Change

This chapter discusses how the Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization Model explains language change. First, it is emphasized that not only innovation and variation, but also the frequency of repetition can serve as important triggers of change. Conventionalization and entrenchment processes can interact and be influenced by numerous forces in many ways, resulting in various small-scale processes of language change, which can stop, change direction, or even become reversed. This insight serves as a basis for the systematic description of nine basic modules of change which differ in the ways in which they are triggered and controlled by processes and forces. Large-scale pathways of change such as grammaticalization, lexicalization, pragmaticalization, context-induced change, or colloquialization and standardization are all explained by reference to these modules. The system is applied in a case study on the history of do-periphrasis.

Understanding the process of entrenchment

This chapter deals with the cognitive process of entrenchment, beginning with a discussion of its psychological underpinnings in learning, memory consolidation, and automatization. Next, forces that effect entrenchment are introduced, among others frequency of repetition, embodiment, salience, and iconicity. These factors facilitate or impede entrenchment by virtue of their potential to influence the psychological processes behind it. The final section of this chapter argues against the received view that routinization and schematization are two different entrenchment processes producing different effects: token routinization and type schematization, conducive to pattern formation and productivity. It is claimed that the two processes are just two sides of one coin and differ only with regard to the variability of what becomes routinized. Routinization is always the key mechanism, while schematization comes to the fore to the extent to which what becomes routinized varies.

Diffusion

The chapter discusses the nature of the process of diffusion as a feedback-loop process and explains its contribution to the conventionalization of innovations, to linguistic variation, change, and persistence. The chapter is divided into sections portraying spatial diffusion, social diffusion, and stylistic diffusion as highly dynamic, potentially reversible, and therefore largely unpredictable. Aspects discussed include various models of spatial diffusion (e.g. the gravity model and the cascade model), the S-curve model of the social diffusion of innovations, as well as processes such as standardization, colloquialization, and vernacularization. It is highlighted that all three dimensions of diffusion must always be kept in sight. This is illustrated by discussing the variable -ing vs -in as a standard example of what Labov (2001) calls a ‘stable sociolinguistic variable’.

Summary of Part I

This short chapter provides a summary of Part I of the book. It emphasizes the claim that all aspects associated with usage events have the potential to become conventionalized and entrenched. These include the forms and meanings of utterances, the interpersonal and cognitive activities involved in their production and comprehension, and the cotextual, contextual, and social characteristics of utterances. The chapter also highlights the special role played by pragmatic associations as mediators between interpersonal and cognitive activities and their conventionalization and entrenchment. Forces affecting usage are portrayed as fairly stable sociopragmatic and emotive principles whose concrete manifestations are, however, subject to change.

Usage events and utterance types

The chapter lays the foundation for the understanding of usage events and utterance types. Usage events consist of several components, all of which can become conventionalized and entrenched: utterances (including the required motor and sensory activities), communicative goals of participants, cognitive and interpersonal activities, and the linguistic, situational, and social context. Utterance types are contingent links between communicative goals and linguistics forms. They are contingent on several dimensions: the onomasiological link between goals and forms, the semasiological link between forms and meanings, combinations on the syntagmatic dimension, and the use of utterance types in cotexts and contexts. Utterance types can be defined as multiply contingent and probabilistic connections between goals and forms. Three classes of utterance types can be distinguished with regard to their function, specificity, and size, i.e. distinctors, units, and patterns. Although the notion of utterance types is similar to that of construction, it is preferred to emphasize the dynamic and contingent nature of form-meaning relations.

Variation

This chapter discusses how the Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization Model explains language variation. It sifts the various contributions of the components of the model for elements that are conducive to onomasiological and semasiological structural variation, to situational, social, and regional variation, and to individual differences. Not only the conventionalization processes of usualization and diffusion, but also the entrenchment process of routinization make a strong contribution to the emergence and change of variation on all levels. Numerous forces promote variation, e.g. economy, extravagance, solidarity, prestige, mobility, and language contact. The dynamic, changeable nature of variation is emphasized and the various sources of this malleability are identified. It is also highlighted that the existence of individual differences is one of the central predictions of the EC-Model.

The routinization of pragmatic associations

In this chapter it is first argued that numerous linguistic phenomena located at the heart of grammar, e.g. deixis, reference, tense, aspect, modality, sentence mode, and intonation, have their origin in the routinization of commonalities extracted from usage events. These commonalities are represented by more or less strongly entrenched pragmatic associations. Then it is claimed that implicatures and other inferential mechanisms such as metaphors, metonymies, irony, as well as connotations and style and register awareness are also based on the routinization of pragmatic associations. These claims are condensed in three pragmatic-strengthening principles: situational pragmatic strengthening, inferential pragmatic strengthening, and pragmatic strengthening of situated meanings. The fundamental role of pragmatic associations for shaping core grammar is emphasized.

Understanding the process of conventionalization

This chapter sets the scene for the two subsequent chapters on usualization and diffusion. Conventions are defined as regularities of behaviour the members of a community conform to because they mutually expect each other to conform to them. Conventionality is multidimensional and not fixed but contingent. Usualization and diffusion are the two subprocesses of conventionalization. Both are driven by the speech chain mechanism, but affect different dimensions of conventionality or conformity. Different kinds of utterance types are marked by systematically different conformity profiles, depending on the dominance of the different dimensions of conformity. Conventionalized utterance types function as implicit and explicit norms. Linguistic innovations can be understood as utterances that are only partly licensed by conventional utterance types. Innovation covers a range from complete novelty to hardly noticed non-salient utterances. Various forces drive and modulate conventionalization: co-semiosis and co-adaptation, identity and social order, prestige and stigma, mobility, multilingualism, and language contact.

The routinization of symbolic associations

This chapter moves on to the routinization of symbolic associations, which, again in cooperation with paradigmatic associations, subserve the cognitive representation of lexical form-meaning and meaning-form links. It is shown that long-standing insights from cognitive semantics and lexicology, including the prototype structures of categories and the prominence of basic-level categories, derive from the routinization of symbolic associations as controlled by frequency of use, basic experiences, salience, and other factors. Two strengthening principles are formulated: semasiological strengthening, dealing with polysemy and prototype effects, and onomasiological strengthening, related to basic-level and synonym-preference and hyponym-preference effects. With regard to the context-dependence of meaning it is argued that symbolic associations are always influenced by syntagmatic and pragmatic associations reflecting combinatorial and contextual experience.

The routinization of syntagmatic associations

This chapter looks at the routinization of syntagmatic associations and their cooperation with paradigmatic associations. It begins by formulating the syntagmatic-strengthening principle, which states that as syntagmatic associations between sequentially arranged elements are strengthened by repetition, the symbolic, paradigmatic, and pragmatic associations of the whole sequence are strengthened, while those of the component parts are weakened. This principle explains effects such as the phraseological tendency, collocation, lexical and lexico-grammatical chunking, idiomatization, and the emergence of complex grammatical constructions on the individual level. The remainder of the chapter deals with the whole range from small and simple (words, compounds) to large and complex utterance types (complex schematic constructions) in order to demonstrate that the routinization of syntagmatic and paradigmatic associations provides the foundation for two major principles of structure, i.e. linearity and opposition. A case study on individual differences demonstrates the effects of syntagmatic strengthening.