Reinforcement by realignment in diachronic construction grammar

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-238
Author(s):  
Yueh Hsin Kuo
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Construction Grammar

Abstract This paper suggests that xiē ‘some’ in Mandarin Chinese originated as a quantifier but became a classifier in the yi ‘one’ construction via realignment, or change in inheritance in diachronic construction grammar. This change has created yi xiē, semantically equivalent to xiē, therefore it is also a case of reinforcement in the sense of Jespersen’s Cycle. However, this study argues that yi xiē has not necessarily undergone grammaticalisation. Generalising the analysis, two types of reinforcement are proposed: reinforcement by innovation and by realignment. The former involves grammaticalisation, but the latter may not. The study highlights the importance of higher-level generalisations in language change.

The growth of the transitivising Reaction Object Construction

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Bouso
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Traditional Form ◽  
Historical Trend ◽  
Object Construction ◽  
Early Modern English

Abstract This paper explores the growth of the Reaction Object Construction (ROC) as in Pauline smiled her thanks, offering new insights into its characterisation and historical development from the perspective of Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995, 2006, 2019) and its application to patterns of language change (Hilpert 2013; Traugott & Trousdale 2013). It is argued that the modern ROC qualifies as a traditional form-meaning pairing and, at a deeper level, as a polysemous construction that follows the path of development of other transitivising constructions such as the way-construction (Israel 1996), and of processes of constructionalisation in general. Once the ROC imposes a coreferential constraint on its object argument, acquiring in this way its status as a form-meaning pairing over the Early Modern English period (1500–1700), the construction increases its productivity and schematicity; at the same time it decreases its compositionality since the link between the form/syntax and the overall meaning of the construction becomes less transparent, as in The door jingled a welcome. The ROC can thus be argued to be part and result of a broader development in the grammar of English, namely the historical trend towards transitivisation.

Principles of Constructional Change

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirjam Fried
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Construction Grammar

This chapter considers the application of the principles of Construction Grammar to language change. It describes a particular change in a morphological construction of Old Czech and discusses some of the ways in which constructions may change internally. The chapter explains the concept of constructionalization and establishes its connection with Construction Grammar. It highlights the gradual nature of constructional change, the micro-steps involved at different constructional levels, and the importance of context.

Chinese as satellite-framed

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald Fong
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Cognitive Grammar ◽  
Clause Structure ◽  
Cognitive Perspective ◽  
Complex Sentences

This article defends the position taken by Talmy that Mandarin Chinese is satellite-framed, and thus argues against Slobin and Chen and Guo that Mandarin is ‘equipollently-framed’. The approach we take is constructional and cognitive in that we draw insights from Construction Grammar and Cognitive Grammar, though it is not restricted to either of them. A more unconventional view of the clause structure in Chinese is first presented, examining the so-called ‘complex sentences’ from a cognitive perspective. The consequence of this view is that the notion of ‘equipollent-framed language’ for Chinese can be abandoned and thus tidying up Talmy’s original typology. It is further argued that the constructional-cognitive view of Chinese captures the structural intuitions more appropriately than a traditional generative account, and that the motion-directional structure in Chinese has been constructionalized to the extent that individual verbs in the construction merge but produce a structure with more than their total properties.

Construction Grammar as Cognitive Structuralism: the interaction of constructional networks and processing in the diachronic evolution of English comparative correlatives

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 349-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
THOMAS HOFFMANN
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Secondary Role ◽  
The Family ◽  
Type Frequency ◽  
Processing Effects ◽  
Constructionist Approach ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Correspondence Hypothesis

Following the Uniformitarian Principle, the Performance–Grammar Correspondence Hypothesis (PGCH; Hawkins 2004) predicts a directionality in language change: if the same content can be expressed by two competing structures and one of these is easier to process (see Hawkins 1999, 2004), then the simpler structure will be preferred in performance. Consequently, it will be used more often with a greater range of different lexical items, which increases its type frequency and ultimately leads to it being more cognitively entrenched than its alternative (see Hawkins 2004: 6). As an analysis of the diachronic evolution of the family of English comparative correlative constructions (the more iconiccause–before–effectC1C2 constructionthe more you eat, the fatter you getvs the less iconiceffect–before–causeC2C1 constructionyou get the fatter, the more you eat) shows, however, the PGCH only played a secondary role in the genesis of this set of constructions. In this article, I will present a usage-based constructionist approach that allows researchers to reinterpret the classical Structuralist notion of gaps in the system as gaps in the mental constructional network. This type of Cognitive Structuralist analysis accounts for the presence of the less iconic C2C1 structure (and the absence of the more iconic C1C2 structure) in OE, the genesis of C1C2 structures at the end of the OE period as well as the processing effects predicted by the PGCH once both the C1C2 and the C2C1 constructions were in competition during the ME period.

Recent developments in the use of the plural marker men in Modern Standard Chinese in Taiwan

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-98
Author(s):  
Angela Cook
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Written Language ◽  
External Pressures ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Standard Chinese ◽  
Variety Show ◽  
Modern Standard

Like any other living language, Mandarin Chinese is continually evolving and being modified in response to both internal and external pressures. These changes have been studied by numerous scholars, who have concentrated mainly on the written language. This paper chooses to explore whether the changes observed, as in the use of the plural marker men, can also be traced in spoken Chinese. For the purposes of studying language change in progress, archived recordings of television broadcasts were used as a source of spoken language samples. This study focuses on the variety of Modern Standard Chinese spoken in Taiwan, as exemplified in a popular Taiwanese variety show over the period 1996 to 2002. The analysis of the data reveals a number of changes in the use of the plural marker men, with some intriguing gender differences and pragmatic nuances.

scholarly journals Constructing a protolanguage: reconstructing prehistoric languages in a usage-based construction grammar framework

2021 ◽  
Vol 376 (1824) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Hartmann ◽  
Michael Pleyer
Keyword(s):  
Entire Range ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Unit Of Analysis ◽  
Prelinguistic Communication ◽  
Evolutionary Emergence

Construction grammar is an approach to language that posits that units and structures in language can be exhaustively described as pairings between form and meaning. These pairings are called constructions and can have different degrees of abstraction, i.e. they span the entire range from very concrete ( armadillo, avocado ) to very abstract constructions such as the ditransitive construction ( I gave her a book ). This approach has been applied to a wide variety of different areas of research in linguistics, such as how new constructions emerge and change historically. It has also been applied to investigate the evolutionary emergence of modern fully fledged language, i.e. the question of how systems of constructions can arise out of prelinguistic communication. In this paper, we review the contribution of usage-based construction grammar approaches to language change and language evolution to the questions of (i) the structure and nature of prehistoric languages and (ii) how constructions in prehistoric languages emerged out of non-linguistic or protolinguistic communication. In particular, we discuss the possibilities of using constructions as the main unit of analysis both in reconstructing predecessors of existing languages (protolanguages) and in formulating theories of how a potential predecessor of human language in general (protolanguage) must have looked like. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Reconstructing prehistoric languages’.

scholarly journals Constructing a protolanguage: Reconstructing prehistoric languages in a usage-based construction grammar framework

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Hartmann ◽  
Michael Pleyer
Keyword(s):  
Entire Range ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Unit Of Analysis ◽  
Prelinguistic Communication ◽  
Evolutionary Emergence

Construction grammar is an approach to language which posits that units and structures in language can be exhaustively described as pairings between form and meaning. These pairings are called constructions and can have different degrees of abstraction, i.e. they span the entire range from very concrete (Armadillo, avocado) to very abstract constructions such as the ditransitive construction (I gave her a book). This approach has been applied to a wide variety of different areas of research in linguistics, such as how new constructions emerge and change historically. It has also been applied to investigate the evolutionary emergence of modern fully-fledged language, i.e. the question of how systems of constructions can arise out of prelinguistic communication. In this paper we review the contribution of usage-based Construction grammar approaches to language change and language evolution to the questions of a) the structure and nature of prehistoric languages and b) how constructions in prehistoric languages emerged out of non-linguistic or protolinguistic communication. In particular, we discuss the possibilities of using constructions as the main unit of analysis both in reconstructing predecessors of existing languages (protolanguages) and in formulating theories of how a potential predecessor of human language in general (protolanguage) must have looked like.

A Grand Tour of English Grammatical Constructions

English Today ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 61-63
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Laws
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Unified Theory ◽  
Grand Tour ◽  
Systematic Fashion ◽  
Information Packaging ◽  
Knowledge Of Language

This introductory text successfully achieves its ambitious goal of demonstrating how the Construction Grammar framework can be applied in a systematic fashion to a range of sub-disciplines within Linguistics. Construction Grammar (CG) is a unified theory of knowledge of language modelled on knowledge of constructions. Each chapter illustrates the application of CG to a different sub-discipline, from those that are more well-established in the literature, such as argument structure and information packaging, to areas that have been addressed in depth more recently from this perspective, such as morphology, language variation and language change.

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