scholarly journals English and the use of the simple past in Dutch

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-101
Author(s):  
Jikkie Veenstra ◽  
Remco Knooihuizen
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Structural Level ◽  
Present Perfect ◽  
Potential Contact ◽  
Through Diffusion ◽  
Verb Tense ◽  
Acceptability Judgment

Abstract The global dominance of English has resulted in contact-induced change in many of the world’s languages. While lexical influence is perhaps the most widespread and the most visible form of change, there are indications that English may also be influencing languages on a structural level. In this article, we investigate a case of potential contact-induced structural change in the verb tense system of Dutch. Non-standard use of the simple past (instead of the standard present perfect) has been noticed for some time, and often linked to English influence. Based on an acceptability judgment questionnaire, we show that there is little evidence for language change in this feature in apparent time, but that judgments do depend on raters’ exposure to English, with higher exposure correlating with more positive judgments. This suggests that contact-induced change through diffusion may be a factor in the use of this construction.

scholarly journals Control Stimuli in Experimental Code-Switching Research

Languages ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan Koronkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Judgment Task ◽  
Individual Variability ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Complex Sentence ◽  
Present Perfect ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Auxiliary Verb ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Acceptability Judgment

The current study investigates whether there is variation among different types of control stimuli in code-switching (CS) research, how such stimuli can be used to accommodate heterogeneity, and how they can also be used as a baseline comparison of acceptability. A group of native Spanish–English bilinguals (n = 20) completed a written acceptability judgment task with a 7-point Likert scale. Five different types of control stimuli were included, with three types considered to be completely acceptable (complex-sentence switches, direct-object switches, and subject–predicate switches) and two types considered to be completely unacceptable (pronoun switches and present–perfect switches). Additionally, a set of present–progressive switches were included as a comparison, as their acceptability status is still actively debated. The participants as a whole exhibited the expected grammatical distinctions among the control stimuli, but with a high degree of individual variability. Pronoun switches and auxiliary verb switches were rated significantly lower than the complex-sentence switches, direct-object switches, and subject–predicate switches. These results show that control stimuli can also establish a baseline comparison of acceptability, and recommendations for inclusion in experimental CS research are provided.

From unit-and-ten to ten-before-unit order in the history of English numerals

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Berg ◽  
Marion Neubauer
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Old English ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Unit Order ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Number Words ◽  
Significant Structural Change ◽  
History Of ◽  
Order Change

AbstractIn the course of its history, English underwent a significant structural change in its numeral system. The number words from 21 to 99 switched from the unit-and-ten to the ten-before-unit pattern. This change is traced on the basis of more than 800 number words. It is argued that this change, which took seven centuries to complete and in which the Old English pattern was highly persistent, can be broken down into two parts—the reordering of the units and tens and the loss of the conjoining element. Although the two steps logically belong to the same overall change, they display a remarkably disparate behavior. Whereas the reordering process affected the least frequent number words first, the deletion process affected the most frequent words first. This disparity lends support to the hypothesis that the involvement or otherwise of low-level aspects of speech determines the role of frequency in language change (Phillips, 2006). Finally, the order change is likely to be a contact-induced phenomenon and may have been facilitated by a reduction in mental cost.

scholarly journals Who changes language? Bilingualism and structural change in Burma and the Reef Islands

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Åshild Næss ◽  
Mathias Jenny
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Language Shift ◽  
The Other ◽  
Lexical Borrowing ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Contact Language ◽  
Reef Islands ◽  
Contact Situation

AbstractIn this paper we discuss two cases of contact-induced language change where lexical and grammatical borrowing appear to have gone in opposite directions: one language has borrowed large amounts of vocabulary from another while at the same time being the source of structural borrowings into the other language. Furthermore, it appears in both cases that the structural borrowing has come about through bilingualism in L1 speakers of the source language, while L1 speakers of the language undergoing the structural change are largely monolingual. We propose that these two unusual factors are not unrelated, but that the latter is the cause of the former: Under circumstances where the numerically much smaller language in a contact situation is the contact language, the L2 speakers' variety, influenced by their L1, may spread into the monolingual community. e lexical borrowing naturally happens from the bilingual speakers' L2 into their L1, resulting in opposite directions of lexical and structural borrowing. Similar processes have been described in cases of language shift, but we show that it may take place even in situations where shift does not occur.

scholarly journals Simpler grammar, larger vocabulary: How population size affects language

2018 ◽  
Vol 285 (1871) ◽  
pp. 20172586 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florencia Reali ◽  
Nick Chater ◽  
Morten H. Christiansen
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Structural Complexity ◽  
Structural Level ◽  
Vocabulary Size ◽  
Opposite Pattern ◽  
Small Communities ◽  
Interacting Agents ◽  
Linguistic Conventions ◽  
Large Groups ◽  
Inverse Pattern

Languages with many speakers tend to be structurally simple while small communities sometimes develop languages with great structural complexity. Paradoxically, the opposite pattern appears to be observed for non-structural properties of language such as vocabulary size. These apparently opposite patterns pose a challenge for theories of language change and evolution. We use computational simulations to show that this inverse pattern can depend on a single factor: ease of diffusion through the population. A population of interacting agents was arranged on a network, passing linguistic conventions to one another along network links. Agents can invent new conventions, or replicate conventions that they have previously generated themselves or learned from other agents. Linguistic conventions are either Easy or Hard to diffuse, depending on how many times an agent needs to encounter a convention to learn it. In large groups, only linguistic conventions that are easy to learn, such as words, tend to proliferate, whereas small groups where everyone talks to everyone else allow for more complex conventions, like grammatical regularities, to be maintained. Our simulations thus suggest that language, and possibly other aspects of culture, may become simpler at the structural level as our world becomes increasingly interconnected.

Form does not follow function, but variation does: the origin and early usage of possessive havegot in English

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 487-510
Author(s):  
DAVID LORENZ
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Present Perfect ◽  
New Variant ◽  
Early Use ◽  
Semantic Shift ◽  
Functional Motivations ◽  
Semantic Properties

This article investigates the emergence and early use of possessive havegot in English. Two hypotheses about its emergence are tested on historical data (c.1460–1760). One hypothesis is based on communicative functionality, suggesting that got was inserted as a ‘pattern preserver’ to compensate for the increased reduction of have. The other hypothesis invokes the conventionalization of an invited inference, thus a (non-functional) semantic shift which does not immediately serve to support a communicative function. The diachronic evidence is found to support only the latter hypothesis.In the second part the early stage of the variation of have and havegot is investigated (c.1720–50). The results show a strong register difference, but also a division of labour between the variants that can be explained by the syntactic and semantic properties of havegot as having emerged out of a present perfect of get. Thus, the variation is organized in a functionally motivated way.It is concluded that in the development of possessive havegot functional constraints apply to the variation early on, but do not play an evident role in the emergence of the new variant. This suggests that functional motivations are a directing force but not necessarily a driving force in language change.

Code-Switching as a Reflection of Contact-Induced Change

2020 ◽  
pp. 192-214
Author(s):  
Ad Backus
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
The Other ◽  
Code Mixing ◽  
Language Mixing ◽  
Lexical Change ◽  
Theory Of Language

Code-switching is often studied in purely synchronic terms, as recorded speech is analyzed for patterns of language mixing. Though this has yielded numerous useful theoretical advances, it has also shielded the code-switching literature from serious engagement with the phenomenon of language change, even from the subtype of change caused by language contact. There is also the additional practice of limiting the study of code-mixing and code-switching to lexical mixing. On the other side of the fence, meanwhile, discussions of contact-induced language change tend to be limited to morphological and syntactic phenomena. This chapter breaks through this stalemate, and argues that a usage-based approach to language change actually demands integration of these perspectives. Code-switching should be seen as a reflection of lexical change. It is for this reason that a synchronic distinction between loanwords and code-switching makes no sense, since the terms refer to the diachronic and synchronic planes, respectively, of the same phenomenon. In the chapter, the author interprets the code-switching literature from this theoretical viewpoint, and explores what both the literature on code-switching and that on contact-induced change stand to gain from linking their empirical findings to a usage-based theory of language change that allocates proper attention to synchrony and diachrony, and unites lexical and structural change in the same framework.

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.

A Cognitive Construction Grammar approach to the pluralization of presentational haber in Puerto Rican Spanish

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeroen Claes
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Structural Priming ◽  
Puerto Rican Spanish ◽  
Conditioning Factors ◽  
Typical Action ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Verb Tense

AbstractIn this paper, I present an analysis of the pluralization of haber ‘there is/are’ in Puerto Rican Spanish (e.g., habían fiestas ‘there were parties’) as an ongoing language change from below in which the impersonal argument-structure construction (<AdvPhaberObj>) is being replaced by a personal variant (<AdvPhaberSubj>). Speakers pluralize presentational haber in about 41% of the cases, and linguistic conditioning factors are ‘typical action chain-position of the noun's referent,’ polarity of the clause, verb tense, comprehension-to-production priming, and production-to-production priming. I argue that the effect of these independent variables can be traced back to three cognitive factors: the preference for unmarked coding, statistical preemption, and structural priming. Social distributions can also be modeled in constructionist frameworks, with results for social class, formality, and gender advocating in favor of considering this variation as an ongoing change from below, which allows speakers to position themselves in terms of gender and social class.

Modelling the “Aoristic Drift of the Present Perfect” as Inflation An Essay in Historical Pragmatics

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Schaden
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Learning Model ◽  
Theoretical Issue ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Causal Mechanism ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Present Perfect ◽  
Linguistic System ◽  
Iterated Learning

In this article, the diachronic tendency of present perfect forms to become more and more past tense-like is analysed in terms of an inflationary process within an Iterated Learning Model. The paper proposes to improve on current accounts of the diachrony of present perfects (mostly set in the framework of grammaticalisation theory) by making explicit a selfreinforcing causal mechanism that drives the process, namely that speakers overestimate the current relevance contribution of their utterances. The main theoretical issue is to develop an explicit account of language change where modifications in a linguistic system are long-term effects of the use of language, or, put differently, of speaker-hearer interaction and the biases that act upon them.

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.

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