29.3236, Review: Discourse Analysis; Historical Linguistics; Pragmatics; Semantics: D'Arcy (2017)

Tue Aug 21 19:26:38 UTC 2018

LINGUIST List: Vol-29-3236. Tue Aug 21 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.3236, Review: Discourse Analysis; Historical Linguistics; Pragmatics; Semantics: D'Arcy (2017)

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Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2018 15:26:21
From: Daniel Bürkle [dmburkle at uclan.ac.uk]
Subject: Discourse-Pragmatic Variation in Context

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-4284.html

AUTHOR: Alexandra  D'Arcy
TITLE: Discourse-Pragmatic Variation in Context
SUBTITLE: Eight hundred years of LIKE
SERIES TITLE: Studies in Language Companion Series 187
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: Daniel Bürkle, University of Central Lancashire

SUMMARY

''Discourse-pragmatic variation in context'' by Alexandra D'Arcy describes the
development of two forms of ''like'': the clause-initial discourse marker
''like'', as in ''They done all types of work. Like, they ploughed and
harrowed'' (after (16d), p.14); and the discourse particle on the left
periphery of phrases, as in ''His father had like a restaurant cafe'' (after
(17c), p.15). Other forms of ''like'' are also described (in Chapter 1), but
the focus of this book is on these discourse forms. Linguists and
non-linguists alike often see these forms as quite random and recent. The core
argument of this book is that they are neither - in other words, even the
apparently less grammatically fixed discourse forms of ''like'' are used in
quite specific and orderly patterns, and have been used in this way for at
least a century.

D'Arcy posits that these two discourse forms of ''like'' arose from
grammaticalization. Her review of historical examples in Chapter 3 finds that
the most likely path is from the conjunction ''like'' (as in, but much older
than, the famous ''Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should'') via the
sentence-final adverb ''like'' (as in ''They were quarrelling like.'', after
(14e), p.12) to the clause-initial marker ''like''. The particle ''like'' is
argued to have developed from the marker in turn.

Chapter 4 draws on a wide range of English corpora (described in Chapter 2) to
support and refine this path of grammaticalization. The argument here is based
on analysing the marker and particle as clause- and phrase-level adjuncts, in
generative terms. Frequency of use is defined as a percentage, of tokens where
a form is (unambiguously) used out of the total of all tokens with the same
grammatical structure - for example, the percentage of matrix complementiser
phrases (CPs) that have the discourse marker ''like'' out of all matrix CPs.
This analysis shows that the marker ''like'' is first attested as an adjunct
to matrix CPs, later with subordinate CPs, and only relatively recently with
tense phrases (TPs). Similarly, the particle ''like'' is first attested on the
left edge of the nominal domain (a determiner phrase (DP) adjunct, in
generative terms - as in ''I haven't seen like a huge difference'', (65a),
p.94) and only recently inside that domain (as in ''They have this like
energy'', after (70a), p.98, which D'Arcy analyses as an adjunct to the
functional noun projection nP). The same development of adjunction sites from
larger to smaller phrases is demonstrated for the adjectival domain:
higher-level adjuncts (as in ''Everything is like so complicated'', (73a),
p.100, which D'Arcy analyses as a degree phrase (DegP) adjunct) are attested
earlier than lower-level adjuncts (as in ''I get really like flabbergasted'',
(72a), p.100, which D'Arcy analyses an adjective phrase (AP) adjunct).

Both of these forms of ''like'' are used more with certain types of their
respective frames than with others - for example, the marker ''like'' is more
common in matrix CPs that have no other discourse marker than in those that
do, and the particle ''like'' is more common with indefinite than with
definite DPs. These frequency differences are quite consistent and stable over
time, even as the overall frequency of ''like'' changes. D'Arcy presents this
as evidence for stable variable grammars for these forms of ''like'' and as
support for the view that these forms developed from grammaticalization.

Noting the stereotype that ''like'' is a feature of female speech, D'Arcy
finds (in Chapter 5) that female speakers use the marker ''like'' more than
male speakers do, but also that male speakers use the particle ''like'' more
than female speakers do. She argues that, while ''like'' is a stigmatised
feature that many assume to be one single form, this difference in
gender-linked patterns shows that (only) the marker ''like'' is stigmatised
and thus increasing in a male-led change. This lends further support to the
uncontroversial grammatical analysis of ''like'' as a bundle of different
linguistic forms, with different patterns of use of and (perhaps not
conscious) attitudes towards different forms of ''like''.

Chapter 6, an updated previous paper by D'Arcy, presents some common myths
about ''like'' - that it is one word rather than many forms, that it has no
meaning or function, that it is a female and adolescent form, and that there
are no grammatical constraints to its use - and dismisses these, drawing on
evidence from the study presented in this book as well as other research.

Implications for linguistic theory are laid out in Chapter 7: ''like'' shows
that children follow and advance language change, including social attitudes
towards variants; standard descriptions of grammaticalization (generally
leading to use in syntactically higher positions) are based on certain types
of grammaticalized forms, and this analysis of discourse forms (which appear
to advance into syntactically lower positions) widens this perspective
considerably; and different analytic methods (token counts or percentages of
contexts) will lead to radically different conclusions.

EVALUATION

The stated goals of ''Discourse-pragmatic variation in context'' are to show
that ''like'' is not used randomly or without purpose, and to provide a book
whose chapters can be read separately while still cohering when read together.

As for the first of these aims, the argument against ''like'' going everywhere
in a sentence and meaning nothing (summarized above) is largely successful.
D'Arcy shows convincingly that ''like'' is used more in certain contexts than
in others, and that there are some contexts where ''like'' cannot be used
felicitously - for example, the first item in an enumeration or list may host
the marker ''like'', but subsequent items may not (p.74). Commendably, D'Arcy
removes tokens where the function of ''like'' is ambiguous from her data, but
this is of course limited to the functions she acknowledges. Assuming (contra
D'Arcy) that ''like'' can be a filler, any token of a discourse ''like'' could
be argued to be ambiguous between discourse and filler ''like'', as these
discourse functions are not necessary for grammatical felicity (unlike the
matrix verb ''like'', for example). The corpus of discourse ''like'' tokens in
the appendix to this book is extensive, and it is of course unlikely that all
these tokens should be filler ''like'' in the speakers' intention. The
possibility of this ambiguity remains, and this book does not include the
filler ''like'' in its otherwise comprehensive survey of ''like'' functions.

As for the second aim, some chapters will indeed give a thorough and useful
overview by themselves: Chapter 1 provides a list of different forms of
''like'', with meanings or functions, historical background, and illustrative
examples; Chapter 6 contrasts naive views of ''like'' with the facts. Other
chapters are, by necessity, very much part of the book as a whole: the list of
corpora in Chapter 2 is a necessary part of the description of this study's
method; the diachronic corpus analysis in Chapter 4 expands on the
developmental paths sketched in Chapter 3.

Even so, the book as a whole is thorough and efficient. It acknowledges and
describes many forms of ''like'', but analyses two specific forms in depth.
The analysis draws on a large set of corpora that cover a relatively long
time-span and many anglophone regions. These corpora, the methods of analysing
the data, and the reasoning behind this method are described in useful detail.
This extends to the grammatical frames that D'Arcy takes as the basis of
comparison. These are based in generative analyses which are precise, but are
made transparent for those readers who are not familiar with generative
grammar (especially functional projections such as nP). This means the
analysis is focused and can be followed, and I would not hesitate to recommend
this book to students working on ''like'' or on similar discourse-pragmatic
forms.

Some aspects, for example the ''Counting Matters'' section (p.163-p.174) that
discusses different methods to calculate frequencies and the implications
these have for results in general and this book in particular, are perhaps not
relevant for everyone. Nevertheless, D'Arcy may not want to become ''The LIKE
Person'' (as she writes in the foreword), but ''Discourse-pragmatic variation
in context'' is ''The LIKE Book''.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Daniel Bürkle is a lecturer in psycholinguistics at the University of Central
Lancashire. His research is focused on constrained variation in language -
situations where speakers can choose between different lexical or grammatical
options, and the processing of these options.

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