From reduction to emancipation
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David Lorenz
Abstract
In this paper I propose an emancipation effect that may follow from the ‘reducing effect’ of frequency (Bybee 2006): if a reduced realization of an item gains in frequency, it will become conceptually independent from the full form. In a context of grammaticalization, I show that this is the case for the form gonna, which is becoming emancipated from its source form going to. I use corpus data of spoken American English to trace the process of emancipation as gonna sheds off the features of phonetic reduction and acquires those of a lexical variant.
Abstract
In this paper I propose an emancipation effect that may follow from the ‘reducing effect’ of frequency (Bybee 2006): if a reduced realization of an item gains in frequency, it will become conceptually independent from the full form. In a context of grammaticalization, I show that this is the case for the form gonna, which is becoming emancipated from its source form going to. I use corpus data of spoken American English to trace the process of emancipation as gonna sheds off the features of phonetic reduction and acquires those of a lexical variant.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Introduction 1
-
Sequence and order
- Sequence and order 13
- Mom and Dad but Men and Women 35
- Sequences of size adjectives in text 47
-
Competing constructions
- The competition between the intensifiers dead and deadly 71
- Has go -V ousted go-and -V? 91
- The construction cannot help -ing and its rivals in Modern English 113
- From reduction to emancipation 133
- Complex prepositions and variation within the PNP construction 153
-
Emerging patterns
- A finer definition of neology in English 177
- A corpus-based study of gender assignment in recent English loanwords in Norwegian 209
- The return of the prefix? New verb-particle combinations in blogs 223
-
Correlating patterns and meaning
- Modality and the V wh pattern 247
- Assessing corpus search methods in onomasiological investigations 271
- Author index 293
- Subject index 297
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Introduction 1
-
Sequence and order
- Sequence and order 13
- Mom and Dad but Men and Women 35
- Sequences of size adjectives in text 47
-
Competing constructions
- The competition between the intensifiers dead and deadly 71
- Has go -V ousted go-and -V? 91
- The construction cannot help -ing and its rivals in Modern English 113
- From reduction to emancipation 133
- Complex prepositions and variation within the PNP construction 153
-
Emerging patterns
- A finer definition of neology in English 177
- A corpus-based study of gender assignment in recent English loanwords in Norwegian 209
- The return of the prefix? New verb-particle combinations in blogs 223
-
Correlating patterns and meaning
- Modality and the V wh pattern 247
- Assessing corpus search methods in onomasiological investigations 271
- Author index 293
- Subject index 297
