Abstract Semantic variation in the cutting and breaking domain has been shown to be constrained across languages in a previous typological study, but it was unclear whether Japanese was an outlier in this domain. Here we revisit cutting and breaking in the Japonic language area by collecting new naming data for 40 videoclips depicting cutting and breaking events in Standard Japanese, the highly divergent Tohoku dialects, as well as four related Ryukyuan languages (Amami, Okinawa, Miyako and Yaeyama). We find that the Japonic languages recapitulate the same semantic dimensions attested in the previous typological study, confirming that semantic variation in the domain of cutting and breaking is indeed cross-linguistically constrained. We then compare our new Japonic data to previously collected Germanic data and find that, in general, related languages resemble each other more than unrelated languages, and that the Japonic languages resemble each other more than the Germanic languages do. Nevertheless, English resembles all of the Japonic languages more than it resembles Swedish. Together, these findings show that the rate and extent of semantic change can differ between language families, indicating the existence of lineage-specific developments on top of universal cross-linguistic constraints.

中文翻译：

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日本语和日耳曼语中切割和断裂语义的跨语言约束和谱系特定发展

摘要 在先前的类型学研究中，切割和中断领域的语义变异已被证明在语言之间受到限制，但尚不清楚日语是否是该领域的异常值。在这里，我们通过收集 40 个视频剪辑的新命名数据来重新审视日本语领域的切割和破坏事件，这些视频描述了标准日语、高度不同的东北方言以及四种相关的琉球语言（奄美、冲绳、宫古和八重山）的切割和破坏事件. 我们发现日本语言概括了先前类型学研究中证明的相同语义维度，证实了切割和破坏领域的语义变化确实受到跨语言的限制。然后，我们将新的日本语数据与之前收集的日耳曼语数据进行比较，发现总的来说，相关的语言比不相关的语言更相似，而且日本语言比日耳曼语更相似。尽管如此，英语与所有日本语言的相似之处多于瑞典语。总之，这些发现表明语义变化的速度和程度在语言家族之间可能不同，这表明在普遍的跨语言约束之上存在特定于谱系的发展。