<div>This study explores historical syntactic changes within a complex network framework focusing on the development of the German verb <i>werden</i> (to become) and the emergence of the related passive and future periphrases. The data are collected from a corpus of Middle and Early New High German texts and the analysis of the instances is carried out in two different stages. The first stage focuses on the frequency of the verb <i>werden</i> and the elements that co-occurred with it throughout Middle and Early New High German. The second stage investigates the same instances through a complex network framework by applying descriptive statistics to uncover the features of the Middle and Early New High German networks that have been created with the occurrences of<i> werden</i> found in the corpus.</div><div><br></div><div><div>The results of the analysis show that <i>werden</i> experienced an increase in the type of connections it was able to establish throughout the centuries. Such a process is known in the literature as preferential attachment. This suggests that linguistic networks, and specifically, syntactic networks, are also subjected to processes that are common among non-linguistic networks.</div></div>

<div>Korean phonology features a cross-linguistically rare tripartite contrast in its stop series between lax, tense, and aspirated segments. Extant evidence suggests this contrast is the result of a fifteenth-century phonological restructuring wherein tense segments, previously an allophone of lax sounds, achieved distinct phonemic status. However, the historical record suggests that almost immediately a pattern of lax segments ‘tensifying’ began, with words featuring lax onset sounds being realized increasingly with tense sounds until the novel pronunciation was universal. While the action of these shifts is sporadic throughout the lexicon, the resulting changes are unidirectional, with the domain of tense segments expanding at the cost of lax sounds. It has been posited in previous research that such sound changes may suggest a rebalancing of functional load across underutilized segments.</div><div>A similar phenomenon in contemporary Korean where speakers exhibit differing pronunciations of onset segments in a number of lexical items is analyzed herein, with the argument that it is best understood as the continuation of these historical processes. Far from an idiosyncratic speaker habit or dialectal quirk, these unexpected tense segments can be interpreted as surface evidence of phonological pressures active since late Middle Korean. The present study explored novel tensified onset pronunciations from a demographic standpoint, aiming to clarify which speaker populations have adopted new variant forms through two experiments. The first featured the elicitation of ‘tensification-prone’ items by native speakers in a production task, while the second used a combination of acceptability judgments of tensified items and attitudinal surveys regarding the use of novel tense pronunciations.</div><div>The results confirm that tensification is active in contemporary Korean, but that a decisive conclusion as to its demographic associations remains elusive. The acceptability judgment experiment suggests that younger speakers and self-affirmed dialect users are more likely to prefer tensified variants, while the production task revealed no significant relationship between these factors and actual pronunciation behavior. Finally, the findings are considered in context of deeper changes in Korean phonology whereby tense and lax segments are increasingly associated with word onset and medial/final position, respectively.</div><div><br></div>

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(文学) / 甲第18000号 / 文博第637号 / 新制||文||599(附属図書館) / 30858 / 京都大学大学院文学研究科行動文化学専攻 / (主査)教授 吉田 和彦, 教授 田窪 行則, 教授 吉田 豊 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Letters / Kyoto University / DFAM

This thesis investigates the history of preposition stranding in the Modern English period from 1500 to 1900, in close relation with the prescriptive movement in the tradition of English grammatical thought. The aim is to assess, or rather re-assess, thee ffect and effectiveness of the (late) eighteenth-century normative tradition on actual language usage. The methodology lies in the comparison of a precept corpus, i.e.meta-linguistic comments, with a usage corpus, i.e. actual language practice. On the one hand, this study will provide insightful observations into the attitudes towards and conceptualisation of end-placed prepositions in the course of the eighteenth century, the age of prescriptivism. Evidence comes from a self-compiled corpus of observations made on this peculiar usage as gathered from a miscellany of precept works (1700-1800). On the other hand, this thesis will trace the diachronic evolution of the use of preposition stranding before, during and after the age of prescriptivism,as collected in two renowned historical corpora, namely the Early Modern English section of the diachronic part of the Helsinki Corpus (1500-1710) and the British part of A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers (1650-1899). The evaluation of the evidence from precept and the evidence from usage will shed new light on (a) the origin of the stigmatisation of preposition stranding (micro-level), and(b) the role of the normative tradition on language variation and change(macro-level). First, contrary to what has been taken for granted in the literature hitherto, I will demonstrate that the proscription against ending sentences with prepositions does not go back directly to the late eighteenth-century heyday of publication of precept works (e.g. Robert Lowth's grammar) but to the mid/late seventeenth-century incipient stages of the prescriptive tradition embraced with ideals of correctness and politeness; especially, to the grammarian and rhetorician Joshua Poole and to the literary writer John Dryden. Language change can thus be observed as early as the early eighteenth century. Secondly, I will provide evidence to show that late eighteenth-century precepts did exert an influence on the use of preposition stranding. The effect is manifest in contemporaneous writings and the effectiveness extends into the early nineteenth century. Nonetheless, it is only a temporary one, as the trends reverse in the late nineteenth century when prescriptivism was fading away. It will be argued that the eighteenth-century normative tradition did not trigger linguistic change but rather reinforced an existing trend.

This dissertation is an analysis of aspects of the phonology and morphology of Zenzontepec Chatino (ISO 639-3: czn), a Zapotecan (Otomanguean) language spoken in a remote area of Oaxaca, Mexico (16°32"N, 97°30"W). There are an estimated 8,000 speakers of the language, but its vitality is weakening due to accelerating shift to Spanish. The phonological analysis begins with the segmental inventory. After that, the autosegmental contrasts are treated, with the highlight being the tone system. The tone bearing unit is the mora, which may bear high tone /H/, mid tone /M/, or no tone Ø. In tone systems with a three-way contrast, the unspecified category is usually the mid-level one. Therefore, Zenzontepec Chatino is typologically unusual in this respect. Special chapters are devoted to phonotactics and phonological processes, including a play language of "speaking backwards" that sheds light on crucial phonological questions, such as the status of glottalization and the limits of prosodic domains. There are also chapters on special topics in phonology: regional variation, Spanish loanwords, and sound symbolism. Another chapter bridges the phonology and the morphology, defining and comparing the phonological word versus the grammatical word, and outlining the basic morphological building blocks: roots, affixes, clitics, and particles. After that, lexeme classes are defined using morphosyntactic criteria, providing a syntactic sketch of the language. The language is strongly head-marking with somewhat agglutinating and synthetic morphology. Another chapter gives an overview of verbal morphology, which is the locus of most of the language's morphology. The dissertation is the beginning of a full descriptive grammar and is part of a larger project to document Zenzontepec Chatino, complementing a dictionary and a documentary text corpus recorded in the community with native speakers. The theoretical approach is one in which the language is explored as much as possible on its own terms using naturalistic textual data supplemented by lexicographic and elicited material. The analysis is not bound by any formal framework, but it is informed by socio-cultural and diachronic considerations. It is situated in a typological perspective to offer more of a contribution to the scientific understanding of the structure of human language. / text

Research projects in Optimality Theory tend to take a synchronic view of a particular generalisation, and set their standards for rigour in typological terms (see for example Suzuki 1998 on dissimilation, Crosswhite 2001 on vowel reduction). The goal of this thesis is to use Stratal OT to take a diachronic view of multiple generalisations within the morpho-phonology of one language, namely Latin, with the principal empirical aim of producing an analysis that is demonstrably true to all the attested facts of the generalisations in question. To that end, I have written PyOT, a computer program implementing the OT calculus and a theory of phonological representations, which I use in this work to model the histories of Lachmann’s Law, rhotacism and the phonologically conditioned allomorphy of the -alis/aris- suffix as active generalisations within the phonological component of the grammar. Appendix A gives the results of the computer model applied to a dataset consisting of 185 attested Latin forms, which suffice to illustrate the exact conditions of the generalisations in question. I show that producing a complete analysis of the three generalisations I have chosen to model entails analysis of other generalisations that interact with them, including the treatment of the Indo-European voiced aspirates in Latin (which interacts with rhotacism), and reduplication in forming perfect stems (which interacts with Lachmann’s Law). Constraint rankings sufficient to model these interactions, and consistent with the general conditions of the interacting generalisations have been included in the model. The intention is for this work to illustrate both the utility of formal phonological theory in advancing hypotheses within historical-comparative linguistics, and the potential of PyOT as a tool for producing Optimality-Theoretic models of (eventually) a language’s entire phonology.

This diploma thesis deals with the diachronic analysis of the Town Law Book of Rokytnice situated in the Eagle Mountains. The work is divided into two parts. The first part is focused on the general introduction to the history of the city, the history of the municipal administration and urban books and the problem of the office language. The second part describes the analysed source, followed by its editorial and lexical analysis. Editorial analysis is focused on the records of purchase and payment in order to determine whether the types of text were written in a standard format. Lexical analysis is aimed at the legal terms. It was found that the unified pattern of the purchase record existed only within an individual scribe, not for the entire Town Law Book. Pattern of payment records varies even within the same scribe. From the editorial point of view it was found out that the legal terms in the law book were mainly described within the municipal administration and business terminology. On the other hand, Latin expressions were used only very rarely. KEYWORDS German Language, Historical Linguistics, Bohemia, 17th Century

The present study aims to address the question of how vowel quality varies between rural and town-dwelling male speakers of Irish-English in South Roscommon, Ireland. Previous studies have identified four distinct varieties of Irish-English in Ireland: the Eastern, South &Western, Midland, and Northern varieties, loosely based on the political provinces of Munster, Connaught, Leinster, and Ulster. County Roscommon straddles the provinces of Connaught and Leinster, complicating the presence of phonological features associated with one of two different ‘accent regions’. The last phonological study carried out in Roscommon was by Patrick Leo Henry in 1957. While this was a promising start in assessing regional distinctions, rural ones in particular, the lack of recent studies leaves a sizeable gap that does not address modern changes in the linguistic landscape of Ireland, nor the availability of modern methods of acoustic analysis. In particular, the present study investigates the pre-nasal merging of front unrounded vowels /ɛ/ and /ɪ/, vowel centralization, and a lower /æ/, associated with the Western variety of Irish English. Factors such as supraregionalization lead to my hypothesis that rural speakers will demonstrate higher frequency of the vowel features associated with the Western variety. To assess the frequency of certain vowel sounds, twenty participants were recorded and formant data was extracted for F1 and F2 values of the tokens. It was found that the rural speakers in Roscommon demonstrated a more prominent merger between /ɛ/ and /ɪ/, a lower [æ], and the rural speakers demonstrated an overall trend toward centralization.

Neste trabalho, realiza-se o estudo das letras ramistas [j] e [v] e de suas variantes [i], [y] e [u] em dois roteiros de viagem lavrados no século XVIII. Para tanto, faz-se uma recolha exaustiva e minuciosa em ambos os manuscritos e há também um mapa que ilustra o tema dos documentos. Gramáticas e ortografias dos séculos XVI, XVII e XVIII foram consultadas e demonstra em que medida o emprego das letras [i], [y], [j], [u] e [v] segue ou não a norma apresentada. A vida e obra de Pierre de la Ramée são abordadas de modo sintético, para que se conheça o contexto de diferenciação das ramistas, [j] e [v] de [i] e [u]. No capítulo dedicado à toponímia, pretende-se analisar como se comportam as ramistas e suas variantes em geral; além de um grafema especial, um tipo de [y] com a cauda cortada: [y], cuja referência fonética e semântica traduz-se, em tupi, no vocábulo água. A análise de dois textos com proximidade temática e cronológica e punhos diferentes deixa entrever hábitos freqüentes de uma determinada época da história da escrita e revela tendências no uso das ramistas e suas variantes. É possível constatar que a preferência no uso desta ou daquela letra dá-se muito mais por idiossincrasias dos autores do que por respeito à normatização imposta pelas gramáticas a eles contemporâneas. / The object of this investigation is the research of the ramist letters [j] and [v] and its differences [i], [y] and [u] made in two travel routes in the century XVIII. Therefore, it is made a very detailed and exhausted selection of both handwritings and there is a map which illustrates the title of the documents. It is also studied grammar books used in centuries XVI, XVII and XVIII and they show whenever the use of [i], [y], [j], [u] and [v] took place in standard grammar. The bibliography of Pierre de la Rameé is used shortly, only to recognize the context of differences in the ramist letters [j] and [v] of [i] and [u]. In the chapter dedicated to toponym, the intention is to analyze the behavior of ramist and its variability in general. It is seen a special writing, a kind of [y] with a dash in the tail like [y], whose phonetic reference and semantic is translated, in tupi, in the word water. The analysis of both texts are close in chronologic and thematic aspects but different treats permit different and frequent manners of a certain time in writing history and reveal some tendencies in the use of ramist writing and its possible for this or that letter is taken by much more for author\'s idiosyncrasies than the normatization imposed by grammar books at that age.

O presente trabalho trará a edição semidiplomática dos processos criminais e autos de devassa dos séculos XVII ao XX, bem como a análise do emprego dos diacríticos. O período escolhido proporcionará analisar a evolução do uso dos sinais gráficos agudo (´), circunflexo (^), grave (`) e til (~), bem como traçar uma similaridade entre os usos, contextualizadas às aplicações estabelecidas no período, quando existentes. O trabalho filológico estará presente em todas as análises realizadas e inicialmente partiremos da transcrição semidiplomática dos manuscritos, que nos possibilitarão identificar alguns fatores que contribuíram com a diversificação do uso dos diacríticos, bem como sanar dúvidas quanto a sua aplicabilidade. Após essa análise e a descaracterização de similaridades, ou seja, a minimização de dúvidas quanto a identificação do diacrítico, devido ao traçado utilizado, partimos para uma segunda etapa da análise do corpus: a diversificação dos usos nos diferentes séculos e suas motivações. Em paralelo, e não menos importante, buscaremos no contexto político-social as perspectivas socioculturais que apresentem a dinâmica na forma de apresentação e estruturação documental, bem como identificar os autores dos documentos e sua influência na elaboração dos autos. Buscando em gramáticas, ortografias e manuais de escrita das épocas relacionadas, estabelecemos relações entre o contexto social, político e ideológico refletidos nas obras linguísticas dos séculos XVI ao XX à utilização dos sinais diacríticos presentes na documentação. Essa correlação serviu-nos de base para que identificássemos similaridades entre os usos defendidos pelos gramáticos, ortógrafos e mestres e os escribas responsáveis pela feitura dos documentos. O objetivo desse estudo é apresentar novos contextos acerca do uso destes sinais gráficos a partir de uma análise linguística e histórico-social dos dados coletados nos autos de devassa, contribuindo assim com futuras pesquisas e estudos na área da filologia e da linguística histórica. / This paper will focus on both the semi-diplomatic edition of the criminal proceedings, autos de devassa (case files), from the 17th to the 20th centuries, and on the analysis of the use of diacritics. The chosen time period will not only make it possible to analyze the development of graphic signs: acute (´), circumflex (^), grave (`), and tilde (~), but also draw a similarity between the uses, contextualized to the applications set out in the period - when existing. The philological research will permeate all the conducted analyses, and we will start with the semi-diplomatic transcription of the manuscripts, which will enable us to identify several factors which contributed to the diversification of the use of diacritics, and will also answer questions as to their applicability. After making this analysis and detracting from the characterization of the similarities, that is, minimizing questions regarding the identification of the diacritic, due to the designed plan, we move on to the second phase of the corpus analysis: the diversification of the uses in the different centuries and their motivations. In addition, and importantly, we will seek in the sociopolitical context the sociocultural perspectives that present the dynamics in presentation form and documental structuring, and also identify the authors of the documents and their influence on the drafting of the files. Searching in grammars, orthographies and writing manuals of the related times, we have established relationships between the sociopolitical and ideological context reflected in the linguistic works of the time period from the 16th to the 20th centuries, and the use of diacritical signs laid out in the documentation. This correlation served as a basis for us to identify similarities among the uses upheld by grammarians, orthographers, professors and the scribes responsible for drafting the documents. The purpose of this study is to introduce new contexts on the use of these graphic signs based on a linguistic, social and historical analysis of the data collected in the autos de devassa (case files), thus contributing to future research in the fields of philology and historical linguistics.