Markedness isomorphism as a goal of language change: The spread of periphrastic do in english

Roman Jakobson saw the arbitrariness of linguistic signs as being attenuated by a semiotic principle of isomorphism which yields form—meaning diagrams. Jakobson also analyzed linguistic elements into hierarchically organized oppositions between conceptually broader elements, called unmarked, and con...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Lingua 1985-01, Vol.65 (4), p.307-322
Main Author: Battistella, Edwin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Diachrony and historical linguistics
Linguistics
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Summary:Roman Jakobson saw the arbitrariness of linguistic signs as being attenuated by a semiotic principle of isomorphism which yields form—meaning diagrams. Jakobson also analyzed linguistic elements into hierarchically organized oppositions between conceptually broader elements, called unmarked, and conceptually narrower ones, called marked. The present paper brings these two Jakobsonian ideas into synchronization by showing their utility in accounting for the direction of historical change. As an instantiation of these ideas, I examine their role in explaining the development of the use of periphrastic do in interrogatives, negatives, and emphatics. I argue that the telos of change determined by alignment of markedness values not only accounts for the spread of do in the semantically marked paradigms, but also explains its loss in the unmarked simple declarative forms.
ISSN:0024-3841
1872-6135
DOI:10.1016/S0024-3841(85)80010-3