Abstract
This paper presents an investigation of the extent to which Heine’s (2003) mechanisms of grammaticalization—erosion (phonetic reduction), decategorialization (loss of morpho-syntactic properties), desemanticization (semantic bleaching) and extension (context expansion)—are evident in the variation of negative question tags in three varieties of British English spoken in Glasgow, Tyneside, and Salford. The study considers the variation in terms of three types of variant—full (e.g., isn’t it), reduced (e.g., int it), and coalesced (e.g., innit)—which each represent a stage in the erosion process. Quantitative variationist analysis of informal conversational data shows that erosion of negative tags occurs to different degrees in each of the three communities. The locality with the least tag erosion—Tyneside—displays particularly strong social stratification in the variation that suggests a change in progress led by younger men. However, there is little to no evidence of decategorialization in the negative tags, nor does variation in tag meaning correlate with phonetic form in a consistent manner. The results therefore suggest that erosion and desemanticization/extension do not occur in lockstep as these constructions grammaticalize, while decategorialization occurs at a later stage in the change.
Highlights
Grammaticalization refers to a specific kind of linguistic change “whereby particular items become more grammatical through time” (Hopper & Traugott 2003:2)
This paper presents a separate investigation of negative tag variation in the three aforementioned varieties, instead focusing on the mechanisms of grammaticalization that are apparent in the data, which are discussed
Having outlined the coding of internal and external factors, this section turns to the quantitative analysis, firstly presenting distributional results which provide insight into the four mechanisms of grammaticalization and their relevance to negative tag variation: erosion, decategorialization, and desemanticization and extension
Summary
Grammaticalization refers to a specific kind of linguistic change “whereby particular items become more grammatical through time” (Hopper & Traugott 2003:2). The form has become semantically bleached and pragmatically extended, used for a wide range of functions beyond what would be expected of a typical interrogative It is sometimes used as a non-paradigmatic (invariant) tag that lacks agreement with the clause to which it attaches, as found in the speech of young Londoners (Andersen 2001; Palacios Martınez 2015; Pichler 2021a) and varieties including Welsh Englishes (Paulasto 2016) and Singaporean and Indian Englishes (Hussain & Mahmood 2014). In her analysis of innit in Multicultural London English, Pichler (2016:65) finds examples of innit in new syntactic environments. These include the left periphery of a clause (as in 10) and other contexts where negative tags would not be generated in Standard English, such as (11), where innit follows a fixed phrase (I know) that is used to express agreement with the previous speaker (both examples are cited from Pichler [2016:65])
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