The Linguistic Cycle and the Language Faculty

Gelderen, Elly van

doi:10.1111/lnc3.12017

Cited by 49 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 22 publications

(27 reference statements)

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“…This state of affairs could simply reflect the fact that Afrikaans has opted for stability in the JC context, rendering it an uninteresting language from the perspective of researchers interested in understanding the factors contributing to cyclic developments (see i.a. van Gelderen 2009van Gelderen , 2011, and van der Auwera 2010 for discussion). Our proposal, however, is that this is not the case and that Afrikaans in fact points to relevant properties of negation systems that have not previously been considered in researchers' attempts to understand JC.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

'Nie sommer nie': Sociohistorical and formal comparative considerations in the rise and maintenance of the modern Afrikaans negation system

Biberauer¹

2015

SPILPLUS

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

'Nie sommer nie': Sociohistorical and formal comparative considerations in the rise and maintenance of the modern Afrikaans negation system

Biberauer¹

2015

SPILPLUS

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“…Looking ahead, the next stage of reflection within this approach to diglossia would be to enter into the detail of, for example, van Gelderen (2011) with her analysis of grammatical cycles in terms of macroparameters of agreement and structural case and, where appropriate, minor cycles related to interpretable or uninterpretable features in specifier and head position within NegP, DP and other relevant functional projections. The challenge for the 'bolt on' alternative to a second grammar is to push the economy approach to the FD-FCT relationship as far as possible with the difference encoded at as high a level of abstraction as is able to…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This means that where FD and FCT differ, FCT is conservative with respect to FD, and that where a single superficial form has a different structure in FD and FCT, the form in FCT is again conservative with respect to FD. Further, innovation-conservatism along each dimension of variation was conceptualised as adjacent positions around a cyclic pattern of diachronic development: the relevant feature specifications of FD are the natural successors of those of FCT as determined by internal economy principles and learner bias (van Gelderen 2011).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do French speakers really have two grammars?

Rowlett

2013

French Language Studies

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I consider variation within French and its status in speakers’ mental grammars. I start with Massot's (2008) claim that, within relevant grammatical units, speakers in contemporary metropolitan France do not combine socio-stylistically marked L and H features, and his explanation of this in terms of diglossia (Ferguson, 1959), that is, the idea that speakers possess two (in this case massively overlapping but not identical) ‘French’ grammars which co-exist in their minds: one (français démotique, FD: acquired early, well, and in a naturalistic environment) comprises one set of grammatical features which generate unmarked forms and the marked L forms; the other (français classique tardif, FCT: learnt later, often unreliably, in a more formal context and under the influence of literacy) comprises a (partially) different set of grammatical features which generate the same unmarked forms as well as the marked H forms. Speakers switch between FD and FCT but do not use them both simultaneously, at least not within the context of an individual clause. While Massot's claim is controversial (see Coveney, 2011), I provisionally accept that it is correct, and move on to consider his explanation. I review instances of variation for which I suggest Massot's model needs to be revised in order to account for the phenomenon of surface forms which can be generated by both putative grammars, and which are therefore superficially part of the overlap, but which have a different linguistic status in each and underlyingly are not therefore part of any overlap. I then reconsider Massot's two-grammar hypothesis, raising issues surrounding the extent of the overlap between them, the nature of the differences between them, and their respective statuses in the minds of speakers. I suggest that in view of their massive overlap, their non-random differences, and their contrasting cognitive statuses, it does not make sense to view both FD and FCT as autonomous grammars. Rather, I suggest that only FD is an autonomous grammar. Since the differences between FD and FCT are instantiations of naturally occurring developments usually conceptualised in terms of cyclic grammaticalisation and renewal (the L features of FD are innovations with respect to the H features of FCT), I suggest that FCT should be seen as a dependent grammatical ‘bolt on’ which encodes its conservatism in an abstract and economical way.

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“…In human speech this principle leads to a permanent shortening of words; it is compensated by fusion of independent morphemes into complex words (agglutination), thus forming a "linguistic cycle" of evolution of isolating languages into agglutinative languages, which are then transformed into fusional languages, and then develop back into isolating ones (Van Gelderen, 2011). In killer whale dialects, fusion of different calls is also sometimes observed.…”

Section: Proximate Mechanisms Of Dialect Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural evolution of killer whale calls: background, mechanisms and consequences

Filatova

Samarra

Deecke

et al. 2015

Behav

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Cultural evolution is a powerful process shaping behavioural phenotypes of many species including our own. Killer whales are one of the species with relatively well-studied vocal culture. Pods have distinct dialects comprising a mix of unique and shared call types; calves adopt the call repertoire of their matriline through social learning. We review different aspects of killer whale acoustic communication to provide insights into the cultural transmission and gene-culture co-evolution processes that produce the extreme diversity of group and population repertoires. We argue that the cultural evolution of killer whale calls is not a random process driven by steady error accumulation alone: temporal change occurs at different speeds in different components of killer whale repertoires, and constraints in call structure and horizontal transmission often degrade the phylogenetic signal. We discuss the implications from bird song and human linguistic studies, and propose several hypotheses of killer whale dialect evolution.

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The Linguistic Cycle and the Language Faculty

Cited by 49 publications

References 22 publications

'Nie sommer nie': Sociohistorical and formal comparative considerations in the rise and maintenance of the modern Afrikaans negation system

'Nie sommer nie': Sociohistorical and formal comparative considerations in the rise and maintenance of the modern Afrikaans negation system

Do French speakers really have two grammars?

Cultural evolution of killer whale calls: background, mechanisms and consequences

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