Volume 22, Issue 1 - Special Issue: Variation, change and constructions in English

All human languages are characterised by inherent synchronic variability (Hudson, Cognitive Linguistics 8: 73–108, 1997, English Language and Linguistics 11: 383–405, 2007a) and are subject to change over time. Consequently, due to this central role of variation and change, any explanatorily adequate cognitive theory of language should aim to account for both of these phenomena. The present special issue explores how usage-based Construction Grammars can address issues of linguistic variation and change. In particular, focusing on English, we will show how constructionist approaches provide new insights for the study of variation and change in the English language as well as how data from English can help to refine construction grammar theories. This introduction will give a short overview of aspects of constructionist approaches to language which are of relevance to the modelling of linguistic variation and change. In addition to our discussion of the modelling of synchronic and diachronic variation in construction grammar, we provide an overview of the topics addressed by the seven articles in this special issue.

This article contributes to the nascent field of Cognitive Sociolinguistics. In particular, we are interested in how usage-based cognitive linguistics and variationist sociolinguistics may enrich each other. We first discuss some of the ways in which variationist insights have led cognitive linguists such as Gries (e.g. Multifactorial analysis in corpus linguistics: A study of particle placement, Continuum, 2003) and Grondelaers et al. (e.g. National variation in the use of er “there”. Regional and diachronic constraints on cognitive explanations, Mouton de Gruyter, 2008) to pay attention to language-external factors (such as medium, region, and register), thereby greatly enhancing the description and understanding of certain grammatical phenomena. The focus then shifts to cognitive linguistic work (by Hollmann and Siewierska, English Language and Linguistics 11: 407–424, 2007 and Clark and Trousdale, English Language and Linguistics 13: 33–55, 2009) which has implications for sociolinguistic theory. The two usage-based concepts that have proved especially relevant in this connection are frequency effects and schemas. The article explores and illustrates the role of these two factors in relation to linguistic variation by means of a new case study on definite article reduction (DAR) in Lancashire dialect, a variety spoken in the North West of England. A twofold conclusion is drawn: first, a symbiotic relation between cognitive and sociolinguistics seems possible, but second, in order for this relation to be truly mutually beneficial variationists should get involved in the Cognitive Sociolinguistic enterprise much more than is currently the case.

This paper focuses on English yes-no interrogatives of the type Would you like/Do you want [NP]? and their elliptical variants You like/You want [NP]?, Like/Want [NP]? and [NP]? . The central question is what type of theoretical relationship can be assumed between the different forms. A theoretical discussion of different traditional approaches and their limitations is followed by the presentation of an explorative corpus search in the BNC, which can reveal interesting differences between the different stages of initial reduction, in particular regarding the semantic class of the NP head nouns: While the possible lexemes found in the full forms and intermediate reductions seem only restricted by pragmatic constraints, the highly reduced [NP]? question displays only lexemes related to the semantic class of consumption goods. Construction Grammar (CxG) is suggested as a useful approach to explain the internal relationships between the different forms, especially because it offers the option of lexically open idiomatic structures, assumes a usage-based, hierarchical network with different degrees of independence between single constructions, and allows for an integration of pragmatic features into a grammatical model.

This article discusses the English construction variously known as Locative Inversion or Stylistic Inversion. It shows that the construction displays a unique ensemble of grammatical and usage properties that can be stated but not motivated through purely grammatical means. In search of an explanatory approach, an analysis is presented that draws on concepts of Artificial Intelligence, in particular plans viewed as complex mental attitudes. It is claimed that utterances of Locative Inversion are associated with a particular communicative plan on the speaker's part that motivates the grammatical and usage properties of the construction where grammar alone cannot. The final section of the article presents corpus examples showing that Locative Inversion is indeed used in the contexts predicted by the plan associated with the construction. This result is both theoretically and methodologically significant, insofar as it constitutes a case where the grammatical properties of a syntactic construction are better explained through its typical conditions of use than through grammatical means proper.

The seeming absence of negative evidence in the input that children receive during language acquisition has long been regarded as a serious problem for non-nativist linguistic theories. Among the solutions that have been suggested for this problem, preemption by competing structures is doubtless the most intensively researched and widely accepted. However, while preemption works well in the domain of morphology, it cannot apply categorically in the domain of syntax, as this would preclude the existence of semantically overlapping constructions, such as the ditransitive and the prepositional dative, which can be used alternatively with many, but not all, verbs of literal or metaphorical transfer. This paper investigates one specific version of preemption briefly entertained by Pinker (Language learnability and language development, Harvard University Pressm, 1984), which would account both for the existence of semantically overlapping constructions and for the fact that these constructions may preempt each other in the case of individual verbs. Typically, such pairs of grammatical constructions differ in their information-structural restrictions and speakers tend to choose the construction that best fits a given discourse context; when speakers use a construction even though there is an alternative that fits the discourse context better, children may take this as evidence that the alternative is not available for the specific verb in question. Two corpus studies are presented, comparing the information-structural profile of prepositional dative constructions containing verbs that may alternate between the dative and the ditransitive with the information structural profile of verbs that are restricted to the prepositional dative. For Pinker's preemptive mechanism to be feasible, there should be a clear and systematic difference in the information-structural profile of these two classes of verbs. However, no such difference can be found in actual usage.

The present paper argues that there is ample corpus evidence of statistical preemption for learners to make use of. In the case of argument structure constructions, a verb i is preempted from appearing in a construction A, CxA, if and only if the following probability is high: P(CxB|context that would be suitable for CxA and verb i ). For example, the probability of hearing a preemptive construction, given a context that would otherwise be well-suited for the ditransitive is high for verbs like explain that overwhelmingly appear in the dative, and low for verbs like tell that readily appear in the ditransitive. Strength of statistical preemption is determined both by this probability, and by the frequency (ln (F)) of a verb in a preemptive construction when the context is at least as well suited to the preempted construction. The critiques of preemption by Stefanowitsch (Cognitive Linguistics 19: 513–531, 2008, this volume) are countered by arguing that the relevant probabilities were not considered. Moreover, we find evidence that constructions are somewhat less constrained when yoked to non-alternating verbs, as Stefanowitsch (cf. this volume) suggests should be the case.

In this paper, I explore the hypothesis that constructions — here understood primarily as the dependencies of Word Grammar — can undergo systematic change, sometimes partly due to the effects of the grammaticalization of a lexical item or class of lexical items. I argue that the development of will as a future tense marker in English involves the development of a new construction where two separate syntactic items are associated with a single event in the semantics. I also look at the loss of the impersonal construction in English, where it has been argued that the change is driven by an increase in the schematicity of the Transitive Construction, as well as having been argued that dative experiencers have been reclassified as subjects. I observe that it has also been noted that dative experiencers could function as subjects in earlier varieties of English, and suggest that this is an example of category strengthening.

In this article we tackle the issue of diachronic variation in constructional semantics through an exploration of the (recent) semantic history of the well-established English ditransitive or double object argument structure construction. Starting from the assumption that schematic syntactic patterns are not fundamentally different from lexical items, we will show that — similar to the diachronic semantic development of lexemes — the semantics of argument structure constructions in general and that of double object constructions in particular, is vulnerable to semasiological shifts as well. More specifically, the analysis, which compares data from 18 th -century Late Modern English with present-day English, shows that the double object construction's semantic evolution presents a case of specialization , in which the construction has come to be associated with a significantly narrower range of meanings. It will further be argued that such patterns of semantic change are best captured in a model of argument structure semantics which discriminates between central and lesscentral or prototypical and non-prototypical uses.