Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 ROMANCE LINGUISTICS AND HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS: REFLECTIONS ON SYNCHRONY AND DIACHRONY
- 2 SYLLABLE, SEGMENT AND PROSODY
- 3 PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSES
- 4 MORPHOLOGICAL PERSISTENCE
- 5 MORPHOPHONOLOGICAL INNOVATION
- 6 CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN FORM–FUNCTION RELATIONSHIPS
- 7 MORPHOSYNTACTIC PERSISTENCE
- 8 SYNTACTIC AND MORPHOSYNTACTIC TYPOLOGY AND CHANGE
- 9 PRAGMATIC AND DISCOURSE CHANGES
- 10 WORD FORMATION
- 11 LEXICAL STABILITY
- 12 LEXICAL CHANGE
- 13 LATIN AND THE STRUCTURE OF WRITTEN ROMANCE
- 14 SLANG AND JARGONS
- Notes
- References and bibliographical abbreviations
- Index
6 - CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN FORM–FUNCTION RELATIONSHIPS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2011
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 ROMANCE LINGUISTICS AND HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS: REFLECTIONS ON SYNCHRONY AND DIACHRONY
- 2 SYLLABLE, SEGMENT AND PROSODY
- 3 PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSES
- 4 MORPHOLOGICAL PERSISTENCE
- 5 MORPHOPHONOLOGICAL INNOVATION
- 6 CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN FORM–FUNCTION RELATIONSHIPS
- 7 MORPHOSYNTACTIC PERSISTENCE
- 8 SYNTACTIC AND MORPHOSYNTACTIC TYPOLOGY AND CHANGE
- 9 PRAGMATIC AND DISCOURSE CHANGES
- 10 WORD FORMATION
- 11 LEXICAL STABILITY
- 12 LEXICAL CHANGE
- 13 LATIN AND THE STRUCTURE OF WRITTEN ROMANCE
- 14 SLANG AND JARGONS
- Notes
- References and bibliographical abbreviations
- Index
Summary
Introduction
In this chapter, I shall motivate and discuss a typology of changes in the relationship between linguistic form and linguistic function, with reference to the Romance languages, and attempt to elucidate some general principles which may underlie the developments described. It will be useful to distinguish four types of change.
• Refunctionalization is the acquisition of a new value or function by an existing morphological opposition (the phenomenon which Lass (1990), borrowing a term from the evolutionary biologists Gould and Vrba (1982), refers to as ‘exaptation’). However, the terms ‘refunctionalization’ and ‘exaptation’ have often been used without distinction to refer both to instances in which the original value of the formal opposition has disappeared and to those in which this original value has been retained alongside the new meaning (indeed, in subsequent work, Lass (1997) explicitly envisages both possibilities). I propose that the notion of ‘refunctionalization’ should be limited to the former case, in which the new function replaces (or displaces) the old one. A good example of this development is the evolution of some Latin accusative pronouns into conjunctive (clitic) forms and their dative counterparts into disjunctive forms in a variety of Romance languages.
• Adfunctionalization is the term I shall use to designate the second state of affairs outlined above, in which the new value or function is added to the existing one. As an example, we may take many of the Romance masculine/feminine doublets which derive from the singular/plural opposition in the Latin neuter; in these cases, not only do the nouns exhibit distinct genders, but, additionally, it is
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- The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages , pp. 268 - 317Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
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