This project aims to improve our current understanding of Basque historical phonology by incorporating recent advances in theories of phonetically based sound change, contact linguistics and phonological typology and by using state-of-the-art quantitative and experimental techniques. The new approach is to combine the historical-comparative method with phonetic detail and quantitative typological data for studying the historical sound patterns of a language isolate such as Basque, in which the comparative method finds most difficulties. This project will result in a better understanding of sound patterns that have been subject of discussion for years in Basque historical phonology, and it will advance our knowledge of general typologies of sound change with a thorough analysis of the uncommon sound changes that will be studied. The areas of interest cover the evolution of the opposition between /h/ and /h~/ (only documented in two other languages), changes in the phonetic cues underlying the opposition between the two stop series (from [spread glottis] to voicing), changes in the place of articulation of sibilants, the evolution of vowel inventories, and changes in the accentual system (from phrasal pitch accent to word-level systems, based on pitch or stress depending on the dialect). For each topic under study, the employed methodology will combine philological work comparing the dialectal variants attested in older stages of the language and analysis of acoustic and articulatory data. In cases in which the precise phonetic realization of a given segment has not been described, varieties of interest will be found in the literature in order to obtain acoustic and physiological data encompassing all relevant phonological contexts in the field. Then, precise phonetic information will be extracted from field recordings. Differences regarding age-group will be explored whenever there is evidence for a sound change in progress. Experiments will be devised to find coarticulatory patterns that might have yielded sound change in the past, including analyzing reconstructed sequences that are not found in the modern language (e.g. #st-) as pronounced by speakers of modern Basque. The project methodology will also include other data-based approaches, such as computer-based segment co-occurrence searches of big corpora to find potential biases in the phonotactic distribution of the segments under study and searches for typological parallels of each process. The role of contact will be assessed by looking for convergent evolutions in neighboring languages. The long-term significance of the project lies in contributing to the reconstruction of the phonology of Proto-Basque as well as to both typologies of phonetically based sound change and sound change in situations of linguistic contact. An indirect and major benefit of the project is that it will provide a new methodology for the study of the historical phonologies of language isolates.

Germanic languages, with the major exception of Modern English, are characterized by the regular occurrence of the finite verb in second position in main clauses, a property known as ‘verb second’ (V2). In the classical approach, this configuration is assumed to result from the attraction of the finite verb to the highest clausal head (C) along with the appearance of an element in its outer edge. With the development of a richer model of the sentential left periphery, which involves an array of discourse-related functional projections, this view becomes problematic, as there is no category that uniquely corresponds to C. Yet, this development has allowed looking at Germanic V2 as part of a wider set of V2 effects occurring in many other languages. Old Romance languages, for instance, have been characterized as obeying a restriction that is highly reminiscent of the Germanic one, namely that finite verbs generally do not appear in clause-initial position, but rather in at least second position. This project has three basic objectives: on the one hand, it aims at expanding the perimeter of the languages relevant to the V2 typology, by including languages with a basic subject-object-verb (SOV) order other than those relatively few examples that have been characterized as V2 (e.g. Kashmiri (Indo-Aryan), Ingush (Caucasian)). In particular, the correlation, established in much of the typological literature, between SOV order and in-situ wh-phrases and foci will be critically revisited. On this view, the adjacency between the verb and a preceding wh-phrase or focus in SOV languages corresponds to a configuration in which the preverbal element is within the VP, that is, in-situ. It will be argued that, in Basque, a bona fide SOV language, this adjacency relation rather corresponds to a syntactic configuration close to the Old Romance type, i.e. it is taken to display V2 effects. The evidence for the same correlation in Turkic languages will be explored. To this end, three Turkic languages (Kyrgiz, Kazak, and Uzbek) will be studied, complemented with the more thoroughly described Turkish, and the evidence in relation to their possible V2 status will be evaluated. The second objective is to assess whether language contact might have had a non-trivial impact in giving rise to V2 effects as an areal phenomenon in South-Western Europe, where Basque, Spanish, French, and Gascon (Occitan) all display V2 effects (to a different extent). This study will be appended by that of Sorbian (Slavic) and Raeto-Romance, both exhibiting V2 effects and being in intense contact with German. Finally, the third objective of the project is to explore a non-uniform approach to the phenomenon of V2. Specifically, it will be investigated whether V2 relies on a unique set of morpho-syntactic mechanisms or rather relates to a linear notion, in that a multitude of factors from several domains of grammar are involved, resulting in a differentiated typology of V2.

Sentences such as ‘Mary believes/says/hopes that John is an angel; Maria glaubt/sagt/hofft, dass Hans ein Engel ist; Marie croit/dit/espère que Jean est/soit un ange’ describe a mental state or act with propositional content. This propositional content is materialized by a clause which is traditionally referred to as ‘complement/argument/object clause’. The aim of the project is to develop a theory that essentially abandons the classical view that finite clauses are syntactically complements and semantically propositional arguments of their matrix predicates. A generalized theory will be developed that systematically relates apparent proposition-denoting ‘complement’ clauses with different types of subordinating elements (complementizers) to the other types of clausal embedding (relative clauses, adverbial clauses) and semantic objects (e.g. attitudinal objects, Moltmann 2003), taking into account various factors (morphology of complementizers, types of embedding predicates, possibility of correlation within the matrix). In fact, this unification of all cases of subordination/hypotaxis is desirable under the view that they all display recursion (a clause within a clause within a clause…) and in the frame of a parsimonious approach to human language. To this aim, the recent theory according to which clauses are adjuncts will be revised under the hypothesis that they modify an overt or covert item (the “anchor”) that is the actual complement to the predicate (which we dub the “tripartite hypothesis”). This innovative idea independently originated in the works of the participants in this project, who decided to join their forces to develop it further and provide an account that is fully satisfactory in terms of syntax/semantics interfacing. The project will concentrate on Germanic, Greek and Romance and test the central hypothesis against non-Indo-European languages like Basque and Hungarian. It furthermore takes seriously diachronic and dialectal variation as important information sources for the understanding of finite embedding as a central component of the grammar of human language.

Several Palaeolithic archaeological sites of the Gravettian period such as Gargas, Tibiran, or Fuente del Trucho display hand stencils with so-called ‘mutilated’ fingers. Here we study the hypothesis that these stencils represent sign language gestures (a classical conjecture by Leroi-Gourhan (1967), which was never put to test). Preliminary work of the biomechanics of the handshapes suggests a connection with sign language handshapes, as only those gestures articulable in sign languages are found in the cave stencils and the patterns attested abide by constraints on the phonology of sign languages. We posit that they correspond to handshapes of ‘alternate sign languages’, ritually employed by bi-modal bilingual populations (as those attested today in Australia in the Great Plains of North America and elsewhere (Kendon, 1988; Davis, 2010)). The project, thus, has 2 main objectives: (1) to create a 3D corpus with the stencils of the major caves in Europe, and (2) to explore the hypothesis that sign language expressions underlie the stencils. This will be approached by combining the newest techniques and analytic tools in linguistics and archæology. The project involves the following 6 main tasks: 1. Creation of a FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) corpus with the hand stencils of four major sites in France and Spain (Gargas, Fuente del Trucho, El Castillo and Maltravieso). This task will involve three sub-tasks: (a) Photogrammetric and hyperspectral analysis of the stencils, (b) archæological contextualization of the paintings in each of the cave settings, (c) creation of a public web corpus with manipulable 3D images and all the required (meta)data. The obtained data will be further compared with published data from other caves, including Cosquer, Erberua, Arcy-sur-Cure, Margot, Cudón, Fuente del Salín, etc. 2. Cross-comparison of the hand stencils in each of the caves studied, searching for matches across stencils. Assessment of the identity of the individual template hands, and potentially, the variability of finger disposals by a same individual in different stencils. Quantitative analysis of the data (cluster analyses and principal component analyses). 3. Categorical analyses and annotation of the handshapes corresponding to each stencil (e.g. with Brentari’s (1998) model or the Hamburg Notation System (Hanke, 2004)). 4. Bio-mechanical analyses of the gestures underlying handshapes. Comparison of different metrics of articulatory complexity (Ann, 1993; Aristodemo & Geraci, 2014; Aristodemo et al., 2019; Morgan et al., 2019). 5. Interpretation of stencil hand gestures as instances of sign language gestures, by examining (i) the extent to which they correspond to general phonetic restrictions in sign languages cross-linguistically; (ii) the extent to which they abide by phonological generalizations established in sign language typology (in particular, in “alternate” sign languages); (iii) their statistical plausibility as linguistic symbol systems. 6. Review of instances where sign languages have been recorded in ethnographic contexts and more specifically with the Plains Indians, Aboriginal Australians and San people. Analysis of the extent to which ethnographically recorded, contemporary stenciling and traditional audio-visual storytelling provide models to suggest critically the uses of handshapes in Palæolithic art. Access to rock art databases, such as the South African Rock Art Digital Archive (SARADA) will enrich the comparative aspect of the study.