Fwd: Borrowed word order in phrases

Wed Dec 18 16:23:45 UTC 2013

Eh, how can change in frequency (note the word "change" in the NP "change
in frequency"!) *ever* not be change?!

I have no opinion on the specific issue of stranded prepositions in French
-- I'm not qualified to judge -- but two additional points that are not
taken into account in Shana's (and co-authors') work are important for the
general question: (1) contact-induced changes very often produce results
that are not identical to the relevant source-language features, a
well-established fact that removes the non-identity of stranded-preposition
rules in English & Quebec French as a cogent argument against a hypothesis
that English influence was involved in the (purported) expansion of
stranded prepositions in Quebec French.  And (2) multiple causation in both
internally-motivated and contact-induced language change is so common that
the existence of a plausible internal analogic source for a given change
also isn't evidence against the influence of language contact in triggering
and/or spreading the same change.   To avoid further misunderstanding, this
of course does not mean that English influenced any spread of this feature
in Quebec French or elsewhere.  It does mean that the other arguments
against the hypothesis are the only ones that carry weight.

I'm pretty careful to follow my criteria for establishing contact-induced
change; when I can't satisfy one of the requisites for a given example, I
say so.  Shana may be misled into thinking I'm careless about this because
of the inaccurate "paraphrase" of one or two of my criteria in Poplack &
Levey.  I've probably stumbled now and then, of course.

  -- Sally Thomason

On Wed, Dec 18, 2013 at 8:01 AM, Lauren Zentz <laurenzentz at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
>   I am posting this on behalf of Shana Poplack, who is not on this
> listserv.
>   Apologies for cross-postings.
>   Lauren Zentz
>
>
>
> Just to set the record straight, it’s not true that the people who wrote
> that article in *Bilingualism: language and cognition, *of which I am
> one, “don’t believe that change in frequency is change”. Of course it can
> be! (See Poplack & Malvar 2008 for a particularly striking example) But
> sometimes it’s not. The point of the BLC paper was to lay out – and
> implement! – a number of criteria, consisting mainly of comparisons with
> relevant diachronic and synchronic benchmarks, for the establishment of
> contact-induced change. Oddly enough, many of them were also enunciated,
> though not always implemented, by Sally herself. Applying such criteria
> systematically to a great deal of Quebec French data, we showed that the
> phrase-final prepositions in question do not display the syntactic
> properties of English stranded prepositions, do not represent a change
> vis-à-vis an earlier stage (at least over the century-and-a-half time span
> under study), and are not contact-induced, but rather the result of an
> analogical extension to the relative clause context of the native French
> “orphan” (e.g. Zribi-Herz) prepositions. That the latter are characteristic
> of non-contact French was also pointed out by Paul in his citation of
> Bauche 1928. Parenthetically, the *“J’y suis pour”* example heard by
> Geoff Nathan in the center of France was one of these orphan prepositions.
>
> -- Shana Poplack
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 9:59 AM, Daniel Ezra Johnson <
> danielezrajohnson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Poplack and Dion don't believe that change in frequency is change? J'ai
>> pas connu ça.
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 3:49 PM, George Walkden <
>> george.walkden at manchester.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>>>  Dear all,
>>>
>>>  For the benefit of those of you who aren't also on the Histling list,
>>> where this was originally posted, here's some of the (fascinating)
>>> discussion that's been going on there. Both Ruth's and Lauren's work has
>>> already been mentioned there (by me, ahem).
>>>
>>>  Best,
>>>
>>>   - George
>>>
>>> :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
>>> George Walkden
>>> Lecturer in English Linguistics
>>> University of Manchester
>>> george.walkden at manchester.ac.uk
>>> http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/george.walkden/
>>> Office: N1.2 Samuel Alexander Building
>>> Tel.: +44 (0)161 275 8905
>>> :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
>>>
>>> Begin forwarded message:
>>>
>>>  *From: *Sarah Thomason <thomason at umich.edu>
>>>  *Subject: **Re: [Histling-l] Borrowed word order in phrases*
>>>  *Date: *15 December 2013 17:18:21 GMT
>>>  *To: *George Walkden <george.walkden at gmail.com>
>>>  *Cc: *"Geoffrey S. Nathan" <geoffnathan at wayne.edu>,
>>> histling-l at mailman.rice.edu
>>>
>>> But that paper in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition is written by
>>> people who don't believe that change in frequency is change.  It's a very
>>> odd belief, and it would rule out any change from a more restricted set of
>>> environments to a "default" status -- for those authors such a change
>>> wouldn't count as any kind of change, no matter how contact-induced it was.
>>>
>>>    -- Sally Thomason
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 9:08 AM, George Walkden <
>>> george.walkden at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear all,
>>>>
>>>>  In googling around on this interesting topic, I've come across a
>>>> paper arguing that the prevalence of stranding in Canadian French is not
>>>> due to contact - with several responses.
>>>>
>>>>  <
>>>> https://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayIssue?jid=BIL&volumeId=15&seriesId=0&issueId=02
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>>  Since it's in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, which is perhaps
>>>> not normally read by everyone on this list, I thought I'd bring it up. The
>>>> issue covers many of the same questions that have been discussed here.
>>>>
>>>>   - George
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  On 15 Dec 2013, at 16:17, Geoffrey Steven Nathan wrote:
>>>>
>>>>   As the person reporting the stranded preposition to this list
>>>> several years ago, let me clarify.
>>>>
>>>> We were having dinner in a medium-sized provincial town in central
>>>> France about fifteen or so years ago when Margaret (Winters--some of you
>>>> know her..) asked the waiter:
>>>>
>>>> Si je peux vous poser une question?
>>>>
>>>> The waiter replied:
>>>>
>>>> Je suis là pour.
>>>>
>>>> I would judge it very unlikely that the waiter was fluent in English,
>>>> and Margaret's French doesn't sound non-native (just vaguely 'not from
>>>> around here...'). I suspect there are lots of these in colloquial
>>>> contemporary French (français avancé as they like to say...)
>>>>
>>>> Geoff
>>>>
>>>> Geoffrey S. Nathan
>>>> Faculty Liaison, C&IT
>>>> and Professor, Linguistics Program
>>>> http://blogs.wayne.edu/proftech/
>>>> +1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)
>>>>
>>>> Nobody at Wayne State will EVER ask you for your password. Never send
>>>> it to anyone in an email, no matter how authentic the email looks.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> *From: *"Marie-Lucie Tarpent" <mltarpent at hotmail.com>
>>>> *To: *hopper at cmu.edu, etnolinguistica at yahoogrupos.com.br,
>>>> histling-l at mailman.rice.edu
>>>> *Sent: *Sunday, December 15, 2013 10:59:37 AM
>>>>
>>>> *Subject: *Re: [Histling-l] Borrowed word order in phrases
>>>>
>>>> Paul Hopper:
>>>>
>>>> About Bauche's examples:
>>>>
>>>> (1) les femmes qu'il a couché avec 'the women he slept with' (= ...
>>>> that he slept with)
>>>>
>>>> This is a very common structure in uneducated speech, with "que" used
>>>> as a single, ubiquitous relative pronoun for functions other than
>>>> Subject.  The formal equivalent "les femmes avec lesquelles il a couché" is
>>>> not only much more difficult to use (because of the gender/number
>>>> agreement) but similar in tone and register to English "the women with whom
>>>> he slept" (itself a calque of French).  An intermediate form would be "les
>>>> femmes avec qui il a couché", common in casual educated speech but frowned
>>>> upon by purists, especially in writing.
>>>>
>>>> (2) je lui ai couru après 'I ran after him'
>>>>
>>>> Although (1) here was not intended as a context for (2), the French
>>>> sentence immediately called to my mind 'I (a man) chased after her' or 'I
>>>> (a woman) chased after him' (= trying to start a relationship)("lui" as an
>>>> oblique pronoun preceding the verb is the same for both genders).  For 'I
>>>> ran after him/her',  "j'ai couru après lui/elle" would be less likely to be
>>>> interpreted as above, although possibly so depending on the context.
>>>>
>>>> (3) tu n'as pas travaillé pour 'you didn't work for it'
>>>>
>>>> A person using the preposition-last structure would be unlikely to use
>>>> "ne ... pas" (and this was certainly true in 1928 and much earlier).  "T'as
>>>> pas travaillé pour" is more likely, although I am not familiar with this
>>>> usage of "pour".  Possibly, it arises from the usage with relative clauses
>>>> (as in (1)):  so perhaps
>>>> a) T'as pas travaillé pour ÇA.  ("ça" here is the topie). 'You didn't
>>>> work for THAT'
>>>> b) C'est pas ça que t'as travaillé pour.  'THAT is not what you worked
>>>> for.'
>>>> c) - ... ÇA...  - T'as pas travaillé pour.  (omitting the topic, which
>>>> was mentioned in a previous sentence) 'You didn't work for IT'
>>>>
>>>> The origin of the preposition-last construction in "popular" (=
>>>> uneducated) speech rules out recent calques from English, and is more
>>>> likely to be found in extensions of popular syntax.
>>>>
>>>> As for the next and most recent example:
>>>>
>>>> (4) j'y suis pour
>>>>
>>>> it sounds very strange to me,  Unlike the other examples, it is most
>>>> likely to be a literal translation from English '(That's what) I am here
>>>> for', but cross-influenced by the already existing popular structure.  (Or
>>>> the opposite could be true).
>>>>
>>>> marie-lucie
>>>>
>>>> > Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2013 07:46:42 -0500
>>>> > From: hopper at cmu.edu
>>>> > To: peter.e.hook at gmail.com
>>>> > CC: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu; etnolinguistica at yahoogrupos.com.br
>>>>
>>>> > Subject: Re: [Histling-l] Borrowed word order in phrases
>>>> >
>>>> > The following examples are from Henri Bauche's book Le langage
>>>> populaire.
>>>> > Grammaire, syntaxe et dictionnaire du français tel qu’on le
>>>> parle
>>>> > dans le peuple de Paris, avec tous les termes d’argot usuel. Paris:
>>>> Payot,
>>>> > 1928.
>>>> >
>>>> > les femmes qu’il a couché avec “the women he’s slept with”
>>>> > je lui ai couru après “I ran after him”
>>>> > tu n’as pas travaillé pour "You didn't work for it"
>>>> >
>>>> > A few years ago Geoff Nathan (perhaps on HistLing) reported a waiter
>>>> as
>>>> > saying "J'y suis pour", presumably "that's what I'm here for".
>>>> >
>>>> > Bauche comments that these forms are often attributed to a Germanic
>>>> > substratum, but says they are also found in Italian. True?
>>>> >
>>>> > Paul
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > > Hi Eduardo,
>>>> > >
>>>> > > An example of a stranded preposition in French [but no idea of
>>>> where the
>>>> > > writer is from]:
>>>> > >
>>>> > > www.leforum.bistrophilo.fr/.../viewtopic.php?f...t...
>>>> > > Mar 3, 2009 - 10 posts - 6 authors
>>>> > > Mmmm c'est délicieux ; on la mettait de côté et à la fin de la
>>>> semaine il
>>>> > > y
>>>> > > en avait assez *pour faire une tarte avec* !
>>>> > >
>>>> > > Cheers,
>>>> > >
>>>> > > Peter Hook
>>>> > >
>>>> > >
>>>> > >
>>>> > > On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 5:59 AM, Koka <lachicadelgorro at hotmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> > >
>>>> > >> Dear Eduardo,
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >> A recent account of the word order "Nada sé" (as opposed to "No sé
>>>> > >> nada")
>>>> > >> in Spanish by Octavio de Toledo attributes this word order to Latin
>>>> > >> influence. You can check the paper (in Spanish) out here (
>>>> > >>
>>>> https://www.academia.edu/2552836/Entre_gramaticalizacion_estructura_informativa_y_tradiciones_discursivas_algo_mas_sobre_nada_
>>>> ).
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >> Hope it helps!
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >> Carlota
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >> > Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2013 01:09:15 -0500
>>>> > >> > From: kariri at gmail.com
>>>> > >> > To: etnolinguistica at yahoogrupos.com.br;
>>>> histling-l at mailman.rice.edu;
>>>> > >> LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>>> > >> > Subject: [Histling-l] Borrowed word order in phrases
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >> >
>>>> > >> > [apologies for cross-posting]
>>>> > >> >
>>>> > >> > Dear colleagues,
>>>> > >> >
>>>> > >> > I'm looking for examples of languages where certain (types of)
>>>> phrases
>>>> > >> > present a different, borrowed word order when compared to a more
>>>> > >> > common, inherited type. Well-known examples are, in English,
>>>> legal
>>>> > >> > terms in which the adjective follows the noun, preserving the
>>>> original
>>>> > >> > Norman French order: "attorney general", "court martial", etc.
>>>> > >> > (Jespersen 1912:87-88).
>>>> > >> >
>>>> > >> > Are you aware of similar examples from other languages? And of
>>>> cases
>>>> > >> > in which the borrowed order, originally limited to borrowed
>>>> lexemes,
>>>> > >> > ended up becoming the default usage?
>>>> > >> >
>>>> > >> > I would appreciate any insights and bibliographic references on
>>>> this
>>>> > >> topic.
>>>> > >> >
>>>> > >> > Obrigado,
>>>> > >> >
>>>> > >> > Eduardo
>>>> > >> >
>>>> > >> >
>>>> > >> > --
>>>> > >> > Eduardo Rivail Ribeiro, lingüista
>>>> > >> > http://etnolinguistica.org/perfil:9
>>>> > >> > _______________________________________________
>>>> > >> > Histling-l mailing list
>>>> > >> > Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu
>>>> > >> > https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >> _______________________________________________
>>>> > >> Histling-l mailing list
>>>> > >> Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu
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>>>> > >>
>>>> > >>
>>>> > > _______________________________________________
>>>> > > Histling-l mailing list
>>>> > > Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu
>>>> > > https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l
>>>> > >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > --
>>>> > Paul J. Hopper,
>>>> > Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of Humanities Emeritus,
>>>> > Department of English,
>>>> > Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences,
>>>> > Carnegie Mellon University,
>>>> > Pittsburgh, PA 15213,
>>>> >
>>>> > Adjunct Professor of Linguistics,
>>>> > University of Pittsburgh
>>>> >
>>>> > Senior External Fellow,
>>>> > School of Linguistics and Literature,
>>>> > Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS),
>>>> > Freiburg i.Br., Germany
>>>> >
>>>> > Publications: <http://carnegie-mellon.academia.edu/PaulHopper>
>>>> > <http://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=n2e7ANUAAAAJ
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > _______________________________________________
>>>> > Histling-l mailing list
>>>> > Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu
>>>> > https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
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