Diachronic linguistics

Данная работа является первой, предваряющей частью большого исследования «Лингвистическая картина российской истории XX века: корпусное исследование». В данном исследовании мы хотели, опираясь на частоты употребления определенных лексических единиц и коллокаций (N-грамм) в течение длительного (заданного) промежутка времени, создать эскизную лингвистическую картину российской истории. Задачи исследования: 1) Разработка методического подхода диахронического исследования частотного поведения лексических единиц русского языка; 2) Создание на основе результатов исследования частотного поведения лексических единиц русского языка лингвистических иллюстраций периода истории СССР – России с 1920 по 2000 г. Инструмент и материал исследования: Система Google books Ngram Viewer и ее русскоязычный корпус.
Подробное описание системы Google Books Ngram Viewer можно найти в нашей книге "Информационные технологии в лингвистических исследованиях", изданной Санкт-Петербургским университетом в 2014 г., и в ряде статей.

The material presented here describes the initial phase of a major investigation entitled "Linguistic portrait of 20th century Russian history: a corpora-based study". Our goal was to create a linguistic sketch of Russian history founded on the  frequency of  change of lexical units (words and collocations or n-grams) during the period from 1920 to 2000. This phase of our work included (1) developing a diachronic study methodology to determine the frequency behaviour of Russian language lexical units and (2) employing the results to produce preliminary illustrations for the selected period of Russian history. The materials included in our study use the Google Books corpora system and the principal instrument of this system, i.e., the Google Books Ngram Viewer. 
A detailed description of the Google Books Ngram Viewer can be found in our book entitled "Information Technologies in Linguistic Studies", published in 2014 by  Saint Petersburg State University, and in a number of papers.

Det svenska sammandraget (1½ sida) och den svenska resumén (20 sidor) av min doktorsavhandling, som behandlar frågor kring de skandinaviska språkens ljudhistoria från 200-talet till 1200-talet e.Kr., belysta delvis av deras kontakter med samtida förstadier till finska och av gamla ortnamn från kontaktzonen, och delvis av teoretisk ljudhistorisk rekonstruktion. I två uppsatser granskas etymologier för ortnamn i södra och sydvästra Finland som belyser tidig språkkontakt. I etymologiska fallstudier behandlas namnen Kjulo och Tavastland. Namnet Karis jämförs med isländska sagornas Herdalar och förklaringen av hur fi. ruotsi 'svensk' hör ihop med ~ fsv. rōþ-och rȳtzẹr 'ryss' problematiseras. Flera farledsnamn diskuteras som är upptagna i det s.k. " Danska itinerariet " liksom ett större urval namn som kunde vara gamla i en Åländsk kontext: Eckerö, Geta, Jomala och Lemland, och därtill Järsö, Skedholm, Styrsö, Slemmern och Lemböte. De allra äldsta förhistoriska alternativen för att förklara namnen Åland och Ahvenanmaa problematiseras och ett nytt förslag framförs. I den första uppsatsen undersöks ett urval av lånord bevarade i finskan och dess närmaste släktspråk och särskilt vad deras ljuddräkter kan avslöja om förändringar i urnordiskans ljudsystem. T.ex. ordet fi. leikata 'att klippa, skära' återförs på en urfinsk form *lɤikka-med bakvokaliskt uttal, som har lånats tidigt från ett urnordiskt original *blaikijan 'göra blek, avhugga en bläcka', innan *blaik-frontades till *blaeik-. En tillrättalagd analys av många etymologier tidsbestämmer de granskade lånen till tiden före det nordiska i-omljudet. De två sista uppsatserna föreslår en ny ljudhistorisk beskrivning av 500/600-talens övergångsnordiska då de flesta omljudda vokalerna, såsom t.ex. nusvenskt y och ö, uppkom, vilket medförde växlingar illustrerade av svenska dölja/döljer/dolde, mat/mätt och duga/dygd. Generationer av ljudhistoriker har allt sedan Rasmus Rask och Jacob Grimm under nästan 200 år gäckats av ett otal problem som gäller när, hur och med vilka slutresultat omljuden från början verkade. I den fjärde uppsatsen visas att de senaste förklaringarna som erbjudits beträffande frontningsomljudet inte är hållbara. Ett nytt förslag presenteras för att förklara en större mängd ohanterliga data med färre allmängiltiga antagen. Problemet som den sista uppsatsen siktar på att lösa är hur frontningsomljudet, vokaliskt framkallad brytning (som t.ex. i svenska mjöd) och rundningsomljud (som t.ex. i svenska dugg av dagg) kan förklaras inom en och samma analys.

The monograph presents new findings and perspectives in the study of variation in metonymy, both theoretical and methodological. Theoretically, it sheds light on metonymy from an onomasiological perspective, which helps to discover the different conceptual or lexical "pathways" through which a concept or a group of concepts has been designated by going back to the source concepts. In addition, it broadens the perspective of Cognitive Linguistics research on metonymy by looking into how metonymic conceptualization and usage may vary along various dimensions. Three case studies explore significant variation in metonymy across different languages, time periods, genres and social lects. Methodologically, the monograph responds to the call in Cognitive Linguistics to adopt usage-based empirical methodologies. The case studies show that quantification and statistical techniques constitute essential parts of an empirical analysis based on corpus data. The empirical findings demonstrate the essential need to extend research on metonymy in a variationist Cognitive Linguistics direction by studying metonymy’s cultural, historical and social-lectal variation.

This paper investigates the relationship between the Cornish language and officialdom over the past thousand years. The social status of Cornish is examined along with attitudes towards the language held by monarchy, government and their agencies. During the middle-ages, Cornish was relatively stable and indeed enjoyed some prestige amongst the gentry who used Cornish as their preferred language for family mottoes. However, following the Tudor accession, the number of Cornish speakers was greatly reduced following the brutal repression of several popular uprisings when a significant proportion of the Cornish speaking population were exterminated. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Cornish continued to be used amongst the poor in Cornwall's fishing communities. The revival of Cornish began around 1900 and the number of speakers grew throughout the 20th century. Nevertheless, the government and state education system provided no support for Cornish language learners until 2002 when the European Union granted Cornish official “minority language” status under Part II of the 1992 Council of Europe Charter for Regional and Minority Languages. In 2005, the government confirmed modest funding support for the Cornish language. Local government in Cornwall are currently implementing a Cornish language strategy to determine a standard written form for Cornish that can be used for official purposes, such as signage, and for education in schools.

The paper surveys the state of research of Hebrew syntax from approximately the mid-20th century onward. It indicates the themes which have already received the attention of scholars to varying extents and points out areas of research which deserve the attention of scholars in the future. Among the topics discussed are the syntactic roles of word classes; the main syntactic functions, viz. subject, predicate, object, attribute, and adverbial; syntactic relations, viz. the predicative relation, the attributive relation, and the object/adverbial relation; verb government and valency; grammatical agreement; annexation; clause patterns, parataxis and hypotaxis; verbal moods, copulas and auxiliary verbs, and negation.

This work focuses on a particular diachronic transformation of a syntactic category, that is the propositional negation. I consider a time span ranging from archaic Latin to modern Italian, passing through the ancient forms of medieval documents. I will show that some negative phenomena endured in different diachronic transformations, while others changed over time, confirming generalizations such as those formalized as espersen's cycle. rom this point of view, the change in the syntactic nature of the Latin negative morpheme n n was crucial: it started as a maximal pro ection and it became a head. This change caused the multiple negation constructions that still occur in Italian. inally, I will also discuss some negative phenomena occurring in odern Italian, which are not well studied.

‘Liberian English,’ the non-standard English-lexifier speech of Liberia, can be divided into three varieties: Kru Pidgin English, spoken by Kru mariners and migrant workers; Settler English, spoken by descendants of nineteenth-century African American immigrants to Liberia; and Vernacular Liberian English, spoken by the rest of Liberia’s English-speaking population. An examination of 21 speakers of putatively basilectal and lower-mesolectual Vernacular Liberian English (VLE) sets out the basis for the assertion that VLE comprises a single continuum, but the examination also introduces complications: five lects are proposed to cover the treatment of past-tense aspect for these speakers, but the relationship of one lect to another is not always fluid; moreover, still with regard to tense-aspect, two speakers of the 21 seem to fall outside the continuum entirely. Tense-aspect in VLE is different from tense-aspect in other Atlantic pidgins/creoles. Those varieties are aspect-prominent, but VLE is highly tense-sensitive, ordinarily merging tense with aspect. The cornerstone of VLE’s treatment of past-tense aspect is the preverbal marker wa, used most basilectally as the primary marker of all types of past-tense aspect (including statives) and used all the way along the continuum to mark statives.

"Occurrence and use of phonaesthetic lexemes in Swedish: a diachronic corpus analysis"

The present work is specifically dedicated to the realization of lexemes that are formed with the swedish phonesthemes /sm-/, /gl-/, /spj-/, /sn-/, /sl-/ and /kn-/ and are sound symbolic . In contrast to many previous investigations, not the synchronic status of phonesthemes is in the foreground, but above all the diachronic comparison of the use of this sound symbolic phenomenon in Swedish.
The aim of the following investigation is to determine the extent to which phonesthemes are present in the context of the realized linguistic utterance in swedish and whether there are quantitative differences at different times.

From 01 April 2022, the national standard DSTU 9112: 2021 comes into force: «Cyrillic-Latin transliteration and Latin-Cyrillic retransliteration of Ukrainian texts. Writing rules». The standard was proposed and developed by specialists of the State Scientific and Technical Library of Ukraine and the Technical Committee 144 "Information and Documentation".
This standard applies not only to bibliographic records but also to all Ukrainian texts from the 10th century to the present day, including proper names. So, we have every legal reason to reproduce the Ukrainian letter "ї" not in the Russian manner (Kyiv, Ukraina), but according to the history, phonetics, and grammar of the Ukrainian language: Kyïv, Ukraïna (system A), Kyjiv, Ukrajina (system B). We have the transliteration rules that ensure the complete equivalence of Cyrillic and Latin writings. This standard is highly important given recent EU decisions on Ukraine, as Ukrainian will soon, along with other European languages, take its rightful place in multilingual natural language processing scenarios, including machine translation.
Slava Ukraïni!

Від 01.04.2022 набуває чинності національний стандарт ДСТУ 9112:2021 «Кирилично-латинична транслітерація і латинично-кирилична ретранслітерація українських текстів. Правила написання». Стандарт запропонували й розробили фахівці Державної науково-технічної бібліотеки України та Технічного комітету 144 «Інформація і документація».
Цей стандарт поширюється не тільки на бібліографічні записи, а й на всі українські тексти від X століття до наших днів, включаючи власні назви. Отже, маємо всі законні підстави відтворювати літеру «ї» не за російським зразком (Kyiv, Ukraina), а так, як це відповідає історії, фонетиці та граматиці української мови: Kyïv, Ukraïna (система А), Kyjiv, Ukrajina (система Б). Маємо транслітераційні правила, які забезпечують повну еквівалентність кириличного й латиничного записів. Значення цього стандарту особливо зростає з огляду на недавні рішення Євросоюзу щодо України, адже невдовзі українська мова, нарівні з іншими європейськими мовами, займе гідне місце у сценаріях багатомовного опрацювання природної мови, зокрема машинного перекладу.
Slava Ukraïni!

Diese Studie verfolgt zwei Forschungsziele: ein theoretisches und ein empirisches.
Der theoretische Teil ist der Beschreibung der Textsorte Grabinschrift aus der textlinguistischen
Perspektive gewidmet. Neben der kulturgeschichtlichen Skizze werden
textstrukturelle und ausgewählte Merkmale der Textualität, Typologie sowie die
Stellung der Grabinschrift unter anderen Textsorten und ihre textsortenspezifischen
Merkmale ausgearbeitet. Die Darstellung der Textsortengeschichte in der Zeit vor
dem untersuchten Zeitraum gibt einen Einblick in die früheren Kommunikationspraktiken
und trägt zum besseren Verständnis des Gebrauchs unterschiedlicher
Ausdrucksmittel und kommunikativer Strategien im untersuchten Zeitraum (1780-
2015) bei.

Philippine English is one of the few postcolonial varieties of English mainly influenced by American (and not British) English from its inception. Previous research on recent diachronic change indicates that this influence continues. Philippine English followed some of the recent syntactic change going on in American English, although some variables also indicate an emergence of properly Philippine norms (i.e. endonormativity). The present study extends this research by analysing change in lexis and spelling in two parallel corpora from the 1960s and 1990s. Results indicate that, despite the early American influence on Philippine English, it still followed British norms in a substantial minority of cases in the 1960s. By the 1990s, these remnants of British influence have almost wholly been replaced by an adherence to American norms. The results can be accounted for by the retreat of British influence in the world and an increase in American influence during this period. Finally, and more broadly, the article discusses the notion of Americanisation and how it can be traced and accounted for. In particular, it argues that spelling is particularly useful as a variable to measure degrees of Americanisation.

Chapter 6 (by Santazilia) is a study of the Basque noun morphology, which sets out the noun paradigm of historical Basque and the structure of its NP, and then goes on to list the explanations proposed so far for every aspect concerning the formation of that paradigm: first the number/definiteness axis, and then the individual cases, classifying these into primary cases (grammatical and local), secondary cases (those built upon the allative and the genitive), and pseudo-flectional morphemes or non-cases.

The chapter addresses, after a brief historiographic overview of Ryukyuan historical linguistics, those topics on phonology (vowels, consonants, accent/tone), grammar (verbs, adjectives, case, kakari-musubi) and lexicon (pronouns, demonstratives) for which the contribution of Ryukyuan is, or has been claimed to be, important for the reconstruction of proto-Japanese-Ryukyuan (pJR), the common ancestor of Japanese and Ryukyuan.