This volume is an important contribution to the diachrony of non-canonical subjects in a typological perspective. The questions addressed concern the internal mechanisms and triggers for various changes that non-canonical subjects undergo, ranging from semantic motivations to purely structural… read more
By the late Middle Ages, a part of South Slavic, including Macedonian and Bulgarian, had lost nominal case inflection, leading to the disappearance of the old Slavic differential object marking (DOM) system. In the 19th century, some southern Macedonian dialects developed a new DOM system based… read more
We probe a new approach to linguistic areas. Instead of similarity of a feature across languages of the area, we focus on its adaptation to the area. Adaptation is a set of changes and/or retentions in a language towards, but not necessarily into, similarity with the other languages of the area.… read more
Frequency asymmetries within a minimal grammatical domain create offline associations that languages tend to exploit for a more efficient encoding. We explore cross-linguistic coding patterns of antipassives. We first argue that antipassive markers tend to have properties of derivational markers. read more
In this chapter I consider a periphrastic construction based on the resultative participle and the auxiliary. The semantics are those typical of a perfect grammaticalized from a resultative construction. The combination with time adverbials as well as contextual information show that the… read more
The paper is a semasiological study of the nominative case in Baltic languages, including morphological and primarily syntactic and semantic-pragmatic aspects. Morphologically, the Baltic nominative case is marked in almost all declensions and numbers by dedicated affixes. Syntactically, the… read more
The present paper investigates the NP-triggered Differential Argument Marking phenomena (DAM) found in the debitive construction of Latvian. There are two perspectives: the synchronic perspective aims at providing a coherent description of the DAM in Contemporary Latvian, while comparison with data… read more
The paper is primarily devoted to a methodological discussion. There are two different types of inquiries into diachronic syntax and, more generally, grammar: stage reconstruction and etymological reconstruction. The aim of the first type is to reconstruct and compare diachronic stages within a… read more
This chapter’s underlying framework is one of functionalist cognitive linguistics.
It suggest a categorization of non-prototypical trajector (subject) constructions
into syntax-, gram- and lexeme-driven ones depending on the nature of
the domain that triggers the oblique case-marking on the… read more
The aim of the paper is to give a semantic description of the independent or bare partitive genitive (IPG) in Lithuanian in rather neutral, functional terms. The IPG is a multi-faceted category that bears on the domains of quantification and (in)definiteness. On its quantificational reading, the… read more
In this paper I have examined several instances in which an oblique constituent acquires canonical subject marking, i.e. nominative case and verbal agreement (in an accusative language). These instances show that an oblique constituent may acquire subject coding properties without being beforehand… read more
This paper contrasts typological and diachronic evidence on argument marking with theoretical proposals made in psycholinguistic research about the ways various types of audience design strategies affect production, with a focus on ambiguity avoidance in argument roles. The aim is to find… read more
