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Project

Diachronic semantic tendencies in lexical, morphological and syntactic variation

This project explores the interplay between semantics and language change through the assessment of the fourth statement of Kuryłowicz (K4). The statement goes as follows: “When as a consequence of a morphological change, a form undergoes differentiation, the new form takes over its primary (‘basic’) function, the old form remains only in secondary (‘derived’) function.” A famous illustration lies in the English word pair 'brethren-brothers'. The new form 'brothers' took over the primary function, while the old form 'brethren' lived on taking a specialized function ‘fellow members of a religious order’. Yet, so far, the evidence for this law remains mostly anecdotal. The assessment of this statement can shed light not only on this interplay between semantics and language change, but also on broader linguistic phenomena as iconicity, isomorphism, exaptation and prototype theory. I will carry out multiple quantitative case studies on Dutch, with different time scopes (from Middle Dutch until now). I will tackle 4 research questions. 1) When a doublet arises, does the new form inevitably take on the primary function, while the old form remains in the secondary function? 2) Is K4 limited to morphological cases, or is it a more general principle that can be applied to other domains as well? 3) If cases occur where K4 does not apply, can these cases be grouped under a common denominator and can a general explanation be found? 4) What are the cognitive mechanisms behind K4? 

Date:1 Oct 2021 →  Today
Keywords:language change, quantitative, semantics
Disciplines:Corpus linguistics, Diachronic linguistics, Historical linguistics, Morphology