About
The EVOCAT project tackles a central puzzle in linguistic theory and historical linguistics: how linguistic categories such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives are formed, represented in the mental lexicon, and change over time. Categorizers—morphological markers that assign and change lexical category—are among the most basic building blocks of grammar, yet their diachronic development has received surprisingly little systematic attention. Traditional historical-comparative studies have focused on lexical cognacy or, to a lesser extent, syntactic parameters, while categorization morphology itself has been considered too idiosyncratic across languages to yield broad generalizations. EVOCAT challenges this assumption by advancing the hypothesis that categorial change proceeds through a directional process of Upwards Reanalysis of morphological material. This predicts that categorizers evolve in uniform, cross-linguistically consistent ways, producing shared innovations that can be exploited for subgrouping and phylogenetic reconstruction. In doing so, the project aims to systematically integrate morphological evidence into the Comparative Method, thereby filling a major gap in the reconstruction of linguistic prehistory.
Directionality and language change
The project situates itself within the theoretical framework of Distributed Morphology, in which lexical roots are fundamentally acategorial and acquire their classification through the merger with abstract functional heads such as n (nominalizer), v (verbalizer), and a (adjectivizer). These heads can be realized morphologically, often through suffixes, and their diachronic reanalysis provides a mechanism for categorial change. For instance, the Ancient Greek suffix -eu- functioned as a nominalizer in forms like basileús ‘king’, but through historical development became reanalyzed as a verbalizer on the way to Modern Greek (stox-év-o ‘to target’). EVOCAT generalizes such cases into a model of directionality in categorial change: morphology associated with lower structural positions can be reanalyzed as higher functional projections, but not vice versa. This parallels well-attested patterns of syntactic change and establishes a unifying principle across domains. The core innovation is thus the application of “upwards” diachronic reanalysis familiar from studies of syntactic change to the evolution of word-building morphology.
Data and methods
Methodologically, the project bridges quantitative corpus-based research with qualitative philological analysis. Large-scale electronic corpora of ancient languages will be systematically mined to trace the diachrony of individual categorizers, while case studies will provide fine-grained insights into reanalysis in context. The Comparative Method serves as the overarching framework for phylogenetic reconstruction, allowing categorial innovations to be treated as shared innovations (isoglosses) diagnostic of subgrouping. By incorporating morphological data into this procedure, EVOCAT addresses the well-known limitations of lexicon-based phylogenetic models, which often produce shallow or unresolved trees due to the unpredictable rate of lexical replacement. Morphological categorizers, by contrast, are predicted to evolve more systematically, offering a novel class of evidence for reconstructing language families. To test this prediction, EVOCAT will combine large-scale corpus-based analysis of ancient Indo-European languages with the creation of a dedicated morphosyntactic database. This database will catalogue the forms, meanings, and functional properties of nominalizers, verbalizers, and adjectivizers across different time periods and language branches. The database will not only provide the empirical foundation for testing the hypothesis of directional change but will also serve as a lasting resource for comparative and typological research.
Expected outcomes and future directions
While Indo-European languages provide the project’s empirical core, EVOCAT will extend its analysis to non-Indo-European languages with comparable attestation depth. These comparisons will allow the project to test whether the predicted directionality of categorial change truly holds cross-linguistically. In doing so, EVOCAT will not only refine our understanding of Indo-European diachrony but also contribute to establishing universals of morphological change.
Beyond its immediate contributions to historical Indo-European linguistics and morphological theory, EVOCAT promises significant interdisciplinary impact. By uncovering systematic, directional principles underlying categorial change, the project informs psycholinguistic models of the mental lexicon in which categorizers structure lexical storage and retrieval. It also bears on broader questions in cognitive science about how humans form, maintain, and repurpose morphosyntactic categories over time. In this way, the project seeks to bridge theoretical linguistics, comparative reconstruction, and cognitive science, providing a new foundation for understanding one of the most fundamental aspects of the human language faculty.