Diachronic Study Research Articles

To compound or not to compound?

Abstract A characteristic trait of Vedic as well as Classical Sanskrit is the use of nominal compounds. Diachronic linguistic studies have observed an increasing use of compounds in Vedic texts. It is also generally accepted that compounds should be read as syntactic phrases and that they can be equivalent to subordinate clauses. However, it has not been studied so far whether and to which degree compounds replaced competing syntactic structures such as relative clauses or participial constructions over time. Using data from a syntactic treebank of Vedic and early Classical Sanskrit, this paper addresses the questions whether compounding replaced equivalent constructions and which textual and sociolinguistic factors may have driven this process. The paper studies compounds used as adnominal and adverbial modifiers, and compares their frequency distributions with those of subordinate clauses, adjectives, converbs, and participial constructions. Since the number of relevant cases is limited and the sociolinguistic factors driving the use of compounds are not well understood, the observed distributions are modeled with a hierarchical Bayesian framework that extracts an optimal subset from a set of possible explanatory factors (chronology, geography, poetry/prose alternation, genre, and school affiliation of Vedic texts).

Word order change in German infinitival complementation

Abstract The present article discusses whether processing factors might play a role in the reduction of word order variability in German infinitival complements of control verbs, connecting evidence from a diachronic corpus study to processing considerations and psycholinguistic findings. We show that intraposition, a linearization pattern that has been claimed to be costly in comprehension due to both center-embedding and temporary ambiguity, became less frequent in language use over time. Findings from language production experiments show that present-day German speakers avoid producing intraposition patterns even following repeated exposure to this pattern. Taken together, our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that processing factors can influence the distribution of word order variants. Looking at the diachronic dimension, however, reveals that the effect of processing factors can be modulated by sociolinguistic factors and the impact of language modality.

From Supernatural to Ornamental: Black Elder (Sambucus nigra L., Family Adoxaceae) in Sweden.

Black elder, Sambucus nigra, is a non-native but now partly naturalized shrub in Sweden; it has been cultivated here at least since the Middle Ages. Previously, this plant was associated with a supernatural being to whom sacrifices were made, and its fruits were used in folk medicine and wood for fuel and crafts. Traditional economic uses vanished with industrialization and urbanization and black elder was mostly planted as an ornamental shrub in urban parks. At the end of the 1970s, however, it made a sudden comeback: city dwellers started to gather flowers to make a refreshing non-alcoholic cordial. This diachronic study of Sambucus nigra spanning over a millennium reflects various attitudes and uses within the context of a changing human society. In addition to the simple but popular cordial, side dishes and desserts made of its fragrant flowers are becoming increasingly popular in modern Swedish cuisine. Globally it has also been (re)discovered and the utilization of this plant is growing: its flowers are used to add flavor to soft drinks, salads, desserts and various dishes; berries are used for medicine and in cooking, especially with meats, and its future uses seem to be limited only by human imagination.

THE RESEARCH POTENTIAL OF ASSOCIATIVE LEXICOGRAPHY: PROSPECTS OF DIACHRONIC RESEARCH IN KAZAKHSTAN

The article describes the history of the formation of world associative lexicography, examines the typology and electronic databases of various associative dictionaries, their meaning and purpose in the context of psycholinguistic studies of the content and ethnocultural specificity of the linguistic consciousness of ethnic groups; gives an interpretation of the terminological apparatus used in the study of cognitive and mental processes of speech activity using associative techniques. Using the example of comparing the contents of two Kazakh associative dictionaries – the Soviet (KRAD-78) and the post-reform period (KAD-2014) – the dynamics of changes in the content of the nuclear zones of linguistic consciousness of two generations of students, participants in mass associative experiments, is demonstrated, which is convincing evidence of the serious research potential of associative lexicography and predicts the prospects of this kind of diachronic associative research. Based on the predicted scientific and socio-cultural significance of diachronic comparative associative studies, the article proposes to create another associative dictionary, expanding the list of stimulus words from 120 to 1000 in order to obtain an associative thesaurus of the Kazakh language, which will reflect a certain transformation of the linguistic consciousness of the ethnic group, and elements of stability of its central nuclear zones.

Diachronic study of changes in vegetal cover in a mountainous ecosystem by spatial remote sensing: case of the Aures mountains (Algeria)

Diachronic study of changes in vegetal cover in a mountainous ecosystem by spatial remote sensing: case of the Aures mountains (Algeria)

Historical Continuity in the Morphological Marking of Subjectivity? Textual Perspectives on the Origin of English Adverbial "-ly" in Late Old and Early Middle English

In spite of the fact that the Present-Day English “adverbial signature” – the suffix ‑ly – is peculiar to English among the Germanic languages and that its emergence seems to conflict with general tendencies of language change in English – the loss of inflectional endings and the fact that English is otherwise happy to allow zero-derivation – neither the early history of ‑ly in Old and Middle English nor the exact date and reasons for its remarkable spread have been fully understood. Recently, the subjective semantics of adverbs in ‑ly have received considerable attention, in both synchronic and diachronic studies. This claim for a particular subjective (abstract or figurative) meaning of adverbs in ‑ly, however, rests almost exclusively one study, Donner’s lexicographical examination of MED material (1991). This chapter inspects the potential of comprehensive textual studies for the suggested subjective semantics in the early use of ‑ly, focussing on two late Old English translations of the Theodulfi Capitula and the early Middle English poem The Owl and the Nightingale, one of the earliest idiomatic and colloquial English texts.

Framework Proposal: A Semantic Feature Analysis of Kennings to Support Their Role in Aiding Word Retrieval in Oral Old English Poetry

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of kennings’ use in Old English (OE) poetry beyond their rhetorical power, more specifically, their role as mnemonic devices. Generally, kennings are used to refer to a certain entity using a more complex and descriptive way, more than one individual tag. This way of encoding referents seems to carry more than aesthetic value for poets and bards. Seeing as Old English poetry is oral in nature, I believe there is an argument to be made for the use of specific structures that can aid word and context retrieval, especially in longer-form content. As such, kennings would function as anchors, and I argue that they function this way because they contain semantic information that supports word retrieval. The framework for analysing this type of word formation is based on semantic feature analysis, which is a protocol used in the therapy of aphasia and anomia to improve word retrieval in post-stroke patients. Beyond this analysis, this paper will argue for the importance of considering alternate, novel techniques and methodologies for the study of Old English and for the diachronic study of language altogether, hoping to help bridge the gap between different areas of research.

A Diachronic Study on the Study of Cheondogyo’s Publication Media during the Japanese Colonial Period : Focusing on 『Gaebyeok(開闢)』

A Diachronic Study on the Study of Cheondogyo’s Publication Media during the Japanese Colonial Period : Focusing on 『Gaebyeok(開闢)』

Translation of signs and a renewed understanding of the post-pandemic cosmopolis: a diachronic study of street signs in the hybridised area of Guangzhou

ABSTRACT From a translational perspective, the researcher conducts a diachronic study of the changing street signs in one of the hybridised areas in Guangzhou. The street signs in the present study were investigated through an ethnographic process and were compared and discussed in relation to their changing contexts before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings show a decrease in multilingual signs in the area post-pandemic time, which may indicate the influence of the pandemic on international visitors. In contrast, increasing monolingual Chinese signs exhibit the authorities’ reassertion of the dominant ideology and restoration of social order. On the other hand, however, a large number of bilingual and monolingual English signs in multifarious modes, among which many are from the business sectors in the 2023 corpus, may signal the open nature of an export-oriented economy in the area and recovery of international business after the pandemic. The changing translational landscape of the area constructs a gateway for us to renew our understanding of the influence of the pandemic on the cosmopolitan city and the relationship between language practice and the city.

DÎVÂNU LUGÂTİ’T-TÜRK İLE KARŞILAŞTIRMALI ALTAY TÜRKÇESİNDE İKİNCİL UZUN ÜNLÜLERİN VARLIĞI

There are 8 normal /a/, /e/, /ı/, /i/, /o/, /ö/, /ö/, /u/, /ü/ and 8 long vowels /aa/, /ee/, /ıı/, /ii/, /oo/, /öö/, /uu/, /üü/ in Altai Turkish. The frequency of use of /aa/, /ee/, /oo/, /öö/, /uu/, /üü/ is wider, while the frequency of use of /ıı/ and /ii/ is narrower, but there are examples where they are used. Altai Turkish has a significant number of long vowel formations that can be analysed in the historical process. Long vowel is expressed by the fact that the articulation time is longer than the normal vowel. Long vowels, which are handled under two headings according to their formation times, are divided into primary (‘original’) and secondary long vowels. Primary long vowels in Altai Turkish did not continue to exist regularly in the historical process like Yakut Turkish and Turkmen Turkish, but in this study, firstly, the examples of primary long vowels that have been preserved from the past to the present, identified as a result of the scanning study from the Altai Turkish dictionary, have been examined. Secondly, it is aimed to determine the existence of secondary long vowels that have formed as a result of contraction in the word structure in Altai Turkish from the Middle Turkish period to the present day, with the vocabulary found in Dîvânu Lugâti't-Türk. The aim of the study is to determine the secondary long vowels formed in the word as a result of contraction in Altai Turkish. The words identified from Altai Turkish Dictionary and Dîvânu Lugâti't-Türk vocabulary has been detected by using diachronic historical study method and scanning method. Keywords: Altai Turkish, Dîvânu Lugâti't-Türk, long vowels, primary long vowels, secondary long vowels.

A Synchronic and Diachronic Study of Students’ Essays in Italian High Schools: Trends in Length, Complexity, and Referencing

In this work, we explore the use of digital technologies and statistical analysis to monitor how Italian secondary school students’ writing changes over time and how comparisons can be made across different high school types. We analyzed more than 2,000 exam essays written by Italian high school students over 13 years and in five different school types. Four indicators of writing characteristics were considered—text length, text complexity, and two indicators of source use, all extracted using natural language processing tools—which provided insights into students’ citation practices over time and in different school contexts. In particular, we measured the portion of students’ essays that included text from source material as well as the amount of copied text that was not properly referenced. We found that student essays became shorter in length over time while also getting more complex. We also found that the tendency to copy uncited text in the essay decreased. High school curricula predict different writing strategies: essays written by students attending scientific and humanistic high schools are longer and less subject to incorrect citations. We argue that such text analysis enables the study of writing features in high school classes and supports the evaluation of curricula.

In-party love spreads more efficiently than out-party hate in online communities

In this article, we present the findings of a comprehensive longitudinal social network analysis conducted on Twitter across four consecutive election campaigns in Spain, spanning from 2015 to 2019. Our focus is on the discernible trend of increasing partisan and ideological homogeneity within interpersonal exchanges on this social media platform, alongside high levels of networking efficiency measured through average retweeting. This diachronic study allows us to observe how dynamics of party competition might contribute to perpetuating and strengthening network ideological and partisan homophily, creating ‘epistemic bubbles’ in Twitter, yet showing a greater resistance to transforming them into ‘partisan echo-chambers.’ Specifically, our analysis reveals that the rise of a new radical right-wing party (RRP), Vox, has heightened ideological homogeneity among users across the entire ideological spectrum. However, this process has not been uniform. While users aligned with mainstream political parties consistently share content that reinforces in-party affinity, resulting in highly efficient ‘epistemic bubbles,’ the emergence of the RRP has given rise to a distinct group of users associated with the most extreme partisan positions, characterized by a notable proportion of out-partisan hostility content, which has fostered the creation of low-efficient 'partisan echo-chambers.'

Management of Coastline Variability in an Endangered Island Environment: The Case of Noirmoutier Island (France)

This article presents a diachronic study of evolution along the coastline of Noirmoutier Island in France, a sandy shore particularly susceptible to erosion and submersion risks, which are exacerbated by climate change due to two-thirds of its territory being below sea level. The study is based on an analysis of aerial images covering a period of 72 years, divided into five distinct periods: 1950–1974, 1974–1992, 1992–2000, 2000–2010, and 2010–2022. The methodology used combines two complementary approaches: the Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) for taking linear measurements of the erosion and accretion that have taken place along various shorelines, and the surface method to evaluate the amount of surface lost or gained between different shorelines while calculating the uncertainties associated with the obtained results. The overall trend observed between 1950 and 2022 indicates that the Noirmoutier coastline studied has gained surface area (81 hectares) at an average rate of +0.57 ± 0.06 m per year. The article then presents an application of the method developed by Durand and Heurtefeux in 2006 to estimate the future position of the shoreline. A map of the local area is also provided, identifying the areas susceptible to coastal erosion by 2052 and by 2122, in accordance with the provisions of the Climate and Resilience Law adopted in France on 22 August 2021. The results reveal that there are many sources of uncertainty in predicting the future evolution of the shoreline using this methodology. Therefore, it is crucial to consider these uncertainties when planning future coastal management actions and adopting appropriate adaptation methods to counteract unforeseen developments.

Hijabi Muslim Women Representation in COHA between 1820 and 2019: A Diachronic Corpus-Based Study

Hijabi Muslim Women Representation in COHA between 1820 and 2019: A Diachronic Corpus-Based Study

The Movement of slow: From English to Italian and Back Again. A Diachronic Corpus-Based Study

The present study explores the changes in the meaning of the word slow, both in Italian and English, from the beginning of the Slow Food Movement (SFM) up to 2019. Since 1989 and the early days of Carlo Petrini’s SFM, technology has increasingly led people towards multi-tasking in an attempt to save time, while at the same time, back to the past trends are increasingly evident as seen in several other Slow Movements, for example, in catering and hand-made/retro chains. The concept of slowness is becoming a relevant and ethical topic that is often related to what is organic, local and sustainable, leading to the introduction of an anglicism in Italian, but also to a new whole re-semantization of the word slow in English. The primary objective of this study is to explore the semantic changes in the word slow diachronically both in Italian and in English. To this aim, two robust corpora were created, one from the Italian newspaper La Stampa and the other from the British The Guardian. The word slow was analysed within the different newspaper domains exploring frequencies, collocates, and identifying significant “repeated events” (Sinclair 2004: 28) together with their semantic preferences. Results from the diachronic analysis show that through the SFM, the word slow has taken on specific new meanings in Italian, related to the dimensions of ethics, wellbeing, and environmental awareness. These were then partly re-introduced in English. More specifically, the case of reborrowing of slow within the context of movements (slow fashion, slow tourism, etc.) has quite likely been influenced by the Italian SFM. As a matter of fact, this process of reborrowing involves both acquisition and loss in meaning in both languages. This seems to be a relevant phenomenon in a global context of constant linguistic contact where English appears to play a relevant role as a global language.

Denominal conversion verbs and the ‘verb + it’ construction in English

In English, a number of verbs enter a noteworthy, though understudied, combination with a morpheme it, which evidently lacks a referential function. Among these verbs, there are quite a few which were formed from nouns by means of conversion (e.g. to bus it, to au pair it, to verse it, to newspaper it). While some authors assume that the expletive morpheme it in direct-object position functions to enhance a verb’s transitivity, the most recent diachronic study has shown that its influence on transitivity is rather marginal. If transitivization is not the driving force behind the use of the ‘verb + it’ construction, the question as to other functions arises. The aim of this article is to present a new proposal according to which the expletive element is primarily (though not exclusively) an aspectual marker, which, in contrast to the bare verb, expresses telicity (e.g. to bus vs. to bus it). In this function, this element provides the verb it complements with a temporal endpoint. Proceeding from a distinction between (a)telicity and (un)boundedness drawn in the pertinent literature, it will be shown that this endpoint may or may not actually be reached. The aspectual function of the expletive element it is assumed here to co-exist with other functions identified in the few previous works and in the present study. These functions, which are independent of telicity, comprise the expression of necessity, the intensification of activities, the preservation of the verse metre especially in literary texts, and the support of the verbal status of innovative or weakly established denominal conversion verbs.

BILINGUAL ADVERTISING COMMUNICATION IN A DIACHRONIC ASPECT (BASED ON RUSSIAN AND CHINESE ADVERTISING SIGNS IN HARBIN, CHINA)

The article discusses the features of the Russian Chinese pidgin against the background of Russian-Chinese intercultural communication from different points of view in terms of the formation and development of regional cultural linguistics. A diachronic study of bilingual advertising communication based on signboards is carried out from the sociolinguistic and linguistic perspectives. The object of the study is the lexicon of two types of pidgin from Chinese-Russian pidgin dictionaries and the Harbin dialect dictionarу as long as Chinese-Russian bilingual signs in the city of Harbin from 1902 to the present day. The change of the dominant language and translation strategy in bilingual advertising communication is analyzed.

A diachronic study of locative postpositions in Hindi

A diachronic study of locative postpositions in Hindi

SYNCHRONOUS AND DIACHRONIC ANALYSIS OF COMPLEX SUFFIXAL FORMANTS AS A METHOD OF THEIR STUDY

Particular characteristics of suffixal complication, which has an articulated dynamic nature, require the application of synchronous and diachronic approaches to their study. Synchronous and diachronic study of complex formants implies the consideration of the previous historical changes when analysing synchronous states, as well as the study of dynamic processes in the word-formational, lexical and semantic subsystems of a language in determinate historical stages of its development. The method of synchronous and diachronic analysis of word-formation models with genetically complex word-formation affixes is presented by the example of the suffix -nits(a) with an object meaning. Synchronous and diachronic analysis of derived words with the suffix -nits(a), which implies the study of systemic relations between the nouns with the suffix -nits(a) in the Old Russian in the different stages of its development, reveals a genetic connection and a historical interaction of the modern Russian word-formation types with the suffixes -nits(a) and -n(ya), which are close semantically and include the derived words with the meaning of container and premises. The suffix -nits(a) with an object meaning is formed in the suffixal complication models “-n(ya) + -its(a)” in the nomina loci group. During its historical development, an extension of the semantic scope of application of the complex formant -nits(a) is observed, and its meaning transcends the boundaries of the names of premises group. The structural and functional evolvement of a new complex formant is empowered both by the peculiarities of nomina loci derivation and by the analogous influence of structurally and semantically close lexical units. The historical development of the suffix -nits(a) results in the following changes in its relations with the suffix -n(ya): the transition from the motivation relations to the relations of co-derivation, the increased productivity of the new complex formant, its prevalence in the competition with the genetically related suffix -n(ya).

The Dual Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare: Balancing Advancements with Ethical and Operational Challenges

The synchronic and diachronic study of the evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) unveils one prominent fact that its effect can be traced in almost all fields such as healthcare industry. The growth is perceived holistically in software, hardware implementation, or application in these various fields. As the title suggests, the review will highlight the impact of AI on healthcare possibly in all dimensions including precision medicine, diagnostics, drug development, automation of the process, etc., explicating whether AI is a blessing or a curse or both. With the availability of enough data and analysis to examine the topic at hand, however, its application is still functioning in quite early stages in many fields, the present work will endeavour to provide an answer to the question. This paper takes a close look at how AI is transforming areas such as diagnostics, precision medicine, and drug discovery, while also addressing some of the key ethical challenges it brings. Issues like patient privacy, safety, and the fairness of AI decisions are explored to understand whether AI in healthcare is a positive force, a potential risk, or perhaps both.