Variation And Reconstruction (Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science. Series IV, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory)

'The relation of language variation to reconstructed languages and to the methodology of reconstruction has long been neglected. The articles in the present volume consider this relationship from a number of different angles, with a number of different focuses. Several of the papers discuss evidence from Germanic, either Proto-Germanic (Joseph, Schwink), or daughter languages such as Dutch (Goss & Howell), Afrikaans (Roberge), Newcastle English (Milroy), and a Wisconsin German dialect (Geiger & Salmons). Other papers look at Italian (Cravens), Spanish (Harris-Northall), and the non-Indo-European languages or families Aramaic (Miller), and Proto-Hmong-Mien (Ratliff), and the Southeast Asian languages Phan Rang Cham and Tsat (Thurgood). In doing so they bring together a number of interconnected issues which are of current concern in comparative and historical linguistics.' CILT 268 VARIATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 2 Editorial page 3 Title page 4 Copyright page 5 Table of contents 6 FOREWORD 8 VARIATION AND RECONSTRUCTION INTRODUCTION 10 1. Introduction 10 2. Overview 12 3. Naturalness 16 4. Granularity 16 5. Methodologies f or reconstructing variation 18 6. The role of the speaker 21 7. Conclusion 23 REFERENCES 24 MICROVARIABILITY IN TIME AND SPACE RECONSTRUCTING THE PAST FROM THE PRESENT 26 1. Background 26 1.1. Italian's Tuscan origins 28 1.2. The state of the question 28 2. /p t k/ in Tuscany today 29 2.1 The stereotypical norm 29 2.2 Variation in modern Tuscan - beyond spirantization 31 2.3 Variation in the valley of Buti 32 3. The hypothesis 33 4. Other evidence 35 4.1 Old Tuscan variants 35 4.2 Toponyms 37 5. Summary 39 6. Conclusion 41 REFERENCES 42 Appendix. Tuscan toponyms with voicing 44 RECONSTRUCTING VARIATION AT SHALLOW TIME DEPTHS THE HISTORICAL PHONETICS OF 19TH CENTURY GERMAN DIALECTS IN THE U.S. 46 1. Introduction 46 2. Real-time data and shallow time-depth reconstruction 49 3. VOT data from Standard German, American English and German dialects 52 4. Dane County Kölsch 54 5. VOT variation in Dane County Kölsch 55 6. A note on English VOTs of Kölsch speakers 62 7. Conclusion: What does this mean for the study of variation and reconstruction? 64 REFERENCES 66 SOCIAL AND STRUCTURAL FACTORS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF DUTCH URBAN DIALECTS IN THEEARLY MODERN PERIOD 68 1. Introduction 68 2. Demographics of early modern European cities 70 3. Case study: The Hague in the 17th century 73 4. Conclusion 90 REFERENCES 91 REDUCTION OF VARIATION AS A FEATURE OF THE STANDARDIZATION OF CASTILIAN SPANISH AROUND 1500 98 REFERENCES 109 ON PROJECTING VARIATION BACK INTO A PROTO-LANGUAGE WITH PARTICULAR ATTENTION TO GERMANIC EVIDENCE AND SOME THOUGHTS ON "DRIFT" 112 1. Introduction 112 2. Methodological preliminaries and some (relatively) easy case studies involving phonology 113 3. Similar cases involving morphology and the lexicon 116 4. Some problems and consequences for reconstruction 119 5. Towards solutions — Cases where proto-variation makes sense 120 6. Some concluding remarks 124 REFERENCES 126 VARIATION OF DIRECT SPEECH COMPLEMENTIZERS IN ACHAEMENID ARAMAIC DOCUMENTS FROM FIFTH CENTURY B.C.E. EGYPT 128 1. Introduction 128 2. Diachronic considerations 131 2.1. Etymological origins 131 2.2. Diachronic distribution 135 3. Syntactic features 136 3.1 Pmr as a complementizer 136 3.2 lm as a complementizer 139 3.3 Summary 143 4. Legal expressions using direct speech 143 4.1 The praescriptio 143 4.2 Waiver clauses 144 4.3 Complaint and penalty clauses 145 4.4 Divorce clause 145 4.5 Summary 145 5. Sociolinguistic factors 146 5.1 Introduction 146 5.2 Problematic sociolinguistic features 147 5.3 Principal 148 5.4 Individual scribal practice 148 6. Conclusions 150 REFERENCES 151 LANGUAGE CHANGE AND THE SPEAKERON THE DISCOURSE OF HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS 154 1. Introduction 154 2. Speaker-based accounts in historical linguistics 156 3. Intentionality and change 158 4. On the discourse of historical linguistics 160 5. Ideological influences on descriptive language histories 163 6. Sociolinguistics and language change 165 7. The Final Release Rule in Newcastle 166 8. Concluding remarks 170 REFERENCES 171 PREFIXVARIATION AND RECONSTRUCTION 174 1. Introduction 174 2. Hmong-Mien nominal prefixes today: form, function, and distribution 174 2.1 Prefix form and function 174 2.2 Age of the prefix system and distribution of prefixes within the family 175 3. Cross-linguistic prefix variation 176 4. Prefix pre-emption 179 5. Nominal prefixes within the context of proto-Hmong-Mien disyllabism 182 5.1 The interpretation of consonant clusters 182 5.2 The disyllabic origins of tonal morphology 184 5.3 Connections to external disyllabics 185 6. Conclusion 185 REFERENCES 186 ON RECONSTRUCTING A LINGUISTIC CONTINUUM IN CAPE DUTCH (1710-1840) 188 1. Setting 188 2. Postulates regarding the instantiation of variation in Cape Dutch 189 3. A linguistic continuum at the Cape (1710-1840) 193 4. Further to the reconstruction of sociolinguistic space at the old Cape 205 5. Conclusion 206 REFERENCES 206 THE RECONSTRUCTION OF VARIABILITY IN PROTO-GERMANIC GENDER 210 Formulaic Reconstruction 211 Approaching variation 213 Gender 214 Variable assignment of gender to specific nouns 216 Variation in gender resolution rules 217 Variation in gender marking strategies and the agreement hierarchy 218 Variationist Theory and the Evaluation of a Reconstruction 218 REFERENCES 219 VARIATION AS A REFLECTION OF CONTACT NOTES FROM SOUTHEAST ASIA 222 1. Introduction 222 2. The data 222 3. Systematic variation in proto: probably contact 227 4. Conclusions 228 REFERENCES 229 INDEX OF CONCEPTS AND LANGUAGES 230 The series Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 233