Diachronic Change Research Articles

Integrating New Prehistoric Palaeopathological Finds from Hungary.

Eight newly identified pathological animal remains identified in two Middle Neolithic assemblages (ca 5330-4940 calBC) in northern and western Hungary were placed within the broader context of relevant prehistoric finds. The aim was to understand the underrepresented Middle Neolithic finds in light of the better-known cases from other prehistoric periods. The newly reported cases include arthritic and inflammatory lesions, as well as dental disorders, such as linear enamel hypoplasia, recognized for the first time in the Hungarian Neolithic. Identifications were based on bone macromorphology. When large samples are available, the frequencies of pathological bone specimens reflect the taxonomic composition. Along with the increasing number of cases, longevity related to exploitation for secondary products also became manifest. Therefore, the effects of assemblage size, disease classification and differences between authors (related to training and the time of publication) need to be considered before pathological lesions can be interpreted in terms of diachronic changes in animal husbandry.

Brazilian Venetan is going leísta

This paper discusses language variation in heritage languages, focussing on a peculiar use of the dative clitic ghe in Brazilian Venetan, a heritage northern Italo-Romance variety. Corpus data and grammaticality judgments by native speakers showed that, unlike homeland varieties of Venetan, the clitic is used in doubling constructions with both indirect and direct objects. Conversely, accusative clitics do not appear in doubling constructions in Brazilian Venetan, but are limited to cases of resumption of dislocated constituents. This phenomenon is compared to a parallel use of dative clitics with direct objects in some previously described leísta varieties of Spanish. I will show that the type of variation attested in Brazilian Venetan accusative and dative clitics depends on different conditions on cliticisation of the two elements. Specifically, while accusative clitics are pronouns that undergo a morphological process of incorporation, dative clitics are merged as agreement markers on the finite verb. The analysis also captures a diachronic change in the distribution of dative clitics in the diachrony of Venetan.

Lack of early sensitivity and gradual emergence of native phoneme categories: A pattern from underrepresented language learners.

Perceptual narrowing of speech perception supposes that young infants can discriminate most speech sounds early in life. During the second half of the first year, infants' phonetic sensitivity is attuned to their native phonology. However, supporting evidence for this pattern comes primarily from learners from a limited number of regions and languages. Very little evidence has accumulated on infants learning languages spoken in Asia, which accounts for most of the world's population. The present study examined the developmental trajectory of Korean-learning infants' sensitivity to a native stop contrast during the first year of life. The Korean language utilizes unusual voiceless three-way stop categories, requiring target categories to be derived from tight phonetic space. Further, two of these categories-lenis and aspirated-have undergone a diachronic change in recent decades as the primary acoustic cue for distinction has shifted among modern speakers. Consequently, the input distributions of these categories are mixed across speakers and speech styles, requiring learners to build flexible representations of target categories along these variations. The results showed that among the three age groups-4-6 months, 7-9 months, and 10-12 months-we tested, only 10-12-month-olds showed weak sensitivity to the two categories, suggesting that robust discrimination is not in place by the end of the first year. The study adds scarcely represented data, lending additional support for the lack of early sensitivity and prolonged emergence of native phonology that are inconsistent with learners of predominant studies and calls for more diverse samples to verify the generality of the typical perceptual narrowing pattern. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: We investigated Korean-learning infants' developmental trajectory of native phoneme categories and whether they show the typical perceptual narrowing pattern. Robust discrimination did not appear until 12 months, suggesting that Korean infants' native phonology is not stabilized by the end of the first year. The prolonged emergence of sensitivity could be due to restricted phonetic space and input variations but suggests the possibility of a different developmental trajectory. The current study contributes scarcely represented Korean-learning infants' phonetic discrimination data to the speech development field.

The Pandemic in Words: Tracking Fast Semantic Changes via a Large-Scale Word Association Task.

Most words have a variety of senses that can be added, removed, or altered over time. Understanding how they change across different contexts and time periods is crucial for revealing the role of language in social and cultural evolution. In this study we aimed to explore the collective changes in the mental lexicon as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. We performed a large-scale word association experiment in Rioplatense Spanish. The data were obtained in December 2020, and compared with responses previously obtained from the Small World of Words database (SWOW-RP, Cabana et al., 2023). Three different word-association measures detected changes in a word's mental representation from Precovid to Covid. First, significantly more new associations appeared for a set of pandemic-related words. These new associations can be interpreted as incorporating new senses. For example, the word 'isolated' incorporated direct associations with 'coronavirus' and 'quarantine'. Second, when analyzing the distribution of responses, we observed a greater Kullback-Leibler divergence (i.e., relative entropy) between the Precovid and Covid periods for pandemic words. Thus, some words (e.g., 'protocol', or 'virtual') changed their overall association patterns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, using semantic similarity analysis, we evaluated the changes between the Precovid and Covid periods for each cue word's nearest neighbors and the changes in their similarity to certain word senses. We found a larger diachronic difference for pandemic cues where polysemic words like 'immunity' or 'trial' increased their similarity to sanitary/health words during the Covid period. We propose that this novel methodology can be expanded to other scenarios of fast diachronic semantic changes.

How does a research topic evolve into a research field? — a bibliometric analysis of metadiscourse research

This study adopted a bibliometric approach to trace the diachronic changes in the metadiscourse research, based on the research articles and their unique references retrieved from the web of science (WOS) core collections from 1980-2020. CiteSpace software was employed to conduct a co-citation analysis to investigate the common themes, the developmental stages, as well as the landmark publications of this domain in the last four decades. Twelve major themes (represented by clusters) were identified; studies in these clusters progressed through three developmental stages, namely: the conceptualizing stage, the maturing stage, and the flourishing stage. Three key transformative studies were identified which contribute to ushering in the developmental stage. The use of structural variation analysis in reaching these findings helped to solve the heavy reliance on co-citation analysis. Our analysis identified unique features in the trajectory of metadiscourse research which can contribute to the deconstruction of the development of scientific fields.

A history of violence in the Mesolithic female skeleton from Mezzocorona-Borgonuovo (Trento, northeastern Italy)

Scholars have long been interested in understanding conflict in prehistoric times. Skeletal lesions attributable to interpersonal violence constitute the most direct evidence available to make inferences on the diachronic changes in the frequency, scale, and motivation for conflict among human communities. It has been proposed that evidence of violence becomes more common among Early Holocene Mesolithic hunter-gatherers; however, the skeletal record becomes increasingly fragmentary in more ancient periods, making the finding of new evidence of great importance. We present here a case of traumatic recidivism in a Mesolithic female from the site of Mezzocorona-Borgonuovo (MBN-1) in the northeastern Italian Alps (Trento). This female displays a perimortem perforating defect in the frontal bone, as well as healed cranial and forearm fractures. Although it is possible to interpret these injuries as resulting from falls from height, we propose that they are most compatible with MBN-1 being victim over time of multiple episodes of interpersonal violence. In addition, probably a few months before death, MBN-1 suffered another traumatic injury of the ankle, and in this case the fall from height appears the most likely scenario. We further propose that the attacks leading to the cranial and forearm fractures were presumably perpetrated by individuals coming from outside MBN-1's group. Conversely, her group most likely cared for her through medical treatment – as suggested by the successful healing of forearm and ankle fractures – and by according her a formal burial. The traumatic history of MBN-1 provides rare glimpses into the life experience of a Mesolithic female from northeastern Italy, a context where human remains are extremely rare. However, being a single case, more findings are needed to understand whether or not MBN-1 can be viewed as emblematic of the overall exposure to interpersonal or accidental trauma for Mesolithic groups in the area, and to explore issues of frequency, origin, and motivation for ancient conflict.

The tonal morphology of the potential in Coatec Zapotec (Di′zhke′)

Abstract While the phenomenon of tonogenesis is well represented in the literature, diachronic tone change in already-tonal languages has received less attention. This paper considers two types of tonal morphology used to mark the “potential” inflectional category on verbs in Coatec Zapotec (aka Di′zhke′). Some verbs are marked with upstep. Coatec upstepped tones are emergent tonal contrasts that are developing out of high register allotones which assimilated to a historical high tone on a now-deleted preceding syllable. Other verbs display patterns of tone ablaut such that a verb with underlying low or falling tone surfaces with high or rising in the potential. Both upstep and tone ablaut in Coatec can be traced to an earlier floating high tone that could dock onto different syllables according to a set of ranked constraints. Using a combination of internal and comparative reconstruction, details of the earlier tonal system are revealed. This is the first published treatment of Proto-Zapotec tone since Swadesh (1947) and the first paper to address tone in Proto-Zapotecan and Proto Core Zapotec. *ʔ is revealed to have been a consonant through the Core Zapotec period, suggesting that the complex systems of phonation contrasts found in some Central Zapotec languages are a recent development. Cases of tonal contrasts developing out of phonation contrasts are known from Southeast Asia, but Zapotec phonation contrasts arose out of interaction between the glottal consonant and pre-existing tonal contrasts. An exploration of the morphological environments conducive to upstep leads to new discoveries about Zapotecan derivational voice prefixes and reveals the origins of perfective allomorphy.

Miten edustuksellinen demokratiamme on muuttumassa? Digitaalisen käsitehistorian näkökulma

Recent concerns about representative democracy being in crisis should be related to longer-term histories of ‘representation’ and ‘democracy’. Conceptual history analyses diachronic change and synchronic contestability of such key terms. Digital history can help understand evolvement in tensions over popular representation and representatives' changing perceptions on their parliamentary role. N-gram analyses and visualizations of relative word frequencies reveal long-term patterns and justify selections for qualitative analysis. Contextualising close reading shows how representative democracy has been increasingly complemented with participatory and direct democracy in the UK parliament, for instance, since the 2000s. These observations lead to questions on parallel developments in other European countries.

Lexical complexity changes in 100 years’ academic writing: Evidence from Nature Biology Letters

Previous diachronic studies of lexical changes in academic writing have focused on the evolution of specific sets or classes of words with specific grammatical or discourse functions, with no scholarly attention paid to diachronic changes in the overall lexical complexity of academic writing, a construct that has been shown to be closely related to text readability and writing quality. This study explores diachronic lexical complexity changes in academic writing based on a self-built corpus, the Corpus of Nature Biology Letters, comprised of 421 scientific letters sampled with ten-year intervals for 100 years (1929–2019). The corpus was analyzed for nine measures of lexical density, sophistication, and diversity to ascertain the trend and strength of lexical complexity changes. Our findings show that the patterns of diachronic changes in the lexical complexity of academic writing accord with the overall trends in academic writing towards greater compression and conventionalization. These findings add to our understanding of the evolution of the academic writing practices of the scientific community and may also have implications for academic writing pedagogy.

Dependence and Subordination: Research on the Development and Changes of Chenghuang Temple and Garden in Shanghai Qingpu District After the Ming Dynasty

The relationship between Chenghuang Temple and affiliated Garden is a representative urban historical public space in Shanghai, which is more typical in Qingpu. A large number of Chenghuang Temple and affiliated gardens were built in Qingpu during the Ming and Qing dynasties, of which two Chenghuang Temple and affiliated gardens in Qingpu County and Zhujiajiao Town are the most famous. The construction process of temples and gardens in both regions has gone through twists and turns, and there are many similarities: from the beginning of construction in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, to the destruction caused by war during the Xiantong period, as well as the reconstruction during the Guangxu period, and the new development in contemporary times. With the social change and the development of the times, the space and landscape of the Chenghuang Temple and affiliated garden in the two places have changed one after another, the relationship between affiliated garden has also changed, and the interactive relationship with the urban space has also been reconstructed. This paper focuses on the development of temples and gardens in Qingpu County and Zhujiajiao Town after the Ming Dynasty, and conducts a comparative study of the two from the aspects of historical changes, temple patterns, garden layout and the relationship between temples and gardens. By analyzing the diachronic changes of the landscape space and social functions of temples and gardens, it reveals the transformation of the relationship between temples and gardens with social change, and the construction process of the interactive relationship between urban historical public space and cities such as Chenghuang Temple and affiliated Garden.

Emerging grammars in contemporary Yoruba phonology

AbstractThis article provides a description and an Optimality Theory (OT) analysis of contact-induced changes and variation in contemporary Yoruba syllable structure. The article claims that a major diachronic change has occurred in the syllable structure of Yoruba phonology due to its continued contact with English, resulting in the invention, preservation, and hypercorrection of clusters and codas. I characterize this change in terms of OT constraint re-ranking (Miglio and Moren 2003) and assess the resulting synchronic variation against the indexed constraint approach of Itô and Mester (1995a, b, 1999), the ranked-winners approach of Coetzee (2004), the partial-order co-phonology of Anttila (1997), and the Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) model of Goldwater and Johnson (2003). I show that none of these approaches is able to account independently for the categorical, gradient, and lexically conditioned variation that characterize the contemporary Yoruba syllable structure, but rather that a MaxEnt model augmented with lexical indexation is the most economical model that fits the Yoruba data accurately.

Using bone technology and ZooMS to understand indigenous use of marine mammals at Iita, Northwest Greenland

The site of Iita in northwestern Greenland had near-continual occupation from 1000 CE to the mid-twentieth century, which presents an unparalleled opportunity to examine diachronic changes in the use of marine mammals for food and raw material resources by Pre-Inuit (Late Dorset) and Inuit–Inughuit—two culturally distinct Indigenous groups. Limited wood in High Arctic environments necessitated the use of antler, bone, and ivory for tool making. Choices in the selection and processing of osseous material reflect changes in the way these two groups used the same resources. However, modification of osseous material during the toolmaking process is often to such an extent that few diagnostic features remain for species identification. Here, we include Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) to identify typically indeterminate pieces of manufacturing debris from preserved collagen. The minimally destructive extraction technique using polishing films had a 99% success rate. The results suggest that selection of raw materials from certain marine mammals, particularly narwhal, by toolmakers at Iita was more frequent than previously understood through traditional faunal analysis alone. There is a paucity of narwhal from the Pre-Inuit (Late Dorset) assemblage, which contrasts starkly with the high frequency of narwhal in the Inuit–Inughuit assemblage. We demonstrate the importance of combining the analysis of bone-tool manufacturing debris with traditional dietary faunal remains to improve our understanding of resource use in coastal environments.

Shell noun phrases in scientific writing: A diachronic corpus-based study on research articles in chemical engineering

A key feature of scientific writing is the use of shell noun phrases to turn human experiences into abstract entities. This paper reports on a diachronic study of shell noun phrases in 120 chemical engineering research articles over a span of 40 years, focusing on their lexico-grammatical patterns, functional categories and alternative expressions. A corpus-based analysis revealed a significant decline of cataphoric shell noun constructions, a substantial decline in discourse and cognition shell noun phrases and concomitant changes in the frequencies of alternative constructions (i.e., reporting clauses). These observed patterns of shell noun use can be explained by the joint influences of a general move toward greater authorial visibility in the academic writing of hard disciplines, disciplinary developments specific to chemical engineering, the informalization of academic discourse in response to the perceived need for knowledge and identity negotiation, and the functional interrelationships among various linguistic resources. They demonstrate that diachronic changes to academic writing are contextually embedded and respond to discipline-internal developments, shifting epistemologies, larger social changes, and the versatility of linguistic resources.

Analyzing Trends in Material Culture Evolution—a Case Study of Gravettian Points from Lower Austria and Moravia

Identifying, analyzing, and explaining trends in the development of material culture is one of the major concerns in prehistoric archaeology. The traditional recording of data in typologies, however, is not optimal for answering the question of diachronic change because typological data capture variability poorly and are often incompatible with multivariate statistics. To overcome these problems, we present PyREnArA (Python-R-Environment for Artifact Analysis), a trait-based tool that allows for a systematic recording of diversity and variability in a way that is applicable to quantitative analysis and multivariate statistics. Using Gravettian assemblages from Lower Austria and Moravia as a case study, we analyze changes in the morphology as well as the design of lithic projectiles and statistically determine the amount of variation that correlates with the progression of time. We identify a slow trend towards slenderer and more pointed projectiles and a shift from laterally to latero-frontally hafted implements. Most of the analyzed traits, however, appear not to experience selective pressure and seem to be unrelated to the passage of time. We discuss these results with regard to different scales of selection, in particular individual choice vs. macroevolutionary group selection over longer periods of time and thus beyond the realm of individual intend, and we raise questions for future research.

False Friends in Interpreting: the case of English, French and Latvian

False friends are the result of language interference on a lexical level. They have been studied in various language combinations and from various aspects, often resulting in different classifications and subtypes. The paper highlights the issues related to false friends from English and French into Latvian in the interpreting scene and considers the current lexical and semantic processes in the Latvian language. Research shows that the number of deceptive loans in Latvian has increased considerably during this century. The diachronic change of false friends may reflect the need for updated lexicographic resources on false friends, since they are an important tool for distinguishing them. However, false friends also exist on an idiomatic level. The discourse on false friends has been assessed through an analysis of a survey that was delivered to Latvian interpreters working in European Union institutions and in the Latvian local market. The study and conclusions may be of interest to linguists, interpreters and translators as well as language teachers and learners.

The Transmission of Vowel Harmony and Vowel Disharmony: An Iterated Learning Study

Substantive bias affects phonological acquisition in a way that learners may more readily learn phonetically motivated patterns. Some previous experimental work has proved the effect of substantive bias in a synchronic context, whereas how the bias influences diachronic changes has hardly been studied. This paper investigates the role of substantive bias in phonological transmission. We employed the iterated learning paradigm to compare the transmissions of two artificial languages exhibiting vowel harmony (phonetically natural) or vowel disharmony (phonetically unnatural). In general, participants performed equally well in the two conditions, and the proportions of the two patterns showed a similar decreasing tendency over generations, suggesting no bias effect in the process of language transmission.

The diachronic change of research article abstract difficulty across disciplines: a cognitive information-theoretic approach

Text difficulty refers to the ease with which a text can be read and understood, and the difficulty of research article abstracts has long been a hot topic. Previous studies have found that research article abstracts are difficult to read in general and that abstracts have gradually become more and more difficult. However, the widely used measurements, such as FRE and SMOG, have long been criticized in that they use only simplistic and surface-level indicators as proxies for complex cognitive processes of reading, and the sophisticated cognitive theory and Natural Language Processing/machine learning-based methods seem not that easy to use and interpret. A theoretically sound and methodologically neat measurement of text difficulty should be called for. Besides, the diachronic changes of abstract difficulty across disciplines have been under-researched. To address these issues, this study adopted a cognitive information-theoretic approach to investigate the diachronic change of text difficulty of research article abstracts across the areas of natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. 1890 abstracts were sampled over a period of 21 years, and two indexes, i.e. entropy from information theory and mean dependency distance from cognitive science, were employed for the calculation of cognitive encoding/decoding difficulty. The results show that in general, the cognitive encoding difficulty of abstracts has been increasing in the past two decades, while the cognitive decoding difficulty of abstracts has been decreasing. Regarding the disciplinary variations, the humanities show no significant diachronic change in encoding difficulty, and the social sciences show no significant diachronic change in decoding difficulty. These phenomena can be attributed to the traits of abstracts, the nature of academic knowledge, the cognitive mechanism in human languages and the features of different disciplines. This study has implications for the innovations in theories and methods of measurement of text difficulty, as well as an in-depth understanding of the disciplinary variations in academic writing and the essence of research article abstracts for research article writers, readers, the scientific community, and academic publishers.

Gender and Age Differences on the Acoustic Analysis of Stops in Jeju Korean

The study explores the acoustic properties of stops produced by Korean speakers of Jeju and examines how they differ by comparing VOT, F0, and H1-H2 in terms of speaker gender and age. The findings indicated that as for the VOT, the lax stops increase while the aspirated stops decrease as speakers get younger. In particular, a significant change in the aspirated stops was observed for the middle-aged female speakers. For the F0, the middle-aged adult groups showed a significant difference between the lax and the aspirated stops than in any other groups, especially for the female speakers. This implies that middle-aged female speakers complement VOT with F0 when discriminating the lax from the aspirated stops. The unique acoustic characteristics that appear for the middle-aged female speakers can be explained as a temporary phenomenon, not a diachronic change. In addition to VOT and F0, it is worth noting that H1-H2 could be employed as an acoustic cue for the classification of stops. The current study suggests that the acoustic properties observed in Jeju Korean should be interpreted through sociophonetic perspectives, and in particular, the acoustic changes in the aspirated stops are worthy of notice.

Postlabial raising and paradigmatic leveling in A’ingae: A diachronic study from the field

This paper discusses and analyzes the variation between ai and ɨi in A’ingae(or Cofán, an Amazonian isolate, ISO 639-3: con) by comparing the data reported in Borman’s (1976) dictionary with contemporary productions. In Borman (1976), ai does not generally appear after labial consonants; the distribution of ɨi is not restricted. In some modern productions, postlabial ai is allowed when the diphthong crosses a morpheme boundary (a + i). I propose that Borman’s (1976) distribution of ai and ɨi is a consequence of a diachronic change of ai to ɨi after labial consonants (* ai > ɨi /B _). The contemporary distribution reflects paradigm leveling and contact-induced replacement: Borman’s (1976) ɨi corresponds to contemporary ai if a is present in another related form. In novel productively-formed words, the availability of postlabial raising is speaker-specific. The proposed sound change of postlabial raising (*ai > ɨi /B _) is unusual and lacks obvious phonetic motivation. I speculate that postlabial raising reflects postlabial rounding (*ai > * ui /B _) opacified by subsequent unconditioned unrounding and centralizing of the back round vowel (* u > ɨ).

Chinese synthetic verbs: a further challenge to manner/result complementarity on the basis of lexical root meaning analysis

Abstract This paper introduces Chinese synthetic verbs and analyses their contributions to debates in manner/result complementarity studies and cognitive typology studies. Chinese synthetic verbs simultaneously express manner information and path/result information, but encode them into separate root slots under Beavers and Koontz-Garboden’s (2012. Manner and result in the roots of verbal meaning. Linguistic Inquiry 43(3). 331–369) scopal modifier test, so they differ from English “manner+result verbs” and further challenge the manner/result complementarity hypothesis. Synthetic verbs followed by redundant path/result verbs constitute double-framing structures that twice encode the framing information, and the non-motion case, i.e., the “synthetic verb+result verb” structure, supplements Croft et al.’s (2010. Revising Talmy’s typological classification of complex event constructions. In Hans C. Boas (ed.), Contrastive studies in construction grammar, vol. 10, 201–235. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company) classification that only includes the motion case, so that Chinese synthetic verbs complement the discussion on double-framing structures. This paper thereby further falsifies the manner/result complementarity hypothesis and provides an overall illustration of the double-framing structure in cognitive typology. This paper also illustrates the diachronic changes of manner, which might be universal and await further investigation.