34.1634, Review: Historical Linguistics, Syntax: Catasso, Coniglio, Bastiani (eds.) (2022)

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Date: 04-Mar-2023
From: Philemon Gomwalk [philgomwalk at outlook.com]
Subject: Historical Linguistics, Syntax: Catasso, Coniglio, Bastiani (eds.) (2022) 


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/33.1746

AUTHOR: Philemon Victor Gomwalk
TITLE: Language Change at the Interfaces
SUBTITLE: Intrasentential and intersentential phenomena
SERIES TITLE: Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 275
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2022

REVIEWER: Philemon Gomwalk

Summary
Bringing together eight articles from researchers working with data
from different diachronic and synchronic language varieties, mostly
from the Indo –European language phyla, the volume seeks to address a
number of key issues related to interactions between syntax, prosody
and information structure within the broader field of diachronic
linguistics. The insightful contributions in the eight papers in the
volume provide illuminating future pathways of research in a
predominantly diachronic study of interface phenomena between syntax,
prosody and information structure. Encompassing data derived from a
broad range of Germanic and Romance varieties, the papers in the
volume seek to demonstrate how key concepts related to
diachronic/synchronic linguistics are not only applied to general
linguistic datasets, but also to how emerging analytical approaches
can be applied to the specific descriptions of some key interface
phenomena in diachronic linguistics in particular.
The volume begins with an insightful general introduction by the
editors, titled (“Interface phenomena and language change Where we are
and where we are going?” (pp.1 to 32). In this introduction, the
authors introduce and elaborate upon the narrow and broad senses in
which the term interface phenomenon is commonly applied in synchronic
linguistic discourse, drawing illustrative examples from such
contemporary  languages as English, Spanish , Italian and Chinese
(refer to pp. 2-7 of Section 1 of the Introduction to the volume,).
Thereafter, the authors also extensively illustrate how the term can
be extended to cover discourse involving diachronic linguistic change,
drawing supporting examples from a range of diachronic Germanic and
Romance varieties (refer to pp. 7-18 of Section 2 of the Introduction
to the volume).
In terms of the organization of its chapters and contents, the volume
is broadly segmented into two main parts, namely, ‘‘Part 1: Interface
phenomena at the intrasentential level’’ and ‘‘Part 2: Interface
phenomena at the intersentential level’’. The first paper in Part 1,
titled “Information structure and Jespersen’s cycle” by Giuseppe
Magistro, Claudia Crocco and Anne Breitbarth , takes a look at the
interaction between information structure and syntactic change in one
particular development that is common across languages of
north-western Europe, namely Jespersen’s cycle, which describes the
renewal of the expression of sentential negation. In particular, the
discussion in the paper attempts to investigate how Jespersen’s cycle
is affected by categories of information structure in prosodic and
acoustic terms. Jespersen’s cycle describes the process by which an
original sentential negator is first reinforced by a second element,
and ultimately replaced by it, after the new element – the reinforcer
– takes over the function of expressing standard negation. Jespersen’s
cycle essentially consists of three basic stages: (I) the ne-stage,
(II) the ne+pas-stage, and (III) the pas-stage (see Dahl, 1979: 88 for
a more exhaustive treatment of this grammatical phenomenon).
In the paper by Magistro et al, focus is placed on stage II, which
involves the emergence of a new element reinforcing the expression of
negation. For example, in Old French, there was the diachronic
emergence of the French negator pas, alongside the original preverbal
negator, ne, before the eventual transition to the later stage whereby
the new element, pas, becomes the standard expression of negation.
Magistro et al considers three dialects spoken in Venice as a testbed
for such analysis, as they represent different points of Jespersen’s
cycle stage II. Cross-linguistic comparison of languages’ diachronies
has shown that new negators often arise from originally optional
reinforcers, with such reinforcers typically express an endpoint on a
pragmatic scale, and represent semantic minimizers/generalizers, for
example, in the Modern English  expressions (not) a drop, (not) a
crumb, (not) a thing. Most languages seem to have such elements at
their disposal. Due to the pragmatic strengthening effects that arise
from the use of such semantic minimizers /generalizers, they can serve
to emphatically reinforce the expression of sentential negation (also
see a similar point made in Breitbarth et al, 2020).
In order to further illustrate the nature of the diachronic
relationship between Jespersen’s cycle stage II and information
structure in languages, Magistro et al draws attention to the
assertion that new negation markers initially come to express narrow
focus of sentential negation, as well as constituent negation, before
they become available in neutral, broad focus negative clauses. The
paper also provides an exploratory discussion on the extent to which
Jespersen’s cycle stage II can be seen working at language interfaces,
both on the information-structural and phonological levels. In
particular, the paper attempts to test the alleged homophony between
the different functions that the new negator can adopt. The authors
strive to demonstrate the different functions that new negators can
adopt over time from an information-structural point of view,
particularly in situations whereby the negative adverb first emerges
in narrow and contrastive focus, where it stands for denying old
information, activated in the context. In concluding their lengthy
discussion on the applicability of the Jespersen cycle stage II to the
patterning and use of negators in Veneto dialects of Modern Italian,
Magistro et al assert that prosodic and temporal reduction can be
found in diachronic change.  The claim is  consistent with findings
which have been documented in previous studies and which they believe
have been sufficiently corroborated by their own recent research
findings (see pp. 37-53 of the paper by Magistro et al, in the
volume).
The second paper in the volume, titled “The object position in Old
Norwegian: An interplay between syntax, prosody and information
structure'' by Juliane Tiemann offers insights into how Old Norwegian
data can be utilized in attaining better understanding of aspects of
Old Norse syntax, thus giving a broader basis for the description of
the development of Old Norse towards the two modern descendants,
namely, Icelandic and Norwegian, as a result of information-structural
restrictions and prosodic influence early in the language’s history.
Tiemann’s paper showed a tight correlation between both information
status and prosodic weight of the referential object in subordinate
clauses containing a finite auxiliary and a non-finite main (lexical)
verb, and its positional realization relative to the lexical verb. OV
is generally preferred with given information, while VO shows a more
diverse picture in terms of information status of the object. The
paper attempts to show that the prosodic weight of an object
significantly determines its surface position, with heavier objects
surfacing more often in post-verbal order, as this applies
specifically to Old Norwegian. This means that even though OV is
preferred with given information, weight can override this requirement
if the object is heavy (as in Old Icelandic), as pointed out by the
author of this paper. However, in contrast to Old Icelandic, there
does not seem to be the same clear division of objects for preverbal
(light) and post-verbal (heavy) position in Old Norwegian. Instead,
light objects seem to be distributed over OV/VO diachronic paradigms,
depending on their information status (also see p. 89 of Tiemann’s
paper in the volume).
The third paper in the volume, titled “Bare quantifiers and Verb
Second” by Silvia Rossi and Cecilia Poletto offers a detailed analysis
of the pre-participial syntax of the bare quantifiers tutto
‘everything’, molto ‘much’ and niente ‘nothing’ in Old Italian
presented in previous studies (see Poletto, 2014; Garzonio & Poletto,
2017) as being determined by the optional or obligatory presence of a
classifier-like category n° in their internal structures. The paper by
Rossi and Poletto offers three main proposals on the diachronic
antecedents and functions of the bare quantifier molto in both Old and
Modern Italian. First, it has an etymological origin as an adjective;
second, the bare use of molto (for expressions of quantities or for
degrees in Old and Modern Italian) derives by the same functional
structure contained in the adjective; and third,   degree words and
intensifiers  in many languages, inclusive of  Old and Modern Italian,
are,  by nature, gradable predicates. The authors argue that the last
proposal on degree words and intensifiers has been well attested to in
studies such as Corver (1997b), Kennedy & McNally (2005) and
Androutsopoulou & Español Echevarria (2009).  In addition, Rossi and
Poletto’s paper offers the proposal that molto may have evolved over
time as an adjective meaning ‘numerous’, which can be coordinated with
other gradable (non-quantity) adjectives, a possibility which has
remained relatively unchanged since the times of active Latin usage
(see p. 105 of Rossi and Poletto’s paper in the volume).
The fourth paper,  titled “On the role of information structure in the
licensing of null” subjects in Old German by Federica Cognola focuses
on the distribution of null subjects in inti- coordinated clauses in
the Old High German translation of Tatian’s Diatessaron and shows that
the presence of null referential subjects in this construction should
not be analyzed as a case of Topic drop of the same type as
present-day German, but as a case of pure pro-drop of Romance type,
involving the presence of a silent category pro licensed via a
matching relation with a null Topic in CP. The aim of the paper is to
contribute to an understanding of the nature of null  subjects in Old
High German. Other key recent studies that have focused on
inti-coordinated clause types in OHG, as pointed out by the author of
this paper, include Weiß & Volodina, 2018 and Cognola & Walkden, 2019.
However, Cognola’s paper in particular focuses on critically
investigating the derivation of null subjects in inti – coordinated
sentences in a small corpus from the OHG Diatessaron, and eventually
proposes that the Topic-matching analysis calls for the recognition of
the use of wh- interrogative clauses and that the sentence beginning
context should also be applied to this syntactic environment, which
was analyzed as involving Topic drop (see Weiß & Volodina 2018;
Cognola & Walkden 2019). The analysis in Section 4 of Cognola’s paper
pays close attention to the distribution of a wide range of both null
and overt subjects in inti- coordinated constructions in Old High
German. When considered in isolation, the paper notes that null
subjects identified can be safely categorized as typical examples of
Topic drop; however, when they are considered within the framework of
Old High German grammar, it is observed that the Topic-drop approach
becomes untenable. As a consequence of this empirical finding, the
author chooses to offer the proposal that the free-inversion
construction in Old High German should receive the same kind of
analysis as Romance free-inversion, and, thus, should be regarded as
an instance of locative inversion (see pp. 148-153 of Cognola’s paper
in the volume).
Cognola’s analysis in this paper also demonstrates that the licensing
of null subjects in OHG involves two operations: one that is
‘‘intrasentential’’ in outlook and another that is
‘‘intersentential’’ in outlook. The former operation, which takes
place through the mediation of FP in the left periphery, has the
function of establishing an external referent for the null category.
The latter operation, which involves TP, implies an Agree relation
between the null Topic or the logophoric operator in the left
periphery and pro. Similarly, within the proposed account offered in
the paper, the two operations identified above can also be seen as
consequential effects of reducing the structure of the left periphery,
through the eventual losses both of  V2 word orders and of FP in
Middle High German. Such a reduction of the structure of the left
periphery is a vital precondition for the licensing of null subjects,
as pointed out by the author of this paper. Since FP is no longer
available in present-day German, null subjects in und- sentences in
the language can only be produced through the Topic-drop construction
in which a given constituent appearing in the left periphery is
deleted. According to the proposed analysis, the presence of Topic
drop is a new strategy to realize the null subject and has substituted
for the Old High German mechanism. Therefore, an identical superficial
syntax featuring a null subject involves two different underlying
structures in different periods of the German language (see pp.
154-155 of Cognola’s paper in the volume).
The first paper in Part 2 of the volume, titled ‘Gehen’ as a new
auxiliary in German by Katharina Paul, Maik Thalmann, Markus Steinbach
and Marco Coniglio, aims at investigating the so-called
gehen+infinitive construction in German, in which an inflected form of
the (movement) verb gehen ‘go’ is combined with the infinitive of
another main verb and, thus, seems to behave like an auxiliary
syntactically. The paper basically argues that the verb gehen+
infinitive constructions, while still continuing to preserve its full
verb function as a verb of motion, is inherently developing a parallel
grammaticalized counterpart functioning as an aspectual auxiliary
verb, as pointed out by its author. The analysis, findings and
conclusions reported in the paper appear to be aligned with similar
general assumptions about grammaticalization of auxiliaries also
observed in Cinque (2006: 57-61) for contemporary Italian.
The second paper in Part 2 of the volume, titled Discourse-driven
asymmetries between embedded interrogatives and relative clauses in
West Germanic by Julia Bacskai-Atkari, examines embedded constituent
questions and relative clauses in West Germanic. It basically  argues
that asymmetries regarding doubly filled COMP patterns are due to
information-structural differences. While both clause types involve
operator movement, Bacskai-Atkari points out that such clause types
differ markedly with regard to the information-structural status of
the operator: in interrogatives, the operator can be associated with
discourse-new information, while in relative clauses the operator is
discourse-old and can be potentially left out. This asymmetry
regarding information-structural properties has two important
consequences. First, doubling patterns involving an overt operator and
an overt complementiser emerge across West Germanic languages in
embedded questions but not in relative clauses. Second, the reanalysis
of the operator into a complementiser is attested in relative clauses
but not in embedded interrogatives. After providing relevant
discursive illustrations drawn from English, Bacskai-Atkari’s paper
also asserts that doubly filled COMP patterns are historically
attested in Middle English. Quoting Allen (1977), the author points
out that such patterns first appeared in embedded interrogatives (end
of 13th century) and later in relative clauses (beginning of 14th
century).  For other details of this particular line of argumentation,
see Bacskai-Atkari (2020c).
Bacskai-Atkari's paper end by making makes a number of three key
assertions on the diachronic manifestations of embedded interrogatives
and relative clauses in West Germanic. First, the paper points out
that while doubling effects are present in many historical West
Germanic dialects in embedded interrogatives, they are comparatively
rare in relative clauses. This fact, as argued by the author, is
related to the different information-structural status of the
respective operators found in some historical West Germanic dialects.
Second, in some other historical West Germanic dialects, the
complementiser strategy is preferred and the operator element found in
embedded interrogatives and relative clauses is not realized overtly.
Thirdly, the paper also asserts by the author that while subject
relative clauses were crucial concerning the introduction of
innovative relative pronouns, the pronoun strategy in Middle- English
as well as in later variants of English, is primarily associated with
non-subject relatives, further restricting the distribution of the
relative pronouns in question. This fact, as argued in the paper,
implies that the relative pronoun is primarily tied to marking
syntactic functions overtly (for other details of this line of
argument, see Bacskai-Atkari, 2021: 203-209 in the volume).
Evaluation
The respective chapters in the volume provide not only a perceptive
cross section of theoretical and analytical viewpoints on issues
related to interface phenomena in linguistic literature, but also
strive to familiarize the reader with the relevant theoretical
frameworks for understanding each individual chapter. In a broad
sense, interfaces are defined as interaction domains between grammar
on the one hand and non-linguistic cognitive systems on the other
hand: the so-called “articulatory-perceptual” and the
“conceptual-intentional” systems. In a narrower sense, the term
“interface” has been extensively used to refer to the interplay (and
to the corresponding operations that take place) between different
subsystems or core modules of language. The underlying idea is that
also more specialized domains of one’s I-language, such as phonology,
prosody, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics, are per se
free-standing, but actively interact with each other on a number of
identifiable levels. It goes without saying that the generative and,
in particular, minimalist approach is not the only theory of grammar
that has been concerned with the nature and role of interfaces in
language (change).
Organisationally, the volume by Nicholas Catasso, Marco Coniglio &
Chiara Bastiani is clearly structured into two main parts, the first
titled ‘Interface phenomena at the intrasentential   level’, and the
second titled ‘Interface phenomena at the intersentential level’. Each
of these parts features four chapters of broadly equal length. Every
chapter has its own list of references, thereby enabling quicker
checks to be made by only including those works relevant to that
article, and a comprehensive index is included at the end of the
collection. For ease of reference by the reader, each chapter is
segmented into appropriate subsections and duly numbered, while
expository footnotes are included but kept to a minimum. In addition,
whenever required, tables are located in respective chapters to aid
the progression of discourse, and diagrammatic figures, where they are
included, are unobtrusively placed and printed in colour.
             In evaluating the applicability and overall validity of
interface phenomenon from an intrasentential perspective, the paper by
Giuseppe Magistro, Claudia Crocco and Anne Breitbarth provides what I
consider to be stimulating insights into language change occurring at
the interface between information structure, syntax and prosody, and
serves to add to current understanding of interface phenomena not only
from a theoretical, but also from an experimental perspective. As a
test bench, they consider Jespersen’s cycle for their investigation
and proceed to provide viable arguments, backed by copious
illustrative examples, why they think new expressions of standard
negations start out from contexts of narrow and contrastive focus (in
which old or activated information is negated) and then extend their
use to other information-structural contexts functioning as neutral
negators.
With regard to issues relating to the applications of interface
phenomena to morphosyntactic analysis, I found the paper by Silvia
Rossi and Cecilia Poletto not only intellectually stimulating but also
analytically convincing. It investigated the distribution of the bare
quantifiers tutto ‘everything’, molto ‘much’ and niente ‘nothing’ in
Old Italian (and their different licensing conditions in the left
periphery of clause structure of Old Italian dialectal varieties). The
reference to numerous illustrative examples, derived from language
varieties other than Old Italian, also served to expand the degree to
which Rossi and Poletto’s study findings and, eventually, their
conclusions may be generalized and applied to comparable similar data
sets from other diachronic language varieties (refer to p.20 of the
Introduction in the volume).
I also enjoyed reading and digesting the contents of the paper by
Federica Cognola which focuses on what I identify as a key issue
associated with interface phenomena in linguistic diachrony. This has
to do with the challenge of understanding the true nature of an
intrasentential change phenomenon driven by what Cognola has
characterized as ‘‘...sentence-internal syntactic projections encoding
pragmatic and discourse-related information’’ (refer to p.20 of the
Introduction in the volume).  The paper addresses the distribution and
triggering factors of null subjects in Old High German (750–1050) main
clauses and addresses the licensing of this phenomenon at the boundary
between the intra- and the intersentential domain. In her paper,
Cognola considers a corpus of 100 sentences extracted from the German
translation of Tatian’s gospel harmony (ca 850, East Franconian). In
particular, she focuses on the licensing of null subjects in
coordinated clauses introduced by the paratactic conjunction inti
‘and’, and discusses novel evidence supporting a discourse-pragmatic
analysis of the phenomenon in this construction. This fact may be
attributable to the fact that later varieties of German gradually
developed stricter V2 syntax patterns (becoming evident in Middle High
German), which implies a reduction of the structural positions in the
left periphery and possibly the disappearance of the projection
hosting the null topic licensing pro in Spec, FP (refer to p.21 as
well as pp. 130-153 of Cognola’s paper in the volume).
In the second part of the volume, I also found the discourse provided
in Julia Bacskai-Atkari’s paper very intellectually robust and
challenging. This is because the paper chiefly focuses on the left
periphery of subordinate clauses in natural language. In specific
terms, it attempts to provide what I consider to be an insightful
survey of doubly-filled COMP patterns in West Germanic from a
diachronic perspective and of the way such patterns can serve as
trigger mechanisms for indicating changes in the CP. In particular,
she investigates constructions that  allow doubling both historically
and synchronically: relative clauses and embedded wh-questions.
In the paper, Bacskai-Atkari was able to demonstrate that there is a
diachronic “relative cycle” in West Germanic which necessarily
involves ‘Specifier-to-Head’ reanalysis of a relative operator into a
relative complementizer. This seems to happen in order to guarantee
economy in diachronic processes: this categorial change, indeed,
implies loss of features. Once the operator has been grammaticalized
in C° and has substituted for the original complementizer, the
specifier position of CP may possibly be occupied by a new operator.
Bacskai-Atkari has further argued persuasively in the paper as
follows:
‘‘….the differences between these two clause types are primarily
discourse-related: the relative operator refers back to ‘given’
information which is fully recoverable in the previous discourse,
while the interrogative operator  is Focus-marked and must be realized
overtly. At the same time, West-Germanic varieties are generally more
likely to lexicalize the C than the Spec, FP position’’ (refer to p.22
of the Introduction in the volume).
Bacskai-Atkari attributes the higher frequency of doubly-filled COMP
patterns in embedded questions than in relative clauses to the fact
that the relative operator, being maximally given, is preferably
reanalyzed as a COMP, leading to non-doubling constructions in
present-day dialects; in embedded interrogative clauses, however, this
is not possible because the operator and the complementizer are not
functionally equivalent. For this reason, the latter exhibit greater
historical continuity than the former (refer to p.23 as well as pp.
191-206 of Bacskai-Atkari’s paper in the volume).
I also found Augustin Speyer’s paper a stimulating reading experience,
chiefly because it dwells on issues related to the left periphery of
main clauses in natural language. In doing so, the paper was able to
investigate the key question as to whether discourse relations (i.e.
continuation, elaboration, narration, explanation, contrast, and
comment) directly influence the ranking of potential prefield fillers
(scene setting, contrastive, topic), and to what extent this is
relevant for the diachrony of the German language. Through his use of
a rich corpus of illustrative data, Speyer was able to compare the
incidence of discourse relations in Early New High German and
present-day German. He was able to demonstrate that the overt marking
of discourse relations by phrasal discourse relation markers is more
prominent in Early New High German than in the contemporary language
(refer to p.23 in the volume). Finally, the author was also able to
show that the key difference between the two language stages pertains
to the relation-specific ranking of the information-structural
categories “topic” and “contrast”. While some discourse relations
exhibit historical continuity with respect to the relative order of
topics and contrastive elements, other relations do not seem to give a
conclusive picture of this hierarchy (refer to p.23 as well as pp. 226
-230 of Speyer’s paper in the volume).
Finally, Sophia Voigtmann’s paper provides another interesting and
rigorous discourse related to issues connected to the right periphery
of clause structure in natural language. In particular, it identifies
and investigates the factors that led to the extraposition of relative
clauses in (Early) New High German through a study of corpus data. The
course of his discourse, Voigtmann was able to show that the
information-structural status of referents interacts with the
extraposition of relative clauses out of the clause hosting its
antecedent, thus influencing word order at the intersentential level.
By testing her hypotheses statistically, the author was able to
convincingly demonstrate that adjacent relative clauses  in New High
German indeed present a higher proportion of given referents, as
opposed to extraposed relative clauses, and highlights how the
interaction of information status and extraposition changes through
time. The author was also able to demonstrate the operation of some
key changes in the restrictions governing the extraposition of
relative clauses in the period covered by (Early) New High German and
how such changes are related to the specific genre and base data used
for the study (refer to p.23 as well as pp. 243-250 of Voigtmann’s
paper in the volume).
In selecting the individual papers that appear in the present volume,
I am convinced that the editors were acutely conscious of the need to
highlight both old and emerging issues connected to interface
phenomena in modern-day linguistic scholarship. In my considered
judgment, all eight papers chosen by the volume editors rightly
deserve their place in the publication because each paper has
attempted to explore some key types of change phenomenon in relation
to recognizable levels of language interface. In effect, with the
different papers covering the full spectrum of morphology, syntax,
information structure, semantics and pragmatics, I recognize and would
warmly recommend the volume as an academically significant publication
that offers new and invaluable academic insights into the underlying
dynamics of language change phenomena at different interfaces,
particularly within the framework of diachronic linguistic studies.






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About The Reviewer
Philemon Victor Gomwalk, PhD, has active research interests in
understanding the nature of the synchronic and diachronic linguistic
typologies of languages within the Chadic phylum in Nigeria,. His
current fieldwork activities have increasingly focused on exploring
the nature and extent of short-term synchronic variation as well as
long-term diachronic change within the Jos-Plateau sub-region, a
well-documented zone of historical linguistic admixture and complexity
in Nigeria, dating from pre-historical into present times.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Philemon Victor Gomwalk, PhD, has active research interests in
understanding the nature of the synchronic and diachronic linguistic
typologies of languages within the Chadic phylum in Nigeria,. His
current fieldwork activities have increasingly focused on exploring
the nature and extent of short-term synchronic variation as well as
long-term diachronic change within the Jos-Plateau sub-region, a
well-documented zone of historical linguistic admixture and complexity
in Nigeria, dating from pre-historical into present times.



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