Modal systems in historical Slavic languages: formal semantics, microvariation, diachronic change, and language contact

• Applicant: Dr. Igor Yanovich
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages ; Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics
• Term: from 2017 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 391377018

• Final Report Year: 2023

Final Report Abstract

The project aimed to better describe and understand the trajectories of semantic change of the expressions of possibility, necessity and futurity in the Slavic languages of the 14th to 17th centuries. Based on earlier work, it was expected that such semantic developments will proceed gradually, and micro-changes suitable for investigation with the methods of variationist sociolinguistics, as well as with application of resampling statistical methods, largely novel within historical linguistics. The empirical work within the project established a greater degree of between-text variability than expected. On the theoretical side, this does not directly fit into the grammaticalization trajectories proposed for such expressions before, and calls for a theoretical reassessment, left for future work. On the statistical side, the project brought indirect results in the form of novel analytical pipelines designed to investigate language-contact phenomena, with resampling methods and simulation-based inference playing an important role.

Publications

• Epistemic Modality. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Semantics, 1-30.
  Yanovich, Igor
  
• Phylogenetic linguistic evidence and the Dene-Yeniseian homeland. Diachronica, 37(3), 410-446.
  Yanovich, Igor
  
• Special issue on formal diachronic semantics Introduction. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique, 65(3), 323-325.
  Yanovich, Igor
  
• CLARITY: comparing heterogeneous data using dissimilarity. Royal Society Open Science, 8(12).
  Lawson, Daniel J.; Solanki, Vinesh; Yanovich, Igor; Dellert, Johannes; Ruck, Damian & Endicott, Phillip
  
• Including Explicit Priors on Phase Duration in Bayesian 14C Dating. Documenta Praehistorica, 48, 202-223.
  Yanovich, Igor
  
• Joint modelling of radiocarbon dates from Ulucak V (Anatolian Late Neolithic), Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, 21:1, pp. 273-28.
  Yanovich, I.