Typology and language change: The case of truncation

Birgit Alber,Joachim Kokkelmans

doi:10.5565/rev/isogloss.124

Birgit Alber, Joachim Kokkelmans

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/isogloss.124

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Abstract

Diachronic change of prosodic structures, as it is encountered for instance in the history of stress systems, has been described as a slow process involving a series of minimal changes in a language’s grammar (Lahiri, 2015). We show that minimal grammatical change of prosodic structures is observed as well in the domain of name truncation (e.g. Italian hypocoristic formation: Francesca > France), where diachronic change is fast and therefore analyzable in real time. Following a study by Boschiroli (2017) on the perceived age of Italian truncation patterns, we establish a relative chronology of French and German truncation patterns and propose an analysis where minimality in language change is defined in terms of the ranking conditions (typological properties) determining the typological system of truncation.

Highlights

Language change targeting prosodic structure bears the clear signs of change in the grammar of a language’s linguistic system
Grammatical constraints condition ing name truncation typically refer to the size of the truncatum, which often is either mono or disyllabic and to its anchor point, i.e. the type of position copied from the base name
While stress systems seem to be resistant to language change, patterns of name truncation are subject to continuous change

Summary

Introduction

Language change targeting prosodic structure bears the clear signs of change in the grammar of a language’s linguistic system. For instance, might change from aligning main stress to the left edge of the word to systems with rightaligning main stress, as has been observed for the evolution from Preclassical to Classical Latin as well as for the diachrony of the metrical system of most Germanic languages (Alber, 2020; Dresher, 2013; Jacobs, 2003; Lahiri, 2015; Speyer, 2009; Zonneveld, 1999). A change of grammatical settings must be involved in the variation of foottype, as observed in prosodic systems of related languages of the Panoan family (González, 2017). While stress systems seem to be resistant to language change (cf ibid., who refers to this trait as pertinacity), patterns of name truncation are subject to continuous change. The paper has to be considered the result of a joint effort of both authors

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