faculteit der letteren rijksuniversiteit groningen lot winterschool 2005 historical syntax jack...

Faculteit der Letteren Rijksuniversiteit GroningenLOT WINTERSCHOOL 2005

HISTORICAL SYNTAX

Jack Hoeksema LOT, BCN

University of Groningen

Faculteit der Letteren Rijksuniversiteit GroningenLecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

Focus of the course:

- corpus-based studies

- usage factors vs grammar

- emphasis on modern Dutch (1600-2004)

Faculteit der Letteren Rijksuniversiteit GroningenLecture 1, Monday January 10, 2005

Corpus data represent usage, not grammar

Usage data indirectly reflect social and grammatical factors

Social factors have to do with the population of language users and the function of the texts

Grammatical factors have to do with the individual competence of the users


Strictly social aspects of corpus data

upper class language overrepresented in historical corpora (literacy)

more texts from men than from women

more texts from later than from earlier periods

more from written registers than from spoken registers


Partly social aspects of corpus dataSuppose texts from some period have 70% variant X

and 30% variant Y• 70% of the population uses only X and 30% only

Y (categorical usage at the level of individuals, variation at the level of the speech community)

• all speakers use X 70% of the time, and Y 30% of the time (variation at the individual level reflecting variation at the group level)

• some more complication relation between individual and group usage


Variation is relevant at the level of individual behavior and not just at the group level (cf. Guy, Gregory R. 1980. ‘Variation in the group and the individual: The case of final stop deletion.’ In William Labov, ed., Locating language in time and space. New York: Academic Press: 1-36. Contra D. Bickerton)


Essential variation: variation which remains variation even after all factors influencing it have been controlled for


Nonessential variation:

example 1

Population: 50% use of A, 50% use of B. All women use A, all men use B. Categorical for each gender.


Nonessential variation:

example 2

Population: 34% use of A, 68% of B. Before vowels, 100% use of A, before consonants 100% use of B.


Essential variation:

Population: 34% use of A, 68% of B. Before vowels, 91% use of A, before consonants 94% use of B. Strong effect of phonological environment, but not a categorical distribution.


So one goal of variation studies is to determine the controlling factors, and to find out whether these completely determine the distribution or not.


Controlling factors can be internal or external

Internal: vowel vs consonant

main clause vs dependent clause, verb versus noun

External: sex, age, social status, peer group, time


Statistical distributions are learned by children

Cf. Labov 1989 on “g-dropping”,

the ing-in alternation in English

‘The child as linguistic historian.’ Language Variation and Change 1:85-97.


I’m working – I’m workin

in < Old English –inde

ing < OE -ing


In speech, in is most common in progressives and present participles, less in adjectives, even less in gerunds and least of all in nouns such as ceiling, morning

This distribution is found in the USA, the UK, Canada and Australia


The distribution is a clear reflection of the historical origin. The fact that it has survived several centuries, means that is is learned from usage by successive generations


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progressive complement presentparticiple

noun

parents child (7)


Stylistic effect

in is informal, ing is formal

Hence systematically more ing in formal contexts, and more in in informal contexts such as vivid narrative


this stylistic factor is found both in the speech of adults and that of children, suggesting that children not only learn statistical distributions, but also associate them with stylistic levels


Speed of change

Many grammatical changes appear to be glacial from the usage data. E.g. the loss of case marking in Dutch appears to have taken several centuries.


The same is true, for instance, of the loss of clitic negation in Dutch: 14th century Hollandic Dutch already allows for dropping ne/en clitics, but 18th century Dutch still shows some (by then rare) examples of clitic negation. So the time course spans 4 centuries.


This could mean a long period of variation, in which the disappearing variant slowly decreases in frequency – or: an abrupt change in the system slowly propagating through the population. Is change gradual, or catastrophic?


Generative grammar tends to favor catastrophic change, since it usually tries to ignore, or abstract away from, variation.

E.g. the work of David Lightfoot.


Historical linguists of other persuasions, e.g. functionalists, usage-based grammarians, students of grammaticalization, etc. tend to favor gradual change.


Is change gradual if individuals show variation in their usage, within a large time-frame?

E.g. period 1: A uses X 90% of the time, and Y 10% of the time

Period 2: B uses X 50% of the time, and Y 50%.

Period 3: C uses X 10% of the time and Y 90% of the time.


Not necessarily...


Yet another option: grammar competition at the level of individual speakers – diglossia. Cf. Anthony S. Kroch, 1994,

“Morphosyntactic Variation.” In Beals et al., (eds.), Proceedings of the Thirtieth Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society,

vol. 2, pp. 180-201.


Kroch: during transitional periods, languages may show syntactic variation of a type that stable systems do not allow. This is due to the coexistence of two grammars, usually as a result of language contact.


Change in this model is both abrupt and gradual. Abrupt is the switch between two systems, gradual is the process of competition, by which one system ultimately replaces another


Example: OV vs VO in Middle English. VO more common in the North: Viking influence.

After a stable period of OV (Old English), there is a transitional period of variation, followed by another stable period of VO (Modern English)


OV correllates with Particle < Verb order, VO with Verb < Particle order.

If two grammars compete, we expect to see the position of the object to parallel that of the particle


Alternatively, if we assume an optional rule of object movement and an optional rule of particle movement, there is no a priori reason why utterances should show a correlation between the two orders.


Study of word order variation has found significant correlations between object < verb and particle < verb order

Cf. S. Pintzuk, 1991, Phrase Structures in Competition. Variation and Change in Old English Word Order. Diss. University of Pennsylvania


The choice between the grammar competion model and language-internal variation is a highly theoretical one, and can only be settled in the context of well-defined grammatical frameworks.


S-shaped change:

curves representing change in usage tend to have a so-called S-shape. Change slow at first, then quick, and slow again at the end.


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S-shaped curves can be modelled (by curve-fitting) to various mathematical functions, including the logistic function

ln(p/(1-p)) = k + st

where t is time, p is the probability of the advancing form, k is the intercept and s a constant representing the slope of the curve (see Kroch 1989)


Constant Rate Hypothesis

(Kroch 1989):

changes spread at the same rate in all environments


That is: the intercepts of two curves may differ, but the slopes are the same, assuming the two curves represent two conditions of a single change


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Primary motivation for the CRH: DO-support in English

Slope parameters for 5 environments:Negative declaratives 3.74Negative questions 3.45Transitive Yes/No questions 3.62Intransitive Yes/No questions 3.77Affirmative WH-object questions 4.01


A Dutch example: lexical replacement of ogenblik by moment

3 environments:

op het ogenblik/moment: series 1

elk/ieder ogenblik/moment: series 2

geen ogenblik/moment: series 3


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Series1 Series2 Series3


The constant rate hypothesis holds very neatly for the two related minimizer uses: geen moment and ieder moment


Compare

The train may arrive any moment/second/minute now.

#The train may arrive any day now.

##The train may arrive any year now.


Universally quantified minimizing nouns have a special immediate future readingCf. Jack Hoeksema, 1997,

"Ieder moment: Scalaire universele

kwantificatie", Tabu 27-4, 161-170.


But op het ogenblik/op het moment shows a much slower rate of change.

Possible explanation: op het ogenblik / op het moment is a fixed expression with idiomatic properties


Op het moment ben ik vrolijk

at the moment am I cheerful

#Op de dag ben ik vrolijk

Op die dag ben ik vrolijk

Op de dag dat ik vertrek ben ik vrolijk

Op deze dag ben ik vrolijk


Deictic readings:

op het moment ben ik vrolijk

= nu ben ik vrolijk

hij had op het moment geen geld = hij had toen geen geld


Other expressions

op dat moment /op dit moment

op een gegeven moment


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Series1

Series2

Series3


So...

constant rate effect holds for all cases except op het ogenblik

All environment go from < 5% moment to > 95% with a century, but op het ogenblik has only reached about 40%


Caveat: this is hard to check with Google, or text cd-roms, because the figures are only valid for expressions without modifiers

Cf. Literom hits (2002)op het moment2323op het ogenblik 1797


op het moment op het ogenblik

2323 1591

minus: op het moment/ogenblik dat

526 1240

minus: op het moment van

296 1176

minus: op het moment waarop

228 1163


Conclusion:

op het moment/ogenblik van de ramp

op het moment dat zij aankwam

etc are not idiomatic, but compositional


Question: is the Constant Rate Hypothesis validated or invalidated?


Neither

The evidence from the Constant Rate Hypothesis so far is rather slender (mainly the 3 case studies in Kroch 1989, and some later studies by Kroch and some of his students)


Usefulness of mathematical modelling of usage curves:

• may help estimate missing data points

• helps the analyst to decide if s/he has enough data


Caveat

The logistic function tails off asymptotically at the beginning and at the end. This is not realistic for changes with a definite beginning and a definite end.


Note that the logistic function yields a symmetrical S-shape, so in principle, the time course of a change is predictable from only the first, or the second half. This makes it possible to make predictions for changes that are half-way to completion, or to reconstruct part of a change if there is a gap in the historical record.


It is not known, whether this is always a realistic assumption. If the S-shape represents a change spreading through a population, we might expect its second half to be faster due to the effect of mass media (for recent changes), or slower, due to the effect of schooling and standardization.

faculteit der letteren rijksuniversiteit groningen lot winterschool 2005 historical syntax jack...

Documents

use of

time variation

group usage slide

nonessential variation

bickerton slide

group level

goal of variation studies

level of individual