Eitan Grossman

Verbs change more than nouns: a bottom-up computational approach to semantic change

Linguists have identified a number of types of recurrent semantic change, and have proposed a number of explanations, usually based on specific lexical items. This paper takes a different approach, by using a distributional semantic model to identify and quantify semantic change across an entire lexicon in a completely bottom-up fashion, and by examining which distributional properties of words are causal factors in semantic change. Several independent contributing factors are identified. First, the degree of prototypicality of a word within its semantic cluster correlated inversely with its likelihood of change (the “Diachronic Prototypicality Effect”). Second, the word class assignment of a word correlates with its rate of change: verbs change more than nouns, and nouns change more than adjectives (the “Diachronic Word Class Effect”), which we propose may be the diachronic result of an independently established synchronic psycholinguistic effect (the “Verb Mutability Effect”). Third, we found that mere token frequency does not play a significant role in the likelihood of a word’s meaning to change. A regression analysis shows that these effects complement each other, and together, cover a significant amount of the variance in the data.

What can historical linguistics and experimental pragmatics offer each other

Abstract Language change is a central concern for any linguistic theory. For one thing, it is often assumed that language change is explanatory, in that it provides a reasonable answer to what Haspelmath dubbed ‘Greenberg’s Problem’ in 2014: why are languages the way they are? A short version of the Greenbergian answer is: ‘Because they became that way through processes of language change.’ However, this sort of answer throws into focus the fact that language change is not only a potential explanation for language structures. Rather, it is a set of problems that itself calls for explanation. In fact, this could be called ‘Greenberg’s Second Question’: why do languages change the way they do? In this article, we explore some ways in which the field of experimental pragmatics might shed light on the second question, by providing a set of methods that could investigate existing hypotheses about language change by developing falsifiable predictions to be evaluated in experimental settings. Moreover, these hypotheses can provide new research questions and data for experimentalists to work on, beyond the rather restricted set of questions that experimental pragmatics has confronted to date.

On the pragmatics of subjectification: The grammaticalization of verbless allative futures (with a case study in Ancient Egyptian)

In this paper, we argue that an expanded conception of the distinction between speaker-oriented and subject-oriented inferences is crucial for understanding the motivations and mechanisms of semantic change in grammaticalization and subjectification, on the one hand, and for clarifying the links between semantic change and reductive formal changes, on the other. Speaker-oriented inferences have significant consequences, leading to the relaxation of selectional restrictions on a construction. In turn, the relaxation of selectional restrictions can create conditions in which the type and token frequency of a construction can rise considerably. Furthermore, changes in the selectional restrictions on a construction can themselves catalyze semantic change by coercing listeners into new form–function pairings. This framework is applied to allative futures, a typological comparative concept developed in order to compare structurally diverse future tenses. Following the typological discussion, a diachronic case study of the emergence and grammaticalization of a verbless allative future in Ancient Egyptian is presented. Such verbless allative futures provide evidence against assumptions that purpose constructions as such are not grammaticalized as future tense constructions (Schmidtke-Bode 2009). Rather, they corroborate earlier hypotheses that it is the allative component of source constructions that crucially leads to intention meanings, and from intention to prediction (see, e.g., Bybee, Pagliuca, and Perkins 1994).

Argument Clauses in Sahidic Coptic

In a recent contribution to this journal, A. Hasznos examined some Greek and Coptic translation-equivalents found in the Greek and Coptic texts of the Vita Antonii, namely, the Coptic translations of the Greek “accusativus cum infinitivo” construction (AcI). Based on the observed equivalence, she draws conclusions regarding three distinct types of influence of Greek on Coptic; it will be argued here that these conclusions need to be re-examined. In this paper, I would like to suggest that Hasznos’ generalizations from the data obscure important facts of Coptic syntax; moreover, I will argue on empirical and methodological grounds that the Coptic and Greek systems are structurally incommensurable. As such, the comparison of translation equivalents is misleading, since it neglects the systemic value of the constructions in question. In the course of the discussion, I will suggest that several long-held opinions regarding Coptic syntax are in fact in need of serious revision.

Condition(al)s of Repayment: P. CLT 10 Reconsidered

This article is a re-edition of P. CLT 10, which was originally published with minimal commentary, no image, and a number of transcription errors. Subsequent published translations improved understanding of the text, but were not made in consultation with the original manuscript. The re-edition of the text, with the first published image of this document, is accompanied by a linguistic analysis. This highlights a number of grammatical features characteristic of Theban legal documents such as the performative EICΩTM and the negative protatic EqTMCΩTM. Addressing them explicitly paves the way for a better understanding of such texts, which are often difficult to interpret.