Implications of Grammaticalization for Language Change

2020 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-345
Author(s):  
Valentina Concu
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Present Perfect ◽  
Reconstruction Process ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
The Past

Abstract The emergence of the German double present and past perfect (hat vergessen gehabt ‘has forgotten had’; ist gefahren gewesen ‘is gone been’ – hatte vergessen gehabt ‘had forgotten had’; war gefahren gewesen ‘was gone been’) is still widely debated. Some scholars consider the development of these constructions a result of the decline of the Präteritum, whereas others claim that these were formed as a consequence of the loss of the aspectual system and the reconstruction process of the verbal categories. In this article, the author argues that the development of these constructions is the result of the grammaticalization of the Perfekt as a ‘commentary tense’ in the 14th Century. The increased frequency of the present perfect prompted the reanalysis of the past participles of haben (gehabt) and sein (gewesen), which began to appear alongside the present perfect, creating new periphrastic constructions, including the double present and past perfects.

British-American Contrasts in the Use of the Past Perfect: Negotiating Ambiguity versus Redundancy?

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-319
Author(s):  
Stephanie Kleppel ◽  
Matthias Eitelmann ◽  
Britta Mondorf
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Language Change ◽  
American English ◽  
Recent Change ◽  
Present Perfect ◽  
British English ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
The Past ◽  
Distribution Studies ◽  
The Cost

Abstract The present study provides an empirical analysis of British-American contrasts in the overall use of the past perfect as well as its functional distribution. Studies on variation according to national variety report a decline of the past perfect spearheaded by American English (cf. Elsness, J. 1997. The Perfect and Preterite in Contemporary and Earlier English (Topics in English Linguistics 21). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyte; Bowie, J., S. Wallis, and B. Aarts. 2013. “The Perfect in Spoken British English.” In The Verb Phrase in English. Investigating Recent Language Change with Corpora, edited by B. Aarts, J. Close, G. Leech, and S. Wallis, 318–52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 348; Yao, X., and P. Collins. 2013. “Recent Change in Non-present Perfect Constructions in British and American English.” Corpora 8 (1): 115–35: 121f.). However, these findings still await an explanation as to possible motivations for the decline. The present study is able to provide novel insights by taking the semantic functions of past perfect structures into account (anteriority, backshifting in indirect speech, hypothetical past). A functional quantitative and qualitative analysis of newspaper corpora comprising 112 million words (27 million British English and 85 million American English) reveals that the overall decline results in a reduction of redundant information at the cost of potential ambiguity. Finally, our findings will be related to the four dichotomies of British-American differences outlined in Rohdenburg and Schlüter (2009 “New Departures.” In One Language, Two Grammars? Differences between British and American English (Studies in English Language), edited by G. Rohdenburg, and J. Schlüter, 364–423. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 421), i.e. progressiveness, formality, consistency and explicitness.

scholarly journals ENGLISH PERFECT IN COGNITION OF SLOVAK ISCED3 LEARNERS OF ENGLISH – PRELIMINARY EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomáš Hlava
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Proficiency Test ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Procedural Knowledge ◽  
Language Instruction ◽  
Declarative Knowledge ◽  
Present Perfect ◽  
The Past ◽  
English Language Instruction ◽  
Different Types

In English language instruction in Slovakia, a strong preference for declarative knowledge at the expense of procedural knowledge development has been reported over the last two decades. However, the cognitive aspects of language attainment predict no impact of instructional efforts, since mental representations of language to be attained are told to be supported by different cognitive systems than associative learning develops. Language variation materializes differences among languages based on differences in digitalizing the experience and thus understanding the world. For Slovak learners, the English present perfect is one such anomaly in categorization. This paper aims to answer what the specific interactions between past simple and present perfect are and how the predicted cognitive aspects of language attainment influence the use of different types of knowledge. A proficiency test focusing on declarative knowledge and language use without context and in context was distributed to 600 Slovak learners of English at the ISCED3a level. In Past simple conditions, students proved highly proficiency in all 3 types of tasks. In present perfect conditions, declarative knowledge strongly dominated over language use in context. In Present perfect conditions, substitutions by past simple were significantly more frequent than substitutions of present perfect by past simple. Cognitive funneling was recognized as a process inhibiting fast proceduralization of the English present perfect compared to fast and reliable proceduralization of the past simple.

Communication as source and motivator of language evolution

2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vilmos Benczik
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Linguistic Resources ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

Language emerges and changes primarily through communication; therefore communication technologies play a key role in the history of language change. The most powerful communication technology from this point of view is phonetic writing, which has a double effect on language: on the one hand it impoverishes suprasegmental linguistic resources; on the other hand it evokes in language a profound and sophisticated semantic precision, and also syntactic complexity. The huge progress in abstract human thought that has taken place over the past three or four centuries has come about on the basis of these linguistic changes. Today, when writing seems to be losing its earlier hegemony over communication, the question arises as to whether this will lead to the erosion of human language, and also of human thought.

LANGUAGE CONTACT AND CHANGE: SUMMARY OBSERVATIONS

2003 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 243-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Richard Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
Language Loss ◽  
The European Union ◽  
New Members ◽  
The Past ◽  
Contact Language ◽  
General Topic ◽  
Language Contact And Change

Various facets of the general topic of multilingualism, including language contact, have been dealt with in previous ARAL volumes (e.g., under separate entries in volumes 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 12, 13, and 15) and as a major substantive focus in volumes 6, 14 and 17. Nonetheless, it does not seem at all surprising that we return to the specific topic of language contact and change in volume 23 given the worldwide incidence of the phenomenon and the attention, and often controversy, which various aspects of language contact, language change or language loss arouses. Thus, I find it interesting that, within the past 12 months, issues related to language contact and derivative implications have surfaced as important factors in public discussions in such disparate settings as the November 2002 elections in several of the states in the United States, the admission of new members to the European Union, and immigration to Australia. Clearly, the topics of language contact and language change are salient and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

scholarly journals The refuge of a dying variant within the grammar: Patterns of change and continuity in the Spanish verbal periphrasishaber de + infinitive over the past two centuries

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Luis Blas Arroyo ◽  
Javier Vellón Lahoz
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Selection Of

AbstractBased on a corpus of ego-documents (private letters, diaries, memoirs) from the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, this paper presents a variationist comparative study to determine the fate of the modal periphrasishaber de + infinitive in the history of modern Spanish. Detailed analysis of the envelope of variation enables us to show that, despite an abrupt decline in the selection ofhaber derelative totener que, both ‘to have to’, grammatical environments that favor its use remain in the mid-20th century. Many of the factor groups and the hierarchy of constraints during this period are similar to those that operated in previous periods. Nevertheless, a generalized decrease in the explanatory power of these factor groups, as well as some divergent patterns within several of these groups are also observed, mainly as a result of the fact thathaber de + infinitive is increasingly relegated to some restricted areas of the grammar and lexicon. Based on these results, some theoretical implications for changing rates and constraints in language change and grammaticalization are discussed.

Yazijioghlu 'Alī on the Christian Turks of the Dobruja

1952 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 639-668 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Wittek
Keyword(s):  
Black Sea ◽  
Distinct Group ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Past ◽  
Greek Orthodox Church

The steppe which stretches between the Lower Danube and the Black Sea, from the Delta southward as far as the foothills of the Emine Dagh, and which since the middle of the 14th century has been called, after the Bulgarian prince Dobrotitsa, the Dobruja, is the homeland of a small Turkish-speaking people, the Gagauz. It is because of their religion that they appear as a distinct group among the Turks: they are Christians belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church. In the past the Gagauz may have constituted, among the various ethnic elements of the region, a group of considerable importance, especially in the southern and middle Dobruja, from Varna and Kaliakra towards Silistria on the Danube. Besides, small isolated groups of them are to be found also in the Balkans (where they are more commonly known by the name of Sorguch): in Eastern Thrace, round Hafsa, to the south-east of Adrianople, and in Macedonia, to the east and west of Salonica, round Zikhna (near Serres) and round Karaferia (Verria). In modern times the Gagauz of the Dobruja have shrunk to a feeble minority chiefly as a result of a prolonged and massive emigration into Bessarabia. To-day even this remnant is rapidly dwindling.

The PATH/LINK schema in Past-Simple vs. Present-Perfect English TA-expressions contrasted with Polish versions

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 337-356
Author(s):  
Dorota Chłopek
Keyword(s):  
English Text ◽  
Simple Construction ◽  
Present Perfect ◽  
Image Schemas ◽  
The Past ◽  
Polish Language

The aim of this paper, which has an explanatory character, is to present the English perfective (past) TA-construction vs. the present-perfect TA-construction by means of image schemas of PATH and LINK, respectively, since the said constructions pose a contrast that is absent from the Polish language. Five examples of English text are juxtaposed with two Polish versions for comparison of how the two English constructions can be instantiated in Polish, the lexical means used in the Polish versions vary. Hence Polish learners of English are encouraged herein to look for hints which will sensitize them to the usage of the past-simple construction vs. the present-perfect construction, in association with the semantic schemas of PATH and LINK in relation to said grammar constructions.

A contrastive look at the present perfect/preterite opposition in English and Norwegian

2001 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Elsness
Keyword(s):  
Zero Point ◽  
Time Span ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Present Perfect ◽  
Parallel Corpus ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Past Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
The Difference

This article deals with the opposition between the present perfect and the preterite in English and Norwegian from a contrastive point of view. The use of these verb forms is very similar in the two languages, and markedly different from that in closely related languages such as German and French, where the present perfect is used much more widely. In English and Norwegian the preterite is the norm if the reference is identified as being to past time which is clearly separate from the deictic zero-point, for instance through adverbial specification, while the present perfect is used of situations extending from the past all the way up to the deictic zero-point, and of situations located within such a time span. In many intermediate cases, where the reference is to a loosely defined past time, either verb form may be used in both languages, although several writers have claimed that the present perfect is more common in Norwegian than in English in such cases. The difference between the two languages is more distinct if the reference is to what can be seen as unique past time, in which case the present perfect is usually blocked in English but very common in Norwegian. Also, the so-called inferential perfect in Norwegian is not matched by any similar perfect use in English. These claims are amply confirmed by an investigation of the English–Norwegian Parallel Corpus (ENPC), where the present perfect is more frequent in the Norwegian as compared with the English sections, at the expense of the preterite. Moreover, there is found to be a marked difference between the original and the translated texts of the ENPC: the ratio between the present perfect and the preterite is generally higher in Norwegian than in English but not quite so high in Norwegian texts translated from English as in Norwegian original texts, and somewhat higher in English texts translated from Norwegian than in English original texts. This difference is ascribed to interference from the source language in the translated texts.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document