LOT WINTERSCHOOL 2005

1
LOT WINTERSCHOOL 2005

• HISTORICAL SYNTAX
• Jack Hoeksema LOT, BCN
• University of Groningen

2
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• Focus of the course
• - corpus-based studies
• usage factors vs grammar
• emphasis on modern Dutch (1600-2004)

3
Lecture 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

4
Lecture 1, Monday January 10, 2005

• 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

5
Lecture 1, Monday January 10, 2005

• Partly social aspects of corpus data
• Suppose 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

6
Lecture 1, Monday January 10, 2005

• 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)

7
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

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

8
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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.

9
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• Nonessential variation
• example 2
• Population 34 use of A, 68 of B. Before
  vowels, 100 use of A, before consonants 100 use
  of B.

10
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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.

11
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

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

12
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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

13
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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 185-97.

14
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• Im working Im workin
• in lt Old English inde
• ing lt OE -ing

15
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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

16
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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

17
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

18
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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

19
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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

20
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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.

21
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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.

22
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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?

23
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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.

24
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

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

25
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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.

26
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• Not necessarily...

27
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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.

28
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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.

29
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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

30
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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)

31
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• OV correllates with Particle lt Verb order, VO
  with Verb lt Particle order.
• If two grammars compete, we expect to see the
  position of the object to parallel that of the
  particle

32
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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.

33
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• Study of word order variation has found
  significant correlations between object lt verb
  and particle lt verb order
• Cf. S. Pintzuk, 1991, Phrase Structures in
  Competition. Variation and Change in Old English
  Word Order. Diss. University of Pennsylvania

34
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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.

35
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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.

36
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

37
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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)

38
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• Constant Rate Hypothesis
• (Kroch 1989)
• changes spread at the same rate in all
  environments

39
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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

40
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

41
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• Primary motivation for the CRH
• DO-support in English
• Slope parameters for 5 environments
• Negative declaratives 3.74
• Negative questions 3.45
• Transitive Yes/No questions 3.62
• Intransitive Yes/No questions 3.77
• Affirmative WH-object questions 4.01

42
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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

43
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

44
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

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

45
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• Compare
• The train may arrive any moment/second/minute
  now.
• The train may arrive any day now.
• The train may arrive any year now.

46
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• Universally quantified minimizing nouns have a
  special immediate future reading
• Cf. Jack Hoeksema, 1997,
• "Ieder moment Scalaire universele
  kwantificatie", Tabu 27-4, 161-170.

47
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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

48
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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

49
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• Deictic readings
• op het moment ben ik vrolijk
• nu ben ik vrolijk
• hij had op het moment geen geld hij had toen
  geen geld

50
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• Other expressions
• op dat moment /op dit moment
• op een gegeven moment

51
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

52
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• So...
• constant rate effect holds for all cases except
  op het ogenblik
• All environment go from lt 5 moment to gt 95
  with a century, but op het ogenblik has only
  reached about 40

53
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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 moment 2323
• op het ogenblik 1797

54
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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

55
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• Conclusion
• op het moment/ogenblik van de ramp
• op het moment dat zij aankwam
• etc are not idiomatic, but compositional

56
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• Question is the Constant Rate Hypothesis
  validated or invalidated?

57
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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)

58
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• Usefulness of mathematical modelling of usage
  curves
• may help estimate missing data points
• helps the analyst to decide if s/he has enough
  data

59
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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.

60
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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.

61
Lecture 1, Monday Jan 10, 2005

• 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.