RICERCA ITALIANA     

Levels of analysis in the evolution of Indo-European languages.

Università degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale"

Abstract

The project "Livelli di analisi nell'evoluzione delle lingue indoeuropee" (LAELIE) / "Levels of analysis in the evolution of Indo-European languages" (LAEIEL) is aimed at extending the Italian contribution to the knowledge of the Indo-European (IE) languages and the theoretical understanding of language change through time and space. This is done through three interconnected research approaches: (i.) studying historical and comparative syntax, including valency and Aktionsart, and the diachronic stability vs. instability of specific syntactic phenomena, (ii.) studying etymology and word-formation, inclusively of the role of valency and Aktionsart, and (iii.) developing the understanding of the historical phonology of three IE language groups (Armenian, Iranian, and Latin-Romance) where sound change has at times considerably affected the transmission of linguistic forms, and made etymological analyses particularly difficult.

Principal Investigator

Giorgio BANTI Università degli Studi di NAPOLI "L'Orientale"

Research Objectives

The project "Livelli di analisi nell'evoluzione delle lingue indoeuropee" (LAELIE) / "Levels of analysis in the evolution of Indo-European languages" (LAEIEL) is aimed at extending the Italian contribution to the knowledge of the Indo-European (IE) languages and the theoretical understanding of language change through time and space. This will be done through three interconnected research approaches: (i.) studying historical and comparative syntax, including valency and Aktionsart, and the diachronic stability vs. instability of specific syntactic phenomena, (ii.) studying etymology and word-formation, inclusively of the role valency and Aktionsart play in it, and (iii.) developing the understanding of the historical phonology of three IE language groups (Armenian, Iranian, and Latin-Romance) where sound change has at times considerably affected the transmission of linguistic forms, and made etymological analyses particularly difficult.
The groups of scholars that take part in this project will make use of different methodological approaches, from functional and typological syntax and morphology, to a philological analysis of etymology based upon one of the soundest Italian traditions. The project's products shall be, on the one hand, a number of scientific papers to be published in different journals and books, an international meeting at the end of the second year, and one or more volumes of proceedings of that meeting. On the other hand, there are going to be an >>>

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

Historical syntax, and particularly the historical syntax of the Indo-European languages, is maybe one of the less developed areas of historical linguistics. After the first brilliant investigations by the Neogrammarians, e.g., Wackernagel and Delbrück, important breakthroughs in this area have not been many, even though several major approaches have been developed over the decades:

A) typological studies, such as those on word order diachrony; suffice it to mention here W.P. Lehmann;
B) more recently, the investigations into generative diachronic syntax up to the theory of parameters (e.g., Longobardi);
C) grammaticalization theory (Heine, Traugott, etc.);
D) the functionalist theory of syntactic change (especially Harris and Campbell) that called attention to three major mechanisms of syntactic change: reanalysis, (analogical) extension, and borrowing.

A good deal of new work has been done on the historical study of the syntax of Germanic languages, especially English and German, and of Romance; less so for other linguistic traditions. One of the problems that frequently haunt syntactic comparisons and reconstructions is that it is relatively more difficult to identify clearly the elements that have to be compared and to verify syntactic etymologies, in comparison with what happens in the more intensively studied fields of sound change and historical morphology. One of the questions that has been hotly debated is the >>>