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In this paper I investigate a change in the word order patterns of Greek nominalizations that took place from the Classical Greek (CG) period to the Modem Greek (MG) one. Specifically, in CG both the patterns in (A), with its two subtypes, and (B) were possible; the MG system, on the other hand, exhibits only the (B) pattern. The difference between the two systems is that agents can only be introduced in the form of prepositional phrase in MG nominals in a position following the head noun, while they could appear in a prenominal position bearing genitive case in CG. Moreover, the theme genitive, i.e. the objective genitive, could precede the head nominal in CG; this is no longer the case in MG, where the theme genitive follows the head noun obligatorily:
(A) i) Det-(Genagent)-Nprocess-Gentheme 1 ii) Det-Gentheme-Nprocess
(B)Det-Nprocess-Gentheme (Ppagent)
I argue that the unavailability of (A) in MG is linked to the nature and the properties associated with a nominal functional projection contained within process non~inals and to other related changes in the nominal system of Greek.
Wang Li (1900-1986)
(2006)
Typology and complexity
(2005)
For the Workshop I was asked to talk about complexity in language from a typological perspective. My way of approaching this topic was to ask myself some questions, and then see where the answers led. The first one was of course, "What sort of system are we looking at complexity in - what kind of system is language?"
The most macabre of the numerous anthropomorphic metaphors linguists provide for their subject matter is that of language death. The extinction of a language is in fact a distressing matter, because the cultural tradition connected to it and the sociocultural or even ethnic independence of the group that speaks it very often perish together with it. Yet it is a very common phenomenon. [...] It would seem strange that such a frequent and well-known phenomenon has not been studied much earlier; nevertheless it is a fact that the investigation of language death is a new and developing field, which emerged as something like an independent subdiscipline of linguistics towards the end of the seventies. This comparatively embryonic stage of the field should be kept in mind throughout the following discussion.
The publication of Mallory’s book (1989) has rendered much of what I had to say in the present contribution superfluous. The author presents a carefully argued and very well written account of a balanced view on almost every aspect of the problem. Against this background, I shall limit myself to a few points which have not received sufficient attention in the discussion. ...
This exercise explores the historical relationship between tone, aspiration, prefixes and stem initial consonants in Tibetan. (The stem-initial consonant is underlined in those words that have prefixes or initial clusters; [ts], [tsh], [tç], [tçh], etc., all count as single consonants.) Other phonetic developments are also explored.
Elsewhere I have argued that the three Old Prussian catechisms reflect consecutive stages in the development of a moribund language (1998a, 1998b, 2001a). After first eliminating the orthographical differences between the three versions of parallel texts while maintaining the distinction between linguistic variants and then assigning separate phonemic interpretations to the three versions on the basis of the historical evidence I listed the following phonological differences between the three catechisms.
Eduard Hermann writes (1916: 147): "Darüber, daß Wills Übersetzung des Enchiridions ein ganz schauderhaftes Preußisch ist, herrscht eine Stimme. Nur darüber sind die Meinungen geteilt, ob Will ein Stümper war und nichts vom Preußischen verstand oder ob das Preußische seiner Zeit dermaßen entartet war, daß Kasus und Formen fast beliebig miteinander wechseln konnten." This is a splendid formulation of the problem. Hermann’s article should be compulsory reading for students of historical syntax. In search of a solution to this problem, I have applied the following procedure. First I have put together the minor catechisms with those parts of the Enchiridion which translate the same German text. Words which are missing in any of the three versions have been italicized. The result is shown below.
Two problems cloud our understanding of subgrouping in Tibeto-Burman. One is the lack of consistent and clear standards and principles for subgrouping. Subgrouping is often based on certain features that the languages are said to share, or on a few shared lexical items, or even on the fieldworker's intuitions, or on how remote speakers feel different languages are (the degree of mutual intelligibility).
This paper offers an extensive analysis of the reflexes of the Proto-Indo-European word-initial cluster *sk- in Proto-Slavic. It is argued that the regular reflex of this cluster is the Proto-Slavic *x-, but that *sk- was analogously re-introduced in a great number of cases under the influence of prefixed forms and cases where forms with and without the so-called "s-mobile" co-existed in Slavic. This conclusion is in accordance with the fact that *x- < *sk- is far more common in derivationally isolated words that do not occur with prefixes.