Diachronic Distribution Research Articles

Doctoral Theses on Foreign Languages in Andalusia (2010-2021): A Gender Analysis

The aim of this article is to study the production of doctoral theses on foreign languages, from our point of view as Spanish speakers, conducted in Andalusia from 2010 to 2021 in order to collect the total number of dissertations and the diachronic distribution; to describe the production per universities, authors and directors according to the gender; and to gather the descriptors most used. Results show that, during the period 2010 to 2021, Andalusian public universities recorded 266 dissertations on FL. The annual average is of 22.16 doctoral theses per year. The representation of women in the authorship of dissertations is 175 (65.78 %), as opposed to 91 men (34.22 %). The participation in the direction of such PhD theses is 51.45 % for women and 48.55 % for men. In accordance with the composition of the direction, doctoral theses were supervised in equal percentage by both only women and (41.35 %) and only men (41.35 %). Mixed direction reached 17.29 %. The amount of 117 different descriptors was gathered. The most used keyword is translation and interpreting (22.7 %). In conclusion, a decrease in the doctoral production on FL was found at Andalusian universities as of 2016. The authorship reveals that FL is a feminised field. In addition, it has been confirmed that mixed co-directions are unusual in this area.

On the use ofsì?(‘yes?’) as invariant follow-up in Italian

AbstractFollow-ups are elliptical interrogative forms typically constituting an utterance in their own right. They are used to signal attention to the interlocutor, to encourage them to continue or as a reply to a call. This paper investigates the invariant follow-upsì?(‘yes?’) in Italian and it argues that it represents a case of pragmatic language change. To this end, it investigates the diachronic distribution, collocation and contexts of usage ofsì?in a variety of language sources in relation to plausible, equivalent expressions (i.e.,dimmianddica[‘tell me’]). The analysis will show that since its earliest record of use in films in 1960, the frequency of occurrence of this form has dramatically increased to the point that, today, it is the preferred device. The study will also provide solid evidence of positive correlations between the use ofyes?in English language audio-visual products and the use ofsì?in scripted and real-use Italian, strongly suggesting that the marker would in fact be a case of pragmatic borrowing from English.

The Habitual ‘Saber + Infinitive’ in South American Spanish

The present paper aims to describe both synchronic and diachronic distributions of the habitual aspectual periphrasis ‘saber + infinitive’ in the varieties of Spanish spoken in the South American continent. The data used for the present analysis come from the Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual and the Corpus del Español del Siglo XXI.

Expressing the Day of the Month in Biblical Hebrew: A Diachronic Perspective

Biblical Hebrew (henceforth BH), like most languages, possesses two different kinds of numerals, cardinals, e.g., sheloshah (three) and ordinals, e.g., shelishi (third). While BH can generate a cardinal of any size, the ordinal paradigm in BH only goes up to ten, and there is no morphological or syntactic mechanism for combining ordinals to express higher numbers. BH compensates for its lack of higher ordinals by employing ordinal numerals in dedicated syntactic constructions. The present study is a diachronic corpus-based analysis of the syntax of one kind of cardinal phrase with ordinal meaning, the day-of-the-month expression. This study takes the syntactic and semantic accounts in Rothstein and Moshavi (2021) as its points of departure, and includes a construction not discussed in that publication. The study examines the synchronic and diachronic distributions of four constructions that account for nearly all occurrences of cardinal constructions with ordinal meaning: the appositional phrase (AP), the reduplicative construct phrase (RCP), the construct phrase (CP), and the bare numeral phrase (BN). The data presented reveals noteworthy developments in day-of-the-month expressions in Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH) that are also reflected in the extra-biblical Hebrew corpora of the Second Temple period. These results establish the syntactic expression of ordinality as a topic of significance for the broader endeavour of characterising the linguistic features of exilic and Second Temple Hebrew.

Διερευνώντας τη διαχρονική εξέλιξη των συνδετικών της Ελληνικής: η περίπτωση του AΝ ΚΑΙ

The study examines the diachrony of the concessive connective ‘ αν και ’ in Medieval and Early Modern Greek. It is illustrated that the concessive conditional ‘ αν και ’, albeit present in the language since Ancient Greek, met with a clear decline in usage during the Medieval Greek period. From the 16 th century on ‘ αν και ’ starts being attested abundantly again and, apart from expressing the concessive conditional meaning, it has also moved towards becoming a purely concessive marker. In the explanation provided here, it is demonstrated that the odd diachronic distribution can be well-understood by appealing to constructional networks and formal factors as motives for grammatical change.

Diachronic Distribution of Elemental Ordering in English

ABSTRACT English elemental ordering in a non-canonical word order incorporates preposing, postposing and elemental reversal. This paper intends to explore how these types of elemental ordering are distributed during the last two centuries by employing the Corpus of Historical American English or COHA. The findings demonstrate that preposing has been increasing apparently but still in its inceptive phase; postposing, subsuming existential there and presentational there, generally keeps plateauing with existential there dominating presentational there; and elemental reversal experiences a trend of gradual decreasing, which is attributed to the dominance in occurrences of passive with a by phrase construction over those of inversion. This research provides us with a corpus linguistic insight of exploring elemental ordering, which distinguishes itself from other researches focusing on information status.

Cenomanian (early Late Cretaceous) ammonoid faunas of western Europe. Part I: Biochronology (unitary associations) and diachronism of datums

Biochronological data of Cenomanian ammonoid faunas of Western Europe are analyzed for three well-documented basins: the Vocontian Basin in southeastern France, the Mnster Basin in Germany, and the Anglo-Paris Basin. A taxonomically standardized data set is constructed for these three basins and includes more than one hundred species and is analyzed with the deterministic Unitary Association Method. Data for each basin are first processed separately, thus yielding three regional biochronological zonations. Then, the three regional sequences are processed together as a three- section data set for the construction of the inter-basin sequence. The latter comprises 24 unitary associations grouped in eight zones for the Cenomanian Stage. These results take into account species that co-occur in time and space (real coexistence), those that only co-occur in time (virtual coexistence), and those that do not co-occur in space nor in time (exclusion of chronological significance). At the paleogeographical scale of Western Europe, this new zonation is in good agreement with the widely used standard zonation, but its resolution is three times higher. This demonstrates the benefits of applying the Unitary Association Method, even to a taxonomic group which is traditionally acknowledged as one of the leading group in dating Mesozoic marine rocks. It also highlights the variable completeness and resolution of the faunal record through space and time, and reveals that a substantial number of the taxa (47%, inclusive of some indexes) have a diachronous distribution across these three Cenomanian basins. However, even with such an enhanced time resolution, no preferred orientation of the diachronous taxa emerges, suggesting that none of these basins seemed to have functioned as a paleobiogeographical source or sink. The absence of any preferred direction of the diachronism of the datums is most likely explained by two, non-mutually exclusive causes: either a random distribution of the incompleteness of the faunal record and/or a common paleobiogeographical history of the faunas in the three basins.

A corpus-based study of interpersonal metaphors of modality in English

ABSTRACT This article conducts a COHA-based study on the diachronic and synchronic distributions of interpersonal metaphors of modality. The diachronic research finds that the metaphorization of modality occurs towards two directions, one being from the implicit orientation to the explicit orientation, and the other being from the subjective orientation to the objective orientation. The synchronic research finds that interpersonal metaphors of modality are genre sensitive, but this sensitivity is determined by the shift from the subjective orientation to the objective orientation rather than from the implicit orientation to the explicit orientation. The findings show that interpersonal metaphors of modality arise from the transcategorization within the semantic domains, and it is objectification rather than explicitation that is the characteristic feature of the relatively more technical non-fiction texts.

Human resilience to Holocene climate changes inferred from rodent middens in drylands of northwestern Patagonia (Argentina)

We reconstruct the Holocene vegetation, climate, and archaeological history for drylands of northwestern Patagonia, Argentina, based on multiproxy analysis (plant macrofossil, pollen, and parasites) of rodent middens integrated with a database of 14C dates associated with human occupations. The local scale corresponds to the Huenul paleoecological and archaeological locality, emplaced in north-western Patagonia (Neuquén Province, Argentina). The rodent midden record from the Huenul series reflects subtle vegetation changes driven by climatic variability at millennial timescale. Drier than present environmental conditions prevailed during the early Holocene (10,500–9400 cal yr BP), peaking during the mid-Holocene (9200–5500 cal yr BP), when wetter than present conditions established during the late Holocene (4400–2500 cal yr BP). These environmental and climatic dynamics agree with other paleoclimatic records from northern Patagonia, suggesting the winter precipitation dynamics related to the Southern Westerlies as a common driver. The diachronic distribution of anthropogenic radiocarbon dates from the western area of the South American Arid Diagonal between 32°–40°S conforms to a fitted exponential model of steady background population growth, not suggesting significant demographic changes that may have been the result of the impact of climate change. This record indicates that these human populations coped successfully with aridity, particularly during the mid-Holocene. These findings reinforce the need to integrate multi-scalar interdisciplinary analyses to assess the impact of climate change in human societies.

Brazilian Portuguese <i>in-situ wh</i>-interrogatives between rhetoric and change

Previous studies of the historical development of partial interrogatives have postulated a change from contexts in which the proposition of the interrogative has been explicitly mentioned in the previous discourse, to contexts in which the proposition is discourse-new. The present paper explores whether the historical increase in the usage frequency of Brazilian Portuguese in-situ wh-interrogatives represents the same process. Using data from a large corpus of BP theater texts dated between the 19th and 21st century, several discourse functions of InSituWh are identified, the most frequent of which are cataphorical questions, which serve to either open up a question unrelated to the current question under discussion, or raise further questions about the current question under discussion, and rhetorical questions, which question the validity or relevance of a previously mentioned proposition. Rhetorical questions typically do not trigger a response by the interlocutor and are used with psychological verbs and morphologically simple interrogative pronouns. A statistical analysis of the diachronic distribution of InSituWh in the data reveals an increase in the usage frequency of InSituWh especially in contexts in which the proposition is discourse-new. However, the results also indicate that this increase is not due to a grammatical change of InSituWh but rather reflects a consolidation of the rhetorical question function of InSituWh within the genre of theater plays.

The Great Complement Shift and the role of understood subjects: The case of fearful

Abstract This article reports on a corpus-based study of diachronic change and constructional competition in the system of English complementation, with a focus on variation in non-finite complements of the adjective fearful. Fearful occurs with prepositional (of -ing) subject-controlled gerunds and with to-infinitives, which can further be distinguished into subject extraposition, subject control, and tough-constructions. Recent decades show a drastic decline of the to-infinitival patterns, concomitant to the loss of one of the senses of fearful. We examine the diachronic distribution and competition of the two construction pairs that show functional overlap, i.e. tough-constructions and extraposition constructions on the one hand, and infinitival and gerundial subject-control patterns on the other. This allows us to show the import of the ‘Great Complement Shift’ in the face of constructional attrition and to investigate new principles motivating the choice for either the to-infinitival or the gerundial subject-control construction. More specifically, the study provides further evidence for the ‘Choice Principle’, which involves the (lack of) agentivity of the understood subject in the event described by the lower clause. In this way, the study adds new explanatory factors and descriptive insights to our knowledge of the broader diachronic change known as the Great Complement Shift.

From linguistic innovation to language change

Abstract This study investigates the diachrony of the Italian expression non c’è problema ‘no problem’ when used as a response marker (e.g., Tottie 1991; Ward 2006) to establish if it represents a case of language change (Milroy, 1992: 171). If on the one hand, the expression was indeed reported to be a neologism by Radtke in 1990, a careful exploration of the relevant literature on the other has revealed that a diachronic, quantitative and pragmatic investigation of its distribution has not been conducted yet. Methodologically, the study conducts lexicographic, quantitative and qualitative analyses over a range of historical and contemporary dictionaries and corpora and it performs statistical significance tests, such as the Log Likelihood and the Fisher’s exact test. The results will reveal not only that this marker started to be used in 1977, but also that today, it is the response marker preferred by language users, thus qualifying as a case of language change. Furthermore, by analysing the diachronic distribution of no problem in English, the article will also explore the possibility that English may have been the source language for such change.

Mapping Miskitu subsistence land use change in Concejo Territorial Katainasta, Honduras

Understanding the large-scale spatial patterns of natural resource use in indigenous homelands is critical for guaranteeing indigenous peoples’ ancestral land rights, designing effective conservation policies, and promoting good governance in Central America. However, few studies have mapped the diachronic distribution of indigenous communities’ resource use in these areas. Here we present a case study describing the spatial functionality of the Concejo Territorial Katainasta (CTK)--the first indigenous territorial jurisdiction in Honduras to receive an intercommunity land title. Two participatory research mapping (PRM) studies--the first in 1992 and the second in 2014-15--mapped the spatial patterns of Miskitu subsistence activities in CTK. The results were subsequently converted into a geographic information system (GIS) that allowed for spatial and temporal comparisons of Miskitu subsistence livelihoods in CTK before and after the titling process. Here we focus on the spatial parameters of three Miskitu subsistence livelihoods: agriculture, hunting and fishing. Analysis of results suggests that 1) the 2014-15 subsistence use areas for Miskitu communities in CTK have not diverged dramatically from those of the 1992 study, and 2) the new legal boundaries of CTK adequately encompass the subsistence use areas of its constituent communities and recognize the historical overlaps in Miskitu resource use and tenure patterns.

A Corpus-based Study of Textual Metaphor in English

Following the criterion of double functionality for identifying grammatical metaphor, this research investigates the diachronic and genre distributions of two of the five types of textual metaphor proposed by He et al.: conjunctionalization of conjunctive adverbial groups and prepositionalization of hypotactic conjunction groups. Research based on COHA reveals that: (1) the conjunctionalization of conjunctive adverbial groups agrees with the principle of unidirectional transfer of grammatical metaphor, and during the recent century conjunctive adverbial groups have been experiencing a trend of conjunctionalization; (2) conjunctive prepositions, however, are not directly transferred from hypotactic conjunction groups but are induced by the gerundalization of present participles; and (3) hypotactic conjunction groups will transfer to zero hypotactic conjunction groups, resulting in a new member of textual metaphor. Research based on COCA and BNC shows that both conjunctionalization of conjunctive adverbial groups and prepositionalization of hypotactic conjunction groups tend to occur in informal texts. This confirms the point of view that paratactic clause complexes are favoured in informal genres such as Spoken and Fiction and that simple clauses win out in formal texts due to the wide use of nominalization of verbal groups and verbalization of conjunction groups.

Rethinking the Grammaticalization of Future be going to: A Corpus-based Approach

The development of future be going to has been widely studied as an instance of grammaticalization. However, the present researches are limited to qualitative description and hence lack quantitative verification. This paper intends to conduct a corpus-based quantitative study on the grammaticalization of be going to to investigate the realization time of its full grammaticalization from (1) the application of mental verbs, (2) the appearance of non-animate subjects and (3) the use of passive voice in the corpus of Google Books and the diachronic distribution of be going to during the 200 years from the 1810s to 2000s in COHA. The findings include (1) the full grammaticalization of be going to is realized at the late 17th century, (2) the diachronic distribution of future be going to has been increasing compared with that of future will, and (3) future be going to belongs to the grammatical category of modal verbs.

The Homeric poems in Romanian attire. A diachronic analysis (II)

In this article we continue the diachronic analysis of the Romanian versions of the Homeric poems, cf. Bârlea (2015c). The triple perspective of the approach is being maintained: a) the evolution of international Homeric studies, which facilitates evermore detailed and exact editions of the Homeric texts; b) the evolution of the literary Romanian language in the period considered (1837–2012), with some references to older periods; c) the differences between translational choices. This time we are concerned with more distinct domains in the language structure of the translations—phonological-morphological and lexical-semantic aspects. Special attention is paid to linguistic localizations, closely linked to the mentalities and historical realities of the Romanian space of circulation of these successive translations from Homer. In the first case, we have concentrated on the problems of orthography and stress, while in the second we have considered not only the diachronic distributions of word forms and meanings, but also their diastratic and diatopic location.

A Corpus-based Approach to the Genre and Diachronic Distributions of English Absolute Clauses

Traditional grammarians generally hold that English absolute clauses are formal and infrequent. This article is intended to carry out a corpus-based quantitative research on the genre and diachronic distributions of English absolute clauses. We hypothesize that the distribution of absolute clauses in English is significantly different across genres and the diachronic distribution of each function type of absolute clauses in different genres is homogeneous. The British National Corpus (BNC)-based genre distribution research shows that absolute clauses are not frequently used in both the informal spoken texts and the formal academic texts; rather they are mostly used in the narrative texts of fiction. The Corpus of Historical American English (COHA)-based research shows that over the span of 200 years, the total number of absolute clauses tends to increase but not decrease. This is especially true to absolute clauses of attendant circumstances. Although the number of absolute clauses of clausal adjuncts is decreasing, absolute clauses are by no means disappearing but levelling off during the recent five decades, for absolute clauses of clausal adjuncts have been becoming stereotyped expressions both grammatically and semantically.

Where do they come from?

Much work has been done to explore the origin and functions of the Chinese “Shi…De” construction, but there are still some problems left unsolved. Firstly, there is no consensus on what a syntactic category the “Shi…De” construction belongs to. Second, no agreement has been reached with regard to the functions of De and Shi in the “Shi…De” construction. Third, the reason why Chinese chooses “Shi…De” to assume the function of focusing is not clear. Moreover, though previous studies have discussed the origin and the diachronic distribution of this construction, the mechanism for its generation or its genesis is left untouched. This paper discussed the Chinese “Shi…De” construction from a synchronic perspective. The findings include: (1) The Chinese “Shi…De” constructions are essentially assertive sentences which relate to the grammaticalization of Shi; (2) De as an empty word is a particle at the phrase level and a functor together with a Shi at the sentence level; (3) The “Shi…De” construction is endowed with its own semantic function; (4) The mechanism for forming Chinese cleft sentences is analogy.

Dialectal and diachronic distribution of case forms in Lithuanian pain-verb constructions

This article deals with the variation in case marking in ᴘᴀɪɴ-vᴇʀʙ ᴄoɴsᴛʀᴜᴄᴛɪoɴs, where in Lithuanian one finds (1) the standard language variant: accusative marked body-part and (2) the dialectal variant: nominative marked body-part. In this article, a clear distinction is made between ᴘᴀɪɴ-sᴘᴇᴄɪꜰɪᴄ vᴇʀʙs, verbs which originally denote pain like e.g. skaudėti, sopėti and ᴅᴇʀɪvᴇᴅ ᴘᴀɪɴ vᴇʀʙs, verbs borrowed from other semantic classes. This study focuses on the ᴘᴀɪɴ-sᴘᴇᴄɪꜰɪᴄ vᴇʀʙs. A study on the dialectal distribution of this variation and its occurrence in old texts is conducted with the aims: (1) to answer the question which construction is the older, (2) to give a clear picture of the dialectal and geographical distribution of this case variation and finally (3) to demonstrate that dialectal data can be used effectively and reliably to investigate diachronic processes and thus contribute to a deeper understanding of the relationship between synchronic variation and diachronic change. The results of the dialectal part of the study reveal that nominative marked body-parts are found in a much wider area than only in Northwestern Lithuania as has sometimes been claimed. They are prevalent in Northwestern Lithuania and also in Eastern Lithuania, but found in all regions and not dialectally restricted. Accusative marking is prevalent in South and West Aukštaitian, which might explain why accusative was selected as the standard form in the Lithuanian Standard Language. The findings in the old texts reveal that nominative is more prevalent in older texts, with only very few examples of accusative marking. This was noticeable in both religious texts from the 16th and 17th c. as well as in old dictionaries dating from before the 20th. c. The findings of this study provide evidence that nominative was the original case marking of body-parts with ᴘᴀɪɴ-sᴘᴇᴄɪꜰɪᴄ vᴇʀʙs.

The origin and control of mega-gullies in Kinshasa (D.R. Congo)

This study aims to investigate the relation between mega-gully (>5m width) distribution and urbanization in Kinshasa (D.R. Congo), to establish what governs mega-gully location and plan form and to illustrate the concepts behind mega-gully treatment. For this purpose, the diachronic distribution of mega-gullies has been mapped in Kinshasa. All mega-gullies have been reported in ArcGis 9.3 on the orthorectified SPOT 2007 image. A newly elaborated DEM enables the mega-gullies to be placed in their natural topographical context. The GIS inventory on the SPOT 2006/2007 anaglyph indicates the mega-gully situation in the high town of Kinshasa 5years ago: 308 mega-gullies with a cumulated length of 94.7km, a mean drainage density of 0.4kmkm−2 and an average width and depth of 17m and 6m respectively. On the WorldView 1 (WV1) coverage, the number of mega-gullies has more than doubled between 2007 and 2010 from 160 to 334. The study shows that mega-gullies only develop within the urbanized perimeter of the high town of Kinshasa and only 5 to 10years after incipient urbanization. The study also indicates that neither the location, the plan form or the downslope course of mega-gullies in Kinshasa are controlled by the natural topography. Forty-three point eight percent of the mega-gullies in Kinshasa are ‘axial’, occupying urban structures which function as artificial runoff drainage lines: roads, tarred or not, with or without side-road trenches, gutters in all forms and materials from concrete to sand, also foot paths and further all artificial runoff drainage lines. The study reveals that every mega-gully is directly or indirectly induced by human activities, but that every gully also finally ends to grow after an initial phase of sudden development. Mega-gully treatment follows two principles, often combined. The first is to stop the alimentation of the mega-gully head with water. The second includes a complete stabilization of the channel and walls inside the mega-gully. This study emphasizes that gully prevention can basically be achieved by control of the runoff discharges in the artificial stream network, as well as beside the roads.