marcellus Sopham.Sophiam amat Marcellus.

‘Marcus loves Sophia.’

English inflectional –s as archaic residue

I like Ike.You like Ike.He/She likes Ike.We like Ike.You like Ike.They like Ike.

Has there ever been a more useless appendage in a language?

She likes Ike.

-s expresses PERSON, NUMBER, TENSE, MOOD, VOICE

Likes represents the 3rd Person Singular Present Indicative Active form of the verb ‘like’

These categories survive in the verb to be which has to ‘agree’ with the pronouns.

I am going. 1st Pers Sing Prog Indic (Active) (am+-ing).

You are going. 2nd Pers Prog Indic (Active) (are+-ing).

She is going. 3rd Pers Prog Indic (Active) (is+-ing).

We are going. 1st Pers Prog Indic (Active) (are+-ing).

You are going. 2nd Pers Prog Indic (Active) (are+-ing).

They are going. 3rd Pers Prog Indic (Active) (are+-ing).

These categories all survive in the verb to be which has to ‘agree’ with the pronouns.

I was evicted. 1st Pers Sing Past Indic Pass (am+-ed).

You were evicted. 2nd Pers Sing Past Indic Pass (are+-ed).

She was evicted. 3rd Pers Sing Past Indic Pass (is+-ed).We were evicted. 1st Pers Plu Past Indic Pass (were+-

ed).You were evicted. 2nd Pers Plu Past Indic Pass (were+-

ed).They were evicted. 3rd Pers Plu Past Indic Pass

(were+-ed).

The process of Melanau becoming more isolating.

Suffixes and most infixes were lost between PMP and PM.

As a result, PM became mostly an isolating language.

However, remnants of the earlier agglutinating system with a few inflections still remain as archaic residue.

Tagalog is closer to PMP

Tagalog is mostly agglutinating but is partly inflectional, e.g. mag- and pag- are difficult to ‘cut’ into morphemes.

Root bili ‘buy’Active mag-bili ‘sell’Passive pag-bil-hin ‘be sold’Durative aspect pag-bi-bil-hin ‘being sold’Completive aspect p-in-ag-bili-Ø ‘was sold’Past progressive p-in-ag-bi-bili-Ø ‘was being sold’

Like English, Melanau morphology is (mostly) isolating.

Melanau ablaut corresponds to Tagalog inflectional infixes:

Root Active Passive(+Past)Melanau: təbaŋ~tubaŋ~tibaŋPMP: *təbaŋ~*tuməbaŋ~*tinəbaŋin

The process of change involved syncope and cluster reduction affecting transitive verbs in Proto-Melanau: *tuməbaŋ > *tumbaŋ > *tubaŋ

*tinəbaŋ > *tinbaŋ > *tibaŋ

Phonological change had morphological consequences

We are confident about reconstructing this sequence of grammatical changes because the same changes affected simple roots, e.g.

PMP PM GLOSS (96) *baqeRu > *baqRu > *baɁu ‘new’(108) *tupelak > *tuplak > *tulak ‘push’(281) *tuqelaŋ > *tuqlaŋ > *tulaŋ ‘bone’

Melanau dialects are developing a ‘periphrastic passive’ with kəna[h,n]4. ASHESB: Talak idun kənah rusuk ŋan abaw puyan.M: Sumek kənah usuk bak abo.D: JaluɁ kənan bənərəsi pəbak dabo.

‘Dishes can be washed with kitchen ashes.’

Note that Dalat uses archaic infix -ən- together with paraphrastic passive marker kənan, revealing the likely path of change from a more inflecting to a more isolating language.

Another example of grammatical change: Matu-Daro

64. GUTS/STOMACHB: Usus siaw may kiman tənawan. -i- passive

‘not’

M-D: Nay siaw may kənah kəman tənawan.(paraphrastic)

‘not’

D: Sup siaw dəbəy kənan kiman tənawan. (mixed) ‘not’

‘Chicken entrails are not eaten by people.’

(Melanau data is from the 200-Sentence list available on the

Resources web page.)

Part II – Morpho-syntactic change

Fourth morphological type: Polysynthetic languages

I sat with the baby last night. I baby sat last night.

I saw three owls. I owl-saw thrice.

The term for this is INCORPORATION.

Incorporation fuses verb+object or verb+preposition.

Verb-preposition incorporation in Indonesian

I sat in the chair. I occupied the chair. (Lexical synonymy)

Saya duduk di korsi Saya men-duduk-i korsi. (Incorporation) I sat in chair I occupied chair

I sent a letter to John I sent John a letter. (Incorporation signaled by word order)

Saya kirim surat kepada Jon Saya kirim-i Jon surat. (Incorporation I sent letter to John signaled morphologically)

TO BE CONTINUED