Cyclical Change
Editor
Linguistic Cycles are ever present in language change and involve a phrase or word that gradually disappears and is replaced by a new linguistic item. The most well-known cycles involve negatives, where an initial single negative, such as not, is reinforced by another negative, such as no thing, and subjects, where full pronouns are reanalyzed as endings on the verb. This book presents new data and insights on the well-known cyclical changes as well as on less well-known ones, such as the preposition, auxiliary, copula, modal, and complementation cycles. Part I covers the negative cycle with chapters looking in great detail at the steps that are typical in this cycle. Part II focuses on pronouns, auxiliaries, and the left periphery. Part III includes work on modals, prepositions, and complementation. The book ends with a psycholinguistic chapter. This book brings together linguists from a variety of theoretical frameworks and contributes to new directions in work on language change.
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 146] 2009. viii, 329 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 21 July 2009
Published online on 21 July 2009
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
-
List of contributors | pp. vii–viii
-
Chapter 1. Cyclical change, an introductionElly van Gelderen
-
Part I. Negatives
-
Chapter 2. Jespersen recycledJack Hoeksema
-
Chapter 3. The Jespersen cyclesJohan van der Auwera
-
Chapter 4. The negative cycle in Early and Modern RussianOlena Tsurska
-
Chapter 5. Jespersen off course? The case of contemporary Afrikaans negationTheresa Biberauer
-
Part II. Pronouns, agreement, and topic markers
-
Chapter 6. Weak pronouns in Italian: Instances of a broken cycle?Diana Vedovato
-
Chapter 7. The subject cycle of pronominal auxiliaries in Old North RussianKyongjoon Kwon
-
Chapter 8. Two instances of a broken cycle: Sentential particles in Old ItalianCecilia Poletto
-
Part III. Copulas, auxiliaries, and adpositions
-
Chapter 9. The Copula cycleTerje Lohndal
-
Chapter 10. RATHER – On a modal cycleRemus Gergel
-
Chapter 11. Cycles of complementation in the Mayan languagesClifton Pye
-
Chapter 12. The Preposition cycle in EnglishCathleen Waters
-
Part IV. An experiment
-
Chapter 13. The study of syntactic cycles as an experimental scienceRoeland Hancock and Thomas G. Bever
-
Author index
-
Subject index
“This is a very useful comparative volume that also raises interesting general questions about the nature of syntactic change. It puts pathways and cycles of change firmly at the heart of historical syntax and shows their relevance for wider theoretical questions.”
David Willis, University of Cambridge, in Diachronica Vol. 28:2, 2011
“This volume significantly adds to the research on the linguistic status of cyclical change. It provides new evidence and analysis of changes that could reasonably be regarded as cyclical.”
Philip Wallage, Northumbria University, in Journal of Linguistics 46. doi: 10.1017/S002226710000277
“The concept of cyclical change proves a fruitful one: it is applicable across various syntactic domains, as the present volume demonstrates. With the wide range of phenomena covered and the profound formal analyses given, this book presents a milestone in the area of research in cyclical change and more generally in diachronic syntax. It will no doubt be an inspiration on future work on the topic.”
Agnes Jäger, Goethe University Frankfurt, in Language 87(2): 430-432, 2011
“This is a valuable and unique volume which provides plenty for the linguist intrigued by cyclical change to his/her teeth into. One can only hope it will spur further investigations in this vein.”
George Walkden, University of Manchester, in Journal of Historical Linguistics 2(2): 283-290, 2012
Cited by (30)
Cited by 30 other publications
Ashby, William J. & Bonnie B. Fonseca-Greber
2023. A new look at ‘ne’ loss in the Spoken French of Tours. In On Spoken French [Studies in Language Companion Series, 226], ► pp. 419 ff. 
Leone, Ljubica
2023. Verb-Adjective Combinations in Late Modern English: Syntactic Reanalysis and Analogical Generalisation. In Internal and External Causes of Language Change, ► pp. 169 ff.
Nicolle, Steve
Espinal, M.Teresa & Ares Llop
2022. (Negative) Polarity Items in Catalan and Other Trans-Pyrenean Romance Languages. Languages 7:1 ► pp. 30 ff.
Kiss, Katalin É. & Nikolett Mus
Tagliani, Marta & Stefan Rabanus
Mithun, Marianne
Abraham, Werner & Maiko Nishiwaki
2020. Mood alternation in German: Negation as a specific case of epistemic weakening. Glottotheory 11:2 ► pp. 209 ff.
Grestenberger, Laura
2020. The diachrony of participles in the (pre)history of Greek and Hittite. Diachronica 37:2 ► pp. 215 ff.
Mosegaard Hansen, Maj-Britt
Tse, Keith
2020. Elly van Gelderen, ed. Cyclical Change Continued
. Journal of Historical Linguistics 10:1 ► pp. 136 ff.
Kuteva, Tania, Bernd Heine, Bo Hong, Haiping Long, Heiko Narrog & Seongha Rhee
2019. World Lexicon of Grammaticalization,
Seres, Daria & M.Teresa Espinal
2019. Russian definitional generic sentences. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 4:1
Briceño, Juan Eugenio
2017.
The Diachrony of Negation eds. by Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen & Jacqueline Visconti. Journal of Historical Linguistics 7:3 ► pp. 432 ff.
van Gelderen, Elly
2017. Cyclicity. In The Cambridge Handbook of Historical Syntax, ► pp. 467 ff.
Ziegeler, Debra & Zhiming Bao
2017. Introduction. In Negation and Contact [Studies in Language Companion Series, 183], ► pp. 1 ff.
LORENZ, DAVID
2016. Form does not follow function, but variation does: the origin and early usage of possessive havegot in English. English Language and Linguistics 20:3 ► pp. 487 ff.
Reinarz, Lukas, Hugo de Vos & Helen de Hoop
2016. Conflicting Constraints in the Comparative Cycle. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 28:4 ► pp. 403 ff.
Zeijlstra, Hedde
2016. Diachronic Developments in the Domain of Negation. Language and Linguistics Compass 10:6 ► pp. 284 ff.
Zeijlstra, Hedde
2023. Pas de Problème: The Distribution and Nature of Double Negation in French and Other Romance Negative Concord Languages. Languages 8:2 ► pp. 118 ff.
Jędrzejowski, Łukasz
2015. On the loss of copy-raising and the development of infinitive complements. Journal of Historical Linguistics 5:1 ► pp. 72 ff.
König, Ekkehard
2015. Manner deixis as source of grammatical markers in Indo-European languages. In Perspectives on Historical Syntax [Studies in Language Companion Series, 169], ► pp. 33 ff.
Nykiel, Jerzy
2015. The Reduced Definite Articleth’ in Late Middle English and Beyond: An Insight from the Definiteness Cycle. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 27:2 ► pp. 105 ff.
Abraham, Werner & Jadwiga Piskorz
2014. A rare case of covert modality. In Modes of Modality [Studies in Language Companion Series, 149], ► pp. 409 ff.
Cournane, Ailís
2014. In Search of L1 Evidence for Diachronic Reanalysis: Mapping Modal Verbs. Language Acquisition 21:1 ► pp. 103 ff.
Cournane, Ailís
2019. A developmental view on incrementation in language change. Theoretical Linguistics 45:3-4 ► pp. 127 ff.
Hancil, Sylvie & Ekkehard König
2014. Introduction. In Grammaticalization – Theory and Data [Studies in Language Companion Series, 162], ► pp. 1 ff.
Mosegaard Hansen, Maj-Britt & Jacqueline Visconti
2014. The diachrony of negation. In The Diachrony of Negation [Studies in Language Companion Series, 160], ► pp. 1 ff.
Dao, Huy-Linh
2013. La particule injonctive đi en vietnamien contemporain : polarité positive et concordance modale. Syntaxe & Sémantique N° 14:1 ► pp. 11 ff.
THORNTON, ROSALIND & GRACIELA TESAN
2013. Sentential negation in early child English. Journal of Linguistics 49:2 ► pp. 367 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 november 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CFK: Grammar, syntax
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General