Vit Bubenik

From case to adposition : the development of configurational syntax in Indo-European languages

In the historical development of many languages of the IE phylum the loss of inflectional morphology led to the development of a configurational syntax, where syntactic position marked syntactic role. The first of these configurations was the adposition (preposition or postposition), which developed out of the uninflected particle/preverbs in the older forms of IE, by forming fixed phrases with nominal elements, a pattern later followed in the development of a configurational NP (article + nominal) and VP (auxiliary + verbal). The authors follow this evolution through almost four thousand years of documentation in all twelve language families of the Indo-European phylum, noting the resemblances between the structure of the original IE case system and the systemic oppositions to be found in the sets of adpositions that replaced it. Quite apart from its theoretical analyses and proposals which in themselves amount to a new look at many traditional problems, this study has a value in the collected store of information on cases, and on adpositions and their usage. There is also a considerable store of etymological information that is relevant to the description of the systemic development.

Tense and aspect in Indo-European languages : theory, typology, diachrony

This monograph presents a general picture of the evolution of IE verbal systems within a coherent cognitive framework. The work encompasses all the language families of the IE phylum, from prehistory to present day languages. Inspired by the ideas of Roman Jakobson and Gustave Guillaume the authors relate tense and aspect to underlying cognitive processes, and show that verbal systems have a staged development of time representations (chronogenesis). They view linguistic change as systemic and trace the evolution of the earliest tense systems by (a) aspectual split and (b) aspectual merger from the original aspectual contrasts of PIE, the evidence for such systemic change showing clearly in the paradigmatic morphology of the daughter languages. The nineteen chapters cover first the ancient documentation, then those families whose historical data are from a more recent date. The last chapters deal with the systemic evolution of languages that are descended from ancient forbears such as Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, and are completed by a chapter on the practical and theoretical conclusions of the work.

Hellenistic and Roman Greece as a Sociolinguistic Area

This study concentrates on the Hellenistic and Roman periods in the history of Greek language. It focuses on the gradual contamination of classical dialects by the Hellenistic Koine, their disappearance, the range of intraregional variation, and the process of Koinization from the angle of interregional adjustments. The author draws on recent sociolinguistic methods dealing with lexical and social diffusion of linguistic change, statistical analysis, and research into bilingualism and diglossia.

Thematization and passivization in Arabic

In my analysis, based on the Prague school theory of ‘functional sentence perspective’ the passive will be related to problems of theme (keeping in mind that voice is not fully determined by the theme system). It will be argued that a rigid transformational analysis of Arabic obscures the fact that there are two essentially different strategies in the organization of discourse, namely a great predilection in languages such as English for the true passive construction (i.e., the construction including the agentive phrase: Zaid was struck by Omar) while in Arabic there is an obvious disinclination to its use (Zaydun darabahu samaru (lit.) Zaid struck him Omar = ‘Zaid was struck by Omar’). It will be shown that the requirement of the normal sequence theme-rheme is more easily met in Arabic - in which the word-order is relatively free-than in English. Thus, if the object of the active clause becomes a theme (i.e. if the roles of actor and theme are separated) the strategy of Arabic is to keep the active voice and resume the thematized object by the pronoun in the contrastive context such as: Mohammad fatah Ibab, ssababik fatahha Sati (lit.) M. opened the door, the windows opened-them A. English, however, normally reconciles the antinomy between the requirements of functional sentence perspective and those of grammatical word-order by the use of the passive voice: M. opened the door, the windows were opened by A. English appears to favor the passive structure because the passive allows the actor - if it is to be specified - to occur at the end of the clause and thus carry the unmarked information focus; on the other hand, Arabic may place the actor at the end of the active clause, since the unambiguous semantic interpretation is guaranteed by the resumptive pronoun on the predicate.

Development of Tense/Aspect in Semitic in the Context of Afro-Asiatic Languages

The author applies the comparative method for the reconstruction of earlier aspectual systems in the Afro-Asiatic phylum of languages. Moving ‘upstream’ from the documented systems of Semitic, Berber and Old Cushitic the state of affairs during the common stage of Proto-Semito-Berbero-Cushitic is reconstructed. With the addition of Egyptian and Chadic data important conclusions regarding the elusive Proto-Afro-Asiatic are reached. Moving ‘downstream’ the trajectory of individual aspectual systems through their later stages is analyzed. A central piece of the monograph is the reconstruction of intermediate stages reflecting the long-term developments of aspectual and temporal categories of individual languages from the Old towards their Middle periods. The continuity and innovation in the aspectual systems towards the contemporary state of affairs in analytic (serial) constructions of Modern Aramaic and Arabic vernacular languages is explicated. The author demonstrates that it is imperative to work in a larger typological framework and that in the field of Afro-Asiatic linguistics valuable insights can be gained from the study of parallel phenomena in Indo-European languages. At the same time, Indo-Europeanists will profit from the study of typologically earlier aspect-prominent systems of Afro-Asiatic languages. The monograph offers important contributions to our understanding of universals and to the typology and diachrony of tense and aspect.

Ilona Janyšková, Helena Karlíková (eds.). 2009. Studia Etymologica Brunensia

Ilona Janyšková, Helena Karlíková (eds.). 2009. Studia Etymologica Brunensia