This project investigates the diachronic interrelationship between alignment, subjecthood, and transitivity prominence across the Indo-European linguistic family. Alignment is understood as the morphosyntactic realization of core arguments. Subjecthood is a cover term for the morphosyntactic properties of the argument referred to as subject, which in this context is defined as the generalized syntactically privileged argument, in a sense to be clarified below. Transitivity prominence is dafined as the degree to which predicates in a language select the pattern characteristic of core transitive verbs. The project has a comparative-historical perspective, exploring whether and to what extent changes in one of these grammatical dimensions has impact on the others and whether they remain stable across genetically related languages. A comparative-historical study of this kind will provide a foundation for exploring the relationship between alignment, subjecthood, and transitivity prominence in synchrony as well as diachrony. will work with a sample of representative languages belonging to each of the different Indo-European branches. These are Hittite (Anatolian), Vedic Sanskrit (Indo-Iranian), Homeric Greek (Greek), Old Latin (Italic), Classical Armenian (Armenian), Tocharian B (Tocharian), Gothic (Germanic), Old Irish (Celtic), Old Lithuanian (Baltic), Old Church Slavonic (Slavic) and Old Albanian (Albanian). Primary data from these languages will be analysed along three dimensions; alignment, subjecthood, and transitivity prominence and be subject to fine-grained analyses and then be explored through qualitative and quantitative approaches. The project will employ the multivariate typological methodological framework developed (e.g., Bickel 2015) to arrive at a comprehensive description of the diversity in these domains across the languages under study. Different statistical methods, notably principal components analysis and multidimensional scaling will be used to capture differences between the languages. The goals of the project are:
- To break down the alignment patterns in each of the languages in the sample into fine-grained formal and functional variables that enable precise analyses that can be compared across languages
- To identify the full set of subject properties in each of the languages under scrutiny
- To establish the transitivity prominence in the lexicon of each language
- To explore the interaction between alignment, subjecthood, and transitivity prominence in each language
- To develop a comparative-historical analysis of the diachronic relationship between these three domains
We assume that alignment, subjecthood, and transitivity prominence represent closely related areas of grammar. We shall examine to what extent these dimensions of grammar remain stable across genetically related languages and whether change in one domain has impact on the other domains. We will address the following research questions: a) How are alignment, subjecthood, and transitivity synchronically and/or diachronically interrelated? What principle or principles determine their correlation, if any? b) What is the range of divergence in each of the three domains across the genetically related languages in our sample? There are also some broader questions relating to genealogy and diachronic typology. For example, what, if any, common patterns of change can be discerned across the languages in the sample? To what extent does this reflect shared inheritance? Are the attested changes determined by language-specific features or do they reflect more general processes of change such as grammaticalization? While alignment typology and change represent a rather well-studied field of morphosyntax, subjecthood and transitivity prominence have received less attention in linguistic research, especially from a comparative-historical or diachronic perspective. Moreover, while it seems clear that these three morphosyntactic dimensions are somehow interrelated, no one has hitherto attempted to explore how they interact synchronically and diachronically. Thus, an exploration of these issues will doubtlessly generate several new and intriguing insights into each of the domains and, more generally, into the principles shaping morphosyntax and constraining grammatical change. This is ensured by the methodological framework employed in the project, which combines theoretical insights from functionally and formally oriented theoretical frameworks as well as from the typological tradition.