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2019 •
The dissertation is a comprehensive study of verb-particle constructions known as phrasal verbs (PVs) in the Welsh language in relation to linguistic norm and contact with English. Despite their widespread use, PVs in Welsh have not been studied in detail thus far, except for pioneering articles by Rottet (2000, 2005). The few other sources that mention these constructions treat them as borrowings from English situated outside the linguistic norm. The aim of my thesis was to provide a comprehensive albeit still preliminary description of PVs in Welsh and revise some oversimplifying statements regarding these constructions by investigating the degree of their standardisation. In the first chapter of the thesis, I present the situation of Welsh as a minority language and attempt to define the sources of the current linguistic norm and standards. I describe the decline of the so-called literary standard and the emergence of a new norm, the so-called official or semi-formal register. The second part of the chapter discussed relevant issues connected with English influence on Welsh with focus on lexical transfer. Chapter 2 begins with a review of literature on PVs in English and Welsh. By analysing contemporary grammars of Welsh, I demonstrate that the constructions are most often excluded or erroneously described. The number of sources on Welsh PVs is very limited as they are usually considered a priori to be calques from English. On the basis of studies by Rottet (2000, 2005) and a comparative analysis of papers on PVs in Irish (Stenson 1997, Veselinović 2000) it is shown that the issue of origins of these constructions in Celtic languages is much more complex. The key element is the division between transparent and idiomatic PVs: while verbs from the first group occur naturally in Celtic languages, the others are generally borrowed, although native constructions exist as well. This implies that idiomatic PVs in Welsh are not only the outcome of direct translation from English and in some cases may originate in natural processes of language evolution, i.e. the semantic extension of transparent constructions towards idiomaticity. In the second part of the chapter, I present a definition and classification of idiomatic PVs used in the subsequent chapters. In the third chapter I present a corpus of written Welsh created for the purpose of the dissertation, comprised of works of fiction and periodicals which are aimed to be a representative sample of semi-formal registers of Welsh. The results of the corpus analysis show the frequencies of PVs according to text type, syntactic categories and classification related to language contact. The corpus data are then used to compare the grammatical description of the constructions found in literature with my own observations. The next part of the chapter is a qualitative analysis of corpus texts focusing on the examples of stylistic markedness of PVs, which indicates their acceptability in the linguistic norm. In the final sections I analyse the meaning of phrasal particles found in the corpus using Rudzka-Ostyn’s (2003) cognitive model of the semantics of particles. By comparing the obtained data with lexicographic materials I identify semantic extensions which are most likely to have emerged due to contact with English. Chapter 4 discusses the description of PVs in Welsh teaching materials and dictionaries. The analysis of numerous sources demonstrates the existence of a norm which prescribes or discourages the use of some PVs as borrowing from English. However, the norm can be observed primarily in materials aimed at native speakers or advanced learners, while resources used at the early stages of learning the language generally avoid statements against borrowings. In the second subsection of the chapter I analyse dictionary entries for 25 most frequent PVs in the corpus, showing lack of consistency in accepting PVs as part of the linguistic norm. Chapter 5 presents the results of a field study conducted in 2016 and 2017 on 55 professional speakers of Welsh in seven groups. The study consisted of an interview and a questionnaire. The questionnaire checked the standardness and acceptability of PVs, while the interviews touched on more general issues related to borrowing and standardisation. The results show variation in acceptability of PVs depending on the type of verb and the used register. They also illustrate the complexity of attitudes related to the changing linguistic norm and point to potential factors which shape speakers beliefs on that matter. In the conclusions I propose a general description of the phenomenon of PVs in Welsh and offer recommendations for including the constructions in grammars, dictionaries and pedagogical materials.
2015 •
There are two major variants of traditionally understood transitivity: broad and narrow. The former makes reference to the number of arguments, hence it will be referred to as quantitative, the latter is of a qualitative type, i.e., it is related to the presence of specific argument types. An instance of a quantitative approach to transitivity is exemplified by Bosworth and Toller’s classification, a qualitative approach is represented by Visser’s (1963-73) typology of Old English verbs. As the two accounts are not only based on different defining criteria but also result in different classifications of particular verbs, the two approaches will be evaluated with the help of independent Old English data.
PhD Thesis, University of Ljubljana
The Development of Verb-initial word order in Early Modern Welsh from the mid sixteenth to the mid eighteenth century2015 •
The history of Welsh word order has long been an issue of controversy. While some scholars have argued that Welsh underwent as many as two major word order changes between the Old and Modern periods — from verb-initial to verb-medial and back to verb-initial again — others have maintained that Welsh has always been essentially verb-initial, disregarding the apparent non-verb-initial phase in the Middle and Early Modern Welsh periods as an artificial literary aberration. At the same time, there has until recently been little empirical study of Early Modern Welsh word order. This thesis provides a systematic empirical investigation of Early Modern Welsh word order from the mid sixteenth to the mid eighteenth centuries, based on an original corpus of over 100 texts of diverse genres, registers and discourse types, including Slander case records, personal letters, drama, the Bible translations, sermons, religious treatises, catechisms and pseudo-historical works. The investigation focuses on the diachronic development of one particular verb-initial construction Absolute-initial verb (AIV) order, where a finite verb comes in absolute initial position in a positive declarative main clause (PDMC). In Middle Welsh (c.1200–c.1500), AIV order was rare in prose, which had a predominantly verb-second or medial word order in positive declarative main clauses, but common in poetry. The corpus analysis shows that AIV order starts to be used more frequently in prose texts from the second half of the sixteenth century and that the first innovative texts to show a frequent use of AIV are the 1567 and 1588 Bible translations, in particular poetic books of the Old Testament such as Psalms, Isaiah, Song of Songs, contradicting the traditional view in Welsh scholarhip that the Bible translations were a conservative bastion of non-verb-initial word order. There is evidence of a continued increase in the use of AIV order in seventeenth and eighteenth century corpus texts, however at the same time we find extreme patterns of variation in the use of AIV order throughout the two century corpus period with some prose authors showing dominant AIV order in over 50% of PDMCs, other contemporary authors almost avoiding the construction altogether, as well as various intermediate patterns of usage. We contrast the Principles and Parameters (P&P) account of this change in Welsh word order by Willis (1998), which seeks to explain the rise of AIV order in terms of a discrete and abrupt change in the grammaticality of the construction but which does not in itself seek to account for the variation in the use of the construction, with an alternative Construction Grammar (CxG) approach, where we posit a gradual mechanism of syntactic change and seek to propose an integrated syntactic and sociohistorical account of the change and variation in use of AIV order. In the Principles and Parameters approach, Middle Welsh is analysed as a V2 language, where unmarked VSO is ungrammatical in positive main clauses, and the emergence of grammatical unmarked VSO in Early Modern Welsh is attributed to the resetting of the V2 parameter, resulting in an abrupt change from a V2 grammar with ungrammatical unmarked VSO to a non-V2 grammar with grammatical unmarked VSO. In the Construction Grammar approach, AIV order is analysed as being a grammatical, but weakly motivated construction in Middle Welsh prose and the gradual increase as well as the variation in its use is analysed in terms of changing and competing motivations (both structural/syntactic and sociolinguistic/stylistic) for its use over time. We will argue that the Construction Grammar concept of motivation can be used as tool in the explanation of syntactic variation and change. In a Construction Grammar framework, it can be argued that AIV order was a well-formed construction in MW prose but a weakly-motivated one, as a system of pre-verbal fronting had come to be generalised: Subject/direct object + preverbal particle a + verb, and Adverbial phrase + preverbal particle y(d) + verb. Where, less frequently, there were finite-verb-initial constructions, the verb was usually preceded by the preverbal particle y(d), rather than occurring in absolute-initial position. In MW poetry the more frequent use of AIV order may have been motivated by specific cultural and stylistic factors (e.g. poetic tradition, metre). The increase in use of AIV order in EMnW seems at least in part to have been motivated by the gradual loss of the preverbal particle y(d): we find correlations between the frequency of use of AIV order and Adverb+Verb order – the use of Adverb+Verb order (i.e. without the particle y) appears to motivate AIV order and vice versa. The patterns of variation further suggest that AIV order appears to have been perceived as interchangeable with two other constructions: Pronominal Subject+Verb and Dummy subject+Verb, and came to be used in all the contexts where these other two constructions were used. The perceived interchangeability of AIV and these constructions seems to have provided Early Modern Welsh writers with a stylistic resource which they exploited in different ways, some choosing to generalise the construction, others to avoid it. A perceived association of AIV order with poetry may have been a motivating factor for its use for some authors, particularly in the 16th century prose translations of the Psalms, where the AIV order may have been used to evoke a poetic style in a prose text and perhaps also render more closely the verb-initial patterns in the original Hebrew poetry.
2016 •
In this paper we address the question of whether it is possible to compare two theoretical approaches to the same phenomenon or whether these should be considered incommensurable. We focus on two contrasting approaches to the identification of code-switching vs. borrowing by Poplack and Meechan [1] and Myers-Scotton [2,3]. For Poplack the distinction is based on linguistic integration and for Myers-Scotton on frequency. We show how what is a definition for one is a hypothesis for the other, and vice versa. Overcoming this apparent incommensurability requires a theory-independent approach in which we define the unit of analysis as "donor-language items" rather than switches or borrowings. Using this unit of analysis in the analysis of English-origin verbs in a Welsh corpus, we examine the assumptions behind the contrasting definitions of CS vs. borrowing. First we consider whether it is possible to identify linguistic integration in an unequivocal, categorical way and secondly whether linguistic integration is related to frequency of usage. We show that the identification of linguistic integration depends on the test used and that both frequency of usage and listedness play roles in the integration of English donor-language items in Welsh. In this way we argue that we achieve a theory-independent approach and go some way towards overcoming incommensurability.
This paper focuses on verb-second main clauses in Middle Welsh and their interaction with co-ordination. It argues that the only empirically-adequate analysis of Middle Welsh coordination patterns requires that the conjuncts be analysed as full CP-clauses. Apparent gaps in those clauses require the postulation of an empty category. Two candidates for such a category are considered, pro and an empty operator. The former analysis is rejected because the empty category fails to obey the licensing conditions on pro in Middle Welsh. A discourse-licensed empty operator on the other hand provides a good account of the environments in which these gaps are found. Cross-linguistic and internal diachronic evidence show that such an analysis of Middle Welsh as having an empty operator in coordinate structures fits well with a typology of such structures according to which languages may adopt and move historically between a highly restrictive ‘syntactic’ system of coordination and a much less restrictive ‘pragmatic’ one.
In M. Cennamo & C. Fabrizio (eds.), Historical Linguistics 2015, Selected papers from the 22nd International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Naples, 27-31 July 2015. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
The sources of antipassive constructions: a cross-linguistic survey2019 •
Antipassive constructions may be polysemous, with aspectual and modal functions other than patient demotion, and may differ with respect to the way agents and patients are coded. This paper explores the hypothesis that at least some of these differences can be explained by taking into account the diachronic sources of these constructions, which hold the key to some regularities. The sample includes the 48 languages with an antipassive in the WALS (Polinsky 2013) + 50 languages in which an antipassive or a functionally equivalent construction is attested. These functionally equivalent constructions are generally not labelled as antipassives in grammatical descriptions, and alternative labels such as depatientive, deobjective, unspecified object construction, etc. are used. The diachronic sources of all these constructions are identified drawing on two kinds of evidence: (i) etymological reconstructions based on the comparative method; (ii) synchronic resemblance between (some features of) the source construction and (some features of) the target construction. Four main sources are found to be recurrent in the sample: (i) agent nominalizations; (ii) generic/indefinite elements filling the object position (e.g. person for animate objects, (some)thing for inanimate objects); (iii) action nominalizations, either alone or accompanied by a light verb like ‘do’ ( do the washing); (iv) morphemes encoding reflexive and/or reciprocal actions. For each of these sources, a diachronic scenario is sketched through which the antipassive construction might have developed out of the source.
Say, Sergey. The antipassive derivation and the lexical meaning of the verb. In: Janic, Katarzyna and Alena Witzlack-Makarevich (eds.). Antipassive: Typology, diachrony, and related constructions [Typological Studies in Language 130]. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
The antipassive derivation and the lexical meaning of the verb2021 •
Descriptions of antipassive constructions in individual languages show that these constructions are often compatible with only a subset of transitive verbs. There are significant typological similarities between the sets of verbs that allow antipassivization. The following properties are typical of these verbs: i) agentive A, ii) specification of the manner component in the verb meaning, iii) lack of inherent telicity (the transitive use can be compositionally transitive, but this is cancelled under antipassivization), iv) narrow class of potential Ps, and v) affectedness of A. Verbs with all of the properties in i)-v), such as 'eat', constitute the core of " natural antipassives " , whereas verbs with only some of these properties are at the periphery of this class. Apart from being especially prone to enter antipassive constructions, the fuzzy class of natural antipassives is relevant for a number of phenomena. i) Polyfunctional valency-related markers or constructions tend to yield antipassive reading when applied to natural antipassives. ii) Natural antipassives tend to choose the less marked construction in languages with two antipassive constructions. iii) Lexicalization of antipassives is more likely for verbs that lack natural antipassive properties, and a typical scenario of lexicalization involves coercion of some of these properties. Ultimately, I conjecture that it is the relevance of the P-argument for the meaning of the verb which accounts for the rarity of fully productive and semantically uniform antipassive constructions in the world's languages.
Synchrony and Diachrony. A Dynamic Interface., edited by Anna Giacalone Ramat, Caterina Mauri and Piera Molinelli [Studies in Language Companion Series 133] 2013
Gradual Change and Continual variation: The History of a Verb-Initial Construction in Welsh2013 •
This article contrasts two different analyses – a diachronic Construction Grammar (CxG) approach and the Principles & Principles approach of Willis (1998) – of the development of a verb-initial construction, Absolute-initial verb (AIV) order, in Early Modern Welsh. The P&P approach attributes the rise of AIV order in Early Modern Welsh to an abrupt and discrete change in the grammaticality of V1 following the resetting of the V2 parameter. We argue, on the basis of a detailed corpus study of the period c.1550-c.1750, that the historical data shows a gradual increase as well as significant sociolinguistic variation in the frequency of use of AIV order. We further argue that a diachronic Construction Grammar approach can better account for gradual syntactic change and syntactic variation, since, unlike P&P approaches, it does not seek to model gradual historical data in terms of discrete grammars and grammatical categories, but has a gradient conception of grammaticality and grammatical categories and can thus propose gradual mechanisms of change and integrate sociolinguistic variation directly in grammatical description.
2002 •
This paper describes and analyzes a series of paradigmatic oppositions between N’ constructions in the P-Celtic languages (Welsh, Breton, Cornish) which serve to code expressive pragmatics of adjectives. The paper considers both paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects of these constructions, and shows that asymmetric interaction of constructions in paradigms influences their purely formal syntagmatic interactions. A typology of expressive categories is built to serve as a framework for comparison between constructions. It is argued that a view of grammar that includes both formal and functional dimensions (‘the coding view’) also provides valuable insight in matters of purely formal constructional interaction.
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