Historical Linguistics 3130 A

Clarifications, earliest posts and a talk Thursday morning

Clarifications to previous lectures

Apparently, some students thought that I said /rib-s/ à /rips/ is an example of progressive assimilation in English. If I said or wrote that, I'm sorry. I meant that /rib-s/ à /ribz/ (plural of "rib"). There is no rule in English that changes /ribs/ to /rips/ (and if there was, it wouldn't be progressive assimilation, it would be regressive).

Also, I should clarify again the difference between umlaut and ablaut. Umlaut is a type of vowel harmony. In the Germanic family, it is the origin of the mouse/mice vowels. Ablaut was a feature of proto-Indoeuropean (vowel gradation: e-grade, o-grade, zero-grade) and is the origin of the sing/sang/sung vowels. The two things are not related to each other in any way, but are easily confused with each other.

Earlier posts on this blog

Earlier posts are still available. Click on the appropriate link on the left under Archives. If you want to print a single post, click on Permalink at the bottom of the post to show it by itself.

Talk on grammatical change in Old and Middle English

Susan Pintzuk from the University of York in northern England will be giving a public talk at the University of Ottawa this Thursday, October 6, at 10:00 am, in Simard 125 (SMD 125). Everyone is invited. See details below. This is a wonderful opportunity to hear about some of the latest work in historical linguistics. The talk is about Old English, but it is part of a larger project called Modéliser le changement: les voies du français / Modelling change: the paths of French involving researchers from 9 countries.

A reception will follow in the Salon Monet in the Linguistics Department (across from the secretariat). PLEASE note the change of time (the talk will take place at 10 am, not 10:30, as previously announced).

Evidence for head-final structure in Old English

By Susan Pintzuk (University of York) and Eric Haeberli (University of Geneva)

Old English is generally regarded as a verb-second language, although the use of V2 order in main clauses is not as regular as in modern Germanic languages. Syntacticians who have investigated OE have agreed that while verb-final main clauses exist, their frequency is low (Fischer et al 2000; van Kemenade 1987; Koopman 1995; Pintzuk 1993, 1999). In this talk we use the position of four diagnostic elements -- particles, stranded prepositions, negative objects, and pronominal objects, all previously established as diagnostics in subordinate clauses -- to demonstrate that the frequency of head-final structure in main clauses is much higher than previously acknowledged. We explore the implications of these findings for the syntactic analysis of OE and for our picture of syntactic variation and change in the Old and Middle English periods.