Diachronic Semantics

This paper addresses the problem of the emergence of the le/la/les-determiners in the diachrony of French. In particular, it focuses on the issue of their inconsistent distribution viz. the observation that during a long period of time the le/la/les forms in French do not pattern as either the demonstratives from which they originate (Late Latin ille), nor as definites, which they end up becoming in Modern French. We model the phenomenon as a competition between two structures associated with different truth and felicity conditions and test model's predictions in contexts which differ with respect to whether and what kind of the relevant conditions they satisfy. We show that the quantitative corpus data are consistent with all of the predictions we make concerning the relative rates of spread of the l-forms in various contexts. In addition, the two environments we identify on theoretical grounds as contexts of reanalysis, relational nouns and noun phrases with relative clauses, are shown to be associated with the highest and most constant rates of the l-forms, in line with our predictions.

The present paper provides a typological study of the semantic shift from ‘word’ or ‘speech’ and from speech act verbs to nouns with the meaning ‘thing’. The evidence for such a shift was found in various Indo-European and Semitic languages, as well as in Japanese, Hurrian, and Chatino. This semantic shift is unidirectional. The meaning ‘thing (material object)’ can be developed from ‘word’, ‘speech’ or verba dicendi only through the stage ‘matter’. The semantic change in question can have an areal nature. Ancient Near East is an area where it is especially common.

This study examines all the midrashim of Sifre on Numbers with the purpose of identifying all those that are based on a linguistic issue. The objective of the study is to give a maximally comprehensive overview of the exegetical methods used in addressing such issues in Sifre on Numbers, in hopes of laying down the groundwork for a future description encompassing all Rabbinic texts. The advantage of this study lies in its systematicity: it offers a description, as comprehensive as I could make it, of all the relevant exegetical methods, both common and rare.
The midrashim were classified into five categories: orthographic, phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic, as reflected in the study's five chapters. Each category is divided into sub-categories as necessary. Every chapter deals at length with a small number of midrashim which reflect the principles that guided the Sages in addressing the relevant domain. In addition, a comprehensive appendix presents all the midrashim belonging to each category.
The study's five chapters review many exegetical methods pertaining to orthography, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics, and beyond the numerous details, which are important in themselves, four main conclusions emerge. These conclusions are stated directly only with respect to the midrashim of Sifre on Numbers, since only these were subjected to a systematic analysis in the study; however, I believe these conclusions may also apply to other midrashim, in particular Tannaitic ones, or at least offer some directions towards an broader examination of midrashic literature.
The conclusions are as follows:
A. The majority of linguistically-based midrashim in Sifre on Numbers pertain to morphology, syntax and semantics, and only a few to orthography and phonology. These findings are in line with the accepted view that in Tannaic midrashim, especially those dealing with halachic issues, exegetical methods tend to be less bold and more conservative.
B. Linguistically-based Rabbinic midrashim are not random, but follow clear and organized rules, well-defined exegetical methods that can be accurately identified and described, as demonstrated throughout the study.
C. The methods used by the Sages in their exegesis were based on a solid linguistic awareness, which they employed in interpreting the Bible.
D. The Sages employ a very broad range of means in their midrashim. In some cases, the breadth of the spectrum leads to a duality that is evident in at least three domains:
1. Rabbinic Hebrew versus Biblical Hebrew: Many midrashim reflect an awareness of the difference between Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew. Conversely, other midrashim interpret the Biblical text based on Rabbinic Hebrew.
2. Minimalist versus maximalist approach: Many midrashim reflect a minimalist approach that gives words the narrowest possible interpretation, whereas other midrashim attribute to words the broadest possible meaning.
3. Scribal traditions versus reading traditions:  The exegetes sometimes focus on the written text, understanding it not according to the accepted reading tradition but based on an examination of its letters and signs. In other cases, however, they completely ignore the orthography and rely exclusively on the accepted pronunciation.

התפתחות אוצר המילים והמשמעים של העברית והערבית

ד"ר ישי נוימן | שנתי | ד' 17:45–19:15

דוברי העברית והערבית חולקים ארץ אחת ומדברים שתי שפות שנובעות ממקור לשוני אחד, משפחת השפות השמיות. ואולם, על פי רוב הן נלמדות כשפות זרות, וחסרה תודעת השיתוף ההולמת שָׂפוֹת שְׁאֵרוֹת. בתחום אוצר המילים חולקות לשונותינו חומר רב, ורק השכבה העליונה גלויה לאוזן שלא צוידה בכלים המדעיים לזיהוי יסודות שארים בשפה האחות. נוסף על כך, תחומים כגון אנתרופולוגיה ובעיקר סמנטיקה קוגניטיבית עדיין לא יושמו במלואם לשם הבנת תהליכי התפתחות אוצר המילים והמשמעים בעברית ובערבית. בקורס זה נבחן את הדפוסים הסמנטיים כ-"מטפורות שאנו חיים על פיהן", ובזכות הדפוסים החוזרים האלה, לצד בחינות סמנטיות ואנתרופולוגיות אחרות, נעמוד באופן מדעי על התפתחות אוצר המילים והמשמעים בכל לשון לעצמה ובשתיהן כמכלול.

تطور مفردات ومعاني اللغتين العبرية والعربية

د. إشاي نويمان | سنوي | الأربعاء 17:45–19:15

ويشترك المتحدثون بالعبرية والعربية في أرض واحدة ويتحدثون لغتين تنبعان من مصدر لغوي واحد، وهو عائلة اللغات السامية. ومع ذلك، يتم تدريسهما في الغالب كلغات أجنبية، وهناك نقص في الوعي الملائم بالمشاركة للغات المنتسِبة. في مجال المفردات، تتشارك لغاتنا في الكثير من المادة، ولا يظهر إلا الطبقة العليا لأذن غير مجهزة بالأدوات العلمية التعرف على العناصر المنتسِبة في اللغة الشقيقة. بالإضافة إلى ذلك، لم يتم بعد تطبيق مجالات مثل الأنثروبولوجيا وخاصة علم الدلالة المعرفية بشكل كامل لفهم عمليات تطوير المفردات والمعاني في اللغتين العبرية والعربية. في هذه الدورة سنقوم بدراسة الأنماط الدلالية باعتبارها "استعارات نعيش بها"، وبفضل هذه الأنماط المتكررة، إلى جانب الفحوصات الدلالية والأنثروبولوجية الأخرى، سنقوم بفحص علمي لتطور المفردات والمعاني في كل لغة على حدة وفي كليهما ككل.

Mutamenti ciclici che coinvolgono la marca di negazione di frase sono ben noti e vanno tradizionalmente sotto il nome di Ciclo di Jespersen. In questo contributo si discutono alcuni dati dalla storia comparata delle lingue romanze (la nascita di nuovi indefiniti prefissati con la
particella di negazione "nec", gli esiti del latino "aliquis"), che mostrano che anche i pronomi e determinanti indefiniti sono soggetti a simili fenomeni di rinnovamento ciclico. Alla base di tali cicli si riscontrano analoghe pressioni funzionali: emerge come particolarmente rilevante a
questo proposito la tendenza pragmatica a sviluppare mezzi per l’espressione della negazione enfatica. Gli indefiniti, in quanto espressione di quantificazione esistenziale nella portata della
negazione, si qualificano come candidati ideali per l’espressione della negazione enfatica di frase. Grazie allo studio degli indefiniti si vedrà come questa pressione pragmatica basata sull’uso risulti, nel processo di mutamento, ancora più decisiva della tendenza a mantenere per
la negazione una realizzazione morfosintatticamente trasparente, tradizionalmente invocata come spiegazione per l’esistenza del Ciclo di Jespersen.

L 'article porte sur un dérivé qu 'on peut trouver dans une aire géographique très précise : Nord de l'Italie, Sud de la France et Nord de l'Espagne. On a cherché à dresser tout d'abord un tableau historique et moderne des dérivés dans tous les domaines linguistiques concernés, ensuite on a proposé une base étymologique — IE *reik-"déchirer, briser, casser, fendre " — et on a étudié son développement sémantique. Résumé L 'article porte sur un dérivé qu 'on peut trouver dans une aire géographique très précise : Nord de l'Italie, Sud de la France et Nord de l'Espagne. On a cherché à dresser tout d'abord un tableau historique et moderne des dérivés dans tous les domaines linguistiques concernés, ensuite on a proposé une base étymologique — IE *reik-"déchirer, briser, casser, fendre " — et on a étudié son développement sémantique. Varios filólogos se han ocupado de manera más o menos amplia de ciertos derivados en algunas lenguas romances y en vasco, cuyo semantismo y etimología no dejaban de plantear problemas. Difícil resultaba establecer su significado originario por el supuesto cruce semántico con otras palabras homónimas o no, y, por tanto, también resultaba poco clara su base etimológica. Además, los datos con los que se contaba no siempre eran completos y los estudiosos no conocían la precisa distribución geográfica de los diversos derivados en las diferentes lenguas. Nuestro primer empeño ha sido, entonces, rastrear la presencia en el dominio romance y en el vasco (§ § 1.-3.) de continuadores de la base indoeuropea *reik-, que nosotros proponemos como etimología (§ 4.). En esta tarea, naturalmente, hemos tenido que afrontar el problema semántico (§ 5.). Nuestra postura básica, después de un cierto tiempo frecuentando las histoires de mots y a diferencia de lo que hemos constatado en otros críticos, es la de evitar toda tentación de concebir las palabras como etiquetas fónicas pegadas convencional-mente a conceptos preestablecidos, a ideas sempiternas asentadas de manera inamovible en lo alto de los cielos1. Creemos, por el contrario, en la plurideterminabilidad de los significados de cada morfo, en la violabilidad de toda determinación previa, propiedad esta que algunos han denominado "indeterminación semántica". La indeterminación es la matriz de la extensión semántica de las

Cet article porte sur les noms du terrain qui se trouvent dans les documents en occitan du Nord de l'Espagne (XIIIe-XVe siècles). Cet occitan parlé et écrit en Navarre et Aragon a conservé des structures linguistiques et lexicales des XIe-XIIe siècles, époque de colonisation des bourgs espagnols. L'étude d'une partie de ce vocabulaire occitan navarrais et aragonais permet de mieux comprendre son importance pour l'histoire du lexique occitan et hispanique. Résumé Cet article porte sur les noms du terrain qui se trouvent dans les documents en occitan du Nord de l'Espagne (XII Ie-XVe siècles). Cet occitan parlé et écrit en Navarre et Aragon a conservé des structures linguistiques et lexicales des XIe-XIIe siècles, époque de colonisation des bourgs espagnols. L'étude d'une partie de ce vocabulaire occitan navarrais et aragonais permet de mieux comprendre son importance pour l'histoire du lexique occitan et hispanique.

In this study we offer an overview of the territorial distribution and the semantic evolution of the names given to the concept of tarda (afternoon, evening) in Old Catalan (12th-16th centuries) and Modern Catalan (17th century-1832) for the purposes of explaining the current semantic and territorial distribution. This study is based on the data of linguistic corpora of Old and Modern Catalan (CIGCA and GIGCMod), interpreted in accordance with Cognitive Semantics. Based on the analysis of the results, we have reached the conclusion that in Old Catalan there was not just one term of great vitality to designate the concept of tarda and the change took place in the 16th-17th centuries with the appearance of vesprada and tarda, possibly favored by the spreading of a new way to count time.

Though Greek and Sanskrit possess clearly cognate tense–aspect categories, they differ significantly with respect to the function of these categories. This dissertation investigates the usage of the Aorist and Imperfect indicative in Homeric Greek and Rigvedic Sanskrit, in order to reevaluate the functional range of both categories in each language. A qualitative and quantitative examination of the data reveals that the differences in usage between the two languages are only superficial. In Homer as in the Rigveda, the Aorist is commonly used to express perfect aspect, while the Imperfect is used to sequence events in past narration. This thesis thus further extends the findings of Hollenbaugh 2018 in proposing that the Aorist and Imperfect do not represent a perfective/imperfective system, nor can they be traced back to such a system in the proto-language, as is often assumed. Rather, they originally marked perfect aspect and a simple past tense respectively. In addition, this dissertation explores the pragmatic interactions across functional categories to explain the lack of application of certain forms in contexts with which they are semantically compatible. The differences in usage observed for the two languages are thus attributed to systematic differences in their respective verb systems overall, rather than to any particular functional innovations per se. The Vedic injunctive and Homeric augmentless forms are also considered, and an account is given of the interaction between the augment and the verbal bases with which it combines. This provides insights into why the augment and augmentless forms behave differently in the two languages in the way that they do, and suggests how each can be derived from a common source in the proto-language.

http://www.e-flux.com/architecture/history-theory/162452/architectural-problems/

During the eighth International Conference of Modern Architecture (CIAM) in 1951, Sigfried Giedion drew from Ancient Greece and Roman Antiquity to present a historical interpretation of the idea of the urban “core.” He described history as a “store house in which one can find forms to imitate” and a “container of human knowledge and experience.” One may happily follow Giedion’s observation that the forum of Pompeii differs in its architectural clarity from the chaotic state of the Roman Forum, or share his surprise about the fact that different functional buildings, like the prison, the Curia, or the Rostra, were so close to one another on the Forum. It is easy to be infected by the euphoria of his description of how Michelangelo implemented his “democratic” ideas on the Roman Capitol.

But these (romantic) glorifications and aestheticizations of the past don’t help us, for instance, to understand interconnections between form, function, social ideas and political circumstances. History is diverse, and certainly not less complex than the present. It is only by comprehending it in its complexity can we begin to ask structural questions that go deeper than pure formal debates or mirror reflections of our own expectations towards the past.

Architectural history should therefore be understood as a “problem history” (Problemgeschichte), as a question of understanding how words, images, and ideas are connected and what impact they have on our understanding of the world. Furthermore, it should a matter of searching out the issues and problems that were prevalent at particular moments in history, and not merely simplifying and apprehending the formal solutions to them. Take, for instance, the moment during the nineteenth century when historicist styles such as Roman, Greek, or Gothic went hand in hand with new construction methods in iron, industrial productions of architectural elements, or the use of electric light.
Or, the stylistic controversy that raged in France during the late eighteenth century between Classicists (like Jacques-Louis David) and Romanticists (like Eugène Delacroix). While this dispute has figured prominently in art history as an aesthetic debate, historical research has revealed that it was instead predicated on a revision of the term “modern” and questions of how the two genres dealt with similar problems such as gender and pictoral boundaries.

Asking structural questions allows deeper insights into the interactions between architecture, art, and society.

Otto Gerhard Oexle, who first theorized Problemgeschichte, recognized how history can make it possible to ask diachronic questions and bring to light points of contact between different disciplines as well as between theory and practice.
We can thus recall Giedion’s interpretation of Greek and Roman city centers and inquire to what extent postwar references to antiquity by modernist architects and political philosophers, from Alvar Aalto to Hannah Arendt, are not just a scientific return to the Classics but truly the expression of a “struggle for democracy.” Perspectives relating to the history of ideas and of science are thus required in order to understand the interests and parameters that have shaped our view of history at particular times. What follows is a brief description of five “problem areas” that deserve a key position in the writing of contemporary architectural history.

This squib first sketches the state-of-the-art in diachronic construction grammar by tracing it back to two strands of research which it distinguishes as historical construction grammar and constructionist grammaticalization theory. It then differentiates between usage-based work in diachronic construction grammar that focuses on (frequency of) use and work that centres on knowledge. It is posited that, to arrive at truly (radically) usage-based models of change, one should separate individual knowledge, or internal systems/constructicons, from assumed-to-be-shared knowledge, or external systems/constructicons. Two usage-based models of constructional change, “Traugott/Trousdale” and “Fischer”, are assessed against this criterion. While the former explicitly distinguishes between individual and “community” knowledge, it is judged to confuse these by assigning a central role to reanalysis/neoanalysis. The latter model revolves around the role of analogy and is less confined to a semasiological account of the linear developments dictated by an external outlook.

This article examines the usefulness of the electronic database Frantext when it comes to study the time of appearance of neologisms. We take the example of feeling words between the Middle French and the contemporary period. After some preliminary methodological principles (study of combinatorial profile, study of relationships between neologisms and words of the same morphological family, study of the inclusion of the neologism in a network of paradigmatic oppositions or in a network of metaphors, study of epilinguistic judgments), we examine the properties and functionalities of the Frantext database. It appears that despite some shortcomings in terms of quantity and distribution of the data, Frantext is an indispensable tool for examining neologisms appearing in the common language, particularly before the nineteenth century.

O objetivo geral deste trabalho é investigar diacronicamente o caso dos intensificadores coloquiais com a estrutura pra X: pra burro, pra dedéu, pra cacete, pra caralho/paca(s), pra cachorro, pra chuchu, pra porra e pra danar. Como questão subjacente, queremos utilizar ferramentas da Semântica Formal para entender como a mudança se processou. Um objetivo secundário do trabalho é verificar com mais detalhes a hipótese de Saito (2013), para quem, pra cachorro surgiu a partir da gramaticalização da construção de finalidade: comida pra cachorro – como havia comida em excesso, ela sobrava até para os cachorros. Na primeira parte do texto apresentamos alguns aspectos linguísticos das expressões já discutidos em estudos prévios sobre advérbios e intensificação. Também questionaremos a hipótese de Saito, mostrando que a ambiguidade prevista na hipótese dele não é sistemática: nem todas as expressões são ambíguas entre a leitura de finalidade e a leitura de intensificação. Na seção (2) mostramos o resultado da pesquisa feita do Corpus do Português (corpusdoportugues.org). Os dados nos mostram que o conjunto é de fato um intensificador típico, na conceituação de Guimarães (2007): denotam intensidade ou quantidade. Embora, como veremos, as dimensões na modificação verbal possam ser: frequência, tempo e qualidade com predicados de atividade; e intensidade, com predicados de estado. Na terceira parte voltamos a discutir a hipótese de gramaticalização. Ao mesmo tempo, mostramos que as expressões passam em todos os testes para a identificação de Expressões Fixas, o que pode ser interpretado como evidência de que estamos diante de um caso de Lexicalização, e que o processo pode ser mais lexical do que gramatical.

Presented paper focuses on regularity of narrowing semantic shift,
that goes for resultative nouns as is to find in evolution of some Indo-European languages. Lexical base for this observation consists of words denoting 'shield' and as a frame of interpretation it is applied here a concept of structural "language laws", as it was proposed by F. de Saussure (here referred with special regards to Latin rhotacism). Thus the article can reach two goals at once: first it compares derivational motivations for 'shield' in various languages, second it reconstructs (initially) the scheme of a universal diachronic change (with look on its synchronic base), giving also a short explanation of its causes.

The idea that sins, including murder, contaminate the land is a common thread in the Bible: "אַל תִּטַּמְּאוּ בְּכָל אֵלֶּה כִּי בְכָל אֵלֶּה נִטְמְאוּ הַגּוֹיִם אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי מְשַׁלֵּחַ מִפְּנֵיכֶם וַתִּטְמָא הָאָרֶץ" [Do not defile yourselves by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am casting out before you defiled themselves and the land became defiled; Leviticus, 18:24-25]; "וְהָאָרֶץ חָנְפָה תַּחַת יֹשְׁבֶיהָ כִּי עָבְרוּ תוֹרֹת חָלְפוּ חֹק" [The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes; Isaiah, 24:5]; "וָאֶשְׁפֹּךְ חֲמָתִי עֲלֵיהֶם עַל הַדָּם אֲשֶׁר שָׁפְכוּ עַל הָאָרֶץ וּבְגִלּוּלֵיהֶם טִמְּאוּהָ" [So I poured out my wrath upon them for the blood which they had shed in the land, for the idols with which they had defiled it; Ezekiel, 36:18].

In this article I will claim that the defilement of the land, caused by bloodshed, is accompanied by an additional dimension – guilt, invoked by the concealing of the blood. The soil’s supposed consent to swallow the blood and conceal it can be understood as covering up for the murderer and protecting him from the punishment he is due. This understanding is raised cautiously and hesitantly by the biblical text itself, and evolved into extensive discussions in rabbinical literature. This idea might shed light on the sages’ understanding of murder and its implications, which appear in several places, as well as help clarify an unclear passage in the Sifre to Numbers: "ולא תחניפו את הארץ אתם גרמתם לארץ שתהא מחנפת את הדם" (Sifre on Numbers, 161, Kahana Edition, 551). In order to explain this homiletical interpretation, one must take into account the ways in which the meaning of the Hebrew root חנ"ף evolved from biblical Hebrew to Mishnaic Hebrew and elucidate the meaning of the words deriving from this root in the latter.

Bengali exhibits a puzzle for standard views on inflection, tense/aspect, and negation. Although Bengali negation is marked by na ‘not’, finite verbs marked for perfect aspect cannot take na or any other negative. To negate perfects, the verbs must drop tense/aspect marking and take a special marker, ni, not used elsewhere in the language.  Previous research (e.g. Ferguson 1972:91) noticed this puzzle, but only one account, Ramchand (2004), attempts a solution.  Working within tense and event logics (cf. Parsons 1990), Ramchand treats ni and na as distinct negative quantifiers, na quantifying events and ni quantifying times. The account defines perfects as ‘resultant states’ entailing prior events, and claims that na negates the resultant state but not the prior event, creating semantic clash. This correctly predicts scopal, interpretive differences between negations of the past and ni negations. However, the account incorrectly predicts that temporal negative polarity items disallow na, though allowed in other past declaratives. Also, Ramchand’s analysis, leaving out discussion of futures, incorrectly predicts that na cannot range over all future times.’

Previous work does not recognize the semantic link between ni and the negative existential nai ‘there is not,’ used for ni dialectally. I therefore propose a unified semantics for ni/nai as the negation of states (existential, locative, and ‘resultant’ states). The apparent present-past alternations, I argue, stem from coercion of events to resultant states when embedded in ni/nai. My explanation for ni captures the scopal effects without limiting the semantics of na, thus avoiding incorrect predictions.

I advocate a diachronic explanation of the morphological gap. Ni originates from nai and nahi ‘there is not’ and I show how its development arises from polysemy of negative markers during medieval Bengali and from analogy to the affirmative perfects, which contain positive auxiliary ach- corresponding to nai. Medieval textual data, previously undiscussed, converge to illuminate the grammaticalization of aspect and negation. My main contribution is showing how the forces of grammaticalization, analogy, and lexical semantics interact to create the paradigm. The facts in my argument affect theoretical concerns outside defective paradigms. The evolution of Bengali perfects is fueled by the semantics of its original constituents, supporting Bybee et al’s (1994) approach to grammaticalization. Bengali also confirms the cross-linguistic tendency of diachronic “perfect to perfective” shift (cf. Dahl 1985, Bybee et al 1994, Deo 2006).

A dolgozat a kutya vezérszavú archaikus frazémák kognitív nyelvészeti elemzését tűzte ki célul, hogy fényt derítsen arra, vajon felfedezhetőek-e közös jellemzők ezen frazémák között, és ezzel magyarázatot találjon arra, milyen tényezők vezethetnek a frazémák köznyelvi használatból való kiveszéséhez. Az archaikus frazémák vizsgálata kimutatta, hogy egy frazémának a használatból való kiveszése többek között különböző kognitív jelenségekkel hozható kapcsolatba, melyek közül a kutya prototípusának elváltozása, a falu fogalmi keret redukálódása és egyes fogalmaknak a fogalmi rendszerből való kiveszése voltak azok a tényezők, amelyek hozzájárulhattak ezeknek a köznyelvi használatból való kiveszéséhez.

Peut-on identifier la signification comme objet spécifique d'un seul domaine d’études ?
Bien avant l’institution de la sémantique au XIXe siècle, la signification est analysée empiriquement par les lexicographes. S’agit-il d’une filiation ? La sémantique linguistique naît-elle de la lexicographie monolingue ?
Une dialectique, sans cesse réactivée dans le temps et à travers les différentes écoles, s’instaure entre sémanticiens et lexicographes en raison du partage conflictuel de cet objet commun qu’est le sens, ainsi que de toute une série de questions annexes : le statut du mot, l’articulation entre état de langue et histoire, la tension entre norme et usage, le choix entre polysémie ou homonymie, la place du locuteur dans le changement linguistique, etc.
Cette dialectique entre un savoir-faire empirique (lexicographie) et un savoir savant (sémantique) en matière de sens ne saurait s’expliquer par les conditions d’émergence et les incertitudes de méthode de la nouvelle discipline. Une méfiance tenace envers les dictionnaires est présente aussi bien chez les philologues du XIXe siècle que chez les linguistes, lexicologues et sémanticiens du XXe siècle travaillant dans des cadres théoriques aussi différents que le structuralisme, le générativisme et le cognitivisme.
L’ouvrage explique ainsi les transferts de méthode réciproques entre sémantique et lexicographie et montre à quel point la tension interdisciplinaire est une dynamique constitutive des savoirs sur le sens.

L’étude des emplois du nom propre Odyssée chez les auteurs grecs (Platon et Aristote notamment) et chez les auteurs latins permet de mettre en évidence un certain nombre de phénomènes qui, sans aboutir encore à l’emploi métaphorique du nom propre, le rendent possible : choix de l’Odyssée comme modèle d’un certain paradigme d’oeuvres littéraires chez Aristote, interprétations allégoriques de l’épopée homérique, perte du lien entre le nom de l’oeuvre et celui de son héros éponyme lors du passage au latin (Odyssea / Vlixes), dédoublement du référent avec l’écriture d’une Odyssea Latina par Livius Andronicus. Sont ensuite analysés les traits sémantiques retenus lors du passage du nom propre au nom commun en français et la manière dont les différentes acceptions du nom commun ont pu se développer. On s’intéresse pour finir à la coexistence, dans les textes de sciences humaines des XXe et XXIe siècles, de l’emploi métaphorique du nom propre Odyssée et de son emploi lexicalisé comme nom commun : à côté des emplois du nom propre dans des métaphores vives, on observe de fréquentes revivifications de la métaphore morte que constitue l’emploi du nom commun.

This article aims at presenting an analysis of a selection of the synonyms of prostitute from the pragmaphilological or sociophilological perspective. The major problem that the onomasiological perspective undertaken in Duda (2014) faced was the difficulty in the determination of the illocutionary force of the synonyms analysed in an objective manner. The euphemism-dysphemism disambiguation desired has turned out to be almost unattainable with the help of various lexicographic sources, which simply fail to include (in the majority of cases) any information about the emotional load (or, in other words, illocutionary force) attached to a given lexical item. Hence, the contextual approach in the study of synonyms of prostitute has been incorporated with a view to disambiguating the euphemism-dysphemism potential of as many synonyms as possible. The analytical aim is to compare qualitatively the illocutionary force of the synonyms of prostitute from the period between the mid-17 th and mid-18 th centuries, based on four selected comedy dramas extracted from the Corpus of English Dialogues 1560-1760

Feminine virtue. An attempt at understanding the evolution of the meaning of cnota (virtue) over the centuries

The article is devoted to the evolution of the meaning of the Polish lexeme cnota (virtue) starting from the Old Polish to the present time. The starting point is the change in the meaning of the lexeme virtue from the ‘complex of ethical qualities’ in the Old Polish language to the ‘hymen’ in the twentieth century. From the beginning of the Polish language, the lexeme virtue contained a different catalogue of values in relation to men and women. Analysis concerned these meanings which referred to a woman and were related to the valuation not only of the virtue, but also of a woman in general, taking into consideration non-linguistic, social and cultural determinants. The material comes from historical and contemporary Polish language dictionaries. The studies also included the use of lexemes related to the lexem cnota (virtue), such as an adjective cnotliwy (virtuous) or a noun cnotka (would-be virgin, goody-goody), if they concerned the woman‘s virtue. The meaning of the lexeme virtue in relation to a woman was associated with virginity, chastity, considered as a key factor for determining the value of a woman. Such meaning, associated with a positive valuation of virtue persisted until the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, the broad importance of the lexeme virtue has fallen into disuse, the meaning has been narrowed to ‘virginity’. Following this, in connection with social and customary changes, the virtue, already as ‘virginity’, lost its traditional high rating in the category of moral values.

(= Polish karawana 'caravan' and karawan 'hearse' in the context of other Slavonic and some West European languages).  --  Summary: The traditional Oriental etymology of Polish karawana ‘caravan’ seems to be self-evident and somewhat trivial. This author aims to show that the transmission channels from the Orient into both Slavonic and Western European languages are far more complex than previously thought.

The evolution of dog’s view in Polish language

The article presents the evolution of dog’s view in Polish language within the centuries – from Old Polish to the present, considering vocabulary dialect.
The components of a dichotomous present stereotype of dog (the two negative ones and one positive) are analyzed in the work. The negative ones seem to belong to the older structure of the language. The example of association with “a lie” – in Polish łże jak pies – and its metaphorical meaning of the verb, is well-known from the Old Polish and still used, however, less frequent. The phenomenon seems to be similar to the attributing a dog with its small value, as it is documented in the used meanings of adjectives such as: psi / pieski (‘dog-ass’).
Late testified, but extremely important element of the dog’s view, is associating it with dog’s fidelity that was expressed in a phrase wierny jak pies – that is focused on being a faithful dog.
This combination of two meanings resulting in its dichotomy, and even its internal contradiction, rejected the negative stereotype of a dog.
Nowadays, due to the cultural changes including our attitude to animals generally, especially domestic ones, its primary association with fidelity seems to be priority.

Language usage can change across periods of time, but document classifiers models are usually trained and tested on corpora spanning multiple years without considering temporal variations. This paper describes two complementary ways to adapt classifiers to shifts across time. First, we show that diachronic word embeddings, which were originally developed to study language change, can also improve document classification, and we show a simple method for constructing this type of embedding. Second, we propose a time-driven neural classification model inspired by methods for domain adaptation. Experiments on six corpora show how these methods can make classifiers more robust over time.

Expletive negation is a singularity in the field of polarity sensitivity. In many ways, expletive negation resembles a negative polarity item (NPI). In particular, its distribution parallels that of NPIs, which are known to be acceptable only in the scope of certain so-called semi-negative predicates (such as "doubt", "before", "without"), among other contexts. In other ways, expletive negation seems to participate in a negative concord relation. Indeed, it has the particularity of apparently not contributing to any negative meaning, in the scope of semi-negative predicates. Yet, unlike NPIs (e.g. "any") and Neg-words (e.g. "nobody") that participate in a negative concord relation, expletive negation does not belong to the class of indefinite expressions. As such, it deserves to be studied in its own right. This dissertation aims at shedding some diachronic light on the issue of expletive negation. The first issue is to determine which diachronic processes are behind the use of expletive negation from one context to another. I show that the use of expletive negation, initially restricted to the complement clause of attitude verbs, becomes productive in the adverbial clause of connectives such as "à moins que" (unless) and "avant que" (before), starting in the 17th century. Based on a fine-grained corpus study, I conclude that the generalization of expletive negation to adverbial connectives is motivated by the expression of a discourse attitude of dispreference. The second issue is to determine which mechanism underlies the loss of expletive negation's syntactic and semantic independence. I argue that French expletive negation descends from Latin prohibitive negation, while canonical negation ("ne ... pas") descends from another negation marker. I propose that the expletive negation results from the grammaticalization of the prohibitive negation, resorting to the notion of modal concord.

This diachronic study, devoted to names in the semantic fields of anger, fear and sadness over the period from the 16th century to the present day, aimed to shed new light on the evolution and renewal of the psychological lexicon, on the means of studying its evolution and on the conceptualisation of affects. Several questions arose at the time: Why is the vocabulary of affects being renewed? What role do socio-cultural evolutions play in the evolution of the meaning and use of affect terms? Do affect words form a system? In this case, is it relevant to study the evolution of the semantic fields of feelings in their entirety? Finally, to what extent are the evolution of the lexicon and that of metaphors linked? To answer these questions, the fist step was to analyse the semantic evolution of the names of affects belonging to these three fields. For each term, the analysis focused on the evolution of its frequency (both overall frequency, but also within four literary genres and among authors), on the most widespread types of experiencers, on the main causes of the affect, on the most central manifestations, and on the other affect terms most often in co-occurrence with it. It seemed important to also take into account the way in which these affects are perceived and defined: to this end, an examination of the definitions proposed by lexicographers in dictionaries and the value judgements made on affects also proved useful in identifying the main changes in terms of meaning and uses. Changes in terms of frequency linked to socio-cultural developments First of all, many regularities in the frequency of affect words have been noted : this frequency is indeed a function of semantic parameters such as the nature of the experiencer, the causes and the manifestations of the affect, which evolve according to the socio-cultural evolutions. Thus, in the 16th century, the terms designating affects with extreme manifestations-such as deuil and ire-declined in favour of douleur and colère, terms that initially were more relevant to medicine. At the end of the Baroque period, the terms of affects linked to interiority declined sharply (souffrance, détresse, souci, angoisse, and to a lesser extent peur). In the classical period, they are replaced by terms initially designating a brief external manifestation that does not allow access to the interiority of the experiencer (inquiétude, alarmes, fureur, frayeur) or terms linked to respect for the powerful (effroi, terreur, crainte). Generally speaking, terms referring to interiority are more common among authors of bourgeois origin and the second preferred by authors of noble origin.

Even when both use and cognition are incorporated in its theorizing about grammatical change, research in the budding discipline of diachronic construction grammar which explicitly subscribes to a " usage-based " approach does not always distinguish between abstraction from the observed usage of a linguistic community and individual linguistic knowledge. Given that language change starts with innovations by individuals and that experientially constructed knowledge is necessarily diverse, such a distinction crucially needs to be made to arrive at a realistic usage-based account of grammatical change. This paper first assesses the extent to which the conflicting models of Elizabeth Traugott and Olga Fischer succeed in teasing apart internal and external systems, concluding that while the former's reanalysis model results from an external semasiological perspective, the latter's analogy model is more radically usage-based in that it does not inherently entangle intra-and extra-individual knowledge. By way of an illustration of a radically usage-based approach, the second part of the paper proposes an onomasiological account of how the pattern be bound to came to be used as a non-deontic/epistemic necessity marker, offering an alternative to viewing it as a development from the historically prior deontic be bound to construction.

This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the use of the connective unit jakoby as attested in the earliest periods of Polish (end of 14th to end of 16th century). Etymologically, this unit presents a lexicalized contraction of a widespread and general marker of comparison (jako) with the “conjunctive-optative particle” by. Its original function, therefore, most likely con-sisted in marking comparisons with unreal or surreal objects, these objects could also be situations. This function has persisted in modern Polish where it still figures prominently at least as far as higher-order objects (states-of-affairs or propositions) are concerned. However, beside this initial function, jakoby has developed into a hearsay particle; the reportive function also appears in its use as a connective of clausal arguments with verbal or nominal attachment sites (complementizer and relativizer, respectively). In the latter, the syntactic status of jakoby is still compatible not only with speech-act related heads, but also with (nominal or verbal) attachment sites denoting cognitive states and epistemic attitudes.
The purpose of this case study consists in registering and differentiating as comprehensively as possible changes in (a) the meaning range and (b) the syntactic distribution of jakoby during the 14th-16th centuries and to compare the results with the distribution and meaning range in contem-porary Polish. Special attention was paid as to whether jakoby started being used as a marker of clausal arguments with propositional status and where this originated. This task was undertaken on the basis of the material assembled and described in the two largest historical dictionaries of Polish presently available (Słownik staropolski and Słownik polszczyzny XVI wieku). Since the description in these dictionaries details a traditional philological account and was not guided by a consistent theory of ‘minor parts of speech’, the information of the entries on jakoby was considerably revis-ed. Among other things, this resulted in different quantitative figures for the syntactic distribution of jakoby in the 16th century than those given in the dictionary itself.
Despite their tentative nature, a comparison of these figures with figures obtained from corpus-based studies on contemporary jakoby clearly shows remarkable differences in both its meaning range and its syntactic environments. First of all, by the end of the 16th century jakoby only margin-ally appeared as an, at least potential, reportive marker; likewise its association with volition, deon-tic and final clauses (which vanished later) remained strong. In line with this, we find only few in-dications of it acquiring the properties of a propositional marker, although one has to account for diverse analytical problems in testing relevant properties. Furthermore, the frequency of jakoby as an adnominal connective was very low compared to its use in the post-war period.  Conversely, its rather frequent use as an adverbial connective (conjunction) has died out altogether. From these findings, we may, among other things, infer that the periods not covered by this study (and under-represented in Polish historical lexicography), namely the 17th-19th centuries, must have been critic-al to the development of evidential meanings which are typical for jakoby today.

This article employs a 4-million-word diachronic corpus to examine how the expression of possibility has evolved in Luganda since the 1890s to the present, by focusing on the language's three main potential markers-yînz- ,-sóból-and-andi-, and their historical interaction. It is shown that while the auxiliary-yînz-originally covered the whole modal subdomain of possibility, the auxiliary-sóból-has steadily taken over the more objective categories of dynamic possibility. Currently,-yînz-first and foremost conveys deontic and epistemic possibility. It still prevails in these more subjective modal categories even though the prefix-andi-, a conditional marker in origin, has started to express epistemic possibility since the 1940s, and-sóból-deontic possibility since the 1970s. More generally, this article demonstrates the potential of corpus linguistics for the study of diachronic semantics beyond language comparison. This is an important achievement in Bantu linguistics, where written language data tend to be young.

L 'article porte sur les noms des métiers qui se trouvent dans les documents en occitan du Nord de l 'Espagne (XIIIe-XIVe siècles). La culture urbaine et bourgeoise des colons (burgenses), provenant pour la plupart du Midi, avait introduit parmi les habitants (cives) des villes ecclésiastiques de nombreux métiers nouveaux et ceux-ci, en même temps, ont modifié leurs habitudes onomastiques.

El objetivo de este trabajo es mostrar el recorrido histórico de la preposición latina IUXTA desde el siglo XI hasta el XVII en la península ibérica a través del análisis de todos los registros de dicha preposición en los corpus CORDE y CHARTA. Se tendrán en cuenta, además de las cuestiones diacrónicas, los aspectos diatópicos y la evolución semántica de esta preposición desde el sentido originario y primario en latín de 'al lado de' hasta el predominante en la Edad Media de 'según' o 'conforme a'. Por otra parte, también haremos referencia a la tipología de los textos en los que se halla con más frecuencia. Palabras clave: Preposición iuxta, Lingüística de corpus, Semántica histórica, Diacronía, Aragonés medieval. Abstract The aim of this work is to present the journey of the Latin preposition IUXTA from the 11 th to the 17 th centuries in the Iberian Peninsula through the analysis of every record of this preposition in CORDE and CHARTA corpora. Some crucial issues have to be taken into account: diachronic matters, the records' geographical position and the preposition semantic evolution from the sense of proximity 'next to', which is the prime in Latin, to the sense of accordance 'according to', which is the most usual during the Middle Ages. Furthermore, attention will be paid to the texts' typology it more frequently appears in.

The evolution of dog’s view in Polish languageThe article presents the evolution of dog’s view in Polish language within the centuries – from Old Polish to the present, considering vocabulary dialect.The components of a dichotomous present stereotype of dog (the two negative ones and one positive) are analyzed in the work. The negative ones seem to belong to the older structure of the language. The example of association with “a lie” – in Polish łże jak pies – and its metaphorical meaning of the verb, is well-known from the Old Polish and still used, however, less frequent. The phenomenon seems to be similar to the attributing a dog with its small value, as it is documented in the used meanings of adjectives such as: psi / pieski (‘dog-ass’).Late testified, but extremely important element of the dog’s view, is associating it with dog’s fidelity that was expressed in a phrase wierny jak pies – that is focused on being a faithful dog.This combination of two meanings resulting in its d...

El artículo se ocupa del verbo medieval español recudir y su continuador moderno acudir. El método utilizado es el que deriva de la semántica diacrónica cognitiva. El verbo recudir era un verbo deíctico y de movimiento con dirección implicada, movimiento hacia atrás con una dimensión prospectiva detrás. A partir del s. XIII aparece un segundo prototipo con un cambio en la señalización deíctica y un cambio en la dirección prospectiva implicada: la dirección del movimiento es la opuesta, hacia delante con una dimensión prospectiva delante. También el s. XIII aparece un nuevo lexema, acudir, que continúa el segundo prototipo y que acaba por reemplazar recudir. El nuevo lexema presenta como sufijo la preposición a-, que responde al cambio de señalización deíctica y al cambio de la dirección prospectiva implicada del segundo prototipo.

The central question is whether proper names are equipped with specific morphosyntactic properties and to what extent and in what way these features differ from those of common nouns. From the one hand researches in proper names concentrates on its diachronic development and semantic issues.  The grammar of proper names – their phonological, morphological and syntactic properties has received comparatively little attention.