We describe four successive rounds of Jespersen’s cycle in Greek and analyze the process as the iteration of a semantically driven chain shift. The contrast between plain and emphatic negation is an easily lost yet necessary part of language, hence subject to repeated renewal by morphosyntactic and/or lexical means.

We rebut Pappas’ critique (this issue) of our treatment of Late Medieval Greek clausal syntax and clitic placement (Condoravdi & Kiparsky 2001), point out some weaknesses of his counterproposal, and suggest directions for further research.

This condensed review of recent trends and developments in historical linguistics proceeds from the empirical to the conceptual, from ‘what’ to ‘how’ to ‘why’. I begin with new findings about the origins, relationships, and diversity of the world’s languages, then turn to the processes and mechanisms of change as they concern practicing historical linguists, continue with efforts to ground change in the acquisition, use, and structure of language, and conclude with a look at ongoing debates concerning the explanatory division of (...) labor between historical and theoretical linguistics and ways to unify historical and theoretical linguistics. The emphasis throughout is on current research rather than on established textbook knowledge. (shrink)