Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-30T21:20:56.588Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Construction Grammar as Cognitive Structuralism: the interaction of constructional networks and processing in the diachronic evolution of English comparative correlatives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2017

THOMAS HOFFMANN
THOMAS HOFFMANN*
Affiliation:
Department of English and American Studies, Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Universitätsallee 1, D-85072 Eichstätt, Germanythomas.hoffmann@ku.de
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Following the Uniformitarian Principle, the Performance–Grammar Correspondence Hypothesis (PGCH; Hawkins 2004) predicts a directionality in language change: if the same content can be expressed by two competing structures and one of these is easier to process (see Hawkins 1999, 2004), then the simpler structure will be preferred in performance. Consequently, it will be used more often with a greater range of different lexical items, which increases its type frequency and ultimately leads to it being more cognitively entrenched than its alternative (see Hawkins 2004: 6). As an analysis of the diachronic evolution of the family of English comparative correlative constructions (the more iconic cause–before–effect C1C2 construction the more you eat, the fatter you get vs the less iconic effect–before–cause C2C1 construction you get the fatter, the more you eat) shows, however, the PGCH only played a secondary role in the genesis of this set of constructions. In this article, I will present a usage-based constructionist approach that allows researchers to reinterpret the classical Structuralist notion of gaps in the system as gaps in the mental constructional network. This type of Cognitive Structuralist analysis accounts for the presence of the less iconic C2C1 structure (and the absence of the more iconic C1C2 structure) in OE, the genesis of C1C2 structures at the end of the OE period as well as the processing effects predicted by the PGCH once both the C1C2 and the C2C1 constructions were in competition during the ME period.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 21 , Special Issue 2: Cognitive approaches to the history of English , July 2017 , pp. 349 - 373
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, Cynthia L. 1977. Topics in diachronic English syntax. PhD thesis, University of Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Allen, Cynthia L. 1980. Topics in diachronic English syntax. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Babington, Churchill (ed.). 1860. The repressor of over much blaming of the clergy by Reginald Pecock, D.D., sometime Lord Bishop of Chichester, vol 1. London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/ahb1325.0001.001/1:AHB1325.0001.001?view=toc;q1=the+more (accessed 13 April 2014).Google Scholar
Barðdal, Johanna. 2008. Productivity: Evidence from case and argument structure in Icelandic. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Barlow, Michael & Kemmer, Suzanne (eds.). 2000. Usage-based models of language. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Bates, Elizabeth & MacWhinney, Brian. 1989. Functionalism and the competition model. In Bates, Elizabeth & MacWhinney, Brian (eds.), The crosslinguistic study of sentence processing, 3–73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Beck, Sigrid. 1997. On the semantics of comparative conditionals. Linguistics and Philosophy 20 (3), 229−71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bencini, Gulia M. L. 2013. Psycholinguistics. In Hoffmann, & Trousdale, (eds.), 379–98.Google Scholar
Berg, Thomas. 2014. Competition as a unifying concept for the study of language. The Mental Lexicon 9, 338–70.Google Scholar
Bergs, Alexander. 2017. Diachronic approaches. In Dancygier, Barbara (ed.), Cambridge handbook of cognitive linguistics, 361–76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bergs, Alexander & Diewald, Gabriele (eds.). 2008. Constructions and language change. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan & Ford, Marilyn. 2010. Predicting syntax: Processing dative constructions in American and Australian varieties of English. Language 86, 186–213.Google Scholar
Brown, Keith (ed.). 2006. Encyclopedia of language and linguistics, 2nd edn. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 2013. Usage-based theory and exemplar representations of constructions. In Hoffmann, & Trousdale, (eds.), 49–69.Google Scholar
CMEPV: Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/ (accessed 30 March 2017).Google Scholar
Cappelle, Bert. 2011. The the. . .the. . . construction: Meaning and readings. Journal of Pragmatics 43 (1), 99–117.Google Scholar
Christophersen, Paul. 1939. The articles: A study of their theory and use in English. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.Google Scholar
Collins, Allan M. & Loftus, Elizabeth F.. 1975. A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing. Psychological Review 82, 407–28.Google Scholar
Croft, William 2001. Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Croft, William & Cruse, Alan D.. 2004. Cognitive linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Culicover, Peter W. & Jackendoff, Ray. 1999. The view from the periphery: The English comparative correlative. Linguistic Inquiry 30, 543–71.Google Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik. 2009. Analysing reanalysis. Lingua 119, 1728–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Den Dikken, Marcel. 2005. Comparative correlatives comparatively. Linguistic Inquiry 36, 497–532.Google Scholar
Evans, Vyvyan & Green, Melanie. 2006. Cognitive linguistics: An introduction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Field, John. 2004. Psycholinguistics: The key concepts. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J. 1988. The mechanisms of ‘Construction Grammar’. In Axmaker, Shelly, Jaisser, Annie & Singmaster, Helen (eds.), Proceedings of the fourteenth annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 35–55. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Fischer, Olga 1992. Syntax. In Blake, Norman (ed.), The Cambridge history of the English language, vol. II: 1066–1476, 207–408. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fried, Miriam. 2008. Constructions and constructs: Mapping a shift between predication and attribution. In Bergs, & Diewald, (eds.), 47–79.Google Scholar
Fried, Miriam. 2013. Principles of constructional change. In Hoffmann, & Trousdale, (eds.), 419–37.Google Scholar
Gisborne, Nikolas & Patten, Amanda. 2011. Construction grammar and grammaticalization. In Narrog, Heiko & Heine, Bernd (eds.), The Oxford handbook of grammaticalization, 92–104. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1985. Iconicity, isomorphism and non-arbitrary coding in syntax. In Haiman, John (ed.), Iconicity in syntax, 187–219. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 1995. Constructions: A Construction Grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 2003. Constructions: A new theoretical approach to language. TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences 7, 219–24.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 2006. Constructions at work: The nature of generalization in language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Görlach, Manfred. 1994. Einführung in die englische Sprachgeschichte, 3rd edn. Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer.Google Scholar
Haiman, John. 1994. Iconicity. In Asher, R. E. (ed.), The encyclopedia of language and linguistics, 1629–33. Oxford: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 1998. Does grammaticalization need reanalysis? Studies in Language 22, 315–51.Google Scholar
Hasson, Uri & Small, Steven L.. 2008. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) research of language. In Stemmer, Brigitte & Whitaker, Harry A. (eds.), Handbook of the neuroscience of language, 81–9. London: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Hawkins, John A. 1999. Processing complexity and filler–gap dependencies across grammars. Language 75, 245–85.Google Scholar
Hawkins, John A. 2004. Efficiency and complexity in grammars. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hilpert, Martin. 2013. Constructional change in English: Developments in allomorphy, word formation, and syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Thomas. 2011. Preposition placement in English: A usage-based approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Thomas. 2014. Comparing English comparative correlatives. Postdoctoral thesis, Osnabrück University.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Thomas & Trousdale, Graeme. 2011. Variation, change and constructions in English: Introduction. Cognitive Linguistics 22 (1), 1–23.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Thomas & Trousdale, Graeme (eds.). 2013. The Oxford handbook of Construction Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hudson, Richard. 2010. An introduction to Word Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1933. Essentials of English grammar. London: George Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1961. A modern English grammar on historical principles. 7 vols. London: George Allen and Unwin; Copenhagen: Munksgaard.Google Scholar
Kemmler, Fritz & Rieker, Iryna. 2012. Medieval English: Literature and language, 5th edn. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Lass, Roger. 1997. Historical linguistics and language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lehmann, Christian. 1992. Word order change by grammaticalization. In Gerritsen, Marinel & Stein, Dieter (eds.), Internal and external factors in syntactic change, 395–416. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lehmann, Christian. 2004. Theory and method in grammaticalization. Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik 32, 152–87.Google Scholar
Marslen-Wilson, William. 2006. Morphology and language processing. In Brown (ed.), 175–84.Google Scholar
Martinet, André. 1952. Function, structure and sound change. Word 8, 1–32.Google Scholar
Martinet, André. 1955. Economie des changements phonétiques. Bern: A. Francke.Google Scholar
Mattys, Sven. 2006. Speech recognition: Psychological approaches. In Brown, (ed.), 819–28.Google Scholar
McMahon, April M. S. 1994. Understanding language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Meillet, Antoine. 1912. Linguistique historique et linguistique générale. Paris: Champion.Google Scholar
Michaelis, Laura A. 1994. A case of constructional polysemy in Latin. Studies in Language 18, 45–70.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Bruce. 1985. Old English syntax, vol. 2: Subordination, independent elements and element order. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pijpops, Dirk & Velde, Freek Van de. 2014. Constructional contamination effects: Evidence from mixed-effects logistic regression modeling of the Dutch partitive genitive. Talk given at the SLE 47 Workshop ‘From methodology back to theory: How do current empirical methods feed back into linguistic theory?’ University of Poznan, 12 September.Google Scholar
Rumelhart, David E., McClelland, James L. & the PDP research group. 1986. Parallel distributed processing: Explorations in the microstructure of cognition. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sag, Ivan A. 2010. English filler–gap constructions. Language 86 (3), 486–545.Google Scholar
Saussure, Ferdinand de. 2006 [1916]. Course in general linguistics, ed. Bally, Charles & Sechehaye, Albert, trans. Harris, Roy. La Salle, IL: Open Court.Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2010. The English genitive alternation in a cognitive sociolinguistics perspective. In Geeraerts, Dirk, Kristiansen, Gitte & Peirsman, Yves (eds.), Advances in cognitive sociolinguistics, 141–66. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Tomasello, Michael. 2003. Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1992. Syntax. In Hogg, Richard M. (ed.), The Cambridge history of the English language, vol. I: The beginnings to 1066, 168–289. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2007. The concepts of constructional mismatch and type-shifting from the perspective of grammaticalization. Cognitive Linguistics 18 (4), 523–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Trousdale, Graeme. 2013. Constructionalization and constructional changes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Trousdale, Graeme. 2008a. Grammaticalization, constructions and the grammaticalization of constructions. Paper presented at New Reflections on Grammaticalization 4, KU Leuven, 16–19 July.Google Scholar
Trousdale, Graeme. 2008b. Constructions in grammaticalization and lexicalization: Evidence from the history of a composite predicate construction in English. In Trousdale, Graeme & Gisborne, Nikolas (eds.), Constructional approaches to English grammar, 33–67. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Trousdale, Graeme. 2012. Grammaticalization, constructions and the grammaticalization of constructions. In Davidse, Kristin, Breban, Tine, Brems, Lieselotte & Mortelmans, Tanja (eds.), Grammaticalization and language change: New reflections, 167–98. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Van de Velde, Freek, De Smet, Hendrik & Ghesquière, Lobke. 2013. On multiple source constructions in language change. Studies in Language 37, 473–89.Google Scholar
Winters, Margaret E. 2010. Introduction: On the emergence of diachronic cognitive linguistics. In Winters, Margaret E., Tissari, Helen & Allan, Kathryn (eds.), Historical cognitive linguistics, 3–27. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar