Do you investigate word order in detail or do you investigate in detail word order? On word order and headedness in the recent history of English
-
Javier Pérez-Guerra
Abstract
This paper examines the design of verb phrases and noun phrases, focusing on the diachronic tendencies observed in the data in Middle English, Early Modern, and Late Modern English. The approach is corpus-based and the data, representing different periods and text types, is taken from the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English, and the Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English. The aim of this study is to look at the consequences that the placement of adjuncts (or modifiers) and complements has for the parsing of phrases in which they occur. First, I will examine whether the historical English data are in keeping with two determinants of word order, complements-first (complement plus adjunct) and end-weight. Second, I will consider the connection between the type of head and the distribution of its adjuncts and complements in noun phrases and verb phrases. My findings show that the more verbal the head is, the more likely the structure of the phrase is governed by specifically the principle of complements-first. On theoretical grounds, this claim has consequences for considerations of prototypicality affecting verbal and nominal heads. Third, I will show that a significant increase of complement-first phrases takes place when word order has become fixed in the language and is thus in keeping with the process of syntacticization of English word order.
Funding statement: Funding: I am grateful to the following institutions for generous financial support: the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund (grant no. FFI2013-44065-P), and the Autonomous Government of Galicia (grant no. GPC2014/060).
References
Arnold, Jennifer E, Anthony Losongco, Thomas Wasow & Ryan Ginsrom. 2000. Heaviness vs. newness: The effects of structural complexity and discourse status on constituent ordering. Language 76(1). 28–55.10.1353/lan.2000.0045Suche in Google Scholar
Egan, Thomas. 2008. Non-finite complementation. A usage-based study of infinitive and -ing clauses in English. Amsterdam: Rodopi.10.1163/9789401205542Suche in Google Scholar
Fischer, Olga. 1992. Syntax. In Norman Blake (ed.), The Cambridge history of the English language, vol. II, 1066–1476, 207–408. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CHOL9780521264754.005Suche in Google Scholar
Gibson, Edward. 1998. Linguistic complexity: Locality of syntactic dependencies. Cognition 68. 1–76.10.1016/S0010-0277(98)00034-1Suche in Google Scholar
Gibson, Edward. 2000. The Dependency Locality Theory: A distance-based theory of linguistic complexity. In Alec Marantz, Yasushi Miyashita & Wayne O’Neil (eds.), Image, language, brain: Papers from the first mind articulation project symposium, 95–126. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1979. On understanding grammar. New York: Academic Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Givón, T. 1993. English grammar: A function-based introduction, vol. II. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/z.engram2Suche in Google Scholar
Greenbaum, Sidney, Gerald Nelson & Michael Weitzman. 1996. Complement clauses in English. In Jenny Thomas & Mick Short (eds.), Using corpora for language research: Studies in honour of Geoffrey Leech, 6–91. London: Longman.Suche in Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan Thomas. 2003. Multifactorial analysis in corpus linguistics: A study of particle placement. New York: Continuum.Suche in Google Scholar
Hawkins, John A. 1994. A performance theory of order and constituency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511554285Suche in Google Scholar
Hawkins, John A. 2000. The relative order of prepositional phrases in English: Going beyond manner-place-time. Language Variation and Change 11. 231–66.10.1017/S0954394599113012Suche in Google Scholar
Hawkins, John A. 2004. Efficiency and complexity in grammars. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199252695.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Hawkins, John A. 2007. Performance and grammatical variation in the ordering of verb, direct objects and obliques. Paper presented at the 29th Annual Conference of the German Linguistics Society (DGfS), University of Siegen, 28 February – 2 March.Suche in Google Scholar
Herbst, Thomas, Ian F. David Heath, Dieter Götz Roe & Michael Klotz. 2004. A valency dictionary of English: A corpus-based analysis of the complementation patterns of English verbs, nouns and adjectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110892581Suche in Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney & Geoffrey K. Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/9781316423530Suche in Google Scholar
Mair, Christian. 1990. Infinitival complement clauses in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Matthews, P. H. 1981. Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Matthews, P. H. 2007. Syntactic relation: A critical survey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Noonan, Michael. 2007 [1985]. Complementation. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description. Vol. II, Complex constructions, 52–150. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511619434.002Suche in Google Scholar
Pérez-Guerra, Javier. Forthcoming. Profiling Late Modern English syntax: A study on the structural complexity of some phrasal constituents.Suche in Google Scholar
Pérez-Guerra, Javier & Ana E. Martínez-Insua. 2010. Do some genres or text types become more complex than others? In Heidrun Dorgeloh & Anja Wanner (eds.), Syntactic variation and genre, 111–40. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110226485.1.111Suche in Google Scholar
Pickering, Martin J., Charles Clifton Jr & Matthew W. Crocker. 2000. Architectures and mechanisms in sentence comprehension. In Matthew W. Crocker, Martin Pickering & Charles Clifton Jr. (eds.), Architectures and mechanisms for language processing, 1–28. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511527210.002Suche in Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech & Jan Svartvik. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: LongmanSuche in Google Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 2003. Cognitive complexity and horror aequi as factors determining the use of interrogative linkers in English. In Günter Rohdenburg & Britta Mondorf (eds.), Determinants of grammatical variation in English, 205–249. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110900019.205Suche in Google Scholar
Rudanko, Juhani. 1989. Complementation and case Grammar: A syntactic and semantic study of selected patterns of complementation in present-day English. Albany: State University of New York Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Shih, Stephanie & Jason Grafmiller. 2011. Weighing in on end weight. Paper presented at the 85th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Pittsburg, PA, 9–11 January.Suche in Google Scholar
Stowell, Timothy. 2006. The order of complements. In Robert Freidin & Howard Lasnik (eds.), Syntax: Critical concepts in linguistics. Vol. I, Phrase structure, 327–345. London: Routledge. [source: Origins of phrase structure, 105–125. Massachusetts Institute of Technology dissertation, 1981.]Suche in Google Scholar
Szmrecsányi, Benedikt M. 2004. On operationalizing syntactic complexity. In Gérard Purnelle, Cédrick Fairon & Anne Dister (eds.), Le poids des mots: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Textual Data Statistical Analysis, March 10–12, 2004, vol II, 1032–1039. Louvain-la-Neue: Presses universitaires de Louvain.Suche in Google Scholar
Temperly, David. 2007. Minimization of dependency length in written English. Cognition 105. 300–33.10.1016/j.cognition.2006.09.011Suche in Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1992. Syntax. In Richard M. Hogg (ed.), The Cambridge history of the English language. Vol. I, the beginnings to 1066, 168–289. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CHOL9780521264747.005Suche in Google Scholar
Van Hoorick, Bart. 1994. Pragmatic positions and the history of English word order. Working Papers in Functional Grammar, 56. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.Suche in Google Scholar
Wasow, Thomas. 1997. Remarks on grammatical weight. Language Variation and Change 9(1). 81–105.10.1017/S0954394500001800Suche in Google Scholar
Wasow, Thomas. 2002. Postverbal behavior. Stanford, CA: CSLI.Suche in Google Scholar
Yaruss, J. Scott. 1999. Utterance length, syntactic complexity, and childhood stuttering. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 42(2). 329–34410.1044/jslhr.4202.329Suche in Google Scholar
Corpora
Kroch, Anthony & Ann Taylor. 2000. Penn-Helsinki parsed corpus of Middle English, 2nd edn.Suche in Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony, Beatrice Santorini & Lauren Delfs. 2004. Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English.Suche in Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony, Beatrice Santorini & Ariel Diertani. 2010. Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English.Suche in Google Scholar
©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- How do corpus-based techniques advance description and theory in English historical linguistics? An introduction to the special issue
- Continuing the dialogue between corpus linguistics and grammaticalization theory: Three case studies
- The diachronic development of zero complementation: A multifactorial analysis of the that/zero alternation with think, suppose, and believe
- “Snake legs it to freedom”: Dummy it as pseudo-object”
- Do you investigate word order in detail or do you investigate in detail word order? On word order and headedness in the recent history of English
- Sociolinguistic variation in morphological productivity in eighteenth-century English
- About text frequencies in historical linguistics: Disentangling environmental and grammatical change
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- How do corpus-based techniques advance description and theory in English historical linguistics? An introduction to the special issue
- Continuing the dialogue between corpus linguistics and grammaticalization theory: Three case studies
- The diachronic development of zero complementation: A multifactorial analysis of the that/zero alternation with think, suppose, and believe
- “Snake legs it to freedom”: Dummy it as pseudo-object”
- Do you investigate word order in detail or do you investigate in detail word order? On word order and headedness in the recent history of English
- Sociolinguistic variation in morphological productivity in eighteenth-century English
- About text frequencies in historical linguistics: Disentangling environmental and grammatical change
