Smooth Signals and Syntactic Change
Abstract
:1. Introduction
1.1. Information Uniformity in Language
1.2. Current Study
- (1) a.
- …og sannleikurinn mun yður frelsa…and the truth will you free“…and the truth will set you free.”(Oddur Gottskálksson’s New Testament, date: 1540; ID 1540.NTJOHN.REL-BIB, 204.662 from Icelandic Parsed Historical Corpus (IcePaHC))
- b.
- …en eg skal sjá yður aftur.but I shall see you-pl again“…but I shall see you again”(Oddur Gottskálksson’s New Testament, date: 1540; ID 1540.NTJOHN.REL-BIB, 223.1305 from IcePaHC)
- (2)
- Mi feader & Mi moder for-þi þt ich nule þe forsaken; habbe forsake me.My father and my mother because that I not+would you forsake have forsaken me“Because I would not forsake you, my father and mother have forsaken me”(St. Juliana, northern Herefordshire/southern Shropshire, date: c1225; ID CMJULIA-M1,106.172 from the Penn Parsed Corpus of Middle English 2 (PPCME2))
1.3. Predictions
- Pronouns are closed-class and frequent, and so are low information content, (cf. Shannon 1948) in comparison with nominal DPs (e.g., you vs. the politician). For example, the average information content value for pronouns in the Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English (PPCMBE; Kroch et al. 2016) is 11.7 bits.
- Nominal DP Objects are high information content in general, because any particular DP will be low probability. There are more common noun lexemes than any other part of speech, and so any given noun is lower probability by virtue of belonging to a very large set. The probability of a given noun combined with a determiner and/or modifiers is necessarily lower than the probability of the noun alone. For example, the average information content for nouns in PPCMBE is 13.7 bits, and we can reasonably expect the average information content is much higher for nominal DPs, since they can be of arbitrary complexity.
- Verbs are mid-level in frequency and so also in information content: lower than nominal DPs, on average, but higher than pronouns. For example, the average information content for lexical verbs in the PPCMBE is 13.5 bits.
- When Subject and Object are of the same type (i.e., both pronominal or both nominal), VO clause structure is statistically favored.
- Otherwise, OV clause structure is favored.
- These effects are orthogonal to the OV to VO change, but apply as constants throughout the course of the change.
- (3)
- grátur mun þryngva ina efstu hluti fagnaðarWeeping will throng the highest parts joy-gen“Weeping will crowd into even the very last bits of joy”(Íslensk Hómilíubók, date: c. 1150; ID 1150.HOMILIUBOK.REL-SER,.1408 from IcePaHC)HIGH-mid-HIGH is the information distribution shape produced, on average, by the above clause structure.
- (4)
- …og sannleikurinn mun yður frelsa…and the truth will you free“…and the truth will set you free.”(Repeated from above, ID 1540.NTJOHN.REL-BIB,204.662 from IcePaHC)HIGH-low-mid is the information distribution shape produced, on average, by the above clause structure.
- (5)
- Ne maʒʒ he nohht rihht cnawenn meneg may he not right know me“He may not rightly know me”(Ormulum, Lincoln, date: 1200; ID CMORM-M1,II,241.2491 from PPCME2)low-mid-low is the information distribution shape produced, on average, by the above clause structure.
- (6)
- tu mihht ec gastlike laf Onn oþerr wise ʒarrkennyou might also spiritual loaf in another way prepare“You might also prepare a spiritual loaf in another way.”(Ormulum, Lincoln, date: 1200; ID CMORM-M1,I,49.493 from PPCME2)low-HIGH-mid is the information distribution shape produced, on average, by the above clause structure.
2. Materials and Methods
- (7)
- ef þeir vilja trú taka, …if they want faith take …“…if they wish to convert, …”(Jómsvíkinga saga, date: 1260; ID 1260.JOMSVIKINGAR.NAR-SAG,.765 from IcePaHC)
- (8)
- (IP-SUB(NP-SBJ (PRO-N þeir))(MDPI vilja)(NP-OB1(N-A trú))(VB taka))Token ID: 1260.JOMSVIKINGAR.NAR-SAG,.765
- (9)
- define:clause IP-(MAT|SUB).*finaux (MD|HV|BE|DO|RD)[PD][IS]mainverb (VB|VAN|VBN)object NP-OB[12]clause idoms finauxclause idoms NP-SBJov:1finaux sprec objectobject sprec mainverbov:0finaux sprec mainverbmainverb sprec object
- (10)
- (11)
- meta:text genretext yearnode label clause
3. Results
- When Subject and Object are of the same type (i.e., both pronominal or both nominal), VO clause structure is statistically favored.
- Conversely, when Subject and Object are of different types, OV clause structure is favored.
- –
- These complementary results are summarized in Section 3.1 below, and illustrated by Figure 2. That this pattern of clause structure results in more uniform information distributions is summarized in Section 3.2 and illustrated by Figure 3.
- These effects are orthogonal to the OV to VO change, but apply as constants throughout the course of the change.
- –
- This result is indicated in Section 3.1 below and illustrated by Figure 2. That information density remains stable given the OV to VO change is summarized in Section 3.3, and is illustrated by Figure 4.
3.1. Effect of Syntactic Context on OV/VO Diachrony
3.2. OV/VO and Information Density in Icelandic
3.3. Stability of Information Density over Time
4. Discussion
4.1. Effect of Syntactic Context on OV/VO Diachrony
4.2. OV/VO and Information Density in Icelandic
4.3. Stability of Information Density over Time
5. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
Abbreviations
OV/VO | Object Verb/Verb Object |
DORM | Deviation of Rolling Mean |
IcePaHC | Icelandic Parsed Historical Corpus |
YCOE | York Corpus of Old English Prose |
PPCME2 | Penn Parsed Corpus of Middle English, Second Edition |
PPCEME | Penn Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English |
PPCMBE | Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English |
AIC | Akaike Information Criterion |
BIC | Bayesian Information Criterion |
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Wallenberg, J.C.; Bailes, R.; Cuskley, C.; Ingason, A.K. Smooth Signals and Syntactic Change. Languages 2021, 6, 60. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6020060
Wallenberg JC, Bailes R, Cuskley C, Ingason AK. Smooth Signals and Syntactic Change. Languages. 2021; 6(2):60. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6020060
Chicago/Turabian StyleWallenberg, Joel C., Rachael Bailes, Christine Cuskley, and Anton Karl Ingason. 2021. "Smooth Signals and Syntactic Change" Languages 6, no. 2: 60. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6020060