Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-wlg5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-27T15:21:39.008Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How gradual change progresses: The interaction between convention and innovation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2016

Hendrik De Smet
Hendrik De Smet*
Affiliation:
KU Leuven
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper hypothesizes that as an expression becomes more frequent in one grammatical context, its mental retrievability improves, which in turn makes it more easily available in different yet closely related (analogous) grammatical contexts. Such a mechanism can account for the progression of gradual change. The hypothesis generates two testable predictions. First, innovative constructions should be more likely to emerge if their analogical models are better entrenched. Second, an expression's retrievability can also be improved by priming, which in the short term should have a similar effect to entrenchment. These predictions are tested against the development of the noun key into an adjective (as in a very key argument). The change is gradual, starting with increased productivity of compounds with key as specifying element, leading later to debonded and clearly adjectival uses. The development of key is analyzed using data from the British Houses of Parliament. The effect of entrenchment is tested against individual variation. Next, situations are investigated where key has been primed, either by an earlier instance of key or by a collocate of key. The evidence supports the hypothesis. Innovative uses of key are favored under conditions that improve the retrievability of its more conventionalized uses.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 83 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Aitchison, Jean. (1991). Language change: Progress or decay? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bergs, Alexander. (2005). Social networks and historical sociolinguistics: Studies in morphosyntactic variation in the Paston Letters (1421–1503). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan L., Perkins, Revere, & Pagliuca, William. (1994). The evolution of grammar: Tense, aspect and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Chappell, Hilary. (2008). Variation in the grammaticalization of complementizers from verba dicendi in Sinitic languages. Linguistic Typology 12:45–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denison, David. (1986). On word order in Old English. Dutch Quarterly Review 16:277–295.Google Scholar
Denison, David. (2001). Gradience and linguistic change. In Brinton, Laurel J. (ed.), Historical linguistics 1999. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 110–144.Google Scholar
Denison, David. (forthcoming). English word classes: Categories and their limits. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik. (2012). The course of actualization. Language 88:601–633.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik. (2013a). Does innovation need reanalysis? In Coussé, E. & Von Mengden, F. (eds.), Usage-based approaches to language change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 23–48.Google Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik. (2013b). Spreading patterns: Diffusional change in the English system of complementation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik. (forthcoming). The root of ruthless: Variation as a window on representation. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics.Google Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik, & Van de Velde, Freek. (2013). Serving two masters: Form-function friction in syntactic amalgams. Studies in Language 37:534–565.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Durrant, Philip, & Doherty, Alice. (2010). Are high-frequency collocations psychologically real? Investigating the thesis of collocational priming. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 6:125–155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, Olga. (2007). Morphosyntactic change: Functional and formal perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Güldemann, Tom. (2002). When ‘say’ is not say: The functional versatility of the Bantu quotative marker ti with special reference to Shona. In Güldemann, T. & von Roncador, M. (eds.), Reported discourse: A meeting ground for different linguistic domains. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 253–287.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, Alice C., & Campbell, Lyle. (1995). Historical syntax in cross-linguistic perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. (1998). Does grammaticalization need reanalysis? Studies in Language 22:315–351.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoey, Michael. (2005). Lexical priming: A new theory of words and language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J., & Closs Traugott, Elizabeth. (2003). Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kapatsinski, Vsevolod. (2009). Adversative conjunction choice in Russian (no, da, odnako): Semantic and syntactic influences on lexical selection. Language Variation and Change 21:157–173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. (1977). Syntactic reanalysis. In Li, C.N. (ed.), Mechanisms of syntactic change. Austin: University of Texas Press. 57–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar. Vol. 1: Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Lee, Ji Won. (2011). Much ado about a lot: A corpus study of much as a negative polarity item. Paper presented at the 20th International Conference on Historical Linguistics in Osaka, Japan, July 26th. Available at: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jiwonlee/. Accessed December 1, 2015.Google Scholar
Naro, Anthony J. (1981). The social and structural dimensions of a syntactic change. Language 57:63–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norde, Muriël. (2009). Degrammaticalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paunonen, Heikki. (1976). Idiolectal variation in Helsinki urban speech. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 10:125–140.Google Scholar
Petré, Peter. (2012). General productivity: How become waxed and wax became a copula. Cognitive Linguistics 23:27–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petré, Peter, & Van de Velde, Freek. (2014). Tracing real-life agents’ individual progress in ongoing grammaticalization: How grammaticalization processes create grammar: from historical corpus data to agent-based models. Paper presented at EvoLang, Vienna, July 14–17.Google Scholar
Rosemeyer, Malte. (2014). Auxiliary selection in Spanish: Gradience, gradualness, and conservation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmid, Hans-Jörg, & Mantlik, Annette. (2015). Entrenchment in historical corpora? Reconstructing dead authors’ minds from their usage profiles. Anglia 133:583–623.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skousen, Roy. (1989). Analogical modeling of language. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Stubbs, Michael. (1995). Collocations and semantic profiles: On the cause of the trouble with quantitative methods. Functions of Language 2:1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. (2006). Morphosyntactic persistence in spoken English: A corpus study at the intersection of variationist sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and discourse analysis. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tabor, Whitney. (1994). Syntactic innovation: A connectionist model. Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford: Stanford University.Google Scholar
Timberlake, Alan. (1977). Reanalysis and actualization in syntactic change. In Li, C. N. (ed.), Mechanisms of syntactic change. Austin: University of Texas Press. 141–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torres Cacoullos, Rena. (2015). Gradual loss of analyzability: Diachronic priming effects. In Adli, A., García, M. García, & Kaufmann, G. (eds.), Variation in language: System- and usage-based approaches. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 265–288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Goethem, Kristel, & De Smet, Hendrik. (2014). How nouns turn into adjectives: The emergence of new adjectives in French, English and Dutch through debonding processes. Languages in Contrast 14:251–277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vartiainen, Turo. (2013). Subjectivity, indefiniteness and semantic change. English Language and Linguistics 17:157–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiner, E. Judith, & Labov, William. (1983). Constraints on the agentless passive. Journal of Linguistics 19:29–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinreich, Uriel, Labov, William & Herzog, Marvin. (1968). Empirical foundations for a theory of language change. In Lehmann, W. P. & Malkiel, Y. (eds.), Directions for historical linguistics. Austin: University of Texas Press. 95–198.Google Scholar