Introduction

In previous works I have focused attention on the role of repetition or frequency in the creation of linguistic structure through language change (see Bybee 2007). All the frequency effects I have identified work in conjunction with particular processing mechanisms. In this chapter and the next two, I examine the processing mechanisms whose repeated application gives shape to grammar, in an attempt to uncover the properties of these mechanisms. The goal, to the extent possible, is to identify the domain-general mechanisms that underlie language. These mechanisms, in conjunction with an exemplar model of linguistic representation and organization, can readily represent the ongoing modifications of the linguistic system that explain its patterning, as well as its synchronic variation and change over time.

By ‘processing’ I refer to the activities involved in both production of the message and the decoding of it. Thus the discussion includes in principle the set of cognitive and neuromotor mechanisms or activities that are put into use in online communication and in the mental storage of language. My hypothesis is that the particular way these processing mechanisms work determines fairly directly the facts about the nature of language. In particular, we will be examining the nature of chunking and the consequent phonetic reduction of repeated sequences, as well as the maintenance and loss of analysability and compositionality in complex expressions due to the effects of repetition.