This volume consists of 19 papers presented at the 16th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, which was held in August 2003 in Copenhagen and drew the largest number of participants and the widest array of languages that this important biannual conference has ever had. As with previous volumes, the papers selected cover a wide range of subjects besides the core areas of historical linguistics, and this time include studies on ethnolinguistics, grammaticalisation, language contact, sociolinguistics, and typology. The individual languages treated include Brazilian Portuguese, Chukchi, Korean, Danish, English, German, Greek, Japanese, Kok-Papónk, Latin, Newar, Old Norse, Romanian, Seneca, Spanish, and Swedish. The volume reflects the state of the art both empirical and theoretical — in Historical Linguistics today, and shows the discipline to be as flourishing and capable of new advances as ever.

Table of contents

Preface Typological reflections on loss of morphological case in Middle Low German and in the Mainland Scandinavian languages John Ole Askedal Ethnoreconstruction in Kok-Papónk Paul Black

Rraising verbs vs. auxiliaries Kasper Boye

On the origin of the final unstressed [i] in Brazilian and other varieties of Portuguese: New evidence in an enduring debate Maria José Carvalho

Socio-historical evidence for copula variability in rural Southern America Gaillynn D. Clements

Main Stress Left in Early Middle English B. Elan Dresher and Aditi Lahiri

Some dialectal, sociolectal and communicative aspects of word order variation and change in Late Middle English Tamás Eitler Using Universal Principles of Phonetic Qualitative Reduction in Grammaticalization to explain the Old Spanish Shift from ge to se Andrés Enrique-Arias The origin of transitive auxiliary verbs in Chukotko-Kamchatkan Michael Fortescue

Grammaticalisation and Latin Michele Fruyt Paths of semantic extension: From cause to beneficiary and purpose Silvia Luraghi Vanishing discourse markers: Lat. et vs. sic in Old French and Old Romanian Maria M. Manoliu From ditransitive to monotransitive structure in the history of the Spanish language. Reanalysis of objects: A case of incorporation and monotransitivization Rosa Mariá Ortiz Ciscomani Reflexive intensification in Spanish: Toward a complex reflexive? Johan Pedersen Modern Swedish bara: From adjective to conditional subordinator Henrik Rosenkvist Nordic prefix loss and metrical stress theory with particular reference to ga- and bi - Michael Schulte The origin and development of lär, a modal epistemic in Swedish Gudrun Svensson The development of the Spanish verb ir to an auxiliary of voice Thora Vinther The development of continuous aspect Kazuha Watanabe Index