Joe Salmons (University of Madison, Wisconsin)

Place: HF 217

        Time: Monday September 19., 14.15–16.00

 

        Title: Verb regularization in German: Frequency in context

Notions of constant rates of change are widespread (Swadesh 1951, Embleton 2000), but controversial (Blust 2000, Matisoff 2000). Lieberman et al. (2007) propose such a formula for English verb regularization, positing a frequency-based 'half-life': "a verb that is 100 times less frequent regularizes 10 times as fast". We provide parallel data from a closely related language, German. Until ca. 1500, regularization was uncommon, under 3%, but the modern period shows a dramatic upswing in strong verbs becoming weak, ca. 15%. We then explore why the history of German so strikingly counter-exemplifies the proposed half-life. As Lieberman et al. and many others (Hare & Elman 1995) have found, frequency plays a central role, but we show that it interacts with verb class membership (consistent with Mailhammer 2007). Regularization is likely shaped in part by language-external forces as well, and increased regularization in the early modern period may be tied to dialect contact and koineization. While there is no general half-life for verb regularization, more nuanced quantitative research on verb regularization can advance our understanding of language change.

• References
  Blust, Robert. 2000. Why lexicostatistics doesn't work: The 'universal constant' hypothesis and the Austronesian languages. Time Depth in Historical Linguistics, ed. by Colin Renfrew, April McMahon & Larry Trask. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 311–331.
• Embleton, Sheila. 2000. Lexicostatistics/glottochronology: From Swadesh to Sankoff to Starostin to future horizons. Time Depth in Historical Linguistics, ed. by Colin Renfrew, April McMahon & Larry Trask. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 143–165.
• Hare, Mary & Jeff Elman. 1995. Learning and morphological change. Cognition 56.61–98.
• Lieberman, Erez, Jean-Baptiste Michel, Joe Jackson, Tina Tang & Martin A. Nowak. 2007. Quantifying the evolutionary dynamics of language. Nature 449.713–716.
• Mailhammer, Robert. 2007. Islands of resilience: The history of the verbs from a systemic point of view. Morphology 17.77–108.
• Matisoff, James A. 2000. On the uselessness of glottochronology for the subgrouping of Tibeto-Burman. Time Depth in Historical Linguistics, ed. by Colin Renfrew, April McMahon & Larry Trask. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 333–371.
• Swadesh, Morris. 1951. Diffusional cumulation and archaic residue as historical explanations. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 7.1–21.

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