Grammatical Innovation Research Articles

On analysing fragments: the case of No?

Abstract This paper addresses the analysis of sentence fragments, specifically the English negative polar response item no. Two main types of synchronic analysis have been proposed for present-day English – one in which yes and no are syntactically inert particles which substitute for a clause, the other in which they are the initial element of an elided clause. Using diachronic data from 15th- to 17th-century English, we argue that the emergence of a novel other-speaker question pattern involving no demonstrates that speakers of early English analysed interrogative polar no as the initial element of a clause with TP-ellipsis. This novel pattern has received little attention in the literature, yet this grammatical innovation is interesting because its emergence demonstrates how diachronic change can be used as a diagnostic for underlying grammatical structure.

The seamlessness of grammatical innovation: the case of be going to (revisited)

Abstract In this paper, I revisit the continued debate surrounding manner of grammatical innovation, i.e. whether it is abrupt or gradual. I show that the debate is complicated by different diagnostics for manner and argue that it is best understood in terms of degree of similarity (how similar the innovative use is to existing uses of a construction). However, even when adopting degree of similarity as a diagnostic, approaches differ with regards to how similar they find innovative and existing uses. The gradualness account argues that innovative uses are similar but distinct from existing uses, as they imply a new form-meaning pairing. A seamlessness account instead argues that innovative and existing uses are so similar that no new form-meaning pairing is required. I develop seamlessness into a theoretical position for semantic innovation in grammaticalization, which holds that grammatical innovations are maximally similar to existing uses i.e. they exhibit considerable conceptual overlap and the existing use is semantically underspecified. Seamlessness is empirically tested using semantic innovations in be going to as a case study.

Grammatical Innovations in German in Multilingual Namibia: The Expanded Use of Linking Elements and Gehen ‘Go’ as a Future Auxiliary

In this paper, we provide an overview of the history and sociolinguistic setting of Germans and German in Namibia, which serves as a backdrop for our discussion of two grammatical innovations in Namibian German. German has been actively used in Namibia since the 1880s, having been brought to the country through colonization, and it remains linguistically vital today. Via a questionnaire study, we investigate the expanded use of two grammatical innovations in Namibian German, namely, i) linking elements and ii) gehen as a future auxiliary. We explore various factors that could have contributed to the emergence of these innovations in order to better understand the dynamics of German in multilingual Namibia.*

Does Philippine English subject–verb agreement exist in academic writing? The case of research articles across disciplines

ABSTRACT Subject–verb agreement is an overlooked grammatical aspect of Philippine English especially in academic registers. This study analyses Philippine English subject–verb agreement in published research articles (RAs) written by Filipino researchers across disciplines. Using Bautista’s subject–verb agreement framework and D’Souza's criteria for linguistic innovation, disciplinary RAs were analyzed through manual coding and independent inter-coding. Being widespread, systematic, rule-governed, and formally and competently used, only the intervening prepositional phrase under verb-related agreement was consistently present across 11 qualitative and quantitative disciplinary RA sub-registers. It appears that this could be an acceptable Philippine English grammatical innovation in academic research writing across disciplines. The study yields implications for Philippine English itself, academic writing instructions, and academic research journals.

Media text as a source for studying new word-formation and lexical semantic changes in modern Serbian

Under the influence of globalization in media texts in Serbian language, as well as in all other Slavic languages, many new words, originating from the English language, have appeared. Those words, hybrids, began to fill the dictionaries of neologisms of all Slavic languages, including Serbian dictionaries. They represent a combination of an English stem and a Slavic affix, or vice versa. However, today the creativity goes even further, and more and more Serbian words that appear in media texts are combining affixes that they never had before. Thus, those words are given new grammatical and pragmatic functions. Many of these new words will never move from the sphere of occasionalisms to the sphere of neologisms, i. e. they will never be more widely used. On the one hand, the authors of media texts (first of all, columnists) nowadays take the liberty to cross the boundaries of the word formation and the use of lexemes, in the way that only writers, especially poets could do so far. This paper lists and describes word formation and grammatical innovations associated with the onomatopoeic adverbs, word formation and grammatical innovations with verbs, word formation and semantic innovations associated with diminutive forms, and noun innovations with a zero suffix. It is important to understand that these creative processes the journalist starts with Serbian language and ends with Serbian language, which contains in itself a hidden influence of (anglo-) globalization onto Serbian language. It may also represent a psycholinguistic impact of globalization on the linguistic behavior of Serbian speakers. The same process occurs in other Slavic languages, and the special attention should be given to that, since we are talking about language changes caused by a borrowed model of behavior and thinking.

Czech, Mate: Grammatical Replication and Shift in South Australian Czech

Abstract: Historical linguistics aims to investigate the innovation stage of a grammatical variant as well as the later community-wide propagation in order to fully understand the change (Fischer 2004). This paper focuses on individual contact-based grammatical innovations in a community setting, viewing the speaker as the "locus of change" (Weinreich 1953/1968: 1; Romaine 2005; Wei 2013). This provides a window into the types of innovations community members produce in a situation of shift, wherein such innovations may never become complete changes. The community studied in this article is the Czech South Australian community, whose language situation is previously unstudied. Utilizing Thomason's (2001) steps for proving whether contact-induced structural change has occurred, this paper identifies several instances of possible grammatical "replication" innovations in the speech of individuals in this community (Heine and Kuteva 2005, 2008: 2; Kuteva 2017), as well as the influence of shift driven by "divergent attainment" (Polinsky 2018: 18) and intergenerational attrition. This is supported by findings of significant authors in the tradition of Czech diasporic linguistic research (Henzl 1982; Vašek 1996; Dutková 1998; Dutková-Cope 2001a, 2001b; Zajícová 2009, 2012). It is suggested here that the features found are possibly the result of shift and attrition processes and contact-induced language transfer acting together within a Dynamic System (Herdina and Jessner 2002).

New perspectives on grammatical change in heritage Norwegian

This study introduces two speaker types, which have not yet been studied, to the study of heritage Norwegian: one adult (48, i.e., not elderly) and one adolescent speaker (16), “Kari” and “Jess”. They are both North American, English-dominant heritage speakers of Norwegian (AmNo), but differ from an older, previously studied cohort of American Norwegian speakers (old AmNo) in several respects. Kari and Jess have had more continuous contact with Norway throughout their lives. They are both Norwegian-literate and consume Norwegian-language media. Jess has attended Norwegian language courses in Norway, which motivates seeing her as a heritage language relearner. In this pilot study, we test the hypothesis that such extra-linguistic factors lead to grammatical differences between the groups. The hypothesis is tested by the analysis of three variables previously studied in old AmNo speakers: verb-second word order in non-subject initial clauses, possessive placement, and grammatical gender. We drew data from a 48-minute semi-structured speech recording. The study found that Kari and Jess indeed differ from old AmNo speakers. Kari’s language shows very little grammatical innovation, placing her among the most stable AmNo speakers. Jess’ language, in contrast, shows strongly innovative tendencies in all studied variables. To explain the innovations in Jess’ language, we appeal to heterogeneous input during childhood acquisition and cross-linguistic influence from English. Both factors, we argue, are active in the process of heritage language relearning.

Untangling the evolution of body-part terminology in Pano: conservative versus innovative traits in body-part lexicalization.

Although language-family specific traits which do not find direct counterparts outside a given language family are usually ignored in quantitative phylogenetic studies, scholars have made ample use of them in qualitative investigations, revealing their potential for identifying language relationships. An example of such a family specific trait are body-part expressions in Pano languages, which are often lexicalized forms, composed of bound roots (also called body-part prefixes in the literature) and non-productive derivative morphemes (called here body-part formatives). We use various statistical methods to demonstrate that whereas body-part roots are generally conservative, body-part formatives exhibit diverse chronologies and are often the result of recent and parallel innovations. In line with this, the phylogenetic structure of body-part roots projects the major branches of the family, while formatives are highly non-tree-like. Beyond its contribution to the phylogenetic analysis of Pano languages, this study provides significative insights into the role of grammatical innovations for language classification, the origin of morphological complexity in the Amazon and the phylogenetic signal of specific grammatical traits in language families.

Marginalia of the Fedorovsky Parimeinik From the 13th Century: Extralinguistic and Linguistic Data

The research note discusses some marginalia in a 13th-century parimeinik from the collections of the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (Tip. no. 60), which have not yet received a detailed description. The author proposes certain amendments to previous publications of the marginalia, partially reconstructs their lost fragments, interprets some extralinguistic information that gives an idea of the name and occupations of the scribe, and linguistic data in the field of phonetics, grammar, and vocabulary in their connection with the corresponding phenomena of the main text of the parimeinik. The author concludes that the marginalia reflect some phonetic innovations present in the main text; their grammatical innovations, on the other hand, are not supported by the main text, the stability of which is due to the genre. At the lexical level, some units make it possible to supply Russian historical lexicography either with an earlier dating for the first fixation of a lexeme in written sources or with a new contextual combination.

Indigenizing say in Australian Aboriginal English

ABSTRACT The quotative system – lexical and morphosyntactic strategies for the direct reporting of speech and thought – has undergone a major transformation in mainstream World Englishes. Diachronic studies of quotation in Australian, British, Canadian and New Zealand English have all documented the same trends: a relatively stable system, using a small number of quotative variants, becomes more varied and complex, with a decline in the frequency of canonical say correlating with an increasing tendency to quote thought. This study, modelled on two foregoing sociolinguistic analyses of mainstream West Australian and New Zealand Englishes, examines quotation in recordings of 26 speakers of Australian Aboriginal English born between 1907 and 1961, including 16 oral histories. The results indicate that, unlike their settler English-speaking counterparts, these speakers have not only preserved the dominance of say: they have come to use it in distinctive ways, with semantic and grammatical innovations not observed in other varieties, in a system which serves to enrich narrative in a speaker population unique for its millennia of oral tradition. The findings suggest processes of grammaticalization and, observed alongside similar expanding frequency and versatility of be like in mainstream Englishes, may signal a parallel evolutive effect in a different language ecology.

A New System of Cantonese Tones? Tone Perception and Production in Hong Kong South Asian Cantonese

Studies in language contact have identified many instances of linguistic variation and grammatical innovations introduced by speakers from multi-ethnic urban neighborhoods. This study focuses on the variety of Cantonese spoken by South Asian youths in Hong Kong, specifically their production and perception of Hong Kong Cantonese tones. Our findings show that the South Asian Cantonese speakers have a smaller tonal inventory than the canonical six-tone system of standard Hong Kong Cantonese and their tonal discrimination abilities are also more impoverished relative to their ethnic Chinese peers. Further analysis shows a positive correlation between tonal discrimination accuracy and tonal realization distinctness among the South Asian speakers, but not among the ethnic Chinese. These findings suggest that South Asian Cantonese speakers might have developed a distinct tone system from their ethnic Chinese peers.

Nativised structural patterns of make light verb construction in Malaysian English

Abstract This study investigated nativised structural patterns of light verb constructions (LVCs) in Malaysian English using a corpus-based, descriptive approach to analyse grammatical innovations. To facilitate the analysis, a 100-million-word general corpus comprising threads from Lowyat.Net, a popular Internet forum in Malaysia, was created, and the British National Corpus (BNC) was used as the reference corpus. Using the Sketch Engine corpus tool, the three most frequently occurring make LVCs in the Malaysian English corpus were identified. The data was analysed to reveal the differences between the structures of make LVC in Malaysian English and its prototypical structure. The findings show that besides the non-isomorphic deverbal noun form, make LVCs in Malaysian English prefer taking the basic constituents of an LVC. Nativised LVCs are essentially those with zero articles and isomorphic deverbal nouns taking definite articles, determiners, and descriptive adjectives in their modifier slots. The zero article LVC is the most common nativised structure pattern due to the influence of substrate languages in Malaysian English.

<i>Me, mi, my</i>: Innovation and variability in heritage speakers’ knowledge of inalienable possession

The present study investigates variability in heritage speakers’ (HSs) knowledge of inalienable possession in Spanish (e.g., me rompí el brazo: ‘I broke my arm’). By testing HSs’ productive and receptive knowledge of this property, the study fills an important gap in the literature and, furthermore, explores whether differences in performance across productive and receptive modalities reflect grammatical innovation at the level of underlying representation. Thirty HSs (16 advanced proficiency, 14 intermediate proficiency) and 15 Spanish-dominant controls (SDCs) completed two experimental tasks, each testing both inalienable and alienable object contexts. Results from the Elicited Production Task show that the HSs exhibit significant variability. Unlike the SDCs, who almost categorically produce clitics to communicate the inalienability of objects, the two HS groups rely more heavily on possessive determiners, alternating frequently between the “target” form (Clitic + DefDet: me rompí el brazo) and three different “innovative” variants (e.g., NoClitic + PossDet: rompí mi brazo). Results from the Acceptability Judgment Task complicate this finding by revealing that the HSs, despite their productive variability, make all of the same within-group distinctions as the SDCs, suggesting that they retain systematic receptive knowledge of inalienable possession. To explain these seemingly contradictory patterns, as well as the strong effect of Spanish proficiency on HSs’ performance across tasks, we suggest that HSs’ variability is consistent with English to Spanish influence at the level of bilingual alignments, transient storage mechanisms proposed by Sánchez (2019) to account for gradient and variable performance in multiple bilingual contexts.

The New Testament translation by Martin Lupáč (ca. 1450): Questions of language and authorship

The New Testament translation from the mid-15th century attributed to the Utraquist priest and diplomat Martin Lupáč represents the first phase of the 4th redaction of the Old Czech Bible translation. It served as a model for the Prague Bible (1488) — the first printed Slavic Bible.The aim of the present work is to detect specific features of Lupáč’s translation method by comparing his texts with four editions of the Old Czech Bible translation. In addition we aim to verify Lupáč’s authorship of the translation, previously attributed to him on the basis of insufficient evidence, by comparing it with two Czech texts written by him. Our results show that Lupáč’s translation contains a number of grammatical innovations that were consciously used to make the Bible content more accessible to the contemporary recipients, e.g., using iterative verbs instead of disappearing imperfect tense, using compound sentences with a finite verb instead of Latin nominal constructions. We detected vocabulary specific for the 15th century (currency, units of measurement, names of feasts), additional explanatory notes, precise translations of non-specific Latin verbs, stylistic dissimilation, and German and new bohemicized Latin loanwords. In addition, in Lupáč’s translation of the Pauline Epistles we found traces of Utraquist theology. We compare the language of two Czech tractates written by Lupáč with the New Testament translation attributed to him, but the degree of similarity is not sufficient to confirm the attribution. In conclusion, Lupáč’s New Testament is a vivid and explanatory translation with unique stylistic figures. Some innovations were so unusual that they were omitted in the Prague Bible created by Utraquists 40 years later.

Contact-induced change and mobility

Abstract This paper takes as its starting point a contact-induced grammatical innovation at the level of attributive predications that has been reported for various Romani speakers, in Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and the United States. Adopting a cross-disciplinary approach, we present evidence both from a historical study that documents individual and family itineraries in the Americas during the first half of the twentieth century and from a multi-sited ethnographic study on biographical narratives. These studies reveal the existence of close links among individuals from geographically distant localities. We suggest that, in the absence of normative linguistic institutions, complex multilingual practices seem to have modified grammar at the level of the bilingual speaker and ultimately of the network as a whole. More generally, by considering a less-studied population engaged in transnational mobile practices, we seek to illustrate how mobility allows for linguistic change to spread rapidly and widely.

From locative existential constructionfi(ih)to a TMA/progressive marker

AbstractThe grammaticalization framework has been suggested as a predictive power for language change. This paper considers the grammatical functions of the locative constructionfi(ih)in the Gulf Arabic Pidgin (a variety spoken by workers from the Indian subcontinent and south Asian countries working in the Arabian/Persian Gulf States). In Gulf Arabic, there are (1) the prepositionfi‘in; into; inside’ and (2) the locative constructionfi(ih)‘there is/are’, which only has an existential function. In Gulf Arabic Pidgin, the locative constructionfi(ih), however, has several grammatical functions, including (1) a possessive marker (i.e.,have-constructions), (2) an equative/predicative copula, and (3) a preverbal predicative marker. The aim in this paper is two-fold: first, to show how a grammaticalization framework can possibly account for the grammatical innovations offi(ih)in the Gulf Arabic Pidgin; and second, to suggest that these grammatical innovations might be the results of an ongoing grammaticalization process of LOCATIVE>TMA/PROGRESSIVE. Earlier studies conducted on this pidgin serve as data sources for this project.

Grammatical Innovation and Linguistic Register: Historical Writing from Late Archaic to Early Medieval Chinese

Grammatical Innovation and Linguistic Register: Historical Writing from Late Archaic to Early Medieval Chinese

НОВЫЙ ЗАВЕТ МАРТИНА ЛУПАЧА КАК ИСТОЧНИК ЧЕТВЕРТОЙ РЕДАКЦИИ ДРЕВНЕЧЕШСКОГО ПЕРЕВОДА БИБЛИИ

The article aims to prove that it was Martin Lupáč’s New Testament translation that served as a model for the Prague Bible and, consequently, it can be considered an early version of the fourth Old Czech Bible translation. All the versions of this Bible translation are compared. It comes out that Lupáč’s translation contains lexical and grammatical innovations. Relevance of the study lies in the following: if Martin Lupáč’s New Testament is considered as a model for the Prague Bible, it makes us reconsider our views on the nature of the fourth Old Czech Bible translation and helps to identify the translation model used in the New and Old Testament of the Prague Bible.

Grammaticalization and the linguistic individual: new avenues in lifespan research

AbstractThis paper reviews theoretical and methodological advances and issues in lifespan research and discusses how the issues at stake are addressed in an ongoing research project. Summarizing the state of the art, we conclude that next to nothing is known about lifespan changes affecting syntactic or grammaticalizing constructions that goes beyond exploratory or anecdotal evidence. TheMind-Bending Grammarsproject, which examines the adaptive powers of adult cognition and constraints on these powers, aspires to make headway in this area. In this paper, we introduce some of the major goals of the project and present a new large-scale longitudinal corpus of 50 adults that was established to study grammatical change across the lifespan. Particular attention is paid to the constraints on the adoption of novel grammatical patterns in the aging mind. Takingbe going toas a case study, we present evidence that (highly educated) healthy monolingual speakers continue to participate in grammatical innovations across the lifespan.

Metaphoric Noun Variants and Modification Types in Undergraduate ESL Students’ Academic Writing Texts

Significant grammatical innovations over the years have been a reaction to changes in purposes of communication due to demands from the reading public. It is assumed such changes are embraced in English used by undergraduate students in readings they are exposed to, and texts produced during their studies. In analyzing data, comprising ESL undergraduate students’ writing scripts, the study seeks to find how such grammatical innovations are manifested in selection of nouns and modification types. A noun is a compulsory element, contributing meaning to text and over the years, constituents comprising nominal groups have evolved from prototype noun to the compressed metaphoric variant. Data is analyzed, against the backdrop of Halliday and Matthiessen’s metaphor taxonomy. Results indicate, majority of students have yet to move from overuse of prototype to more metaphoric noun variants. Noun modification choices are restricted and this is a language gap that needs addressing. Awareness of contemporary grammatical innovations pertaining to nouns and modification strategies are imperative in order to improve ESL students’ text quality and effectiveness.