DIACHRONIC CONSTRUCTION GRAMMAR

1. (Grammar) In which the objects of study are constructions and how they change over time. | Martin Hilpert, 2021
2. (Grammar) A field of cognitive linguistics which takes a construction grammatical theoretical perspective to the study of linguistic change and which descriptively traces the development of constructions and constructicons. | Dirk Noël and Timothy Colleman, 2021

DIACHRONIC CONVENTIONALIZATION
(Sociolinguistics) Here, we come from a diachronic perspective and look at possible long-term effects of interaction within a linguistic community, which we refer to as conventionalization. Conventionalization is considered a prerequisite for innovation (De Smet 2016) and a relevant component process in long-term, persistent change, as in grammaticalization (i.e. the transformation of lexical to grammatical items; Bybee 2010, Schmid 2015).
 Effects of innovation and conventionalization are encountered, e.g., at the lexico-grammatical level, where items may leave their traditional contexts and acquire new (grammatical) functions or converge on one function over time. A specific example is examined in De Smet's study (2016) of the noun key, showing how it moved to other contexts and adopted different functions and ultimately came to be used as predicative adjective. The more general mechanism proposed by De Smet is that for innovation to occur, items need first to be conventionalized in one grammatical context, thus improving their retrievability, and subsequently become available in different, yet closely related grammatical contexts. | Elke Teich, Peter Fankhauser, Stefania Degaetano-Ortlieb, and Yuri Bizzoni, 2021
See Also GRAMMATICALIZATION.

DIACHRONIC ELLIPSIS MISMATCH
(Grammar) The expression X is derived from the source expression Y through ellipsis as a result of diachronic change/grammaticalization, but X and Y differ in their syntax and semantics. We identify four such cases in Japanese:

1. Existential indeterminates, which are derived from adjunct wh-questions: dare-ka, dare-ka-sira, dare-da-ka, dare-yara. 'someone'
2. Free choice indeterminates, which are derived from unconditionals: dare-de-mo, dare-datte, dare-darooga, dare-nisiro, dare-niseyo. 'anyone'
3. Comparative indeterminates, which are also derived from unconditionals: dare-yori(-mo). 'than anyone'
4. Nominal disjunctions, which are derived from adjunct alternative questions: A-ka, B(-ka), A-da-ka, B-da-ka. 'A or B'

DIACHRONIC FOSSIL
(Historical) Fossilization is a trend towards the freezing-up, the coagulation into a rigid form of one or more otherwise viable items. Evidence for the rigidity of fossils can be found in the inability of these forms to undergo rules which they would undergo if they were not fossilized. A diachronic fossil is an item for which the form it is derived from can be shown to have been a non-fossil in a stage of the language previous to the fossilization of the item in question.
 In Old French, voir was used in the sense of 'look' as well as in the sense of 'see'. Due to homonymy voir could be imperativized.

1.  Ves moi chi (Courtois d'Arras, v. 610)
    'see me here'

2.  Me voici!
    'Here I am!'

3. a. Voyez-cy le contract! (Rabelais, I, 32)
     'see here the contract'
   b. * Voyez-ci, Mesdames et Messieurs, le président de notre club, M. Mediterrannée.
   c. Voici, Mesdames et Messieurs, le président de notre club, M. Mediterrannée.
     'Here is, Ladies and Gentlemen, the president of our club, Mr. M.'

4. a. Viva la patria!
     'Long live our country!'
   b. Viva i nostri soldati!
     'Long live our soldiers!'

DIACONSTRUCTION

1. (Diasystematic Construction Grammar) It has to be expected that categorization as a cognitively economic process does include all languages (and dialects, of course) in any situation in which the available input is multilingual, too. Interlingual identification, therefore, is categorization in very much the prototypical Construction Grammar sense: similar constructions in two different languages are taken to instantiate a common diaconstruction. | Steffen Höder, 2012
2. (Diasystematic Construction Grammar) The following ideas, which are relevant to the integration of multilingual structures, are generally agreed upon in Construction Theory:
   1. Constructions are linguistic elements that pair form with meaning (i.e. lexical meaning or grammatical function); any grammar can be described as an inventory of such constructions, covering all levels of the language system, including syntax, morphology, lexicon, and more.
   2. Some constructions are lexically or phonologically filled (such as words or morphs), while others are partially filled (for example in inflectional paradigms) and yet others are maximally schematic (such as syntactic or prosodic constructions).
   3. Constructions with different degrees of schematicity are interconnected through inheritance links within a constructional network, reflecting the fact that some constructions are productive and rule-based, while others are not predictable from more abstract structures.
   4. Speakers acquire schematic constructions on the basis of the available input, via processes of abstraction, generalization, and categorization in order to achieve a cognitively economic representation.
    In Höder (2012), I have argued that there is no a priori reason why these usage-based processes should be sensitive to (let alone be blocked by) language boundaries in multilingual environments. From a Construction Grammar perspective, one should rather expect them to involve all linguistic structures the speakers are exposed to, independently of their belonging to one language or the other. Furthermore, one should expect that the establishment and acquisition of multilingual constructions is limited only by the possibilities of formal and/or functional categorization. Cross-linguistic categorization is thus tantamount to the contact linguistic notion of interlingual identification (Weinreich 1964), i.e. the establishment of functional or formal equivalence between elements of different languages by multilingual speakers. This process eventually allows for the construction of linguistic diasystems, consisting of interconnected language-specific constructions and language-unspecific diaconstructions. | Steffen Höder, 2014

DIAGLOSSIA
(Sociolinguistics) Auer (2005) offers a typology of contemporary European dialect/standard constellations. He observes that in many European language areas, dialect/standard diglossia has given way to a situation with intermediate variants located between the standard and base dialects. He uses the notion of diaglossia to conceptualize this situation in which the dichotomy implied by the concept of diglossia is replaced by an almost fuzzy continuum of variants which are neither distinctly dialectal nor standard, and which can differ in the extent to which they resemble base dialect forms on the one hand, and standard forms on the other. Such intermediate forms are referred to with the terms diaglossia and diaglossic reportoire instead of perhaps more common terms such as regiolect and regional dialect, because "the implication [of the morpheme -lect] that we are dealing with a separate variety is not necessarily justified." It makes more sense to think of the space between base dialect and standard as a continuum with non-discrete intermediate structures, and with a "good degree of levelling between the base dialects [...] which at the same time implies advergence to the standard."
 In Europe today, Auer continues, diaglossic repertoires are found everywhere, from Norway to Cyprus and from Poland to Spain. As a typological label, diaglossia is not an empirically observable phenomenon but a concept applied to an analysis of linguistic variants in use. It is a general description of the varietal spectrum available to language users in a specific community at a given place and time. | Gijsbert Rutten, 2016

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