scholarly journals New -way(s) with -ward(s): lexicalization, splitting and sociolinguistic patterns

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-239
Author(s):  
Karlien Franco ◽  
Sali A. Tagliamonte
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Time Perspective ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Social Standing ◽  
Large Database ◽  
Phrasal Verbs ◽  
Morphological Variable

AbstractThis paper investigates the distribution of a morphological variable that has not gained much attention in the literature: adverbial -s versus -Ø. This morpheme predominantly occurs with adverbs ending in -ward(s), like forward(s), afterward(s), and inward(s), or -way(s), such as anyway(s) or halfway(s). Using a large database of sociolinguistic interviews of Ontario English and an apparent-time perspective, we show that the use of the variants changes over the twentieth century, with the adverbial suffixes -ward(s) and -way(s) behaving differently. -Ward(s) shows a trend towards -s, while most words in -way(s) increasingly take -Ø–splitting by adverbial suffix. Anyway(s) is an exception to this pattern, with a change from below towards -s, strongly conditioned by social standing. We also find evidence for lexicalization of forms without -s in phrasal verbs like to move forward. We explain these findings against the background of variationist sociolinguistic theory and principles of language change.

scholarly journals How long was the nineteenth century?

2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (spe) ◽  
pp. 81-98
Author(s):  
David LIGHTFOOT
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Learning Procedure ◽  
The Way

This paper reviews the problems of the deterministic and predictive view of language change initiated by nineteenth century linguists and shows that such a view is still present in many analyses proposed by twentieth century linguists. As an alternative to such a view, the paper discusses an approach along the lines of Niyogi and Berwick (1997), which takes the explanation for long-term tendencies to be a function of the architecture of UG and the learning procedure and of the way in which populations of speakers behave.

scholarly journals Comparative variationism for the study of language change: five centuries of competition amongst Spanish deontic periphrases

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Luis Blas Arroyo
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
Common Factor ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Auxiliary Verbs ◽  
Complementary Distribution ◽  
Modal Verb ◽  
History Of

AbstractBased on a corpus composed entirely of texts close to the pole of communicative immediacy, mainly private letters from the sixteenth, eighteenth and twentieth centuries (c. 1960), this paper analyses the results of a variationist study on the historical evolution undergone by the Spanish modal periphrases with three distinct auxiliary verbs (haber, tener, deber). Using the heuristic tools of the comparative method, the data show that variation has been constrained by a handful of common factor groups over almost five centuries. Nonetheless, with the odd exception, these factors have conditioned each verb in a different way. Moreover, the sense of this variation changes as time goes by, with especially relevant reorganisation in the first part of the twentieth century. Furthermore, there is a notable association between these constraints and the degree of markedness and the frequency of the conditioning contexts, giving support to a usage-based approach to language change in which cognitive processes such as entrenchment play a decisive role. These data also allow a particular profile to be traced for each modal verb in the history of Spanish, in which tener and haber finally undergo a complementary distribution, whereas deber follows a different pattern. After several centuries of stagnation, tener becomes the star in the deontic firmament of spontaneous communication, diffusing abruptly as a change from below in the twentieth century, and replacing haber, which had been the unmarked variant for centuries.

Language contact through translation

Target ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 420-455
Author(s):  
Shuangzi Pang ◽  
Kefei Wang
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Parallel Corpus ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Sample Points ◽  
Chinese Texts

Abstract This article investigates the role of translations from English in language change in Chinese. It employs a new corpus, the Chinese Diachronic Composite Corpus (CDCC), which incorporates a parallel corpus and comparable corpus in three sampling periods in the twentieth century, and a refe­rence corpus as a starting point in the timeframe. We examine whether explicitness in English–Chinese translations has exerted an impact on the target language, focusing on adversative conjunctions as a measure of explicitness. The results of the study demonstrate that: (1) translated Chinese texts have changed in step with original Chinese texts in the frequency of adversative conjunctions; (2) translated Chinese texts and original Chinese texts are interrelated throughout the three periods, but the correlation between them has changed perceptibly over the three sample points; and (3) source language interference found in translated Chinese texts increases over the three periods.

Three changing patterns of verb complementation in Late Modern English: a real-time study based on matching text corpora

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Mair
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Working Environment ◽  
Standard English ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
Text Corpora ◽  
Grammatical Variation ◽  
Changing Patterns ◽  
Infinitival Complements ◽  
Late Modern

The article looks at three instances of grammatical variation in present-day standard English: the use of bare and to-infinitives with the verb help, the presence or absence of the preposition/complementizer from before -ing-complements depending on prevent, and the choice between -ing- and infinitival complements after the verbs begin and start. In all three instances, current British and American usage will be shown to differ, and these differences need to be interpreted against diachronic changes affecting Late Modern English grammar as a whole. The description of twentieth-century developments is mainly based on data obtained from matching corpora of British and American standard English. Since in all three cases studied developments did not originate in the twentieth century, additional data from the quotation base of the OED were used to outline the long-term evolution of the relevant portions of the grammar since ca. 1600. In general/methodological terms, the article aims to show that an utterance-based model of language change, in combination with the exceptionally well-developed corpus-linguistic working environment available to the student of standard English, can lead to new discoveries even in a well-studied area such as the grammar of standard English.

scholarly journals Understanding Language Death in Czech-Moravian Texas

2007 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 147-163
Author(s):  
Kevin Hannan
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Wave Theory ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Language Death ◽  
Symbolic Function ◽  
Linguistic Model ◽  
Personal Interaction ◽  
The Social

Based on several decades of personal interaction with Texas speakers of Czech, the author’s article attempts to correlate social change with some specific stages of language obsolescence and language death. Many instances of language change in that community, as well as cultural and social change, may be explained by the linguistic model known as the wave theory. One hundred and fifty years passed between the introduction of Czech and the death of that language in Texas. From the mid-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century, the Czech-Moravians represented a closed community in which individuals defined their identity primarily by the Czech language, ethnicity, and culture. In the final five decades of the twentieth century, as the social template representing Texas speakers of Czech disintegrated, spoken Czech ceased to function as a living language, and much of the ancestral culture connected with the language was lost. Today some among the elderly, described as semi-speakers, terminal speakers, or ‘‘rememberers’’ of language, retain a limited knowledge, but the ancestral language now has only a symbolic function.

scholarly journals A long birth

Diachronica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 514-539
Author(s):  
Tore Nesset
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Birth Process ◽  
Cascading Effect ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
S Curve ◽  
Diachronic Development ◽  
Gender Specific

Abstract This article investigates the diachronic development of Russian numeral constructions consisting of a paucal numeral (dva “two”, tri “three”, četyre “four”) followed by an adjective and a noun. Based on statistical analysis of more than 6,000 corpus examples, it is shown that a split took place in the second half of the twentieth century when feminine nouns developed a different agreement pattern from that of masculine and neuter nouns. This split is argued to represent the final step in a long “birth process” of gender-specific paucal constructions that started with the loss of the dual in the Middle Ages. It is suggested that we are witnessing a cascading effect, whereby the feminine pattern develops when the pattern for masculine and neuter nouns is approaching stabilization. The article furthermore includes a discussion of the hypothesis that “S-curves” represent a template for language change. While the documented changes resemble S-curves, the proposed analysis also addresses some general problems with testing the S-curve hypothesis empirically.

Anti-Witchcraft Cults in Asante: An Essay in the Social History of an African People

1981 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 125-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.C. McCaskie
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Time Perspective ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
African People ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
African Context ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Causative Link

There is a considerable literature dealing with the phemenon of twentieth-century anti-witchcraft cults among the Akan peoples of Ghana, and notably the Asante. This literature is written from the disciplinary perspective of social anthropology and it may be divided into two interpretative views of the matter. The first espouses the theory that such cults are ‘new’--creations of the twentieth century--in that they represent a reflexive response to the social disorientation assumed to have been engendered by colonial overrule. The second questions the causative link between the twentieth century and increased anomie, and suggests the location of such cults in a time perspective reaching back into the distant--but undefined--pre-colonial past. For a social historian interested in the problem of witchcraft and its suppression this literature presents a resistant difficulty. It concerns itself with the material appurtenances and the impressionistic ‘psychohistory’ of cult practices, but it is almost entirely bereft of historical data and it indulges in generalizations erected upon the flimsiest of factual considerations. McLeod, who has ably reviewed this literature, has commented upon this deficiency with regret, but--at least so far--has done little to rectify it.In this paper I am concerned with the discrete history--social, economic and political--of three important anti-witchcraft cults that flourished in Asante between the late 1870s adn the late 1920s; in chronological order these were, domankama (‘The Creator’), aberewa (‘The Old Woman’) and hwe me so (‘Watch Over Me’). In discussing these cults as historical phenomena I seek to explicate or otherwise to dissolve some of the generalizations evident in the existing literature. I seek too to say something concerning the construction of a valid Asante (and African) social history, the relationship between social history and social anthropology in the African context, and the significance for the historian of Africa of socio-cultural phenomena such as witchcraft.

Recent changes in the function and frequency of Standard English genitive constructions: a multivariate analysis of tagged corpora

2007 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
LARS HINRICHS ◽  
BENEDIKT SZMRECSANYI
Keyword(s):  
Logistic Regression ◽  
Multivariate Analysis ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Standard English ◽  
Relative Importance ◽  
Large Database ◽  
Independent Variables ◽  
Phonological Constraints ◽  
The Press ◽  
Text Length

This study of present-day English genitive variation is based on all interchangeable instances of s- and of-genitives from the ‘Reportage’ and ‘Editorial’ categories of the ‘Brown family’ of corpora. Variation is studied by tapping into a number of independent variables, such as precedence of either construction in the text, length of the possessor and possessum phrases, phonological constraints, discourse flow, and animacy of the possessor. In addition to distributional analyses, we use logistic regression to investigate the probabilistic factor weights of these variables, thus tracking language change in progress as evidenced in the language of the press. This method, married to our large database, yields the most detailed perspective to date on frequently discussed issues, such as the relative importance of possessor animacy and end-weight in genitive choice (cf. most recently Rosenbach 2005), or on the exact factorial dynamics responsible for the ongoing spread of the s-genitive.

Modeling Language Change in the St. Louis Corridor

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-106
Author(s):  
Jordan Kodner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Population Structure ◽  
Population Study ◽  
Population Model ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Modeling Language ◽  
Computational Simulations ◽  
Northern Cities Shift ◽  
Northern Cities ◽  
Complex Relationships

AbstractThe St. Louis Corridor extending from Chicago, Illinois to St. Louis, Missouri has been described as a “breach” through the Midlands dialect region because of the presence of Inland North features there. Most notably, features associated with the Northern Cities Shift suddenly appeared in Corridor cities in the mid-twentieth century, but they have since largely retreated. Friedman's (2014) population study has uncovered complex relationships between the Corridor's geography and this pattern of advance and retreat, and this work elaborates on that investigation through computational simulations of the Corridor's population structure. Implementing a new network-analytic population model (Kodner & Cerezo Falco, 2018), I find support for Friedman's original hypothesis that migration into cities along Route 66 imported Inland North features into the Corridor first before it spread outward to communities farther away from the route and uncover questions about the Corridor's population that merit further study.

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