Cagliari, Italy  15-18 September 2003

ALT V Conference

 

 

Christiane Marchello-Nizia & Anna Sörés

Compared chronologies of change of type: how to go from one type to another.
 anna.sores@net-up.com
 

 

This presentation aims at renewing the reflection on word order changes, in particular from SOV to SVO. Can diachronic typology find pathways of type changes ?

 

Since Greenberg (1963, 1966), the studies of word order typology have taken different directions : some specialists of diachrony (Lehmann 1974, Vennemann and Bartsch 1973) have proposed theories concerning the order of the utterance’s main constituents, while others (Adams 1975, Bauer 1995) have worked on the changes that took place at the syntagmatic levels within specific languages. Hawkins (1983) has centered his work on implicational universals, while Dryer (1992) focused on the problem of the correlation between the respective order of the verbe and the objetc and other serial features.

Our work is based upon an aspect which, to our knowledge, has not been dealt with in the aforementioned approaches, i. e. the chronology of features change in the process of the change of type.

A certain number of questions can arise from this approach, namely :

  • Does the type change process present regularities ?

  • Are there elements that do not vary whilst others would ?

  • If so, which ones and according to which factors ?

  • In which relative chronological order?

    •

    In order to answer these questions, we compare the word order evolution

    1. at the level of the main sentential constituents and

    2. at the syntagmatic level.

    First, we shall centre our analysis on the transition from the SOV to the SVO type in two different language families: the Romance group of the Indo-European languages, represented by French, and the Ugric group of the Uralic family, represented by Hungarian.

    We will complete our data by those from other Romance and Finno-Ougric languages.

    Analysis of the corpora leads one to observe that although the start (SOV) and outcome (SVO) are identical, the process of change occurred according to a different chronology. The data as a whole allows us to state an explanatory hypothesis according to which the result will differ depending upon whether the process started at the syntagmatic or at the sentential level.

    Second, we will test our hypothesis in two ways: 1) on other languages or language families that underwent the same process of change from SOV to SVO (Germanic languages and Niger-Congo languages, for instance); 2) on the process involved in other type changes.

    This will allow us to put forward a hierarchy of traits that seems to drive or to provoke a change of type. The result of this diachronic analysis partly confirms the hypothesis stated by Hawkins and Dryer on the basis of purely synchronic data.

    References

    ADAMS James Noel (1976) "A Typological Approach to Latin word order". In Indogermanische Forschungen, p.70-99.

    BÁrczi Géza – L. BenkÖ – J. BERRÁr  (1967): A magyar nyelv története [Histoire de la langue hongroise] Nemzeti  

          Tankönyvkiadó, Budapest

    BAUER Brigitte L.M.(1995) The Emergence and Development of SVO Patterning in Latin and French. Diachronic and

         Psycholinguistic Perspectives. Oxford : Oxford University Press.

    DRYER Matthew S. (1992) «  The Greenbergian Word Order Correlations », in Language 68/1 :81-138

    DRYER Matthew (1997) « On the six-way Word Order Typology ». In Studies in language 21/1, p.69-103.

    GREENBERG Joseph H. (1963, 2nd ed.1966) « Some Universals of Grammar with particular Reference to the order of meaningful

         Elements ». In J.Greenberg (ed) Universals of Language. Cambridge:The M.I.T.Press, p.73-113.

    HAGEGE Claude (1978) « Du thčme au thčme en passant par le sujet. Vers une théorie cyclique ». In La Linguistique, 14, p.3-

        38.

    HAWKINS John A. (1983) Word Order Universals. San Diego : Academic Press.

    LEHMANN Winfred P. (1974) Proto-Indo-European Syntax. Austin: University of Texas Press.

    LI Charles N. & Sandra A. Thompson (1974) « An explanation of Word Order Change : SVO > SOV ». In Foundations of

         Language 12, 201-214.

    Marchello-Nizia Christiane (1995) L’évolution du français : ordre des mots, démonstratifs, accent tonique. Paris :Armand

         Colin.

    SÖRES Anna (1995) « Rapports génétiques et typologiques dans l’étude synchronique des langues romanes ». In Revue

         Romane 30, p.41-79.

    VENNEMANN Theo (1974) « Topics, subjects and word-order : from SXV to SVX via TXV », in J.M.Anderson et C.Jones ed.

         Proceedings of the First International Congress of Historical Linguistic. Amsterdam : North-Holland, vol.I, p.339-376.

    WACHA Balázs (1991) « A mondat szórendje és aktuális tagolása » [L'ordre des mots et l’articulation informationnelle dans la

         phrase] in A magyar nyelv történeti nyelvtana [Grammaire historique de la langue hongroise], éd. Benkö L. Budapest:

         Akadémiai Kiado, tome I : 618-631.