The historical development of asymmetries

Abstract

The structuring and encoding of space through language, the shape of the linguistic inventories found in individual languages, as well as the symmetries and asymmetries manifested by such systems have received a great deal of attention during the last four decades. The vast majority of the relevant studies adopted a purely synchronic perspective and diachronic studies of the relevant phenomena are rare. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this discussion by analyzing the historical development of directional demonstratives in Germanic languages, the structure of the relevant systems at different stages, the reduction and loss of oppositions and the resultant creation of asymmetries. The results of the descriptions will be examined and evaluated from a comparative and typological perspective.