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New Empirical Approaches to Grammatical Variation and Change
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New Empirical Approaches to Grammatical Variation and Change

A special issue of Languages (ISSN 2226-471X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 December 2020) | Viewed by 28726

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Sina Bosch

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Guest Editor
Potsdam Research Institute for Multilingualism, University of Potsdam, Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse 24-25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany
Interests: syntactic and morphological processing; psycholinguistics; bilingualism
Ms. Ilaria De Cesare (M.A.)

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Guest Editor
University of Potsdam, Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse 24-25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany
Interests: syntactic variation and change; historical linguistics
Prof. Dr. Ulrike Demske

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Guest Editor
University of Potsdam, Am Neuen Palais 10, 14469 Potsdam, Germany
Interests: syntax; morphology; language variation and change; historical linguistics; microvariation in German dialects
Dr. Claudia Felser

grade E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Potsdam Research Institute for Multilingualism, University of Potsdam, Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse 24-25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany
Interests: sentence processing; theoretical and experimental syntax; second language acquisition of syntax

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Theories of grammatical variation and change have traditionally been informed by corpus data. However, with the use of experimental methods becoming more widespread in linguistic research, a growing number of studies are combining corpus analysis with experimental investigation. The availability of large annotated corpora has opened up new opportunities for studying grammatical variation and change, and advances in statistical modeling have led to novel analysis methods being applied to both synchronic and diachronic corpus data. Models of language change often invoke notions such as economy, efficiency, and processing ease to account for the replacement of one grammatical variant for another, but they typically base their assumptions on insights drawn from work on language acquisition, language disorders, or cross-linguistic distribution. Methods that tap into real-time language processing allow us to test these claims more directly by examining how processing factors affect speakers’ grammatical preferences and constrain variability. Using experimental methods such as acceptability judgements, comprehension or production tasks also allows us to assess the extent to which corpus frequencies can predict speakers’ grammatical choices and preferences in variation contexts. Although some of these studies have revealed imperfect correlations between corpus frequency and acceptability, or between corpus frequency and processing difficulty, our understanding of the role of usage frequency in determining the success of a given variant is still rather limited. To formally capture permissible variation and gradient acceptability, models of grammar may be required which allow for gradience by employing weighted linguistic constraints. This Special Issue seeks to draw together research that uses experimental, multimethodological or other innovative approaches to the study of synchronic or diachronic grammatical variation and change, with the aim of highlighting the potential benefits of such approaches and outlining possible directions for future research. We welcome original research articles, methodological articles, perspective articles, hypothesis and theory articles, and brief commentaries/opinion pieces.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

  • The role of usage frequency and processing-related factors in grammatical change;
  • Quantitative approaches to diachronic corpus data;
  • Computational modeling of grammatical variation or change;
  • Using constraint-based models of grammar to capture gradience in variation contexts.

The tentative completion schedule is as follows:

-Abstract submission deadline: 30th July 2020

-Notification of abstract acceptance: 15th August 2020

-Full manuscript deadline: 30th November 2020

Abstracts can be sent to the Guest Editors of this volume or to Languages editorial office ([email protected]). The full manuscript should be no more than 12000 words in length.

Dr. Sina Bosch
Ms. Ilaria De Cesare (M.A.)
Prof. Dr. Ulrike Demske
Dr. Claudia Felser
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Languages is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • synchronic and diachronic grammatical variation and change
  • psycholinguistics
  • corpus linguistics
  • computational modeling of grammatical variation
  • constraint-based modeling of grammar
  • gradience in grammatical variation
  • multimethodological approaches to language variation
  • comprehension
  • production

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Published Papers (9 papers)

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Editorial

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3 pages, 242 KiB  
Editorial
New Empirical Approaches to Grammatical Variation and Change
by Sina Bosch, Ilaria De Cesare, Ulrike Demske and Claudia Felser
Languages 2021, 6(3), 113; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6030113 - 28 Jun 2021
Viewed by 2418
Abstract
Research on grammatical variation and change has traditionally been based on diachronic and synchronic corpus analysis, but the growing importance of experimental approaches to the study of language has led many researchers to combine corpus study with experimentation to systematically examine linguistic variability [...] Read more.
Research on grammatical variation and change has traditionally been based on diachronic and synchronic corpus analysis, but the growing importance of experimental approaches to the study of language has led many researchers to combine corpus study with experimentation to systematically examine linguistic variability and stability [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Empirical Approaches to Grammatical Variation and Change)

Research

Jump to: Editorial

26 pages, 1124 KiB  
Article
Preposition Stranding vs. Pied-Piping—The Role of Cognitive Complexity in Grammatical Variation
by Christine Günther
Languages 2021, 6(2), 89; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6020089 - 18 May 2021
Viewed by 3617
Abstract
Grammatical variation has often been said to be determined by cognitive complexity. Whenever they have the choice between two variants, speakers will use that form that is associated with less processing effort on the hearer’s side. The majority of studies putting forth this [...] Read more.
Grammatical variation has often been said to be determined by cognitive complexity. Whenever they have the choice between two variants, speakers will use that form that is associated with less processing effort on the hearer’s side. The majority of studies putting forth this or similar analyses of grammatical variation are based on corpus data. Analyzing preposition stranding vs. pied-piping in English, this paper sets out to put the processing-based hypotheses to the test. It focuses on discontinuous prepositional phrases as opposed to their continuous counterparts in an online and an offline experiment. While pied-piping, the variant with a continuous PP, facilitates reading at the wh-element in restrictive relative clauses, a stranded preposition facilitates reading at the right boundary of the relative clause. Stranding is the preferred option in the same contexts. The heterogenous results underline the need for research on grammatical variation from various perspectives. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Empirical Approaches to Grammatical Variation and Change)
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28 pages, 491 KiB  
Article
Discourse and Form Constraints on Licensing Object-First Sentences in German
by Markus Bader and Yvonne Portele
Languages 2021, 6(2), 82; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6020082 - 30 Apr 2021
Viewed by 2578
Abstract
In German, the subject usually precedes the object (SO order), but, under certain discourse conditions, the object is allowed to precede the subject (OS order). This paper focuses on main clauses in which either the subject or a discourse-given object occurs in clause-initial [...] Read more.
In German, the subject usually precedes the object (SO order), but, under certain discourse conditions, the object is allowed to precede the subject (OS order). This paper focuses on main clauses in which either the subject or a discourse-given object occurs in clause-initial position. Two acceptability experiments show that OS sentences with a given object are generally acceptable, but the precise degree of acceptability varies both with the object‘s referential form (demonstrative objects leading to higher acceptability than other types of objects) and with formal properties of the subject (pronominal subjects leading to higher acceptability than non-pronominal subjects). For SO sentences, acceptability was reduced when the object was a d-pronoun, which contrasts with the high acceptability of OS sentences with a d-pronoun object. This finding was explored in a third acceptability experiment comparing d-pronouns in subject and object function. This experiment provides evidence that a reduction in acceptability due to a prescriptive bias against d-pronouns is suspended when the d-pronoun occurs as object in the prefield. We discuss the experimental results with respect to theories of German clause structure that claim that OS sentences with different information-structural properties are derived by different types of movement. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Empirical Approaches to Grammatical Variation and Change)
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33 pages, 3202 KiB  
Article
Acceptability of Different Psychological Verbal Constructions by Heritage Spanish Speakers from California
by Viola G. Miglio and Stefan Th. Gries
Languages 2021, 6(2), 80; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6020080 - 27 Apr 2021
Viewed by 3145
Abstract
This study set out to investigate whether US Heritage Spanish features a more streamlined verbal paradigm in psych verb constructions compared to standard varieties of Spanish, where HS speakers find an invariable third-person singular form acceptable with both singular and plural grammatical subjects. [...] Read more.
This study set out to investigate whether US Heritage Spanish features a more streamlined verbal paradigm in psych verb constructions compared to standard varieties of Spanish, where HS speakers find an invariable third-person singular form acceptable with both singular and plural grammatical subjects. In standard Spanish, the semantic subjects of psych verbs are typically pre-verbal experiencers cast as oblique arguments in inverse predicates such as in me encantan los buhos ‘I love owls’. The translation of this sentence shows that equivalent English predicates are typically direct constructions. The data were gathered using an acceptability judgement questionnaire that was distributed to participants that fit into one of three groups: early bilingual heritage speakers of Spanish from California, advanced Spanish as L2 speakers, and non-bilingual native speakers of Spanish who had learnt English as an L2 as adults. The Heritage Spanish speakers in this group often patterned differently from both other groups, who surprisingly patterned together. We argue that this is due to L2 speakers’ mode of acquisition (formal and subject to prescriptive grammar), in comparison with Heritage Spanish speakers’ naturalistic acquisition. Specifically, we find evidence for a streamlining of the Spanish verbal paradigm not immediately attributed to English interference, and that in psych verb constructions, Heritage Spanish speakers more readily accept a third-person singular invariable verbal form. This differentiation of the verbal paradigm from standard Spanish use should be considered a bona fide linguistic change, but not proof of either incomplete acquisition or language attrition. Since Heritage Spanish speakers are, after all, native speakers of Spanish, this study shows that Heritage Spanish should be considered and studied as any other dialect of Spanish, with its distinctive grammatical features, and subject to variability and change. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Empirical Approaches to Grammatical Variation and Change)
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20 pages, 422 KiB  
Article
Correlative Coordination and Variable Subject–Verb Agreement in German
by Claudia Felser and Anna Jessen
Languages 2021, 6(2), 67; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6020067 - 3 Apr 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2749
Abstract
Coordinated subjects often show variable number agreement with the finite verb, but linguistic approaches to this phenomenon have rarely been informed by systematically collected data. We report the results from three experiments investigating German speakers’ agreement preferences with complex subjects joined by the [...] Read more.
Coordinated subjects often show variable number agreement with the finite verb, but linguistic approaches to this phenomenon have rarely been informed by systematically collected data. We report the results from three experiments investigating German speakers’ agreement preferences with complex subjects joined by the correlative conjunctions sowohl…als auch (‘both…and’), weder…noch (‘neither…nor’) or entweder…oder (‘either…or’). We examine to what extent conjunction type and a conjunct’s relative proximity to the verb affect the acceptability and processibility of singular vs. plural agreement. Experiment 1 was an untimed acceptability rating task, Experiment 2 a timed sentence completion task, and Experiment 3 was a self-paced reading task. Taken together, our results show that number agreement with correlative coordination in German is primarily determined by a default constraint triggering plural agreement, which interacts with linear order and semantic factors. Semantic differences between conjunctions only affected speakers’ agreement preferences in the absence of processing pressure but not their initial agreement computation. The combined results from our offline and online experimental measures of German speakers’ agreement preferences suggest that the constraints under investigation do not only differ in their relative weighting but also in their relative timing during agreement computation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Empirical Approaches to Grammatical Variation and Change)
20 pages, 3008 KiB  
Article
Smooth Signals and Syntactic Change
by Joel C. Wallenberg, Rachael Bailes, Christine Cuskley and Anton Karl Ingason
Languages 2021, 6(2), 60; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6020060 - 25 Mar 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 4169
Abstract
A large body of recent work argues that considerations of information density predict various phenomena in linguistic planning and production. However, the usefulness of an information theoretic account for explaining diachronic phenomena has remained under-explored. Here, we test the idea that speakers prefer [...] Read more.
A large body of recent work argues that considerations of information density predict various phenomena in linguistic planning and production. However, the usefulness of an information theoretic account for explaining diachronic phenomena has remained under-explored. Here, we test the idea that speakers prefer informationally uniform utterances on diachronic data from historical English and Icelandic. Our results show that: (i) the information density approach allows us to predict that Subject and Object type will affect the frequencies of OV and VO in specific ways, creating a complex Constant Rate Effect, (ii) the bias towards information uniformity explains this CRE and may help to explain others, and (iii) communities of speakers are constant in their average target level of information uniformity over long periods of historical time. This finding is consistent with an understanding of this bias which places it deep in the human language faculty and the human faculty for communication. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Empirical Approaches to Grammatical Variation and Change)
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29 pages, 2353 KiB  
Article
Grammar Competition and Word Order in a Northern Early Middle English Text
by Robert Truswell
Languages 2021, 6(2), 59; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6020059 - 24 Mar 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2560
Abstract
The Edinburgh Royal College of Physicians manuscript of Cursor Mundi and the Northern Homilies, a northern Middle English text from the early 14th century, contains unprecedentedly high frequencies of matrix verb-third and embedded verb-second word orders with subject–verb inversion. I give a [...] Read more.
The Edinburgh Royal College of Physicians manuscript of Cursor Mundi and the Northern Homilies, a northern Middle English text from the early 14th century, contains unprecedentedly high frequencies of matrix verb-third and embedded verb-second word orders with subject–verb inversion. I give a theoretical account of these word orders in terms of a grammar, the ‘CM grammar’, which differs minimally in its formal description from regular verb-second grammars, but captures these unusual word orders through addition of a second preverbal A′-projection. Despite its flexibility, the CM grammar did not spread through the English-speaking population. I discuss the theoretical consequences of this failure to spread for models of grammar competition where fitness is tied to parsing success, and discuss prospects for refining such models. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Empirical Approaches to Grammatical Variation and Change)
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31 pages, 1161 KiB  
Article
Can Frequency Account for the Grammatical Choices of Children and Adults in Nominal Modification Contexts? Evidence from Elicited Production and Child-Directed Speech
by Emanuela Sanfelici and Petra Schulz
Languages 2021, 6(1), 35; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6010035 - 26 Feb 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2891
Abstract
There is consensus that languages possess several grammatical variants satisfying the same conversational function. Nevertheless, it is a matter of debate which principles guide the adult speaker’s choice and the child’s acquisition order of these variants. Various proposals have suggested that frequency shapes [...] Read more.
There is consensus that languages possess several grammatical variants satisfying the same conversational function. Nevertheless, it is a matter of debate which principles guide the adult speaker’s choice and the child’s acquisition order of these variants. Various proposals have suggested that frequency shapes adult language use and language acquisition. Taking the domain of nominal modification as its testing ground, this paper explores in two studies the role that frequency of structures plays for adults’ and children’s structural choices in German. In Study 1, 133 three- to six-year-old children and 21 adults were tested with an elicited production task prompting participants to identify an agent or a patient referent among a set of alternatives. Study 2 analyzed a corpus of child-directed speech to examine the frequency of passive relative clauses, which children, similar to adults, produced very often in Study 1. Importantly, passive relatives were found to be infrequent in the child input. These two results show that the high production rate of rare structures, such as passive relatives, is difficult to account for with frequency. We claim that the relation between frequency in natural speech and use of a given variant in a specific context is indirect: speakers may opt for the less grammatically complex computation rather than for the variant most frequently used in spontaneous speech. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Empirical Approaches to Grammatical Variation and Change)
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17 pages, 1042 KiB  
Article
Beyond Mere Text Frequency: Assessing Subtle Grammaticalization by Different Quantitative Measures. A Case Study on the Dutch Soort Construction
by Robbert De Troij and Freek Van de Velde
Languages 2020, 5(4), 55; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages5040055 - 9 Nov 2020
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2967
Abstract
Grammaticalization has proven to be an insightful approach to semantic-morphosyntactic change within and across languages. Many studies, however, rely on assessing the large, obvious differences before and after the change. When investigating burgeoning or ongoing grammaticalization processes, it is notably harder to objectively [...] Read more.
Grammaticalization has proven to be an insightful approach to semantic-morphosyntactic change within and across languages. Many studies, however, rely on assessing the large, obvious differences before and after the change. When investigating burgeoning or ongoing grammaticalization processes, it is notably harder to objectively measure the degree of grammaticalization. One approach is to gauge changes in the well-known ‘parameters’ of Lehmann, Hopper, and Himmelmann, but this approach is often qualitatively oriented. Quantitative studies mainly rely either on token frequency of a construction, assuming that grammaticalization is accompanied by a frequency increase, or by tracing the development of two competing constructions, looking at the proportion of their respective token frequencies. In this article, we argue for a wider range of quantitative measures, beyond token frequency, as dependent variables. We will show that these measures can jointly point to subtle ongoing grammaticalization. As a case study, we will focus on Dutch binominals with soort ‘sort’, a core member of the much-discussed sort-kind-type (SKT) construction in the languages of Europe. Based on a large dataset of over 14,000 instances from the period between 1850 and 1999, we investigate quantitatively measurable changes in the construction’s surface behavior (i.e., the gradual loss of the relator van ‘of’ and increasing restrictions on premodification and pluralization, pointing to a process of ‘decategorialization’). In addition, we will also use Gries’s deviation of proportions (DP) to gauge the dispersion of soort, a valuable but under-used metric in quantitative studies of grammaticalization. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Empirical Approaches to Grammatical Variation and Change)
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