HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS 1997 -- Editorial page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- PREFACE -- Table of contents -- SOUND LAWS: REACTIONS PRESENT AND PAST -- 1. The problem -- 1.1 Some ways of tackling the problem -- 2. Another look -- 2.1 Sound laws are non-causal generalizations -- 2.2 Sound laws are statements of correspondences OR: the Neogrammarian hypothesis is both true and false -- 2.3 Exceptionlessness is a working principle -- 2.4 Exceptionlessness is a tautology -- 2.5 Exceptionlessness is false -- regularity is true -- 3. Conclusions -- Notes -- References -- PASSIVES IN WESTERN MALAYO-POLYNESIAN -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Balinese -- 3. Indonesian -- 4. Other Sundic -- Notes -- References -- WHAT CAN THIS BE? A WEST AFRICAN CONTRIBUTION TO SRANAN -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Di(si) as relativizer and as conjunction -- 3. Di(si) in possessives and ordinals -- 4. The position of demonstrative disi -- 5. Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- GRAMMATICAL AND LEXICAL ASPECT IN AKKADIAN AND PROTO-SEMITIC -- 1. Theoretical foundations and historical background -- 2. Proto-Semitic aspects -- 3. Modal forms of Proto-Semitic -- 4. Trajectories from Proto-Semitic to daughter languages -- 5. Some parallels with IE languages -- References -- EUPHEMISM WITH ATTITUDE POLITICALLY CHARGED LANGUAGE CHANGE -- 1. Introduction -- 2. What is political correctness? -- 3. Political correctness and euphemism -- 3.1 Euphemism with attitude -- 3.2 What lies behind PC euphemism? -- 3.3 The dysphemistic worm in the euphemistic bud -- 4. Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- THE LOSS OF THE VOICE DIMENSION BETWEEN LATE LATIN AND EARLY ROMANCE -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Transitivity as a gradient -- 3. Transitivity in Latin -- 3.1. The R-form -- 3.2 Se /sibi + active verb -- 3.3. Alternations in voice marking -- 4. The loss of the voice dimension -- 5. Conclusion -- Notes.

References -- HOW A HISTORICAL LINGUIST AND A NATIVE SPEAKER UNDERSTAND A COMPLEX MORPHOLOGY -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Sound Change -- 3. Grammaticization -- 4. Idiomaticization -- 5. Summary -- References -- THE EVOLUTION OF GRAMMAR EVIDENCE FROM INDO-EUROPEAN PERFECTS -- 1. Introduction -- 1.2. Source determination -- 1.2 Unidirectionality -- 1.3 Universal paths -- 2. The model of BPP -- 3. The Indo-European perfect -- 4. Indo-Iranian -- 4.1 A Problem with Unidirectionality: Sanskrit aorists -- 5. Greek -- 6. Reduplication and stative perfects: a problem for Source Determination? -- 7. Conclusion -- 7.1 The stative as a basic category -- 7.2 Source determination -- 7.3 Unidirectionality -- 7.4 Universal paths -- Notes -- References -- YIDDISH AND HEBREW BORROWING THROUGH ORAL LANGUAGE CONTACT -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Comparison with Borrowed Components in Other Languages -- 2.1 Profile of Borrowing Interference -- 2.2 Patterns of Lexical Borrowing -- 2.3 Periphrastic Verbs -- 3. Hebrew Origin Lexical Items -- 4. External Evidence -- 5. Conclusion -- References -- DEGENERATE FEET IN TACANAN LANGUAGES: UNMARKEDNESS IN OT -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Degenerate feet: The degenerate foot parameter and Catalexis -- 3. Stress in Tacanan: Cavinena, Chama and Tacana -- 4. Degenerate feet in OT -- 5. Summary -- Notes -- References -- THE EVOLUTION OF Ó IN OPEN POSITION PARALLEL DEVELOPMENTS IN FRENCH AND IN DUTCH DIALECTS -- Notes -- References -- THE STRUCTURE OF 'RA-DELETION' IN JAPANESE -- 1. Introduction -- 2. ra-Deletion Phenomena and Prescriptive Approaches -- 3. Structural Approaches -- 3.1 Contexts for m-Deletion -- 3.2 Retention vs. Removal of the Initial Consonant of Suffixes in Japanese -- 4. Ra-Deletion or Re-Extension? -- 4.1 Problems with Ra-Deletion Analysis -- 4.2 Re-Extension Analysis: More Explanatory Analogical Force -- 4.2.1 Claims.

4.2.2 Defining the Third Type of Verb Class -- 4.2.3 Analysis -- 4.2.4 Summary and Prediction -- 5. Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- CAN GRAMMATICALIZATION BE EXPLAINED INVISIBLE HANDEDLY? -- 1. From Mandeville 's paradox to invisible hand explanations -- 2. Can grammaticalization be explained invisible-handedly? -- 3. Illustrations -- 4. Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- TOWARD A 'STANDARD YIDDISH' PRONUNCIATION AN INSTRUMENTALLY AIDED PHONETIC ANALYSIS -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The origin of 'Standard Yiddish' pronunciation -- 3. Acoustic phonetics and instrumentally aided methods -- 3.1 Consonants -- 3.2 Vowels -- 4. Outlook -- Notes -- References -- THE EVOLUTION OF ADVERBIAL SUBORDINATORS IN EUROPE -- 1. Theoretical framework and methodology -- 2. General historical developments -- 3. Historical developments involving causal, conditional and concessive subordinators -- Appendix: -- Notes -- References -- A CORPUS-BASED MODEL FOR THE DESCRIPTION OF LANGUAGE CHANGE AND VARIATION IN NOMINAL CLASSIFICATION EXEMPLIFIED BY DUTCH SEVENTEENTH CENTURY VARIETIES -- 1. Three operating procedures -- 2. A model for the description of nominal classification -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 Case conditions outside prepositional groups -- 2.2.1 The nominative condition -- 2.2.2 The genitive co -- 2.2.3 The dative condition -- 2.2.4 The accusative condition -- 2.3 Case conditions within prepositional groups -- 3. Summary, comparison and conclusion -- Notes -- References -- TOWARDS AN EXPLANATION OF SOME MORPHOLOGICAL CHANGES WHICH 'SHOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED' -- 1. An 'unnatural' scenario -- 2. 'Natural Morphology' and the notion of 'system-dependent' morphological naturalness -- 3. The history of Romanian feminine plurals and Italian gerunds -- 3.1 Romanian feminine plurals -- 3.2 Old Italian (Tuscan) gerunds -- 4. Some implications -- Notes -- References.

ON THE CONSERVATISM OF EMBEDDED CLAUSES -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Review of Preceding Data -- 3. Some Possible Explanations and Their Inadequacies -- 3.1 Syntactic Explanation -- 3.2 Discourse-Pragmatic Explanation -- 3.3 Stylistic Explanation -- 3. 4 Processing-based Explanation -- 4. Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- VELARS AND PALATALS IN OLD ENGLISH ALLITERATION -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Alliteration in Old English verse -- 3. ONSET IDENTITY -- 4. Interpreting OE -- 5. Interpreting OE -- 6. The violability of PLACE for the OE velars -- 7. Why PLACE? -- 8. Unpacking PLACE IDENTITY: the violability of DORSAL -- 9. Al-LITERA-tion or LEFT EDGE ISOPHONY/ACRO-ISOPHONY? -- Notes -- References -- THE SEQUENCING OF GRAMMATICIZATION EFFECTS A TWIST FROM NORTH AMERICA -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Verb-like affixes -- 3. Noun-like affixes -- 4. The diachronic sources of lexical affixes: compounding -- 5. A second source of derivational affixes: affix compounding -- 5.1 Yup 'ik compound suffixes -- 5.2 Bella Coola compound suffixes -- 6. Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- WHAT RESEARCH ON CREOLE GENESIS CAN CONTRIBUTE TO HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS -- 1. Preliminaries -- 2. Some Noteworthy Facts on the Development of Creoles -- 3. Ecology and Linguistic Evolution -- 4. Creolization as a Social Process -- 5. The Role of Contact in the Histories of English and French -- 6. Language as a Species: Whence the Significance of Variation -- 7. Some Conclusions -- Notes -- References -- THE BORROWING OF MEANING AS A CAUSE OF INTERNAL SYNTACTIC CHANGE -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Yiddish dos-sentences -- 2.1 The data -- 2.2 Comparison of the syntax -- 2.2.1 Position of expletive and embeddability -- 2.2.2 Word order and focusability -- 2.2.3 Syntactic comparison: summary -- 2.3 Source of the syntax of the Yiddish dos-sentences -- 2.4 Discourse functions. -- 2.5 Summary.

3. Yinglish Yiddish-Movement sentences -- 3.1 The data -- 3.2 Discourse functions -- 3.2.1. Standard English Focus-Movement vs. Yinglish Yiddish-Movement -- 3.2.2 Yiddish Focus-Movement -- 3.3 Comparison of the syntax -- 3.4 Summary -- 4. The Modern Yiddish pluperfect -- 4.1 The Old Yiddish pluperfect -- 4.2 The Modern Yiddish pluperfect -- 4.3 A plausible story? -- 4.3.1 Semantic borrowing: sequence of tenses -- 4.3.2 Sequence of tenses and the pluperfect -- 4.3.3 Syntactic reanalysis of the pluperfect -- 5. Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- GRAMMATICALIZATION OF COMPLEX VERBAL CONSTRUCTIONS IN FINNISH -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The Evolution of complex verbal constructions and grammaticalization -- 3. On the form of the quasi-construction -- 4. Main functions of the quasi-construction -- 5. Source contexts -- 6. Semantic and pragmatic preconditions -- 7. Reanalysis and analogy -- 8. Conclusion -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- References -- TWO MODELS FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE CONTACT A PSYCHO-LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE VERSUS A SOCIO-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Van Coetsem (1988, 1995) -- the dominance approach -- 3. Thomason & Kaufman (1988) -- the maintenance approach -- 4. The dominance approach and the maintenance approach -- a comparison -- 4.1 Introduction -- 4.2 Iowa Dutch -- 4.3 Summary -- 5. Thomason (in press) -- imperfect learning versus fluency -- 6. Conclusions -- Notes -- References -- A MOTIVATED ACCOUNT OF THE SEMANTIC EVOLUTION OF WATCH AND ITS CATALAN EQUIVALENTS -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Semantic evolution of WATCH -- 3. Semantic evolution of VETLLAR and VIGILAR -- 4. Semantic evolution of GUAITAR -- 5. Conclusions -- Notes -- References -- SUBJECT INDEX -- INDEX OF LANGUAGES.