Abstract
AbstractThe present work investigates the effects of social constraints on word order variation in particle placement in Ontario English, Canada. While previous research has documented numerous linguistic factors conditioning the choice of variant, social correlates have so far remained unexplored. To address this gap, we analyze 6,047 variable phrasal verbs from the vernacular speech of six communities in Ontario. These data were coded for length of the direct object, verb semantics, community, and the individual's education, gender, age, and occupation. Our analyses confirm previous findings that variation in particle placement is predominantly determined by direct object length. However, we also expose significant social and geographic factors, and importantly an effect of age, with younger speakers using the joined variant more than older speakers. Further analysis confirms that the latter effect is consistent across communities, indicating a change in progress, possibly due to ongoing grammaticalization of particles in the verb phrase.
Highlights
The present study investigates the effect of contextual factors—linguistic and social —on word order variation in particle placement, as in (1) in Ontario, Canada
Toronto has the highest percentage of joined variants in all three time periods compared to the other communities, while three communities lag behind Toronto in this development: North Bay, Temiskaming Shores, and Kirkland Lake
Corpus-linguistic approaches to analyzing particle placement have focused on the structure, function, and linguistic correlates of this alternation
Summary
The present study investigates the effect of contextual factors—linguistic and social —on word order variation in particle placement, as in (1) in Ontario, Canada. The two variants in (1) are generally considered semantically equivalent but pragmatically and stylistically different Such stylistic or pragmatic factors constraining the choice between the joined and the split order have received ample attention in the literature (see, among others, Cappelle, 2006, 2009; Dehé, 2002; Grafmiller & Szmrecsanyi, 2018; Gries, 2003; Haddican & Johnson, 2012; Lohse, Hawkins, & Wasow, 2004; Rodríguez-Puente, 2016, 2017, 2019). The present study goes beyond traditional analyses by considering social as well as language-internal constraints on word order variation With this approach, we follow a recent upsurge of studies that have demonstrated that syntactic alternations are contextually constrained both by factors that are inherent to the linguistic system and those that arise out of language usage and which are socially motivated (see Geeraerts, Kristiansen, & Peirsman, 2010:7–8; Röthlisberger, 2020). The last section offers final conclusions and directions for future research
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