Hans Christian Luschützky

Instrument and place nouns: A typological and diachronic perspective

Abstract Most patterns of word formation convey more than one meaning. Although multifunctionality is such a widespread phenomenon, only a limited number of topics, such as the polysemy of diminutives, action nouns and agent nouns, have received special attention in the theoretical literature. The present article focuses on instrument and place nouns, which are expressed by means of one and the same derivational pattern in more than half of the languages expressing these two concepts morphologically. The empirical assessment of this syncretism provides the starting point for an in-depth discussion of multifunctionality in word formation. After a review of the literature on monosemy, polysemy and homonymy, diachronic pathways leading to syncretism of instrument and place nouns are described in detail. It turns out that the syncretism is not due to a particular semantic affinity of the concepts ‘instrument’ and ‘place’, as sometimes assumed in the literature, including the recent semantic-maps approach. Instead, five different processes can be discerned which lead to the multifunctionality of the respective markers: reanalysis, concretization of action nouns, ellipsis, homonymization, and borrowing.

Agent-noun polysemy in a cross-linguistic perspective

Abstract According to a widely held opinion, agent-instrument polysemy in derivational morphology is the result of semantic extension from agent to instrument meaning. In the present paper we set out to explore the cross-linguistic distribution of patterns of polysemy along the agent-instrument axis. It turns out that about forty percent in a sample of 82 languages expressing both agent and instrument meaning by derivational morphology have markers that are polysemous for the categories in question. A closer look at the data reveals, however, that many of these prima-facie cases of agent-instrument polysemy have arisen not by semantic extension from agent to instrument meaning, but in a number of different ways.

Agent-noun polysemy in Slavic: some examples

Abstract Agentive formations in Slavic languages employ a vast amount of suffixes, some of which are common to all individual Slavic languages, while others are productive (or have evolved) only in particular regions of the Slavic-speaking area. This contribution presents examples of the most characteristic features of agentive formations across Slavic languages, including Old Church Slavonic as a representative of a diachronically earlier language state. In order to assess the specific setting of polysemy of agentive formations, attention focuses on enhancing factors such as multifunctionality, i.e., applicability of one and the same suffix to verbal and nominal (optionally including adjectival) bases.

Voices from the Past. A Diachronic Perspective on Voicing

Diachronic phenomena of voicing and devoicing are explained here as resulting from cumulative effects of phonetic tendencies and preferences underlying speech production and perception. Regular diachronic change in voicing, either inferred from dialectal variation or manifested in written records, is the equalized result of sociolinguistic tuning processes in the transmission of the phonetic habits and perceptual feedback control from one generation of speakers to the other. Since phonation is not an autonomous component of the speech production mechanism, but dependent on both initiation and articulation, fluctuation in the execution of the phonation gesture is inherent to speech and thus governed not only by segmental context, but also by prosody. From the dynamic interaction of phonation with initiation and articulation, tendencies of change can in principle be predicted, but only in terms of probability: the implementation of sound change in a given historical scenario largely remains a matter of reselection within the spectrum of realisational variants, related to sociolinguistic processes of levelling and/or segregation that are hardly recoverable from what is usually known about speech communities of the past. On the one hand, synchronic variation with respect to voicing, especially in obstruents, can persist for ages without causing any change in the phonological system of the respective language or dialect. On the other hand, obstruent systems can be rearranged quite radically (in the course of so-called sound shifts) due to processes triggered by the antagonism of supraglottal constriction and transglottal airflow. Subsequent phase displacement of the phonation gesture can restore this antagonism, so that the system never reaches a state of rest. Diachronic tendencies of voicing and devoicing reflect the inherent dynamics of speech production, often to the detriment of perceptual redundancy.

Phonologica 1984 : proceedings of the fifth International Phonology Meeting, Eisenstadt, 25-28 June, 1984

This volume presents the edited proceedings of the Fifth International Phonology meeting held in July 1984. The topics covered include Prosody and non-linear phonology, Morphology and phonology, Sentence phonology and sentence phonetics, and Substantive evidence in phonology.