22.3589, Review: Historical Linguistics: Lenker, Huber, and Mailhammer (2010)

[linguist at LINGUISTLIST.ORG]

LINGUIST List: Vol-22-3589. Thu Sep 15 2011. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 22.3589, Review: Historical Linguistics: Lenker, Huber, and Mailhammer (2010)

Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry at linguistlist.org>
 
Reviews: Veronika Drake, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
Monica Macaulay, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
Rajiv Rao, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
Joseph Salmons, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
Anja Wanner, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
       <reviews at linguistlist.org> 

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/

The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, 
and donations from subscribers and publishers.

Editor for this issue: Anja Wanner <anja at linguistlist.org>
================================================================  
Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated
from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships:
          http://multitree.linguistlist.org/
					
					
This LINGUIST List issue is a review of a book published by one of our
supporting publishers, commissioned by our book review editorial staff. We
welcome discussion of this book review on the list, and particularly invite
the author(s) or editor(s) of this book to join in. If you are interested in 
reviewing a book for LINGUIST, look for the most recent posting with the subject 
"Reviews: AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW", and follow the instructions at the top of the 
message. You can also contact the book review staff directly.

===========================Directory==============================  

1)
Date: 14-Sep-2011
From: Penny Thompson [s0783066 at sms.ed.ac.uk]
Subject: English Historical Linguistics 2008
 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2011 01:47:37
From: Penny Thompson [s0783066 at sms.ed.ac.uk]
Subject: English Historical Linguistics 2008

E-mail this message to a friend:
http://linguistlist.org/issues/emailmessage/verification.cfm?iss=22-3589.html&submissionid=4532041&topicid=9&msgnumber=1
 
Discuss this message: 
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=4532041

 


Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/21/21-4824.html 

EDITORS: Lenker, Ursula, Judith Huber,  and Robert Mailhammer 
TITLE: English Historical Linguistics 2008
SUBTITLE: Selected papers from the fifteenth International Conference on English 
Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 15), Munich, 24-30 August 2008. Volume I: The 
history of English verbal and nominal constructions
SERIES TITLE: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 314 
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins 
YEAR: 2010

Penelope J. Thompson, Linguistics and English Language, University of Edinburgh

SUMMARY

This book presents a collection of fourteen selected papers from the ICEHL 
conference of 2008, Munich. This volume is dedicated to morphosyntactic 
phenomena in the history of English, ranging from changes in OE (e.g. 
Johannesson, Wischer etc.) to changes currently in progress (e.g. Close and 
Aarts, Sellgren etc.). The intended audience ranges from those interested in 
modeling syntactic change to scholars interested in the issues involved when 
analyzing historical data sets. Additionally the volume would of course be of 
interest to anyone interested in the history of the English Language. 

The volume is divided into four parts. The first and largest part contains papers 
dealing with verbal constructions, second with modality, the third with the noun 
phrase and the final past with syntactic variation and change through language 
contact. The volume begins with an introductory chapter by the editors, which 
draws attention to the recent trend in historical syntax for more functional 
approaches and heavily data-focussed studies. They observe the similarities 
between fine-grained studies and traditional philology, concluding that detailed 
corpus studies further the aims of traditional philology (p. 2). The value of these 
detailed data orientated studies as documentary exercises in their own right is 
noted, but also that, as in the case of this volume, many such studies may serve 
as the foundation for theoretical inferences. 

A chapter by chapter summary will now be provided:

''Þonne hate we hine morgensteorra'': On verb complementation in Old English 
(Nils-Lennart Johannesson): The volume begins with a part on verbal 
constructions, the first chapter of which discusses how to account for verbal 
constructions which allow for combinations of nominative and accusative 
complements in Old English. Naming verbs also allow for combined 
nominative/dative complements; a fact that Johannesson observes has been 
noted in the literature (Mitchell 1985: 636, Visser 1963: 212), but not particularly 
elaborated on. The nominative + accusative combination exemplified in the 
chapter title has been termed ''remarkable'' by Visser (1963: 553), though this has 
also had little in the way of explanation. Within the framework of Government and 
Binding Theory (Haegeman 1994), Johannesson provides an account that is based 
on three dimensions of verb categorization: 'copularity' (whether or not a verb has a 
complement marked for nominative case), 'transitivity' (the presence or absence of 
a complement marked for the oblique case) and 'status' (the type of subject the 
verb takes). 

Tracking and explaining variation and change in the grammar of American English 
(Juhani Rudanko): This paper investigates the adjective 'accustomed' with respect 
to the predicate it selects, which shows variation between a 'to' infinitive and a 'to -
ing' complement in American English. Through close examination of the relevant 
forms in the TIME corpus, Rudanko observes firstly that there is evidence to 
suggest that Vosberg's (2003: 308) 'Extraction Principle' may be applied to 
adjuncts, meaning that the infinitive will tend to be favoured. Secondly, it is 
observed that there is a semantic distinction influencing the distribution. The 'to' 
infinitive appears to be selected when there is an element of choice, whereas the 
'to -ing' complement is associated with a lack of choice.

'Prevent' and the battle of the -ing clauses: Semantic divergence? (Elina Sellgren): 
Sellgren investigates the competition in British English between similar 
complements following 'prevent', in particular those including from + -ing ('prevent 
him from robbing the bank'), those with 0 + -ing ('prevent him robbing the bank'), 
and also with reference to the older, rarer genitive variant ('prevent his robbing the 
bank') (examples from Mair 2002). This is a corpus-based, data-orientated study 
presenting a semantic distinction as a factor in determining the choice of the two 
variants in British English.  Sellgren refers to corpus studies (Mair 2002) that 
demonstrate that in British English there is an approximately equal distribution of '0 
-ing' and 'from -ing' variants, and notes that this is the result of a recent change. 
However, the author's data (Sellgren 2010: 3) show that although the overall 
distribution is close to equal, certain texts demonstrate a heavy preference for one 
variant or the other. She goes on to question why such a swift change has taken 
place, and what factors might influence the choice of sentential complements. 
Sellgren ultimately links the 'from -ing' variant to the idea of hypotheticality, while 
linking the '0 -ing' variant to the idea of a realized event, or permanence. 

Prescription or practice? 'Be/have' variation with past participles of mutative 
intransitive verbs in the letters of Joseph Priestley (Robert Straaijer): Straaijer's 
contribution focusses on the use of auxiliaries 'be' and 'have' when used with the 
participles of mutative intransitive verbs such as 'go' or 'become.' In Old English 
'have' is used only with transitive verbs, although a change through Middle English 
to Late Modern English causes it also to be used for mutative and intransitive 
verbs. This study focuses on the language of the grammarian Joseph Priestly 
(1733-1804) and aims to assess whether his idiolect is conservative or innovative, 
and whether it is in line with his descriptions as a grammarian. Straaijer creates a 
corpus (Joseph Priestly Letter Corpus, or JPLC) of Priestly's unedited language, 
and examines the data from letters, both formal and informal in order to ascertain 
whether the register affects the distribution of 'be' and 'have.' This is compared to 
data from Rydén & Brorström (1987). In Priestly's language, time and register are 
not shown to be significant variables, and on a closer examination of each of the 
relevant verbs in turn, it is revealed that certain verbs favour one variant, for 
example, in the case of 'miscarry,' Priestly favours 'have,' while favouring neither 
variant in particular in the case of 'go.' This part of the analysis provides detailed 
information about the behavior of Rydén & Brorström (1987) and JPLC with respect 
to 'return,' 'miscarry,' 'become,' 'recover,' 'go,' 'arrive,' and 'come.' Straaijer 
concludes that Priestly's language is representative of a middle class literate 
person of his time, and that it does indeed reflect his grammatical descriptions, 
appearing not to prescribe one variant over the other, but believing that the choice 
depends on context. 

On the idiomization of 'give + O + to' constructions (Minoji Akimoto): Akimoto's 
chapter is a detailed diachronic study into the idiomization process of the 'give + O 
+ to' construction from Middle English to Present Day English, which examines the 
OED CD-ROM, the Helsinki Corpus, the ARCHER Corpus and the FLOB Corpus. 
Historically, 'give + indirect object + to' constructions were more common than 
those with a direct object, such as 'give birth to.' However, Akimoto notes that in 
Middle English the 'give + O + to' constructions became frequent and productive. 
Akimoto (2010: 85) makes a distinction between eventive nouns as the O element, 
which are semantically an extension of a verb, and non-eventive nouns, observing 
that the 'give + O + to' constructions where 'O' is an eventive noun are more likely 
to be idiomatized than those with non-eventive nouns. Akimoto concludes that 
short eventive nouns without suffixes are susceptible to idiomization, and presents 
evidence of semantic bleaching, weakening of 'nouniness' (Ross 1973: 141) and 
the loss of syntactic freedom. 

The clausal complementation of GOOD in extraposition constructions: The 
emergence of partially filled constructions (An Van linden): Van linden's 
contribution focuses on the clausal complement patterns associated with 'good' in 
extraposition constructions. Van linden compares the patterns with GOOD to those 
found with other deontic-evaluative adjectives, such as 'appropriate' and 
'important.' This is a corpus study, examining data from Old English to Present 
Day English found in five large corpora, with the use of a multiple distinctive 
collexeme analysis (Gries & Stefanowitsch 2004). Van linden shows that in 
Present Day English, 'good' favours propositional 'to-' clauses, in particular locative 
and knowledge/acquisition of knowledge patterns, whereas other deontic-
evaluative adjectives prefer mandative 'to-'clauses. 

The 'fail to' construction in Late Modern and Present-Day English (Thomas Egan): 
Egan's paper investigates the change in the 'fail to' construction over the last three 
hundred years, which was almost always negated in the earlier period under 
observation, but now surfaces without negation in the majority of instances. In 
addition to the negation, Egan also notes that there used to be an assumption that 
the subject of the 'fail to' construction was 'trying' to perform the action. This is 
also a corpus study, examining data from the Corpus of Late Modern English 
Texts (CLMET), and also a selection of Present Day English corpora (Egan 2010: 
127). Egan also notes a semantic change, in which there is an increase in 'fail to' 
used in conjunction with ideas of perception and understanding, and also a rise in 
the use of 'fail to' used in a global sense, i.e. where the subject does not 'fail to x' 
on a single occasion. Egan goes on to argue that this lack of negation of 'fail to' 
shows evidence of grammaticalization as a new form of negation. Egan notes that 
there is no current need for a new marker of negation, but that 'fail to' could fulfil 
the role should there be one.

The interplay of modal verbs and adverbs: A history of MÆG EAÞE (Jerzy 
Nykiel): Nykiel investigates the status of MÆG EAÞE 'may easily' throughout Old 
and Middle English. This is a harmonic combination of modal verb + modal adverb, 
in which the adverb reinforces the possibility- based meaning of the verb 'may.' 
The demise of this construction is shown to be due to the replacement of EAÞE 
with the French loan 'esili' (1300) (Nykiel 2010: 146). Nykiel considers the 
possibility that the construction may be lexicalized already in Old English, based 
on typologies of idiomization (Himmelmann 2004: 27, Brinton & Traugott 2005: 55) 
and concludes that the behaviour of MÆG EAÞE does not fulfil the conditions of 
idiomization in some of the examples cited from West Saxon, as there is no 
decrease in productivity or substitutability. However, though not the focus of this 
chapter, Nykiel notes that there is evidence for such indications of idiomization in 
some of the Anglian texts (Nykiel 2010: 160).

Current change in the modal system of English: A case study of 'must,' 'have to' 
and 'have got to' (Joanne Close and Bas Aarts): This paper investigates the 
decline of the modal 'must,' and the rise of semi-modals 'have to' and 'have got to' 
in Present-Day British English. The data come from the Diachronic Corpus of 
Present-Day Spoken English. The distribution of the above (semi-)modals is 
examined, and broken down into the following semantic types: Epistemic modality, 
Ambiguity, Root modality and Performative modality. Full data counts are 
provided. Although 'must' is on the decline, it remains the favoured modal for 
epistemic use, and epistemic 'have to' has not increased (Close & Aarts 2010: 
176). The authors, in contrast to Krug (2000) and Leech (2003) suggest that the 
data may indicate that there is a connection between the decline of 'must' and the 
rise of 'have to.' The authors suggest that ''strength of commitment'' (Huddleston & 
Pullum 2002: 175) can provide an explanation for the decline of 'must,' and that a 
decline in forms expressing strong commitment is in evidence. 

Discontinuous quantificational structures in Old English (Artur Bartnik): Bartnik's 
paper focuses on discontinuous quantificational structures in Old English. An 
example of such a structure is Quantifier Floating, in which the noun which is 
qualified by the quantifier is not adjacent to it, although both elements syntactically 
form a constituent at some level. Bartnik discusses such constructions in relation 
to examples from Old English, in which quantifier floating appears to be evidenced. 
Bartnik notes that in the literature there have been accounts in which this 
constitutes movement, and others in which the elements are base generated in 
their surface positions. Bartnik goes on to argue that such structures cannot all be 
treated in the same way, and that some structures arise from movement, and that 
others cannot be due to movement, but must be base generated. Two types of 
movement are identified: topicalization, in which the structure appears above the 
personal pronoun, and scrambling, in which the quantifier appears below the 
personal pronoun. Examples in which movement cannot occur are evidenced by 
the lack of agreement between the two elements. 

Genitive variation in letters, history writing and sermons in Late Middle and Early 
Modern English (Teo Juvonen): Juvonen's contribution presents an analysis of 
genitive variation between the 'of-' genitive and the 's--' genitive within Late Middle 
English and Early Modern English which is based on data from three corpora. The 
study seeks to isolate any behaviour that is influenced by register, and thus 
separates the data into letters, history writing and sermons. Juvonen begins by 
discussing the factory that influence genitive variation in Present-Day English, 
such as animacy, and also topicalization, in which the 's'-genitive allows the 
possessor to become known to the listener first. The results show that genre is 
more important than period in relation to the selection of genitives. There was not a 
statistically significant rise or fall in the ration of 's'-genitives to 'of' genitives 
throughout the three periods. However, there was a highly statistically significant 
correlation between genre and percentage of 's'-genitives, with sermons having the 
fewest, and the more informal letters having the most. Juvonen also notes the 
importance of other factors; for example, all genres favour the 's'-genitive with 
short, given possessors in prototypical genitives.

On the use of 'beon' and 'wesan' in Old English (Ilse Wischer): Wischer focuses on 
the choice in Old English between 'beon' and 'wesan.' Standard handbooks assume 
that 'beon' is for future events and statements of general truth, while 'wesan' is 
used for immediate present relevance. A data analysis of the Old English part of 
the Helsinki Corpus is presented. Within the indicative, the data indicate that the 
1st and 2nd sg. favour the 's'-form, and that although the 3rd and plural also favour 
the 's'-form, it is to a lesser extent. Wischer notes that the b-form found in the 3rd 
person sg. is a innovation within Old English, with no parallel in other West and 
North Germanic Languages. The plural had a higher percentage of 'b'-forms than 
was found in any other case. In the subjunctive, Wischer finds evidence to 
contradict Brunner's (1951: 259) assumption that SIE does not appear in Mercian. 
Wischer concludes that the 'b'-forms found in the 1st and 2nd sg. are inherited 
from proto Germanic, but that the 'b'-forms in the 3rd sg. and the plural, bið and 
beoð are innovations. The difference between 'beon' and 'wesan,' she notes, is that 
of future and present, and also one of 'habitual present' and 'current present.' 

The reflexes of OE 'beon' as a marker of futurity in early Middle English (Margaret 
Laing): Laing's paper is the second contribution in part four on syntactic variation 
and change through contact, and continues the theme of the choice of 'beon' as a 
marker of futurity. As described in the last chapter, Old English is more likely to 
select b-forms for the future. In Laing's chapter, the continuing behaviour of 'beon' 
in Middle English is investigated.  The data for this chapter have arisen from the 
work on early Middle English manuscripts as part of the compiling of the Linguistic 
Atlas of Early Middle English (LAEME, Laing & Lass 2008). Before the data 
analysis, Laing considers descriptions fund within Ælfric's grammar of Late West 
Saxon, and also a later early Middle English copy. Laing Explains that in this 
Latin-Old English Grammar, Ælfric clearly uses 'b'-forms bið/beoð when talking 
about future, and 's'-forms ys/synd/synt when referring to the present. Laing 
provides details of the corpus analysis and tagging procedure. The evidence from 
the LAEME corpus indicates that in some dialects this distinction of futurity 
continues into Middle English. Laing also notes the rise of 'shall' as a marker for 
futurity, though she notes the importance of distinguishing between purely future 
occurrences, and those with (some) deontic sense. Examination of the data 
reveals four distinct systems involving the present sg. indicative, the present 
plural indicative, the subjunctive and the future: Type 1: Southerly Mixed, Type 2: 
Southerly discrete, Type 3: Midland system and Type 4: Northern System. All of 
these systems favour the s-type in the present indicative singular, but variation 
across the other categories is in evidence. 

Stylistic fronting in the history of English (Masayuki Ohkado): Ohkado's chapter 
addresses the question of whether there is evidence that stylistic fronting in Old 
and Middle English is due to Scandinavian influence (as argued by Trips 2002), or 
whether it is truly a process in the history of English. This chapter gives almost 
equal weight to data and theoretical analysis, and will therefore be of interest to 
linguistics with interests in syntactic theory as well as historical linguists. Stylistic 
fronting occurs in Icelandic, and Ohkado begins by describing the properties of the 
process, noting that it is constrained by two conditions: 1. The Subject Gap 
Condition (SGC), which states that stylistic fronting only occurs in clauses with a 
subject gap, and the Accessibility Hierarchy (AH), which determines which 
potential candidate for fronting will be selected if more than one option exists 
(2010: 258). Ohkado's data reveal that the stylistic fronting pattern surfaces in Old 
and Middle English, and he argues that this is unlikely to be the result of language 
contact, as the pattern occurs in dialects from areas such as the South, Kent and 
the West Midlands, which would be unlikely to have had significant contact with 
Scandinavian influences.

EVALUATION

It is unfortunately not possible to provide a detailed evaluation of each analysis 
within the volume. This selection of papers provides a coherent read, and offers a 
wide range of phenomena and treatments. This is partly due to the excellent 
organization of the contents into subject-based parts. The first part, which focuses 
on verbal constructions begins with a highly theory-based chapter by 
Johannesson, which provides a syntactic account of a hitherto unaccounted for 
phenomenon. As one reads on throughout the volume, it becomes clear that this 
collection also provides data-focused work that would be relevant to those who are 
most interested in diachronic and synchronic data analysis. The corpus work 
evident throughout the volume provides valuable insights into the grammars under 
investigation, and ranges from focused examination of specific examples (e.g. 
Nykiel) to full data counts and/or statistical analysis (e.g. Van linden, Wischer and 
many more). A chapter displaying an interesting use of both is Sellgren's, which 
involves corpus data counts to ascertain the distribution of the relevant 
phenomenon, and also, in discussing the possible reasons for the choice of one 
variant over another, scrutiny of specific examples. Her analysis in involves the 
claim that the level of hypotheticality correlates with the choice of one variant over 
the other. Her assessments of hypotheticality in the examples are plausible, and it 
would be interesting to see whether these correlations are confirmed once all 
examples are classified according to hypotheticality criteria. Sellgren notes (2010: 
53) that the authors of certain texts display a higher preference for one variant over 
another, which leads the reader to wonder whether other factors, such as 
sociolinguistic factors or register, play a role at all. 

The scope of this volume in terms of the history of English is comprehensive, with 
Old, Middle, Early Modern and Present Day English all being well represented. The 
chapter by Joanne Close and Bas Aarts provides a fascinating data-focused 
insight into an ongoing change in British English. Laing and Wischer's chapters 
work particularly well together, providing valuable data and insights into the use of 
'beon' ('to be'), with Wisher investigating whether the use of Old English 'beon' to 
express futurity is is borne out in the data, and Laing examining whether this 
usage survives into Middle English.

In addition to a discussion of the debate surrounding processes of syntactic 
change, including grammaticalization and idiomization, considerations of the 
effects of register (Juvonen), social factors (Straaijer), dialectal differences (Laing), 
and language contact (Ohkado) are well represented. English Historical Linguistics 
2008 will clearly be of interest to a wide readership.

REFERENCES

Brinton, Laurel J. & Elizabeth C. Traugott. 2005. Lexicalization and Language 
Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brunner, Karl. 1951. Die englische Sprache: ihre geschichtliche Entwicklung, 
Vol.2. Halle: Niemeyer. 

Gries, Stefan Th. & Anatol Stefanowitsch. 2004. ''Extending Collostructional 
Analysis: A Corpus-based Perspective on 'Alternations'.'' International Journal of 
Corpus Linguistics 9: 1.97--129.

Haegeman, Liliane. 1994. Introduction to Government & Binding Theory. 2nd Ed. 
Oxford: Blackwell.

Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 2004. ''Lexicalization and Grammaticalization: Opposite 
or Ornthogonal?'' What Makes Grammaticalization? ed. by Walter Bisang, Nikolaus 
P. Himmelmann & Björn Wiemer, 21-42. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Huddleston, Rodney & Geoffrey K. Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the 
English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Krug, Manfred G. 2000. Emerging English Modals: A Corpus-based Study of 
Grammaticalization. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Laing, Margaret & Roger Lass. 2008. A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English 
1150-1325 [http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laemel/laemel.html] Edinburgh: The 
University of Edinburgh.

Leech, Geoffrey. 2003. ''Modality on the Move: The English Modal Auxiliaries 
1961-1992.'' Modality in Contemporary English, ed. by Roberta Facchinetti, 
Manfred Krug & Frank Palmer, 223-240. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Mair, Christian. 2002. ''Three Changing Patterns of Verb Complementation in Late 
Modern English: A Real-Time Study Based on Matching Text Corpora.'' English 
Language and Linguistics 6, 105-131.

Mitchell, Bruce. 1985. Old English Syntax. Volume 1: Concord, the Parts of 
Speech, and the Sentence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Ross, John R. 1973. ''Nouniness''. Three Dimensions of Linguistic Theory, ed. by 
Osamu Fujimura, 137-258. Tokyo: TEC. 

Rydén, Mats & Sverker Brorström. 1987. The BE/HAVE Variation with 
Intransitives  in English: with Special Reference to the Late Modern Period. 
Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.

Trips, Carola. 2002. From OV to VO in Early Middle English. Amsterdam & 
Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 

Visser, Fredericus Theodorus. 1963. An Historical Syntax of the English 
Language. 1, Syntactical Units with One Verb. Leiden: Brill.  

Vosberg, Uwe. 2003. ''The Role of Extractions and Horror Aequi in the Evolution of 
-ing Complements in Modern English.'' Determinants of Grammatical Variation in 
English, ed. by Günter Rohdenburg & Britta Mondorf, 305-327. Berlin & New York: 
Mouton de Gruyter. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Penelope J. Thompson is a PhD Student (English Language) at the 
University of Edinburgh. Her doctoral research (sponsored by the Arts 
and Humanities Research Council) focuses on the morphophonology 
of Old English, in particular in West Saxon and in the Lindisfarne 
Gospels.  Her research interests include Old English 
morphophonology, Old English dialectology, the interaction between 
phonology and morphology, and phonological theory, in particular 
Stratal Optimality Theory. She also currently serves on the executive 
committee of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain. 







-----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-22-3589	
----------------------------------------------------------
Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated
from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships:
          http://multitree.linguistlist.org/