The particular affinity linking glottality and nasality to each other, a connection which is grounded both on articulatory and acoustic bases, seems to be responsible for various phonetic phenomena in different languages. In sound changes associated to what has been termedrhinoglottophilia(Matisoff 1975), the two logically possible diachronic pathways show up: from glottality to secondary nasalization, on the one hand, and from nasality to secondary laryngealization, on the other. The innovations concerned can thus be considered symmetrical, a feature that is rarely found in sound change. This paper first reviews the evidence at our disposal for positing a class of replacive phonetic changes caused by rhinoglottophilia, and then argues for an explanation of the diachronic correspondencen>hin the history of the Basque language based on the (primarily acoustic) effects of this specific connection between glottality (more specifically, aspiration) and nasality.
Despite its alleged relative stability, grammatical gender has nevertheless been completely lost in a number of languages. Through the analysis of three case studies (Afrikaans, Ossetic, and Cappadocian Greek) and a brief survey of similar developments in other languages, this article investigates the link between the loss of gender and language contact, which appears to be a key factor in the decline of gender systems. Drawing on recent research within the framework of sociolinguistic typology, I focus on the specific influence that a particular type of language contact (namely, non-native or imperfect learning) usually exerts on the grammar of the languages being acquired. I also discuss the diachronic asymmetry between the loss and the development of gender in language contact settings: while gender loss seems to be contact-related in quite a number of cases, replication or borrowing of gender turns out to be a rather restricted or even rare phenomenon.
This paper explores the hypothesis of contact-induced change for the rise of the partitive case in Finnic languages and of the partitive case/determiner in Basque. On the basis of the well-established Indo-European partitive-genitive case and taking into account the lack of such a basis on the Uralic side, we argue that the partitive case in Finnic languages has arisen as a result of Balto-Slavic influence. Concerning the Basque partitive determiner, we likewise suggest a contact scenario (with Romance languages) as being responsible for the development of an entire system of determiners, including the definite and possibly the indefinite article as well as the partitive marker, which originates in an old ablative ending but crucially lacks the morphological properties characteristic of Basque inflectional markers.
In addition to its central role in the organization of gender systems and its numerous effects on different parts of the grammar, animacy reveals itself as a significant, sometimes even determinant factor in diachronic processes like the reduction of morphological complexity. Complexity in the realm of inflection may be defined as the extent to which formal distinctions in paradigms are semantically or phonologically unmotivated and therefore largely unpredictable on extramorphological grounds. Animacy and natural (or sex-based) gender emerge in certain cases as features capable of constraining this kind of complexity by offering a transparent semantic criterion that helps substantiate several formal distinctions in languages, thereby reducing the amount of morphological complexity or unpredictability inherited from earlier stages in the evolution of different linguistic systems.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.