Richard B. Dasher

On pre-accentual lengthening

Among the numerous factors known or suspected to affect the length of a syllable in English is the nature of the immediately following syllable. It is widely recognized (P. Fijn van Draat, 1910, p. 14; Jones, 1956, §§ 886–7; Bolinger, 1965, pp. 168–9; Lehiste, 1972, p. 2021) that in a succession of monosyllabic words a word containing a full vowel will be longer when followed by another such word than when followed by a word containing a reduced vowel. 1 Van Draats example is Money makes the mare to go versus Money makes the mare go : in the latter, ‘We pronounce mare in two syllables.’ In the former one can say that the reduced to ‘borrows time’ from the full mare .

Regularity in Semantic Change: The development of modal verbs

Introduction Focal points for many of the case studies in this book are modality and deixis. We start in this chapter with selected examples of the development of epistemic from deontic meaning within the domain of modality relatively narrowly construed. Themes are developed that will be shown in later chapters to be relevant to modality more broadly construed. There is little agreement on exactly how to define modality, beyond the observation quoted in 1.7: “The essence of ‘modality’ consists in the relativization of the validity of sentence meanings to a set of possible worlds” (Kiefer 1994: 2515). In work on logic, the fundamental types of modality are necessity and possibility in so far as they relate to the truth or falsity of the proposition. In work on linguistics, two related types, deontic (obligation) and epistemic (conclusion), have received most attention, but at least one other is also recognized: ability/capacity (see e.g. Leech 1971, Lyons 1977, Palmer 1990 [1979], 1986, Coates 1983, Sweetser 1990, Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca 1994, Kiefer 1994, 1997, Van der Auwera and Plungian 1998). Some brief working characterizations of the three types of modality follow; more detailed discussion of deontic and epistemic modality is provided in 3.2: (i) Deontic modality (from the Gk. deon “what is binding”); also widely known as “root” modality (e.g. Coates 1983, Sweetser 1990). This centrally involves obligation or compulsion. In his ground-breaking study of modality in language Lyons identified several characteristics of deontic modality.

The impact of collaboration with big companies on entrepreneurial technology innovation

Startups and small and medium sized companies are an important source for technology innovation. Cooperation with big companies reinforces technological innovation but it can also hamper entrepreneurial undertakings. This research considers the impact of cooperative activities of startups or small and medium sized companies with big companies in regard to technology innovation in the automotive industry. The analysis of 16 cases gives a first overview about the particular characteristics of cooperative activities in an industry that suffers from disruptive innovation and new players. The analysis covers the reasons for cooperation, the desired partner characteristics, and the benefits and sacrifices caused by the cooperative activities. Risk and cost reduction are not seen as critical by big companies regarding the decision for or against the collaboration. Their focus is on knowledge gain and new ideas. Startups or small and medium sized companies on the other hand seek for market entry and public relation. Cooperation is not primarily considered as a source for venture capital. Public funding as a financial source for innovative work is underestimated except for university cooperation. The study bases on eight expert interviews with CEOs, founders and technical directors with wide experience in research and development cooperation.

Regularity in Semantic Change: Prior and current work on semantic change

Introduction In this chapter we outline some of the work and issues to date on semantic change, with particular attention to research focused on regularity and on mechanisms of semantic change that will be developed further in later chapters. No attempt is made to cover research into the history of research into semantic change comprehensively. For some overviews discussing different approaches, see Kronasser (1952: chapter 1), Ullmann (1957: chapter 4), Warren (1992: chapter 1), Blank (1997: chapter 1, 1999), Geeraerts (1997: chapter 3), Fritz (1998: chapter 4). Backgrounds to contemporary work In Europe and America much of the groundwork of semantic theory was laid by Greek and Roman grammarians, who argued at length about the arbitrariness or naturalness of meaning–form pairs, homonymy and polysemy, and by philosophers and logicians especially from the seventeenth century on, who focused on the nature of reference. Likewise, the nature of the lexicon was discussed by dictionary makers, especially from the eighteenth century on. In the nineteenth century the work on language families that led to comparative Indo-European linguistics focused on sound correspondences and plausible sound change, but crucially required a notion of cognate meaning and of plausible meaning changes as well, and triggered the development of more sophisticated views of semantic change. This is particularly true of the major comparative dictionaries that arose out of this work, much of it in the Neogrammarian tradition, among them Pokorny (1959/69), The Oxford English Dictionary (1989; the first volume appeared in 1884), Wartburg (1928–66).