Elizabeth Closs Traugott

Lexicalization and language change

Lexicalization, a process of language change, has been conceptualized in a variety of ways. Broadly defined as the adoption of words into the lexicon, it has been viewed by some as the reverse process of grammaticalization, by others as a routine process of word formation, and by others as the development of concrete meanings. In this up-to-date survey, Laurel Brinton and Elizabeth Traugott examine the various conceptualizations of lexicalization that have been presented in the literature. In light of contemporary work on grammaticalization, they then propose a new, unified model of lexicalization and grammaticalization. Their approach is illustrated with a variety of case studies from the history of English, including present participles, multi-word verbs, adverbs, and discourse markers, as well as some examples from other Indo-European languages. As a first overview of the various approaches to lexicalization, this book will be invaluable to students and scholars of historical linguistics and language change.

Constructionalization and Constructional Changes

1. The Framework 2. A Usage-based Approach to Sign Change 3. Grammatical Constructionalization 4. Lexical Constructionalization 5. Contexts for Constructionalization 6. Review and Future Prospects References Index of Constructions Author Index Index of Subject Matter Author Index

The concepts of constructional mismatch and type-shifting from the perspective of grammaticalization

Abstract The concepts mismatch, type-shifting, and coercion are central to much recent work on cognitive linguistics. In a number of papers, Michaelis has investigated entity and event coercion (Michaelis 2003a, b, 2004 a, b). I address her question “what conditions favor the diachronic development of shift constructions” (Michaelis 2004a: 8) from the perspective of grammaticalization, with particular reference to the development of partitive constructions like a bit of apple into degree modifier constructions like a bit of a hypocrite. I show why these are different constructions, and conclude that the most important factors have to do with matching quantitative implicatures to already extant quantifying degree modifiers with NP heads, and with the strategies for expressing how much “pragmatic slack” (Lasersohn 1999) is available in computing denotations.

The lady was al demonyak : historical aspects of Adverb all

In this diachronic study, we shed light on the development of the functions and structural properties of Adverb all, and suggest that degree modifiers in general should be analyzed in similar terms. We show that the harmonic relationship between Adverb all and its head is best accounted for in terms of boundedness rather than gradability (see Kennedy & McNally, 2005; Paradis, 2001). The stability over a millennium of indeterminacy between bounded and unbounded readings of Adverb all + head sequences, and of the ambiguity in many contexts between Adverb and Quantifier-floated all, shows that a division of labor over time between ambiguous meanings is not necessary (Geeraerts, 1997). Despite its long history, Adverb all has been treated as conversational or an innovation (B¨ acklund, 1973; Waksler, 2001). We address the question why certain items like all come to be stereotyped as ‘new’ when in fact they are not.

Meaning-change in the Development of Grammatical Markers.

Abstract This paper develops several hypotheses concerning the semantic-pragmatic shifts that take place in the development of grammatical markers like prepositions, auxiliary verbs, or sentence connectives. It is shown that grammatical markers shift over time, from primarily referential to more pragmatic meanings, and, more specifically, that there is a potential unidirectionality in such meaning-shifts from propositional to textual to attitudinal meanings.

Scope and the development of epistemic modality: evidence from ought to

Discussions of modality (e.g. Bybee, Perkins & Pagliuca, 1994; Coates, 1983; Lyons, 1977; Palmer, 1986; Traugott, 1989) typically center around two issues: deonticity vs. epistemicity, and degree of subjectivity. Using diachronic evidence from the quasi-modal ought to , this paper argues for the need to recognize a third, crosscutting these two: narrow vs. wide scope. We argue that the epistemic use of ought to developed out of a wide-scope deontic construction, in which the modal was used with deontic meaning, but with propositional scope ( contra Bybee, 1988). Rather than attributing an obligation to the subject (i.e. having narrow scope), the modal in this construction makes an assertion about the proposition as a whole, like an epistemic. However, such ought to constructions are found some four hundred years before the first epistemic examples, and thus can be shown to be distinct from epistemic uses ( contra Gamon, 1994).

The sociolinguistics of a short-lived innovation: Tracing the development of quotative all across spoken and internet newsgroup data

ABSTRACT Thispaperexaminesashort-livedinnovation,quotativeall,inrealandapparenttime.Weusedatwo-prongedmethodtotracethetrajectoryofalloverthepasttwodecades:(i) Quantitativeanalysesofthe quotativesystem ofyoungCalifornians fromdifferentdecades;thisrevealsastartlingcrossoverpattern:in1990/1994,allpredominates,butby 2005, it has given way to like. (ii) Searches of Internet newsgroups; these confirmthat after rising briskly in the 1990s, all is declining. Tracing the changing usage ofquotative options provides year-to-year evidence that all has recently given way tolike. Our paper has two aims: We provide insights from ongoing language changeregarding short-term innovations in the history of English. We also discuss ourcollaboration with Google Inc. and argue for the value of newsgroups to researchprojects investigating linguistic variation and change in real time, especially whererecorded conversational tokens are relatively sparse. AnearlierversionofthispaperwaspresentedatNWAV35(NewWaysofAnalyzingVariation)atOhioState University in Columbus. We are grateful forcomments from the audience,in particularto John V.SinglerandMaryBucholtz.Allremainingerrorsare,ofcourse,ourown.WearegratefultoJohnSinglerandotherreviewersofthispaperfortheirhelpfulfeedbackon anearlierdraft. WethankGoogleInc.forthe opportunity to collaborate on this exciting project, drawing on their both personnel and facilities.Many thanks go to Thorsten Brants for his enthusiasm for and support of the project as well as forhis enormous input in terms of computational methods. We are also indebted to David Hall fordeveloping and implementing the tools needed to do the searches we requested and for respondingswiftly and extensively to all our queries and suggestions. Thanks are due to Carmen Fought,Rachelle Waksler, and Ann Wimmer for allowing us to use their data on quotative all and otherforms from the 1980s and 1990s as well as to Bob Bayley and Mackenzie Price for guidance withstatistical analysis. Finally, we are grateful to Stanford faculty colleagues for their input and toseveral Stanford students who provided substantial assistance with data collection and analysisbetween 2004 and 2010, especially Zoe Bogart, Crissy Brown, Kayla Carpenter, Tracy Conner,Kristle McCracken, Rowyn McDonald, Cybelle Smith, Francesca Smith, and Laura Whitton.

Literacy and Language Change: The Special Case of Speech Act Verbs

This paper explores the methodological and theoretical issues that need to be addressed in testing the validity of proposed correlations between the rise of a certain class of words and the development of literacy. Olson and Astington (in press) suggest a correlation between the rise of a) assertive speech act verbs such asobserve,state, andclaim, b) literacy, and c) the Enlightenment. Data from the history of speech act verbs in English do not provide evidence for any privileged correlation with the Enlightenment, since assertives abound from Old and especially Middle English on. Possible correlations with literacy point not to writing as the motivating force but rather to the language of the law-courts, feudal practices, and rhetorical debate in the Middle Ages.

Approaching modality from the perspective of Relevance Theory

Abstract In this paper, key elements of the Relevance Theoretic approach to the relationship between semantics and pragmatics are introduced. The proposal is that a minimalist semantics is contextually enriched according to a single principle of “relevance”. This is in contrast to standard models that assume a rich semantics and a relatively parsimonious pragmatics enriched by several conversational maxims or principles. A review follows of one of the first in depth monographs on a single linguistic domain in Relevance Theoretic terms, Anna Papafragous Modality: Issues in the Semantics–Pragmatics Interface [Current Research in the Semantics/Pragmatics Interface, 6 (2000)]. Papafragou argues for a unitary approach to root-epistemic distinctions, and for treating epistemic modality as a case of embedded representation (“metarepresentation”). Broad-ranging issues in diachrony and language acquisition are also addressed.

The status of onset contexts in analysis of micro-changes

Konig and Vezzosi (2004: 239) commented about work on grammaticalization that: ‘Very rarely … do we find detailed discussions of the onset contexts that set such a process into motion and the conditions that such contexts must meet’. However, understanding local context-derived inference is now a high priority in a number of areas of linguistics, ranging from computational semantics to discourse analysis of conversation to work on micro-changes in historical linguistics. In this paper I discuss the hypothesis that a subset of linguistic contexts, specifically ‘bridging contexts’, are a key factor in morphosyntactic change. I begin by outlining the history of the hypothesis, which originated in work on semantic change, and shifted emphasis from implicatures and invited inferences associated with a changing expression (e.g. Traugott and Konig 1991) to the linguistic contexts in which two (or more) meanings are possible, but one is ‘only contextually implicated’ (Evans and Wilkins 2000: 549). Subsequently Heine (2002) and Diewald (2002) hypothesized that the development of “bridging” or “critical” contexts is a necessary and distinct stage in grammaticalization, using synchronic variation as data I then go on to discuss the extent to which we can find evidence in diachronic corpora of English for these hypotheses. I also evaluate Hansen’s (2008) claim that in bridging contexts new meanings are backgrounded against Heine’s that they are foregrounded. Two case studies are presented: the development in late Middle English and Early Modern English of be going to with temporal meaning (e.g. Danchev and Kyto 1994), and of pseudo-clefts with ALL and WHAT (Traugott 2008a, 2010).