{"title":"Ambiguity avoidance as a factor in the rise of the English dative alternation","authors":"Eva Zehentner","doi":"10.1515/cog-2021-0018","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper discusses the role of cognitive factors in language change; specifically, it investigates the potential impact of argument ambiguity avoidance on the emergence of one of the most well-studied syntactic alternations in English, viz. the dative alternation (We gave them cake vs We gave cake to them). Linking this development to other major changes in the history of English like the loss of case marking, I propose that morphological as well as semantic-pragmatic ambiguity between prototypical agents (subjects) and prototypical recipients (indirect objects) in ditransitive clauses plausibly gave a processing advantage to patterns with higher cue reliability such as prepositional marking, but also fixed clause-level (SVO) order. The main hypotheses are tested through a quantitative analysis of ditransitives in a corpus of Middle English, which (i) confirms that the spread of the PP-construction is impacted by argument ambiguity and (ii) demonstrates that this change reflects a complex restructuring of disambiguation strategies.","PeriodicalId":51530,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8000,"publicationDate":"2021-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"3","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Cognitive Linguistics","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2021-0018","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 3
Abstract
Abstract This paper discusses the role of cognitive factors in language change; specifically, it investigates the potential impact of argument ambiguity avoidance on the emergence of one of the most well-studied syntactic alternations in English, viz. the dative alternation (We gave them cake vs We gave cake to them). Linking this development to other major changes in the history of English like the loss of case marking, I propose that morphological as well as semantic-pragmatic ambiguity between prototypical agents (subjects) and prototypical recipients (indirect objects) in ditransitive clauses plausibly gave a processing advantage to patterns with higher cue reliability such as prepositional marking, but also fixed clause-level (SVO) order. The main hypotheses are tested through a quantitative analysis of ditransitives in a corpus of Middle English, which (i) confirms that the spread of the PP-construction is impacted by argument ambiguity and (ii) demonstrates that this change reflects a complex restructuring of disambiguation strategies.
摘要本文论述了认知因素在语言变化中的作用；具体地说，它研究了论点歧义回避对英语中最受研究的句法变化之一，即与格变化（We give their cake vs We giving cake to their）的出现的潜在影响。将这一发展与英语历史上的其他重大变化联系起来，如格标记的丧失，我认为双及物从句中原型主体（主语）和原型接受者（间接宾语）之间的形态和语义语用歧义似乎为具有更高线索可靠性的模式（如介词标记）提供了处理优势，而且还有固定子句级别（SVO）顺序。主要假设是通过对中古英语语料库中的双及物句进行定量分析来检验的，该分析（i）证实了PP结构的传播受到论点歧义的影响，（ii）表明这种变化反映了消歧策略的复杂重组。
期刊介绍：
Cognitive Linguistics presents a forum for linguistic research of all kinds on the interaction between language and cognition. The journal focuses on language as an instrument for organizing, processing and conveying information. Cognitive Linguistics is a peer-reviewed journal of international scope and seeks to publish only works that represent a significant advancement to the theory or methods of cognitive linguistics, or that present an unknown or understudied phenomenon. Topics the structural characteristics of natural language categorization (such as prototypicality, cognitive models, metaphor, and imagery); the functional principles of linguistic organization, as illustrated by iconicity; the conceptual interface between syntax and semantics; the experiential background of language-in-use, including the cultural background; the relationship between language and thought, including matters of universality and language specificity.
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