Cover not available

Article published In: Studies in Language
Vol. 49:2 (2025) ► pp.337–375

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

The historical development of asymmetries

The case of directional demonstratives in Germanic

ORCiD logo with link | Free University of Berlin | University of Freiburg
Published online: 19 November 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.21029.koe
Abstract
The structuring and encoding of space through language, the shape of the linguistic inventories found in individual languages, as well as the symmetries and asymmetries manifested by such systems have received a great deal of attention during the last four decades. The vast majority of the relevant studies adopted a purely synchronic perspective and diachronic studies of the relevant phenomena are rare. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this discussion by analyzing the historical development of directional demonstratives in Germanic languages, the structure of the relevant systems at different stages, the reduction and loss of oppositions and the resultant creation of asymmetries. The results of the descriptions will be examined and evaluated from a comparative and typological perspective.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • (a)Semantic asymmetry
    • (b)Lexical asymmetry
    • (c)Morphological asymmetry
    • (d)Syntactic asymmetry
    • (e)Asymmetry in frequency
  • 2.Systems of spatial demonstratives
  • 3.The historical development of directional demonstratives in Germanic languages
    • 3.1Icelandic
    • 3.2English
      • 3.2.1Old English
      • 3.2.2Middle English
      • 3.2.3Early Modern English
      • 3.2.4Present-Day English
    • 3.3German
  • 4.The use of directional demonstratives as clitics in Modern German
    • 4.1Distribution
    • 4.2Directional deictics as separable prefixes of verbs
  • 5.Deictic directionals in other Germanic languages
    • 5.1Dutch and Afrikaans
    • 5.2Swedish and Norwegian
    • 5.3Danish
  • 6.Summary and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
References (73)
References
Altmann, Hans. 1998. Lokal- und Direktionaladverbien in einem mittelbairischen Dialekt. [Local and directional adverbials in a central Bavarian dialect]. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik LXV(3). 257–279.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bayer, Josef. 1977. Zur Semantik direktionaler Postpositionen. [Towards a semantic analysis of directional prepositions]. Papiere zur Linguistik 17/181. 102–122.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berg, Thomas. 2020. Asymmetrical intercalation in Germanic complex verbs. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 32(2). 107–144. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bourdin, Philippe. 1997. On goal-bias across languages: Modal, configurational and orientation parameters. In Bohumil Palek, Osama Fujimiúra & Jiři Václav Neustupný (eds.), Proceedings of LP’96. Typology, Item Orderings and Universals, 185–218. Prague: Karolinum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Campbell, Alistair. 1957. Old English Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chao, Yuen Ren. 1968. A grammar of spoken Chinese. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Claridge, Claudia. 2000. Multi-verb words in Early Modern English: A corpus-based approach. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cleasby, Richard & Gudbrand Vigfusson. 1874. An Icelandic-English dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Coulmas, Florian. 1982. Some Remarks on Japanese Deictics. In Jürgen Weissenborn & Wolfgang Klein (eds.), Here and there: Cross-linguistic studies on deixis and demonstration, 209–221. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Creissels, Denis. 2006. Encoding the distinction between location, source and destination: a typological study. In Maya Hickmann & Stéphane Robert (eds.), Space in languages: Linguistic systems and cognitive categories, 19–28. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. Demonstratives, joint attention and the emergence of grammar. Cognitive Linguistics 17(4). 463–489. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dixon, R. M. W. 2003. Demonstratives: A cross-linguistic typology. Studies in Language 27(1). 61–112. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Donaldson, Bruce. 1993. A grammar of Afrikaans. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Einarsson, Stefán. 1945; 2001. Icelandic grammar, texts, glossary. Baltimore, London: John Hopkins University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fagard, Benjamin & Anetta Kopecka. 2021. Source/Goal (a)symmetry: A comparative study of German and Polish. Studies in Language 45(1). 130–171. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J. 1972. How do you know whether you are coming or going. In Karl Hyldgard-Jensen (ed.), Linguistik 1971, 369–379. Frankfurt: Athenäum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fries, Norbert. 1991. Prepositions and prepositional phrases: a contrastive analysis. In Gisa Rauh (ed.). Approaches to prepositions, 53–75. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gerritsen, Johan. & N. E. Osselton. 1978. Wolters‘ Woordenboeken. Nederlands-Engels. Groningen/Leiden.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Girnth, Heiko & Sascha Michel. 2008. Hin vs. her — hier vs. dort/da. The neutralization of the speaker’s perspective. A case of semantic (inter-)subjectivization in German dialects. Dialectologia et Geolinguistica. 161. 48–81.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goschler, Juliana & Anatol Stefanowitsch. 2013. Beyond typology: The encoding of motion events across time and varieties. In Juliana Goschler & Anatol Stefanowitsch (eds.), Variation and change in the encoding of motion events, 1–16. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guérin, Valérie. 2015. Demonstrative verbs: A typology of verbal manner deixis. Linguistic Typology 19(2).141–200. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2015. Defining and diagnosing linguistic categories: A case study of clitic phenomena. In Johanna Błaszczak, Dorota Klimek-Jankowska & Krysztof Migdalski. (eds.), How categorical are categories? 273–304. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2021. Explaining grammatical coding asymmetries: Form-frequency correspondences and predictability. Journal of Linguistics 57(3). 605–633. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2022. Is cliticization an intermediate stage between free lexeme and affix status. Paper presented at a conference, the University of Potsdam. Available at: [URL] (last access 20 August 2024).
Ikegami, Yoshihiko. 1987. Source vs. goal: A case of linguistic dissymmetry. In René Dirven & Günter Radden (eds.), Concepts of case, 122–146. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ishibashi, Miyuki. 2012. The expression of ‘putting’ and ‘taking’ verbs in Japanese: The asymmetry of Source and Goal revisited. In Anetta Kopecka & Bhuvana Narasimhan (eds.), Put and Take events: A cross-linguistic perspective, 253–272. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Iwasaki, Shoichi. 2013. Japanese (revised edition). Amsterdam: John Benjamin. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jacobs, Neil G. 2005. Yiddish — A linguistic introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray. 1983. Semantics and cognition. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jawzal, Nechirvan Hassan & Razgar Yousif Omar. 2020. English directiona adverbs: An empirical study. Zanco Journal of Humanity Sciences 24(3): 315–324. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kaiser, Elsi. 2013. Demonstrative adjectives in spoken Finnish: Informational sufficiency and the speaker-addressee dynamic. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 124–139.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Karatsareas, Petros & Thanasis Georgakopoulos. 2016. From syntagmatic to paradigmatic zeros: the loss of the preposition se in inner Asia Minor Greek. STUF — Language Typology and Universals 69(2). 309–340. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kittilä, Seppo. 2008. Animacy effects on differential goal marking. Linguistic Typology 12(2). 245–268. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. The (proto)typicality of direction: the (allative and illative) case(s) of Finnish. In Sivia Luraghi & Heiko Narrog (eds.), Perspectives on semantic roles, 151–179. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Köbler, Gerhard. 2006. Neuenglisch-althochdeutsches Wörterbuch. Available online at [URL] (last access 20 August 2024).
. 2014. Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, online. Available online at [URL] (last access 20 August 2024).
Koenig, Ekkehard & Yoko Nishina. 2015. Deixis der Art und Weise, der Qualität und des Grades im Deutschen und Japanischen: eine kontrastiv vergleichende Analyse [Deictics of manner, of quality and of degree in German and Japanese: a contrastive analysis.]. Linguistische Berichte [Sonderheft) 201. 7–32.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Koenig, Ekkehard & Letizia Vezzosi. 2022. On the development of OE swa to ModE so and related changes in an atypical group of demonstratives. In Bettelou Los, Claire Cowie, Patrick Honeybone & Graeme Trousdale (eds.), English historical linguistics: Change in structure and meaning, 309–344. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2024. The development and loss of directional deixis in the history of English. To appear in Medioeva europeo 8(1): 23-53.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kopecka, Anetta & Marine Vuillermet. (eds.), 2021. Source-Goal (A)symmetries across Languages. Special Issue of Studies in Language 451.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakusta, Laura & Barbara Landau. 2005. Starting at the end: The importance of goals in spatial language. Cognition 96(1). 1–33. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. Language and memory for motion events: Origins of the asymmetry between source and goal paths. Cognitive Science 36(3). 517–544. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leonard, Stephen. 2007. Spatial references in Icelandic: The issue of identity. Proceedings from LingO 2. The Oxford Postgraduate Linguistics Conference, 157–164.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen. 2018. Introduction. Demonstratives: Patterns in diversity. In Stephen Levinson, Sarah Cutfield, Michael J. Dunn, Nick. J. Enfield & Sérgio Meira (eds.), Demonstratives in cross-linguistic perspective, 1–42. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lewis, Geoffrey L. 1967. Turkish grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lidén, Mitsuyo Kuwano. 2016. Deictic demonstratives in Japanese, Finnish and Swedish: First and third language perspectives. Stockholm: University of Stockholm Ph.D. dissertation.
Los, Bettelou, Corrien Blom, Geert Booij, Marion Elenbaas & Ans van Kemenade. 2012. Morpho-syntactic change: A comparative study of particles and prefixes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Luraghi, Silvia & Tatiana Nikitina & Chiara Zanchi (eds.). 2017. Space in diachrony. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nam, Seungho. 2004. Goal and source. Their syntactic and semantic asymmetry. Berkeley Linguistic Society 30: General Session and Parasession on Conceptual Structure and Cognition in Grammatical Theory, 304–17. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nikitina, Tatiana. 2009. Subcategorization pattern and lexical meaning of motion verbs: A study of the source/goal ambiguity. Linguistics 57(5). 1113–1141. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nintemann, Julia, Maja Robbers & Nicole Hober. 2020. Here, hither, hence and related categories: A cross-linguistic study. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Paul, Herrmann. 1916–20. Deutsche Grammatik. Halle.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Perkins, Revere. 1992. Deixis, grammar and culture. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Regier, Thierry & Mingyu Zheng. 2007. Attention to endpoints. A cross-linguistic constraint on spatial meaning. Cognitive Science 311. 705–719. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rossdeutscher, Antje. 2009. German her, hin, hin und her und herum: Meaning and justification of direction and change of direction in perceptual space. In Arndt Riester & Togrim Solstad. (eds.), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 131. 439–454. Stuttgart: Online Publikationsverbund Universität Stuttgart.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rowley, Anthony. 1980. Richtungs- und Ortsangabe in der Mundart von Florutz (Fierozzo) im italienischen Tirol. [Directional and local expressions in the dialect of Florutz in Tirol.] In Anthony Rowley (ed.), Sprachliche Orientierung l. Untersuchungen zur Morphologie und Semantik der Richtungsadverbien in oberdeutschen Mundarten. Bayreuth: Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät (Jahrbuch der Johann-Andreas-Schmeller-Gesellschaft), 73–96.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rzepecki, Robert. 2008. Verben mit her- und hin- besser verstehen. Übungen zu den mit her- hin- und hinter- präfigierten Verben. [For a better understanding of verbs with her- and hin-. Exercises with verbs prefixed by hin- and her-.] Norderstedt: Grin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stefanowitsch, Anatol & Adha Rohde. 2004. The goal basis in the encoding of motion events. In Günther Radden & Claus-Uwe Panther (eds.), Studies in Linguistic Motivation, 249–267. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stefanowitsch, Anatol. 2018. The goal bias revised. A collostructional approach. Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association 6(1). 134–166. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stolz, Thomas; Nataliya Levkovych & Aina Urdze. 2017a. Spatial interrogatives: Typology and dynamics (with special focus on the development from Latin to Romance). In Sylvia Luraghi, Tatiana Nikitina & Chiara Zanchi (eds.), Space in Diachrony, 207–240. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stolz, Thomas; Nataliya Levkovych; Aina Urdze; Julia Nintemann & Maja Robbers. 2017b. Spatial interrogatives in Europe and beyond. Where, whither, whence. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Svenonius, Peter. 2006. Icelandic particles in -an. CASTL, University of Tromsø.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Talmy, Leonard. 1985. Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description: Grammatical categories and the lexicon, 57–149. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thráinsson, Höskudur. 1994. Icelandic. In Ekkehard Koenig & Johan van der Auwera (eds.) The Germanic languages. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Verkerk, Annemarie. 2017. The goal over source principle in European languages. In Silvia Luraghi, Tatiana Nikitina & Chiara Zanchi (eds.), Space in diachrony, 1–40. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wright, Joseph. 1906. An Old High German primer. Oxford Clarendon Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wunderlich, Dieter. 1983. On the compositionality of German prefix verbs. In Rainer Bäuerle, Christoph Schwarze & Arnim von Stechow (eds.). Meaning, use, and interpretation of language, 452–465. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zeller, Jochen. 2001. Lexical particles, semilexical postpositions. In Norber Corver & Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.), Semi-lexical categories, 505–549. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue