Volume 12, Issue 1 - Special Issue: How do corpus-based techniques advance description and theory in English historical linguistics?, Guest Editors: Martin Hilpert and Hubert Cuyckens

The article shows that significant benefits can be gained from the integration of corpus linguistics and grammaticalization theory, two subfields which, despite sharing considerable common ground, tended to remain as separate areas of linguistic analysis until quite recently. Making use of diachronic and contemporary corpora of English, such as the Helsinki Corpus , ARCHER, and COCA, the article illustrates how standard corpus practices can indeed contribute to our understanding of grammaticalization and related processes of language change. The selected case studies deal with the origin of existential there , the development of like -parentheticals in contemporary American English, and the history of the marker of expository apposition namely .

This corpus-based study examines the diachronic development of the that /zero alternation with three verbs of cognition, viz. think , believe , and suppose by means of a stepwise logistic regression analysis. The data comprised a total of ( n =9,720) think , ( n =4,767) believe , and ( n =4,083) suppose tokens from both spoken and written corpora from 1560 to 2012. We test the effect of 11 structural features that have been claimed to predict the presence of the zero complementizer form. Taking our cue from previous research suggesting that there has been a diachronic increase in zero use and applying a rigorous quantitative method to a large set of diachronic data, we examine (i) whether there is indeed a diachronic trend toward more zero use, (ii) whether the conditioning factors proposed in the literature indeed predict the zero form, (iii) to what extent these factors interact, and (iv) whether the predictive power of the conditioning factors becomes stronger or weaker over time. The analysis shows that, contrary to the aforementioned belief that the zero form has been on the increase, there is in fact a steady decrease in zero use. The extent of this decrease is not the same for all verbs. Also, the analysis of interactions with verb type indicates differences between verbs in terms of the predictive power of the conditioning factors. Additional significant interactions emerged, notably with verb, mode (i.e., spoken or written data), and period. The interactions with period show that certain factors that are good predictors of the zero form overall lose predictive power over time.

While dummy it in subject position ( It is raining ) has received much scholarly attention, its use in object position has rarely been investigated. When considering examples such as to leg it , to snuff it , we are faced with the question of what motivates the occurrence of dummy it . Using corpus-based techniques that permit context-sensitive retrieval in historical data the present paper traces the development and distribution of dummy it with the aim of shedding new light on the role of transitivity in language change. The occurrence of non-referential it can be related to a series of (de-)transitivization processes that have recently been observed for weakly entrenched verbs or verb senses. Defining transitivity with Hopper and Thompson (1980: 251) as the effectiveness with which an action takes place, it is argued that one function of it is to enhance a verb’s transitivity by equipping it with a pseudo-object. Such moderately transitive uses have also been observed for other verbs that do not normally take direct objects, e.g. verbs occurring with cognate objects, way -constructions or reflexive structures. This article presents corpus-based findings showing that dummy it modulates transitivity in accordance with the changing entrenchment of the verb it is used with.

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.

This paper presents ongoing work on Säily and Suomela’s (2009) method of comparing type frequencies across subcorpora. The method is here used to study variation in the productivity of the suffixes - ness and - ity in the eighteenth-century sections of the Corpora of Early English Correspondence and of the Old Bailey Corpus (OBC). Unlike the OBC, the eighteenth-century section of the letter corpora differs from previously studied materials in that there is no significant gender difference in the productivity of - ity . The study raises methodological issues involving periodization, multiple hypothesis testing, and the need for an interactive tool. Several improvements have been implemented in a new version of our software.

This paper is concerned with the limitations of inferring grammar change from variable text frequencies in historical corpus data. We argue that fluctuating frequencies of grammatical variants in real time are a function not only of changing grammars but are also conditioned by what we call ‘environmental’ changes (for example, content changes) that affect the textual habitat. As a case study, we explore the English genitive alternation in the Late Modern English period and demonstrate that the English s -genitive is and always has been preferably used with animate possessors; if for some reason animate np s are rare in some specific historical period or text, this will trivially depress s -genitive rates and boost of -genitive rates. Against this backdrop, the paper advocates probing the probabilistic underpinning of grammatical variability in diachrony, for the sake of keeping apart trivial habitat-induced frequency change and grammar change proper.