Benjamin Slade

How to Rank Constraints

This chapter illustrates the virtues of the Optimality-Theoretic framework (Prince & Smolensky 1993) in explicating the course of syntactic change. The rise of do-support, a well-known change in the history of English, is taken as a case study. We investigate the patterns of variation inherent in linguistic change that occur as innovating forms replace conservative forms. We take the position that these periods of variation reflect competition between grammatically incompatible structures, i.e. conceptualizing variation and change in the surface structures of language as a reflection of alternation of different underlying grammars (Kroch 1989a,b; 1994), which themselves result from reanalysis by language learners (cf. Lightfoot 1991 et seq.). We argue that the notion of constraint competition inherent in Optimality Theory is advantageous in understanding language change as competition between contradictory grammatical systems. Also, we demonstrate the capacity of Optimality Theory as a means of describing systematic, grammatically-structured long-term linguistic change — particularly changes following an ‘S’-curve pattern of linguistic renewal — as resulting from systematic re-ordering of precedence relationships amongst conflicting universal grammatical principles.

Result states and repetitive adverbs

This paper considers some paradoxes that arise in connection with repetitive adverbials in English. We propose a simple syntactic structure of verbal predicates along the lines of Ramchand (2008) and show how the apparent paradoxes can be resolved with that structure and some straightforward assumptions. One observation is that repetitives behave differently with verbs taking affected subjects (like read) than with verbs taking non-affected subjects (like paint). Another observation is the fact that repetitives are not uniform in their behaviour with respect to resultatives. Once again, structural assumptions, specifically, distinct structural positions of the resultatives, account for this varied behaviour.