24.1460, Review: Historical Linguistics; Syntax: Meurman-Solin et al. (2012)

Sat Mar 30 17:54:41 UTC 2013

LINGUIST List: Vol-24-1460. Sat Mar 30 2013. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 24.1460, Review: Historical Linguistics; Syntax: Meurman-Solin et al. (2012)

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Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2013 13:53:38
From: Aroldo de Andrade [aroldo.andrade at gmail.com]
Subject: Information Structure and Syntactic Change in the History of English

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/23/23-3283.html

AUTHOR: Anneli  Meurman-Solin
AUTHOR: María José  López-Couso
AUTHOR: Bettelou  Los
TITLE: Information Structure and Syntactic Change in the History of English
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2012

REVIEWER: Aroldo Leal de Andrade, Universidade Estadual de Campinas

INTRODUCTION
This volume grew from papers presented at the Workshop on Information
Structure and Syntactic Change at the 15th International Conference on English
Historical Linguistics held in Munich, August 2008, supplemented by articles
from invited contributors.

SUMMARY
The book has thirteen chapters, grouped into four parts, plus an editors’
introduction. Part one focuses on the change from Verb-Second and Object-Verb
orders to Subject-Verb-Object (chapters 2-5). Part two gathers papers on the
development of a grammar of prose after 1500 (chapters 6-8). Part three
includes two chapters (9 and 10) on nonfinite clauses. Finally, part four
develops on the internal structure of the English noun phrase (chapters
11-13).

Chapter 1, ‘On the Interplay of Syntax and Information Structure: Synchronic
and Diachronic Considerations’ by Bettelou Los, María José López-Couso, and
Anneli Meurman-Solin, presents an introduction to information structure, the
way it relates to syntax, and an overview of the themes discussed in the book.
In addition to defining some crucial terms, they consider both syntax and
information structure to be constrained by language-particular templates
whereby some linguistic level can override a requirement set up by another
one. The type of historical linguistics involving these interactions is seen
as a kind of touchstone to linguistic theories, once the researcher has to
model the variation at hand, find plausible scenarios for the change of one
stage into the next and, if possible, propose an explanation for it. The
autonomy of syntax vis-à-vis information structure is clearly adopted, as a
consequence of modeling scenarios of linguistic change.

In chapter 2, ‘The Loss of Verb-Second and the Switch from Bounded to
Unbounded Systems’, Bettelou Los argues that the loss of Verb-Second (V2)
affected English syntax and information structure in a pervasive way, in the
sense that it affected the speakers' conceptualization of events. A V2 system
expresses a bounded language, in which the speaker follows the event from
within, and may locally anchor the event to a specific place and time
(following Carroll & Lambert 2003), thanks to a multifunctional first
position. With a typological switch to an unbounded system, syntactic
innovations emerge, such as prepositional passives of the type ‘The doctor was
sent for’, passive Exceptional Case-Marking constructions with to-infinitives
(e.g. ‘John was said to be lying’) and stressed-focus clefts such as ‘Only
after that did I realize that everyone was staring at me’). Evidence for this
is the loss of adverbials referring back to the immediately preceding
discourse and the tendency for the remaining first constituent topics to be
new, contrastive in flavor. Los then analyzes ellipted subjects and topic
shift strategies, claiming that Old English was a V2 system with local
anchoring, similar to German, not only because of constituent movement to
first position, but also due to an enriched system of pronominal adverbs and
gendered demonstratives, which later became impoverished.

Chapter 3, ‘The Effect of Information Structure on Object Position in Old
English: A Pilot Study’, by Ann Taylor and Susan Pintzuk, correlates the
information status of objects with their position in the sentence, i.e.
given/new and preverbal/postverbal. After observing that object weight
overwhelms the effect of information status, their quantitative research
focuses on light objects in subordinate clauses, where the object can be pre-
or postverbal. As for syntactic change, the authors assume that both IP and VP
may project head-initial or head-final in Old English, where information
status plays a role in object position due to rightward movement; fixed VO
order emerges as a result of gradual increase of underlying VO. The increasing
fixity in object position is associated with a decrease in the way information
structure plays a role in object positioning.

In chapter 4, ‘Word Order, Information Structure, and Discourse Relations: A
Study in Old and Middle English Verb-Final Clauses’, Kristin Bech relates
informational-structural properties of verb-final (SXV) clauses with the
distinction between coordinating and subordinating discourse relations (Asher
& Vieu 2005). She observes that SXV clauses correlate with coordinating
discourse relations, i.e. those that move the narrative forward, instead of
elaborating or commenting on already presented actions. Corroborating
informational evidence is the newness of the X element and the dynamic status
of the verb, which is in focus. Bech concludes, however, that once a typical
correlation is not found (coordinating discourse relations do not pattern with
a specific order), it is not possible to say that rhetorical relations on the
text level determine word order, unlike the role of information value of the
syntactic constituents.

In chapter 5, ‘Syntax and Information Structure: Verb-Second Variation in
Middle English’, Ans van Kemenade and Marit Westergaard investigate
Verb-Second (V2) variation in declaratives in Middle English against the
backdrop of similar variation in wh-questions in Present-Day Norwegian
dialects. The authors recognize language acquisition as the driving force in
change, noting the sensitivity of children to pragmatic information from their
early years. At the same time, children would adopt a conservative strategy
toward language acquisition, where they make finer syntactic distinctions than
adults. In this sense, V2 word order in different contexts is the result of
either informational-structural or syntactic factors (or both), which calls
for a model of micro-cues. For instance, they identify two sources of
potential variation in V2: verb movement and inversion of nominal subjects.
Three developments are identified in the data: the syntacticization of the
subject position, the generalization of V2 with pronominal and nominal
subjects with auxiliaries and unaccusative verbs, and the loss of V2 in
declaratives at the end of Middle English. Each shift is attributed to
syntactic or informational-structural factors, or even both.

Opening Part II, Chapter 6, ‘Discourse Status and Syntax in the History of
English: Some Explorations in Topicalization, Left-Dislocation and
There-Construction’, by Javier Pérez-Guerra, presents the results of a
research on informationally-marked constructions in Early Modern and the
beginning of Late Modern English, on different genres, according to which
topicalization and there-sentences, whenever they include anaphoric elements,
present local discourse domains. He observes that the there-construction is
stable across time and genre. Besides, topicalization cases would hold to the
“given before new” principle in the unmarked cases, whereas left-dislocation
would not present any clear informative characterization, which the author
suggests to be a consequence of the left-dislocated phrase not fulfilling any
syntactic function in the sentence.

In chapter 7, ‘Givenness and Word Order: A Study of Long Passives from Early
Modern English to Present-Day English’, Elena Seoane compares two
methodologies of measuring givenness: the one proposed by Prince (1981) which
includes linguistic and extralinguistic factors, and the other proposed by
Givón (1983, among others) which takes only textual criteria into account. By
examining long passives, she argues that Prince’s approach is capable of
explaining more data than Givón’s, based on cases where the analyses are
wholly different with respect to the relative degree of givenness of subject
and by-phrase. She concludes that one needs to consider a combination of
factors to accurately measure givenness, including some knowledge of the
specific topic being talked about and cultural references alluded to in the
discourse.

Anneli Meurman-Solin presents a study on utterance linking strategies in
chapter 8, ‘The Connectives And, For, But, and Only as Clause and Discourse
Type Indicators in 16th- and 17th-Century Epistolary Prose.’ By using
diplomatically edited letters from two tagged corpora, she bases her study on
how connectives mark the beginning of utterances by disregarding the
intervention of modern editors on texts with punctuation and capitalization.
The evolution of four connectives regarding their co-occurrence with
particular discourse types is presented and discussed. Among these, ‘and’ is
the most frequent, and shows a downward s-curve; ‘for’ and ‘but’ usually
introduce a first-person stance use; and ‘only’ is the less frequent of all.
The general conclusion is that a “grammar of prose” would develop, among other
things, through the transition from a looser to a semantically more explicit
utterance linking. In this sense, Meurman-Solin argues that connectives such
as ‘for’ and ‘only’ at some time point to a dialogic reading between writer
and the addressee, and dismisses the analysis that assumes some connectors to
be especially frequent in spoken mode.

An van Linden and Kristin Davidse’s contribution, ‘The Role of the
Accessibility of the Subject in the Development of Adjectival Complementation
from Old English to Present-Day English’ (chapter 9) opens Part III, on
Nonfinite Clauses. It focuses on the role of accessibility of subjects in the
development of extraposed complements depending on deontic adjectives, such as
‘it is important to honor those who have done honour to us’. The authors
observe an informational shift according to which to-complements came to be
favored over that-complements together with an increase in general and more
accessible subjects inside the embedded domain, which took place in Middle
English. A reversal of this general trend is observed in the Modern period,
mainly due to the greater frequency of the complex transitive construction
(for + NP + to-infinitive). At the same time, an extension of the use of less
accessible subjects is observed even in contexts that do not usually provide
the identity of the subject in a non-marked fashion. They give specific
motivations for this change, such as stylistic factors and certain register
bias, usually related to mandative constructions, which go beyond the tendency
toward optimization of informational factors

Chapter 10, ‘Latin Absolute Constructions and Their Old English Equivalents:
Interfaces between Form and Information Structure’ by Olga Timofeeva, examines
how Latin absolute participial constructions are translated into Old English,
by establishing relationships between the semantics of absolute constructions,
their functional/thematic role in communication, the order of clauses in a
sentence, and text cohesion. Her main conclusion is that translators
distinguish the importance of text items depending on construction meaning: if
discourse-old, they can be omitted; if discourse-new, they can be expressed in
independent coordinate clauses, or even be incorporated into the structure of
the superordinate clause as second predicates, if there is a thematic subject
somehow bound to the main subject.

Beginning Part IV is Cynthia L. Allen’s contribution: ‘Why a Determiner? The
Possessive + Determiner + Adjective Construction in Old English (chapter 11).
She discusses possible explanations for a correlation found in Old English: a
postnominal adjective must necessarily appear whenever a possessive precedes a
determiner in the same noun phrase. For instance, Allen considers an “added
information” hypothesis according to which the determiner would appear (more
frequently) whenever it adds information on grammatical features, and a
hypothesis according to which the nature of the adjective would affect the
choice for this construction. She concludes in favor of the latter, and
speculates on specific correlations to this end, as well as on a related
problem, i.e. the disappearance of this construction, which may be the result
of no clear function having been crystallized around the determiner.

Chapter 12, ‘Functional Shifts and the Development of English Determiners’, by
Tine Breban, presents a proposal whereby the semantic and contextual
generalization the articles ‘the’ and ‘a(n)’ are usually said to have went
through would be the reflections of underlying functional shifts. For
instance, Old English ‘an’ has lost the expression of features ‘new to the
discourse and in focus’, ‘specific’ and ‘persistent’, which characterized it
as a presentative marker, whereas ‘se’ lost its referential, deictic use,
observed in terms of ‘topic shift’, ‘persistence’ and ‘boundary marker’,
keeping only the expression of identifiability. With the change, these
specialized functions were compensated for and expressed by more contentful
determiners such as demonstratives and quantifiers which became formally
distinct from the articles (‘the’ versus ‘that’; ‘a(n)’ versus ‘one’) or by
the development of complex determiners formed by an article and a pre- or
post-determiner (‘the same’, ‘a certain’). Breban then relates these
developments to the creation of a complex hierarchical organization of the
determiner zone, which has shifted with larger changes affecting the language
system.

In chapter 13, ‘The Proximal and Distal Perspectives in Relation to the
Position of Directional Modifiers in the English Noun Phrase’, Turo Vartiainen
argues that if a directional modifier, such as a participle (e.g. ‘following’)
or an adverb (e.g. ‘above’) may occur either in the prenominal or postnominal
position, then this variation follows a general cognitive pattern whereby
conceptualized proximity is expressed in the premodifying position, whereas
conceptualized distance is usually expressed in the postmodifier position. He
couches this correlation in terms of Givón’s (2001) proximity principle, that
the closer two entities are notionally, the closer they will be structurally.
Vartiainen describes of the synchronic behavior of five directional modifiers
(‘coming’, ‘past’, ‘above’, ‘below’, ‘following’) together with a diachronic
study of ‘following’, where semantic change has advanced from a mere spatial
meaning to become used in either temporal or textual functions more
frequently.

EVALUATION
This book presents valuable studies that pave the way for a deeper
understanding of the interface between syntax and information structure on the
diachronic axis. The guiding principles shared across different contributions
make up a research agenda where syntax and pragmatics preserve their
independence, but have some “communication paths,” similar to other linguistic
levels which information structure interacts with. The necessity of presenting
motivated scenarios of linguistic change would be the driving reason to
consider these interfaces.

This being so, the chapters cohere fundamentally, with minor differences
related to the extent functional explanations figure in the individual
contributions. The thematic progression goes from general aspects of syntax,
such as word order and marked constructions, to smaller domains, such as
nonfinite clauses and noun phrases. In this sense, the title of Part II is
misleading, since the respective chapters do not share the variation in genres
and the development of a grammar of prose as their gist. Ample
cross-referencing also gives the reader a better sense of integration between
the different themes within the book.

Two related positive aspects are the search for grounded explanations and the
offer of independent evidence for claims made. For instance, some chapters
present data from other Germanic languages, from psycholinguistic experiments
or even from languages typologically related to English. The use of corpora
and statistical analyses seems consistent with the goals.

It is worth noting three theoretical problems that could have been better
treated. The first is model compatibility with the study of the
syntax-information structure interface. Regarding this, the authors argue that
a grounded explanation for change should not reduce to feature
weakening/strengthening, as entailed in the cartographic approach proposed in
Rizzi (1997), where semantic and pragmatic information is encoded in the realm
of the syntax. However, the problem here is more connected to how pragmatic
information has been generally disregarded in the cartographic approach, where
the labels ‘Topic’ and ‘Focus’ are used as referring to “syntactic objects,
putting aside their precise pragmatic values” (cf. Benincà 2006, p. 54). On
the other hand, if a pairing between syntactic positions and pragmatic value
is recognized, as in the typology of topics proposed by Frascarelli &
Hinterhölzl (2007) and Bianchi & Frascarelli (2010), one can relate a meaning
change to different syntactic positions. In sum, a “communication path” is
ensured. Second, is the issue of motives for change. Quantitative reasons are
invariably invoked in various chapters, including opacity in the Primary
Linguistic Data in the language acquisition process (2, 5), extension or loss
of linguistic functions (8, 12, 13), or “drift” created by the very skewing of
data frequencies (Westergaard 2010) (5). However, further theoretical
reflection is needed, as observed by van Linden and Davidse. A third problem
would be accounting both for stable principles guiding variation and for the
impact of distinct phenomena on another linguistic level in an integrated way.
This would account for the creation, loss or just shift in information-based
variation.

Some of the specific decisions throughout the book direct the reader to ad hoc
solutions and unanswered questions that challenge those interested in this
area. In spite of this, some contributions may be helpful for those starting
research on the topic, since hints on data selection, classification and
quantification are provided. For this reason, the book is useful not only for
those working on the history of English, but for any historical linguist.

REFERENCES
Asher N. & Vieu, L. 2005. Subordinating and coordinating discourse relations.
Lingua 115, 591-610.

Benincà, P. 2006. A Detailed Map of the Left Periphery of Medieval Romance. In
Zanuttini, R. et al. (eds.), Crosslinguistic research in syntax and semantics:
Negation, tense, and clausal architecture, 53-86.  Washington, DC: Georgetown
University Press.

Bianchi, P. & Frascarelli, M. 2010. Is Topic a Root Phenomenon? Iberia 2,
43-88.

Carroll, M. & Lambert, M. 2003. Information structure in narratives and the
role of grammaticised knowledge: A study of adult French and German learners
of English. In Dimroth, C. & Starren, M. (eds.), Information Structure and the
Dynamics of Language Acquisition, 267-287. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Frascarelli, M. & Hinterhölzl, R. 2007. Types of Topics in German and Italian.
In Winkler, S. & Schwabe, K. (eds.), On Information Structure, Meaning and
Form, 87-116. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Givón, T. 1983. Topic continuity in discourse: An introduction. In Givón, T.
(ed.), Topic Continuity in Discourse: A quantitative cross-language study,
1-41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Givón, T. 2001. Syntax: an introduction. 2 vols. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Prince, E.F. 1981. Toward a taxonomy of given-new information. In Cole, P.
(ed.), Radical Pragmatics, 223-255. New York: Academic Press.

Rizzi, L. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In Haegeman, L.
(ed.), Elements of Grammar: Handbook of Generative Syntax, 281-337. Dordrecht:
Kluwer.

Westergaard, M.R. 2010. Cue-based acquisition and information structure drift
in diachronic language development. In Ferraresi, G. & Lühr, R. (eds.),
Diachronic Studies on Information Structure: Language Acquisition and Change,
87-116. Berlin: de Gruyter.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Aroldo Andrade is a postdoctoral fellow at the State University of Campinas.
His research focus is the relation between morphosyntactic change and
information structure in Portuguese. For his PhD he studied the change in the
realization of clitic climbing in European Portuguese with comparison to other
Romance languages.

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