[Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories

[Johanna Nichols]

I think also Kahane & Kahane, maybe in their Language 1979 or 1986 article.

Johanna

On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 3:04 PM Uni KN <frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de> wrote:
>
> Close, Östen:  they got it from Egyptian.  Or so argues Carsten Peust, in Göttinger Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 2, 1999, S. 99-120
>
> Fälle von strukturellem Einfluss des Ägyptischen auf europäische Sprachen
> (1) Die Herausbildung des definiten Artikels, (2) Die Entwicklung des grammatischen femininen Genus, (3) Die inklusive Zählweise von Zeitintervallen
>
> https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/2274/1/Peust_Faelle_von_strukturellen_Einfluessen_1999.pdf
>
> Similarly
> LEVIN, Saul 1992: Studies in comparative grammar: I. The definite article, an Egyptian/Semitic/Indo­European etymology, in General Linguistics 32:1­-15.
> FEHLING, Detlev 1980: The origins of European syntax, in Folia Linguistica Historica 1:353-387.
>
> Frans
>
>
> On 16. Jun 2020, at 18:25, Östen Dahl <oesten at ling.su.se> wrote:
>
> This topic happened to come up in my recent conversation with Martin Haspelmath on his blog (https://dlc.hypotheses.org/2361). There are also some references there to earlier literature.
>
> I would not bet on the definite article in Ancient Greek as an independent development. After all, definite articles were around in the neighbouring Semitic languages. If the Greeks got their alphabet from the Semitic-speaking peoples, they could also get the article from them, I think.
>
> - Östen
>
>
> -----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
> Från: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> För Bohnemeyer, Juergen
> Skickat: den 16 juni 2020 15:44
> Till: LINGTYP <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> Ämne: Re: [Lingtyp] Innovation of functional categories
>
> Dear Christian — Thank you very much for your response! I'll have much more to say about your suggestions, but for now, I’d just like to try a clarification:
>
> On Jun 16, 2020, at 6:41 AM, Christian Lehmann <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote:
>
>
> To the extent that the contribution made by such expressions to the sentence meaning is indeed redundant, it would mean that the respective information is already contained in the context, and to this extent there would be no need for the hearer to employ inferencing.
>
>
>
> I’m assuming a view of communication on which it is largely inference-based. The question on this view is not whether but how much inferencing the hearer has to do.
>
> Consider the information added by gender markers to pronouns and agreement morphology. In the vast majority of cases, this information is not needed for identifying the referent. But having it by my hypothesis still facilitates processing  by further boosting the predictability of the referent. As long as the added effort for speaker and hearer in processing the gender information is minimal (that’s where grammaticalization comes in), this may confer a minuscule processing advantage.
>
> Same story with tense or definiteness: in the vast majority of uses, tense markers and articles are not terribly informative (witness all the speech communities that get by happily without them), so that can’t be the reason why we grammaticalize them (that’s my thinking, anyway).
>
> (As to Givón, yes, absolutely, I’m well aware that I’m merely trying to retell a story functionalists have been telling since the dawn of functionalism :-))
>
> Best — Juergen
>
> --
> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
> Professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Linguistics and Center for Cognitive Science University at Buffalo
>
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