Pub Date : 2024-09-13DOI: 10.1017/s1360674324000029
W. JULIANE ELTER, MARLIEKE SHAW
Recent research shows that, even under direct insertion, loan verbs are subject to constraints: for instance, they enter non-finite categories more readily than finite categories. To deepen our understanding of such loan word accommodation biases we investigate two contact situations to test whether biases hold in contact between closely related languages. A corpus study on Norse and French loan verbs entering Middle English compares the proportions of their finite and non-finite usage to gauge the impact of etymology and temporal distance to direct contact on loan integration. We identify significant bias towards non-finite use for both etymologies, but it is stronger for French than for Norse loan verbs. This suggests that biases are stronger in some contexts than in others: they are more prominent at a smaller temporal distance to direct contact and in contact between languages that are less closely related.
{"title":"Loan verb accommodation: a comparison of Old Norse and French in Middle English","authors":"W. JULIANE ELTER, MARLIEKE SHAW","doi":"10.1017/s1360674324000029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1360674324000029","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Recent research shows that, even under direct insertion, loan verbs are subject to constraints: for instance, they enter non-finite categories more readily than finite categories. To deepen our understanding of such <span>loan word accommodation biases</span> we investigate two contact situations to test whether biases hold in contact between closely related languages. A corpus study on Norse and French loan verbs entering Middle English compares the proportions of their finite and non-finite usage to gauge the impact of etymology and temporal distance to direct contact on loan integration. We identify significant bias towards non-finite use for both etymologies, but it is stronger for French than for Norse loan verbs. This suggests that biases are stronger in some contexts than in others: they are more prominent at a smaller temporal distance to direct contact and in contact between languages that are less closely related.</p>","PeriodicalId":45748,"journal":{"name":"English Language & Linguistics","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142181582","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-13DOI: 10.1017/s1360674323000679
E JAMIESON, JENNIFER SMITH, DAVID ADGER, CAROLINE HEYCOCK, GARY THOMS
A perennial problem for sociolinguists interested in morphosyntactic variation is that such forms are often low frequency, making quantitative analysis difficult or impossible. However, sociolinguists have been generally reluctant to adopt methodologies from syntax, such as acceptability data gleaned from speaker intuition, due to the belief that these judgments are not necessarily reliable. In this article we present data from the Scots Syntax Atlas, which employs sociolinguistic methodologies in spoken data alongside the results of acceptability judgments. We target three morphosyntactic variables and compare and contrast these across the two data types in order to assess the reliability of the judgment data at community level. The results show that reliability is variable-dependent. For some variables, there is clear correlation; with others, it appears that, as Labov (1996) phrased it, ‘intuitions fail’. We discuss how factors such as salience, social stigma and local identity combine to govern the reliability of judgment data.
{"title":"‘When intuitions (don't) fail’: combining syntax and sociolinguistics in the analysis of Scots","authors":"E JAMIESON, JENNIFER SMITH, DAVID ADGER, CAROLINE HEYCOCK, GARY THOMS","doi":"10.1017/s1360674323000679","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1360674323000679","url":null,"abstract":"<p>A perennial problem for sociolinguists interested in morphosyntactic variation is that such forms are often low frequency, making quantitative analysis difficult or impossible. However, sociolinguists have been generally reluctant to adopt methodologies from syntax, such as acceptability data gleaned from speaker intuition, due to the belief that these judgments are not necessarily reliable. In this article we present data from the <span>Scots Syntax Atlas</span>, which employs sociolinguistic methodologies in spoken data alongside the results of acceptability judgments. We target three morphosyntactic variables and compare and contrast these across the two data types in order to assess the reliability of the judgment data at community level. The results show that reliability is variable-dependent. For some variables, there is clear correlation; with others, it appears that, as Labov (1996) phrased it, ‘intuitions fail’. We discuss how factors such as salience, social stigma and local identity combine to govern the reliability of judgment data.</p>","PeriodicalId":45748,"journal":{"name":"English Language & Linguistics","volume":"116 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142181583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-03DOI: 10.1017/s1360674324000066
Marcel Schlechtweg
English morphosyntactic agreement, such as determiner–noun agreement in These cabs broke down and noun–verb agreement in The cabsbreak down, has a few interesting properties that enable us to investigate whether agreement has a psycholinguistic function, that is, whether it helps the listener process linguistic information expressed by a speaker. The present project relies on these properties in a perception experiment, examines the two aforementioned types of English agreement, and aims at analyzing whether and how native English listeners benefit from agreement. The two types of agreement were contrasted with cases without any overtly agreeing elements (e.g. The cabs broke down). Native speakers of English with normal hearing heard short English sentences in quiet and in more or less intense white noise and were requested to indicate whether the second word of the sentence (e.g. These cabs broke down) was a singular or plural noun. Accuracy was entered as the response variable in the binomial logistic regression model. Results showed that overt determiner–noun agreement clearly increased response accuracy, while noun–verb agreement had at best marginal effects. The findings are interpreted against the background of functional aspects of linguistic structures in English, in the context of unfavorable listening conditions in particular.
英语的语态句法一致,如 These cabs broke down 中的定语-名词一致和 The cabs break down 中的名词-动词一致,具有一些有趣的特性,使我们能够研究一致是否具有心理语言学功能,即是否有助于听者处理说话者所表达的语言信息。本项目在一项感知实验中利用了这些特性,研究了上述两种类型的英语连贯,旨在分析母语为英语的听者是否以及如何从连贯中受益。这两种类型的一致与没有任何明显一致元素的情况(如 The cabs broke down)形成对比。听力正常的英语母语者在安静和或强或弱的白噪声中听到英语短句,并被要求指出句子中的第二个词(如 These cabs broke down)是单数还是复数名词。在二项逻辑回归模型中,准确性被作为反应变量。结果表明,明显的定语-名词一致明显提高了回答的准确性,而名词-动词一致最多只有微不足道的影响。本研究以英语语言结构的功能方面为背景,特别是在不利的听力条件下对研究结果进行了解释。
{"title":"Morphosyntactic agreement in English: does it help the listener in noise?","authors":"Marcel Schlechtweg","doi":"10.1017/s1360674324000066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1360674324000066","url":null,"abstract":"English morphosyntactic agreement, such as determiner–noun agreement in <jats:italic><jats:underline>These</jats:underline> cab<jats:underline>s</jats:underline> broke down</jats:italic> and noun–verb agreement in <jats:italic>The cab<jats:underline>s</jats:underline> <jats:underline>break</jats:underline> down</jats:italic>, has a few interesting properties that enable us to investigate whether agreement has a psycholinguistic function, that is, whether it helps the listener process linguistic information expressed by a speaker. The present project relies on these properties in a perception experiment, examines the two aforementioned types of English agreement, and aims at analyzing whether and how native English listeners benefit from agreement. The two types of agreement were contrasted with cases without any overtly agreeing elements (e.g. <jats:italic>The cabs broke down</jats:italic>). Native speakers of English with normal hearing heard short English sentences in quiet and in more or less intense white noise and were requested to indicate whether the second word of the sentence (e.g. <jats:italic>These cabs broke down</jats:italic>) was a singular or plural noun. Accuracy was entered as the response variable in the binomial logistic regression model. Results showed that overt determiner–noun agreement clearly increased response accuracy, while noun–verb agreement had at best marginal effects. The findings are interpreted against the background of functional aspects of linguistic structures in English, in the context of unfavorable listening conditions in particular.","PeriodicalId":45748,"journal":{"name":"English Language & Linguistics","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140826898","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-01DOI: 10.1017/s1360674324000017
Muhammad Shakir
This article conducts an exploratory multidimensional (MD) analysis of four interactive online registers, namely newspaper comments, tweets, web forums and text messages, originating from four South Asian countries (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) and two Inner Circle (Kachru 1985) English-speaking countries (UK and USA). A principal component analysis (PCA) has been performed on the interactive registers using linguistic features tagged by a modified version of the MFTE tagger (Le Foll 2021a). The dimensions resulting from the PCA show that nominal, literate and informational features are generally more common in the South Asian data – which represent varieties belonging to the Outer Circle (Kachru 1985). Additionally, different features are used for expressing persuasion or opinion compared to the two reference varieties.
{"title":"An exploratory investigation of functional variation in South Asian online Englishes","authors":"Muhammad Shakir","doi":"10.1017/s1360674324000017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1360674324000017","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article conducts an exploratory multidimensional (MD) analysis of four interactive online registers, namely newspaper comments, tweets, web forums and text messages, originating from four South Asian countries (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) and two Inner Circle (Kachru 1985) English-speaking countries (UK and USA). A principal component analysis (PCA) has been performed on the interactive registers using linguistic features tagged by a modified version of the MFTE tagger (Le Foll 2021a). The dimensions resulting from the PCA show that nominal, literate and informational features are generally more common in the South Asian data – which represent varieties belonging to the Outer Circle (Kachru 1985). Additionally, different features are used for expressing persuasion or opinion compared to the two reference varieties.</p>","PeriodicalId":45748,"journal":{"name":"English Language & Linguistics","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140578278","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-15DOI: 10.1017/s1360674323000667
VICTORIA MUẞEMANN
The present article analyzes the use of preposition stranding (the world which we live in) and pied-piping (the world in which we live) in finite WH-relative clauses in twelve varieties of English. In the light of previous studies, it assumes that the strength of processing constraints and formality effects that drive speakers’ constructional choices should correlate with Dynamic Model stages (Schneider 2007). However, drawing on data from the International Corpus of English (ICE) and using mixed-effects logistic regression analysis, the study shows that processing factors affect speakers of all Dynamic Model stages in a very similar way. At the same time, clear differences between variety stages are observed with respect to formality and topic, which strongly affect Phases IV and V but not Phase III. These results are interpreted from a Usage-based Construction Grammar perspective.
{"title":"A topic which I want to know more about – preposition placement in finite WH-relative clauses in World Englishes","authors":"VICTORIA MUẞEMANN","doi":"10.1017/s1360674323000667","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1360674323000667","url":null,"abstract":"The present article analyzes the use of preposition stranding (<jats:italic>the world which we live in</jats:italic>) and pied-piping (<jats:italic>the world in which we live</jats:italic>) in finite WH-relative clauses in twelve varieties of English. In the light of previous studies, it assumes that the strength of processing constraints and formality effects that drive speakers’ constructional choices should correlate with Dynamic Model stages (Schneider 2007). However, drawing on data from the <jats:italic>International Corpus of English</jats:italic> (ICE) and using mixed-effects logistic regression analysis, the study shows that processing factors affect speakers of all Dynamic Model stages in a very similar way. At the same time, clear differences between variety stages are observed with respect to formality and topic, which strongly affect Phases IV and V but not Phase III. These results are interpreted from a Usage-based Construction Grammar perspective.","PeriodicalId":45748,"journal":{"name":"English Language & Linguistics","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140154116","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-12DOI: 10.1017/s1360674323000540
DANIELLE TOD
This article presents an analysis of speech rhythm in Tongan English, an emergent variety spoken in the Kingdom of Tonga. The normalised Pairwise Variability Index (nPVI-V) is used to classify the variety and determine the social and stylistic constraints on variation in a corpus of conversational and reading passage data with 48 speakers. Findings reveal a greater tendency towards stress-timing in speakers of the emergent local elite, characterised by white-collar professions and high levels of education, and those with a high index of English use. Variation is discussed as a consequence of proficiency, language contact and L1 transfer. An acoustic analysis of vowels in unstressed syllables of eight speakers confirms that lack of vowel centralisation (higher F1) is an underlying linguistic mechanism leading to more syllable-timed speech. Stark interspeaker variation was identified, highlighting the need to proceed with caution when classifying L2 Englishes based on speech rhythm.
{"title":"Rhythm in the Kingdom: a variationist analysis of speech rhythm in Tongan English","authors":"DANIELLE TOD","doi":"10.1017/s1360674323000540","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1360674323000540","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article presents an analysis of speech rhythm in Tongan English, an emergent variety spoken in the Kingdom of Tonga. The normalised Pairwise Variability Index (nPVI-V) is used to classify the variety and determine the social and stylistic constraints on variation in a corpus of conversational and reading passage data with 48 speakers. Findings reveal a greater tendency towards stress-timing in speakers of the emergent local elite, characterised by white-collar professions and high levels of education, and those with a high index of English use. Variation is discussed as a consequence of proficiency, language contact and L1 transfer. An acoustic analysis of vowels in unstressed syllables of eight speakers confirms that lack of vowel centralisation (higher F1) is an underlying linguistic mechanism leading to more syllable-timed speech. Stark interspeaker variation was identified, highlighting the need to proceed with caution when classifying L2 Englishes based on speech rhythm.</p>","PeriodicalId":45748,"journal":{"name":"English Language & Linguistics","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140107924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-01DOI: 10.1017/s1360674323000485
JOANNA NYKIEL, JACOB THAISEN
English comparative modals are combinations of the adverbs rather, sooner and better with an auxiliary. There is recent consensus that the comparative modals rather and sooner have over time developed a different syntax and semantics than better. However, potential differences in the syntax of rather and sooner with respect to patterns of complementation haven’t been explored. This article reports the results of a corpus study of these two modals and finds that rather patterns like object-raising verbs, allowing a range of complements that are unavailable for sooner. Our analysis of these patterns draws on recent work in the Construction Grammar framework, with forays into its formal implementation, Sign-Based Construction Grammar, and we propose that rather differs from sooner in that it constitutes a micro-construction whose features are licensed by both the Modal Construction and the Object-Raising Construction, the latter a subtype of the Transitive Construction.
{"title":"English comparative modals and their complements","authors":"JOANNA NYKIEL, JACOB THAISEN","doi":"10.1017/s1360674323000485","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1360674323000485","url":null,"abstract":"English comparative modals are combinations of the adverbs <jats:italic>rather</jats:italic>, <jats:italic>sooner</jats:italic> and <jats:italic>better</jats:italic> with an auxiliary. There is recent consensus that the comparative modals <jats:sc>rather</jats:sc> and <jats:sc>sooner</jats:sc> have over time developed a different syntax and semantics than <jats:sc>better</jats:sc>. However, potential differences in the syntax of <jats:sc>rather</jats:sc> and <jats:sc>sooner</jats:sc> with respect to patterns of complementation haven’t been explored. This article reports the results of a corpus study of these two modals and finds that <jats:sc>rather</jats:sc> patterns like object-raising verbs, allowing a range of complements that are unavailable for <jats:sc>sooner</jats:sc>. Our analysis of these patterns draws on recent work in the Construction Grammar framework, with forays into its formal implementation, Sign-Based Construction Grammar, and we propose that <jats:sc>rather</jats:sc> differs from <jats:sc>sooner</jats:sc> in that it constitutes a micro-construction whose features are licensed by both the Modal Construction and the Object-Raising Construction, the latter a subtype of the Transitive Construction.","PeriodicalId":45748,"journal":{"name":"English Language & Linguistics","volume":"52 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140025207","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-27DOI: 10.1017/s1360674323000576
CAMERON MORIN, GUILLAUME DESAGULIER, JACK GRIEVE
Construction Grammar is an emerging theory of language, but the analysis of sociolinguistic variation is still relatively underdeveloped in the framework. In this article, we consider the representation of social meaning in Construction Grammar through a corpus-based analysis of double modals in British English on social media. We describe the use of double modals in a large corpus of geolocated Twitter posts, including presenting an inventory of observed double modals and maps showing the regional distribution of each of these forms. We find that double modals show a general northern pattern and are concentrated in the Scottish Borders. We also find various rare double modals that occur more widely across the UK. To account for these results, we propose a Construction Grammar account of double modals. We argue that defining double modals as grammatical constructions requires that aspects of their social meaning be delimited, especially register and region. Furthermore, we argue that double modals may be enregistered as dialect constructions, distinguished from standard constructions of British English. We conclude by considering the importance of incorporating social meaning into Construction Grammar, underlining the value of a Cognitive Sociolinguistic approach to grammatical theory.
{"title":"A social turn for Construction Grammar: double modals on British Twitter","authors":"CAMERON MORIN, GUILLAUME DESAGULIER, JACK GRIEVE","doi":"10.1017/s1360674323000576","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1360674323000576","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Construction Grammar is an emerging theory of language, but the analysis of sociolinguistic variation is still relatively underdeveloped in the framework. In this article, we consider the representation of social meaning in Construction Grammar through a corpus-based analysis of double modals in British English on social media. We describe the use of double modals in a large corpus of geolocated Twitter posts, including presenting an inventory of observed double modals and maps showing the regional distribution of each of these forms. We find that double modals show a general northern pattern and are concentrated in the Scottish Borders. We also find various rare double modals that occur more widely across the UK. To account for these results, we propose a Construction Grammar account of double modals. We argue that defining double modals as grammatical constructions requires that aspects of their social meaning be delimited, especially register and region. Furthermore, we argue that double modals may be enregistered as dialect constructions, distinguished from standard constructions of British English. We conclude by considering the importance of incorporating social meaning into Construction Grammar, underlining the value of a Cognitive Sociolinguistic approach to grammatical theory.</p>","PeriodicalId":45748,"journal":{"name":"English Language & Linguistics","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139978588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-14DOI: 10.1017/s1360674323000631
WILKINSON DANIEL WONG GONZALES
The variability of adverbial placement in the modified infinitive construction (i.e. split infinitives vs. full infinitives with adverbial pre- and post-modification) has been widely discussed in the (American English) literature. Yet a convincing generalized explanation for the variation that simultaneously incorporates language-internal and language-external factors has yet to be found, particularly in English varieties that have not received as much scholarly attention as standardized varieties. This article investigates modified infinitive syntactic variation in Twitter-style Philippine English (PhE) using a 135-million-word Twitter corpus. It adopts a Bayesian approach in conducting a multiple multinomial regression analysis of the said variation, with the help of Deep-Learning-based demographic inference tools. Although the conditioning effects of some factors diverge from patterns discussed in prior work, the results generally show that language-internal (e.g. stress and rhythm, adverb type, adverb length) and language-external factors (i.e. time, age, sex, geography) jointly shape the choice to split the infinitive in this linguistic style of PhE.
{"title":"When to (not) split the infinitive: factors governing patterns of syntactic variation in Twitter-style Philippine English","authors":"WILKINSON DANIEL WONG GONZALES","doi":"10.1017/s1360674323000631","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1360674323000631","url":null,"abstract":"The variability of adverbial placement in the modified infinitive construction (i.e. split infinitives vs. full infinitives with adverbial pre- and post-modification) has been widely discussed in the (American English) literature. Yet a convincing generalized explanation for the variation that simultaneously incorporates language-internal and language-external factors has yet to be found, particularly in English varieties that have not received as much scholarly attention as standardized varieties. This article investigates modified infinitive syntactic variation in Twitter-style Philippine English (PhE) using a 135-million-word Twitter corpus. It adopts a Bayesian approach in conducting a multiple multinomial regression analysis of the said variation, with the help of Deep-Learning-based demographic inference tools. Although the conditioning effects of some factors diverge from patterns discussed in prior work, the results generally show that language-internal (e.g. stress and rhythm, adverb type, adverb length) and language-external factors (i.e. time, age, sex, geography) jointly shape the choice to split the infinitive in this linguistic style of PhE.","PeriodicalId":45748,"journal":{"name":"English Language & Linguistics","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139755795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-18DOI: 10.1017/s1360674323000564
ANNA CICHOSZ
This study is a corpus-based investigation of the use of the V-final (VF) order in Old English conjunct (or coordinate) clauses. The aim of the analysis is to determine which of the two hypotheses formulated in earlier studies of the subject finds more convincing data support in the available corpora of Old English. According to one interpretation, conjunct clauses are a subtype of main clauses, and the VF order is used in both groups to signal continuation in discourse, especially with punctual, dynamic and relatively heavy verbs. Under the other view, VF conjunct clauses are syntactically subordinate, with the coordinating conjunction blocking verb movement like a complementiser. The present study shows that while both hypotheses are descriptively adequate, the main mechanism responsible for the use of the VF order in conjunct clauses is syntactic priming, with the VF order activated by a trigger clause (usually subordinate) and spreading to the following conjunct clause(s), which often results in long chains of subsequent VF clauses.
{"title":"The syntactic status of V-final conjunct clauses in Old English: the role of priming","authors":"ANNA CICHOSZ","doi":"10.1017/s1360674323000564","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1360674323000564","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study is a corpus-based investigation of the use of the V-final (VF) order in Old English conjunct (or coordinate) clauses. The aim of the analysis is to determine which of the two hypotheses formulated in earlier studies of the subject finds more convincing data support in the available corpora of Old English. According to one interpretation, conjunct clauses are a subtype of main clauses, and the VF order is used in both groups to signal continuation in discourse, especially with punctual, dynamic and relatively heavy verbs. Under the other view, VF conjunct clauses are syntactically subordinate, with the coordinating conjunction blocking verb movement like a complementiser. The present study shows that while both hypotheses are descriptively adequate, the main mechanism responsible for the use of the VF order in conjunct clauses is syntactic priming, with the VF order activated by a trigger clause (usually subordinate) and spreading to the following conjunct clause(s), which often results in long chains of subsequent VF clauses.</p>","PeriodicalId":45748,"journal":{"name":"English Language & Linguistics","volume":"104 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138715182","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}