Valency over Time: Diachronic Perspectives on Valency Patterns and Valency Orientation (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [Tilsm])

Open Access Valency patterns and valency orientation have been frequent topics of research under different perspectives, often poorly connected. Diachronic studies on these topics is even less systematic than synchronic ones. The papers in this book bring together two strands of research on valency, i.e. the description of valency patterns as worked out in the Leipzig Valency Classes Project (ValPaL), and the assessment of a language's basic valency and its possible orientation. Notably, the ValPaL does not provide diachronic information concerning the valency patterns investigated: one of the aims of the book is to supplement the available data with data from historical stages of languages, in order to make it profitably exploitable for diachronic research. In addition, new research on the diachrony of basic valency and valency alternations can deepen our understanding of mechanisms of language change and of the propensity of languages or language families to exploit different constructional patterns related to transitivity. Contents 5 Valency and transitivity over time: An introduction 7 Transitivity, diachrony, and language contact 19 Valency patterns and alternations in Gothic 37 Valency Patterns of Old Irish verbs: finite and non-finite syntax 95 Anticausativization and basic valency orientation in Latin 139 Basic valency in diachrony: from Ancient to Modern Greek 175 Basic causative verb patterns in Uralic: Retention and renewal in grammar and lexicon 215 The many ways of transitivization in Totoli 241 Anticausatives and lability in Italian and French: a diachronic-synchronic comparative study 271 Phonologically conditioned lability in Soninke (West-Mande) and its historical explanation 311 Index of Authors 335 Index of Subjects 341 Index of Languages 345 The papers collected in this book are devoted to verbal valency, and share a diachronic perspective, by either discussing changes in the behavior of verbs or discussing verbal valency at different historical stages of specific languages. They provide new data for research on valency patterns and on changes in valency orientation, verbal voice, and related constructions