Language change for the worse

Dankmar W. Enke (ed), Larry M. Hyman (ed), Johanna Nichols (ed), Guido Seiler (ed), Thilo Weber (ed), Andreas Hölzl (ed)

Synopsis

Many theories hold that language change, at least on a local level, is driven by a need for improvement. The present volume explores to what extent this assumption holds true, and whether there is a particular type of language change that we dub language change for the worse, i.e., change with a worsening effect that cannot be explained away as a side-effect of improvement in some other area of the linguistic system. The chapters of the volume, written by leading junior and senior scholars, combine expertise in diachronic and historical linguistics, typology, and formal modelling. They focus on different aspects of grammar (phonology, morphosyntax, semantics) in a variety of language families (Germanic, Romance, Austronesian, Bantu, Jê-Kaingang, Wu Chinese, Greek, Albanian, Altaic, Indo-Aryan, and languages of the Caucasus). The volume contributes to ongoing theoretical debates and discussions between linguists with different theoretical orientations.

Chapters

  • Language change for the worse
    Dankmar W. Enke, Larry M. Hyman, Johanna Nichols, Guido Seiler, Thilo Weber
    Chapter 1
  • High vowel fricativization in Northern Wu Chinese and its neighbors
    Matthew Faytak
    Chapter 2
  • Postoralized and devoiced nasals in Panãra (Jê)
    ND > NT
    Myriam Lapierre
    Chapter 3
  • Loss of number in the English 2nd person pronoun
    A change for the worse, but due to a change for the better?
    Christine Elsweiler, Judith Huber
    Chapter 4
  • Clitic doubling in Albanian dialects from the perspective of functional transparency
    Veton Matoshi
    Chapter 5
  • Who needs posterior infinitives
    Tabea Reiner
    Chapter 6
  • The particular-characterizing contrast in Marathi and its historical basis
    Ashwini Deo
    Chapter 7
  • The complexification of Tungusic interrogative systems
    Andreas Hölzl
    Chapter 8
  • For better and/or for worse
    Complexity and person hierarchies
    Johanna Nichols
    Chapter 9
  • Can language evolution lead to change for the worse?
    Gerhard Jäger
    Chapter 10
  • How to use evolutionary game theory to study evolutionary aspects of grammar
    Roland Mühlenbernd
    Chapter 11
  • Languages as public goods and language change as a tragedy of the commons
    Gerhard Schaden
    Chapter 12

Statistics

Language change for the worse

Biographies

Dankmar W. Enke, LMU Munich

Dankmar W. Enke has been a research associate at LMU Munich. His main research interest lies at the morphology-semantics-pragmatics interface. He is particularly interested in systematic patterns in the diachronic pairing between form and meaning of functional categories such as aspect, negation, and case.

Larry M. Hyman, University of California, Berkeley

Larry M. Hyman is Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School, Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley. He has worked extensively on phonological theory, tone systems, as well as on the history, typology, and description of the Niger-Congo languages, focusing especially on the Bantu languages. He co-founded the Comparative Bantu On-Line Dictionary (CBOLD).

Johanna Nichols, University of California, Berkeley

Johanna Nichols is Professor Emerita of Slavic Languages and Literatures as well as Affiliate Professor Emerita of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on historical typology (e.g., Slavic), distributional typology (e.g., Eurasian languages), and the description of the two Nakh-Daghestanian languages Chechen and Ingush. She is a co-developer of the Autotyp network of typological databases.

Guido Seiler, University of Zurich

Guido Seiler is a professor of Germanic Linguistics at the University of Zurich. He has worked on variation and change in phonological and morphsyntactic structure of Germanic varieties, with a focus on aspects language contact. Much of his recent work is centered around varieties spoken by Amish and Mennonite minorities in North America.

Thilo Weber, Leibniz Institute for the German Language

Thilo Weber is a researcher at the Leibniz Institute for the German Language in Mannheim. His research interests include the grammar of German and its varieties, language variation and change and corpus linguistics.

Andreas Hölzl, University of Potsdam

Andreas Hölzl is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Potsdam. His research interests include the languages of Asia, language typology, linguistic reconstruction, and areal linguistics. With Language Sience Press he previously published his doctoral dissertation in 2018 and the book Tungusic languages: Past and present in 2022.

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Published

September 18, 2024
LaTeX source on GitHub

Series

Studies in Diversity Linguistics

Print ISSN

2363-5568
Cite as
Enke, Dankmar W., Hyman, Larry M., Nichols, Johanna, Seiler, Guido, Weber, Thilo & Hölzl, Andreas (eds.). 2024. Language change for the worse. (Studies in Diversity Linguistics 33). Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5116353
Copyright (c) 2020 Dankmar Enke, Larry Hyman, Johanna Nichols, Guido Seiler, Thilo Weber (Volume Editor)

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Details about the available publication format: PDF

PDF

ISBN-13 (15)

978-3-96110-317-1

doi

10.5281/zenodo.5116353

Details about the available publication format: Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN-13 (15)

978-3-98554-013-6

Physical Dimensions

180mm x 245mm