Stefanie Kuzmack
Department of Linguistics
University of Chicago
1010 E. 59th St.
Chicago, IL 60615
e-mail: Kuzmack AT uchicago.edu
Presentations:
SHEL5 (Studies in the History of the English Language), 2007
Quotative re: Language change online
A new quotative complementizer, re, has entered English. Unlike the quotatives like and all, re developed online. As a result of that environment, it developed a unique use: bringing quotations (often taken from earlier in the same conversation) back into the discourse in order to set up responding to those statements. This usage stems from the nature of threaded discussions, where the long turns make it useful to quote previous statements in order to clarify what is being responded to. The case of re demonstrates that language change can occur in a written medium without input from spoken language, and illustrates the role that context of use plays in shaping change.
LSA 2007, session on historical syntax
Ish: A new case of antigrammaticalization
The history of the English morpheme –ish is a clear-cut instance of degrammaticalization. This paper applies Haspelmath’s (2004) concept of antigrammaticalization and the stringent criteria that it sets for legitimate examples of degrammaticalization to the case of –ish (‘somewhat’). Although Haspelmath found only nine examples that met his criteria, -ish does so, as well: it has gradually degrammaticalized, moving from a suffix, to an enclitic, to an independent word, and has preserved its identity as a qualifier throughout. Ish thus constitutes a tenth example of antigrammaticalization and the third in English alone.
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