scholarly journals Aspects of change in the syntax of Māori - A corpus-based study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Karena Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Contact Period ◽  
Modern Material ◽  
Syntactic Change ◽  
The Future ◽  
English Syntax ◽  
Grammatical Change ◽  
Language Revitalisation ◽  
Material Evidence

<p>In the current climate of Māori language revitalisation, there is ample anecdotal evidence to suggest that not only the vocabulary, but also the syntax of modern Māori is markedly different from its traditional roots, and that it shows significant influence from English syntax. However, syntactic change in Māori has not hitherto been rigorously studied. This thesis aims to provide material evidence of change in Māori syntax, through a corpus-based study of grammatical change in te reo Māori over the period of contact with English.  My methodology involved the compilation and comparison of two synchronic corpora representing the two ends of the contact period to provide a diachronic perspective on the language. Each corpus consists of approximately 102,000 running words of material written originally in Māori. The early corpus contains items published pre-1900. The modern material was written post-1990. The thesis is not only an exploration of the possibility of documenting syntactic change through the use of such corpora, but also tests whether it is possible to do this using corpora significantly smaller than the multi-million word corpora typical in corpus linguistics.  The scope of this methodology is tested by examining three distinct types of grammatical features: a grammatical particle (the preposition mō), a pair of semantically related lexemes that appear to be undergoing a process of grammaticalisation (the verbs taea and āhei), and a widespread grammatical construction (certain types of relative clauses). In each instance, the two corpora are compared for features such as the frequency of occurrence, the associated constructions, and the contexts of use.  In relation to the methodological questions, the thesis concludes that while these corpora are too small to provide adequate data on individual lexical items like taea and āhei, the methodology did make it possible to document change in the other, relatively high-frequency grammatical features.  The thesis also raises the questions of whether the changes identified result from the direct adoption of English usages and constructions, whether they result from insufficient exposure to traditional Māori as a result of the dominance of English, or whether they are perhaps instead the result of internally-motivated Māori language evolution. This leads to a discussion of the likely implications of the changes documented here for the future of the language and the language community. I argue that acceptance of all such change as natural and unavoidable is likely to be detrimental to the future of te reo Māori.</p>

scholarly journals Aspects of change in the syntax of Māori - A corpus-based study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Karena Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Contact Period ◽  
Modern Material ◽  
Syntactic Change ◽  
The Future ◽  
English Syntax ◽  
Grammatical Change ◽  
Language Revitalisation ◽  
Material Evidence

<p>In the current climate of Māori language revitalisation, there is ample anecdotal evidence to suggest that not only the vocabulary, but also the syntax of modern Māori is markedly different from its traditional roots, and that it shows significant influence from English syntax. However, syntactic change in Māori has not hitherto been rigorously studied. This thesis aims to provide material evidence of change in Māori syntax, through a corpus-based study of grammatical change in te reo Māori over the period of contact with English.  My methodology involved the compilation and comparison of two synchronic corpora representing the two ends of the contact period to provide a diachronic perspective on the language. Each corpus consists of approximately 102,000 running words of material written originally in Māori. The early corpus contains items published pre-1900. The modern material was written post-1990. The thesis is not only an exploration of the possibility of documenting syntactic change through the use of such corpora, but also tests whether it is possible to do this using corpora significantly smaller than the multi-million word corpora typical in corpus linguistics.  The scope of this methodology is tested by examining three distinct types of grammatical features: a grammatical particle (the preposition mō), a pair of semantically related lexemes that appear to be undergoing a process of grammaticalisation (the verbs taea and āhei), and a widespread grammatical construction (certain types of relative clauses). In each instance, the two corpora are compared for features such as the frequency of occurrence, the associated constructions, and the contexts of use.  In relation to the methodological questions, the thesis concludes that while these corpora are too small to provide adequate data on individual lexical items like taea and āhei, the methodology did make it possible to document change in the other, relatively high-frequency grammatical features.  The thesis also raises the questions of whether the changes identified result from the direct adoption of English usages and constructions, whether they result from insufficient exposure to traditional Māori as a result of the dominance of English, or whether they are perhaps instead the result of internally-motivated Māori language evolution. This leads to a discussion of the likely implications of the changes documented here for the future of the language and the language community. I argue that acceptance of all such change as natural and unavoidable is likely to be detrimental to the future of te reo Māori.</p>

Relics and Divination

2018 ◽  
pp. 70-82
Author(s):  
Robert Wiśniewski
Keyword(s):  
Early Period ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Future ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Written Sources

As early as in the second half of the fourth century, Gregory of Nazianzus assured his audience that the saints, living or dead, had the power to predict the future. This chapter seeks to explain how such predictions were obtained. There were at least three divinatory practices in which relics could be used: incubation in martyrs’ sanctuaries, interrogation of demoniacs in the presence of relics, and the drawing of lots on martyrs’ tombs. The problem is that the literary evidence for the first practice in the early period is rather scarce, for the second, exceedingly scanty, while for the third it is simply non-existent (we only know about it from material evidence). This reticence of the written sources does not necessarily reflect the actual popularity of these methods and plausibly results from their ambiguous character—neither praised nor condemned, they have left very few traces in literature.

Why very good in India might be pretty good in North America

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-489
Author(s):  
Susanne Wagner
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
North American ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Variationist Sociolinguistics ◽  
The Future ◽  
Trajectories Of Change

Abstract Situated at the interface of several sub-disciplines (corpus linguistics, World Englishes, variationist sociolinguistics), this study investigates patterns of adjectival amplification (very good, so glad, pretty cool) in the Corpus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE). It highlights regional distributions/preferences of amplifier-adjective 2-grams and the idiosyncratic status of certain bigrams according to their frequency status. Globally, clear regional preferences in amplification patterns as well as possible trends concerning change are identified. Regionally, L1 varieties contrast starkly with some regions (Africa, Indian subcontinent) but – maybe unexpectedly – not with others (Southeast Asia). The results offer insights into current trajectories of change concerning the investigated amplifiers in certain regions and 2-grams: North American varieties are leading a trend away from very towards so and possibly pretty in the future.

scholarly journals The future of multimodal corpora

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 391-415 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawn Knight
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Future Developments ◽  
The Past ◽  
Current State ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
Multimodal Corpora ◽  
The Future ◽  
Multimodal Corpus ◽  
Critical Overview

This paper takes stock of the current state-of-the-art in multimodal corpus linguistics, and proposes some projections of future developments in this field. It provides a critical overview of key multimodal corpora that have been constructed over the past decade and presents a wish-list of future technological and methodological advancements that may help to increase the availability, utility and functionality of such corpora for linguistic research.

scholarly journals Syntactic Change in Late Modern English

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Smitterberg
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Syntactic Change ◽  
Original Case ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Many ◽  
Linguistic Units ◽  
Late Modern

Syntactic Change in Late Modern English presents a stability paradox to linguists; despite the many social changes that took place between 1700 and 1900, the language appeared to be structurally stable during this period. This book resolves this paradox by presenting a new, idiolect-centred perspective on language change, and shows how this framework is applicable to change in any language. It then demonstrates how an idiolect-centred framework can be reconciled with corpus-linguistic methodology through four original case studies. These concern colloquialization (the process by which oral features spread to writing) and densification (the process by which meaning is condensed into shorter linguistic units), two types of change that characterize Modern English. The case studies also shed light on the role of genre and gender in language change and contribute to the discussion of how to operationalize frequency in corpus linguistics. This study will be essential reading for researchers in historical linguistics, corpus linguistics and sociolinguistics.

Change in Grammar

2019 ◽  
pp. 579-603
Author(s):  
Marianne Hundt
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Modal Verbs ◽  
Syntactic Change ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
Grammatical Change

The chapter discusses morphological and syntactic change against the backdrop of different theoretical (formal versus functional/usage-based) and methodological approaches (introspection versus corpus data). Specifically, it addresses the question whether grammatical change happens suddenly in a catastrophic resetting of parameters or whether change happens in a more piecemeal, incremental fashion. The case studies that are used to illustrate syntactic demise, innovation, and grammatical revival come from the area of mood (an inflectional category) and modality, notably the grammaticalization of modal verbs. Semi-modals such as (had) better are discussed as examples of constructionalization. Taken together, grammatical changes in mood and modality are ideally suited to exemplify more long-term typological developments in English from a synthetic to a largely analytic language.

Contact-induced grammatical change

Diachronica ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Lucas
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
First Language ◽  
Theoretical Discussion ◽  
Language Attrition ◽  
Syntactic Change ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
First Language Attrition ◽  
Time Work ◽  
Grammatical Change

Language contact plays a key part among the factors leading to change in grammars, and yet the study of syntactic change, especially in the generative or innatist tradition, has tended to neglect the role of contact in this process. At the same time, work on contact-induced change remains largely descriptive, with theoretical discussion restricted mostly to the putative limits on borrowing. This article aims at moving beyond these restrictions by outlining a psycholinguistically-based account of some of the ways in which contact leads to change. This account takes Van Coetsem’s (1988, 2000) distinction between recipient-language and source-language agentivity as its starting point, building on this insight in the light of work on language acquisition and first language attrition, and showing how these principles can be integrated into a unified acquisitionist model of syntactic change in general. The model is then applied to case studies of contact-induced syntactic change in Yiddish and Berber.

scholarly journals THE END OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY

2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd A. Surovell ◽  
Jason L. Toohey ◽  
Adam D. Myers ◽  
Jason M. LaBelle ◽  
James C. M. Ahern ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Altitude ◽  
The State ◽  
Classic Period ◽  
Upper Paleolithic ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Modern Material ◽  
Finite Resource ◽  
The Future ◽  
Current Century

Except for the addition of modern material remains, the archaeological record is a finite resource, which means that, at some point in the future, there will be nothing left to find. In this paper, we model trends in archaeological discovery based on the growth of the field and the probability of site discovery. We compare this model to seven diverse datasets of archaeological discovery trends: (1) all sites from the state of Wyoming, USA; (2) high-altitude archaeological sites from the state of Colorado, USA; (3) mostly complete Neandertal crania; (4) monumental sites of the Maya Classic period; (5) proboscidean kill/scavenge sites globally; (6) Upper Paleolithic sites from Europe; and (7) a compilation of shipwreck discoveries. We forecast discovery trends over the current century. We show that, for all datasets, rates of discovery are in decline, and some segments of the record are near depletion.

scholarly journals The consequences of the loss of verb-second in English: information structure and syntax in interaction

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
BETTELOU LOS
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Syntactic Change ◽  
Linguistic Level ◽  
English Syntax ◽  
Finite Verb

English syntax used to have a version of the verb-second rule, by which the finite verb moves to second position in main clauses. This rule was lost in Middle English, and this article argues that its loss had serious consequences for the information structure of the clause. In the new, rigid subject-verb-object syntax, the function of preposed constituents changed, and the function of encoding ‘old’ or ‘given’ information in a pragmatically neutral way was increasingly reserved for subjects. Pressure from information structure to repair this situation subsequently led to the rise of new passive constructions in order to satisfy the need for more subjects; the change in the informational status of preposed constituents triggered the rise of clefts. If information structure can be compromised by syntactic change in this way, this suggests that it represents a separate linguistic level outside the syntax.

Aluminology

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mimi Sheller
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Modern Material ◽  
Air Power ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Future ◽  
Metal Aluminium

This chapter examines how the light yet strong metal aluminium shaped modern material cultures around practices and ideologies of speed and mobility. Aluminium-based light modernity became definitive of the twentieth century through both military air power and innovative civil applications, informing modernist visions of a streamlined future. The archaeology of metallic modernity opens up a space for thinking about the material remains that contemporary cultures of mobility have left on the Earth, and beyond, in outer space. By tracing the infiltration of this unique metal into the material cultures of modernity the chapter uncovers a layer of modern artefacts-buildings, aircraft, vehicles, appliances, satellites-that express a certain moment in human existence, and also express that period’s hopes for the future of humanity.

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