Types of Variation: Diachronic, Dialectal And Typological Interfaces (Studies in Languages Companion)

Types of Variation Studies in Language Companion Series (SLCS) The SLCS series has been established as a companion ...

Author: Terttu Nevalainen | Juhani Klemola | Mikko Laitinen

74 downloads 783 Views 3MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

Types of Variation

Studies in Language Companion Series (SLCS) The SLCS series has been established as a companion series to Studies in Language, International Journal, sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language”.

Series Editors Werner Abraham

Michael Noonan

University of Vienna

University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Editorial Board Joan Bybee

Christian Lehmann

University of New Mexico

University of Erfurt

Ulrike Claudi

Robert Longacre

University of Cologne

University of Texas, Arlington

Bernard Comrie

Brian MacWhinney

Max Planck Institute For Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig

Carnegie-Mellon University

William Croft

University of California, Santa Barbara

University of Manchester

Edith Moravcsik

Östen Dahl

University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

University of Stockholm

Masayoshi Shibatani

Gerrit Dimmendaal

Rice University and Kobe University

University of Leiden

Russell Tomlin

Ekkehard König

University of Oregon

Marianne Mithun

Free University of Berlin

Volume 76 Types of Variation: Diachronic, dialectal and typological interfaces Edited by Terttu Nevalainen, Juhani Klemola and Mikko Laitinen

Types of Variation Diachronic, dialectal and typological interfaces

Edited by

Terttu Nevalainen University of Helsinki

Juhani Klemola University of Tampere

Mikko Laitinen University of Helsinki

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Types of Variation : Diachronic, dialectal and typological interfaces / edited by Terttu Nevalainen, Juhani Klemola and Mikko Laitinen. p. cm. (Studies in Language Companion Series, issn 0165–7763 ; v. 76) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Language and languages--Variation. 2. Historical linguistics. 3. Dialectology. 4. Typology (Linguistics). I. Nevalainen, Terttu. II. Klemola, Juhani. III. Laitinen, Mikko. IV. Series. P120.V37T97 2006 417’.7--dc22 isbn 90 272 3086 2 (Hb; alk. paper)

2006042750

© 2006 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa

To the memory of Elina Sorva (1978–2006)

Contents Part I. Typology and grammaticalization 1. ‘Triangulation’ of diachrony, dialectology and typology: An overview Terttu Nevalainen, Juhani Klemola and Mikko Laitinen 2. Bi-directional vs. uni-directional asymmetries in the encoding of semantic distinctions in free and bound person forms Anna Siewierska and Dik Bakker

3

21

Part II. Diachrony and typology 3. Historical morphology from a typological point of view: Examples from English Dieter Kastovsky 4. Typology and comparative linguistics: Jakobson revisited Konstantin G. Krasukhin 5. Primary adjectives in English and German: Variation and change in diachrony and typology Thomas Schöneborn

53 81

99

6. The concessive connective albeit: A diachronic corpus-based study † Elina Sorva

121

7. Possessives and determiners in Old English Cynthia L. Allen

149

8. Analytic of the samyn or synthetic its? The use of neuter possessives in Older Scots texts Joanna Bugaj

171

9. Expressing human indefiniteness in English: Typology and markedness of pronouns Mikko Laitinen

203

Part III. Dialectology and typology 10. Dialect and typology: Where they meet — and where they don’t Werner Abraham

243

viii Types of variation

11. Somerset relativizers revisited Kirsti Peitsara 12. Resilient or yielding? Features of Irish English syntax and aspect in early Australia Clemens Fritz

269

281

Part IV. Dialectology, typology and diachrony 13. Negative indefinites: A typological and diachronic perspective on a Brabantic construction Johan van der Auwera, Ludovic De Cuypere and Annemie Neuckermans

305

14. The relatives who and what in northern East Anglia Patricia Poussa

321

15. Vernacular universals? The case of plural was in Early Modern English Terttu Nevalainen

351

Index of languages

371

Index of authors

373

Index of subjects

376

part i

Typology and grammaticalization

chapter 1

‘Triangulation’ of diachrony, dialectology and typology An overview* Terttu Nevalainen

Juhani Klemola

University of Helsinki

University of Tampere

Mikko Laitinen University of Helsinki

1. Introduction This volume explores connections between diachrony, dialectology and typological linguistics, focusing on the ways in which historical linguists and dialectologists may learn from insights offered by typology, and vice versa. As the title of the collection suggests, the underlying theme of the chapters is linguistic variation, and its implications for the research questions addressed. The following sections will lay the common ground and outline the issues discussed by the contributors. As editors of the volume, we believe that they will raise the awareness of the three linguistic subdisciplines of each other and, growing out of this awareness, encourage their cross-fertilization to their mutual benefit. Most typological studies to date are based on descriptions of standard and/or written languages. Recent cross-linguistic studies often build upon large computerized databases, such as Siewierska and Bakker’s contribution to this volume, and in so doing attain wide cross-linguistic coverage. However, it is increasingly recognized in linguistic typology that significant advances in the field can be made by lowering the level of abstraction and making systematic use of both elicitation techniques and corpus data where they are available (Croft 2003: 28–30). These methods bring in linguistic variation, which is often sidestepped in grammars of standard written languages. By contrast, dialectology, both regional and social, is concerned with non-standard varieties of languages, and focuses on alternative systemic realizations of a given language. These varieties often only exist in the spoken medium. Diachronic linguistics in turn provides an evolutionary angle on both dialectology and typology by describing how certain features are selected as part of a given language in the

Terttu Nevalainen, Juhani Klemola, and Mikko Laitinen

course of time, while others are rejected. The rise of standard languages is a case in point. As they can often be subject to conscious monitoring, we may ask to what extent they represent what Roger Lass has called teratogenesis, ‘monster making’, rather than natural linguistic variation and evolution. Combining two of these linguistic subdisciplines, dialectology, diachronic and typological linguistics is not a new idea. Diachronic linguistics played a key role in the rise of traditional typology, namely the classification of languages into three basic types, isolating, agglutinative and inflectional, and the life cycle of languages derived from this classification. The relevance of the diachronic angle to cross-linguistic generalizations has also been acknowledged in contemporary research. As pointed out by Joanna Bugaj in her contribution to this volume, Joseph Greenberg was one of its early advocates. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he promoted the concept of diachronic typology, which is described by Croft, Denning and Kemmer (1990: xiii) as follows: Diachronic typology is the typology of language change, as contrasted with synchronic typology, the typology of language states. The move from synchronic to diachronic typology is not merely the application of the typological method of comparison to another area of language study; it represents a radical shift in theory. [. . .] Above all else, diachronic typology enables us to abandon one of the most unfortunate idealizations ever adopted in the study of language, the assumption that a synchronic language state is homogeneous.

Dialectology has similarly been combined with (functional) typology, most recently in Kortmann (ed., 2004). The ambitious goal of this approach is to take “a major step in the direction of a unified account of intra- and cross-linguistic variation” (Kortmann 2004: 2). Kortmann argues that while the typological approach to structural variation across languages offers fresh insights to the study of dialect morphosyntax, perhaps even more importantly, dialectology also has a very important contribution to offer to the study of language typology: “dialect data, besides serving as a rich additional data source and making a significant contribution to areal typology, are bound to help establish more fine-grained typological parameters and formulate generalizations and hierarchies which are at the same time more finegrained and more robust” (Kortmann 2004: 1). Furthermore, Kortmann points out that dialect data makes it possible for typologists to compare like with like — one of the problems of much mainstream typological work has been the fact that descriptions of spoken varieties of ‘exotic’ languages have been compared to standardized written varieties of well–described (European) languages. If the aim of typology is, as suggested by Croft (2003: 289), to unify the study of all types of linguistic variation, this variation, both diatopic and diachronic, will naturally enrich typological research itself. The issue bears on the research methods used as well as the linguistic variation encountered. With the aim of capturing the

‘Triangulation’ of diachrony, dialectology and typology

relevant dimensions of linguistic variation, many studies in this volume make use of innovative methodological approaches, including large electronic corpora and databases, which enable cross- and intralinguistic comparisons both dialectally and across time. The treatment of Brabantic negative indefinites by van der Auwera, De Cuypere, and Neuckermans, for instance, is a case in point in that it combines dialectal, diachronic and typological perspectives in the study of a regionally restricted and typologically unique change.

2. Scope of the volume 2.1 Languages and language varieties The search for interfaces between the three subdisciplines is highlighted in the writers’ selection of languages and language varieties: well documented languages necessarily provide the basis for contributions on diachronic and regional variation. The majority of the studies concentrate on West Germanic languages, Dutch, German and English, and their ancestry. Most contributions compare two or more related languages or language varieties, some trace the rise of a new regional variety, or relate the varieties they study to areal generalizations such as Standard Average European, or to features shared by the vernacular varieties of a world language such as English. The following list presents the languages found in the analyses and/or the illustrations of the individual contributions. 1. Three of the contributions adopt a cross-linguistic typological approach to the triangulation of the three subdisciplines by using data from a range of languages, or providing an in-depth comparison of two: – A large computerized cross-linguistic database of 328 languages is used in Siewierska and Bakker’s comparison of the semantic distinctions attested in free and bound person forms. – Greek, Lithuanian and Russian and its dialects are discussed in Krasukhin’s study, which combines historical typology and comparative linguistics. Data from Latin, English, German, Turkish, Malay and French complement the analysis. – English and German adjectives are compared by Schöneborn. 2. Five writers explore the diachronic evolution of English utilizing dialectological and/or typological approaches in their analysis. They also discuss corresponding phenomena in other Western European languages: – Allen examines two constructions in Old English in which a possessive and a determiner co-occur, making comparisons with Old Norse. – Kastovsky explores historical morphology from a typological point of view


concentrating on English, particularly on Old English, and drawing examples from German and Germanic, Latin and (Proto-)Indo-European. – Laitinen’s contribution is concerned with pronominal number in human indefinite expressions in Early Modern English. – Nevalainen discusses vernacular universals, exploring Early Modern English dialect data and presenting comparative evidence from colloquial spoken Finnish. – Sorva analyses the concessive connective albeit in English, covering its French ancestry and history from Middle English to the present-day. 3. Six chapters concentrate on regional varieties and/or local dialects of West Germanic languages: – Abraham focuses on the interface between dialectology and typology drawing his data from the simple preterite past in South German dialects. – van der Auwera, De Cuypere and Neuckermans investigate the incidence of a positive indefinite pronoun with sentential negation in a small Dutch dialect area in Belgian Brabant. – Bugaj discusses the rise of the possessive form its in Older Scots including a comparison with Polish. – Fritz tackles features attributable to Irish English in the emerging Australian English of the 19th century. – Peitsara’s study of the traditional dialect of Somerset is concerned with the structure and marking of relative clauses. – Poussa focuses on relative clause markers in the traditional dialects of Norfolk, including the possible influence of Scandinavian and North German dialects.

2.2 Materials, methods and approaches One of the recent developments in making typological information and methods more widely accessible is the Language Typology Resource Center, a project funded by the European Community. It consists of a thematic network with the aim of creating a web-accessible electronic archive for typological description, providing research tools such as typological databases, language-typological expert systems, scientific grammars, corpora, and so on (http://www.lotschool.nl/Research/ltrc/ltrcproject/index.htm). Siewierska and Bakker’s study in this volume also draws upon it. The introduction of dialectal and historical perspectives into typology is similarly reflected in the materials and approaches selected by the contributors to this volume. While all contributions naturally to some extent rely on traditional sources of data such as dictionaries and grammars (diachronic or synchronic), the majority base their arguments on complementary data sources. Owing to the volume’s emphasis on linguistic variation, most studies make use of quantitative methodolo-


gies and corpus-based techniques where these are available and appropriate. Apart from the primary sources offered by electronic corpora, the contributions utilize dialect atlases, typological and other databases, and any combinations of these. In the following, we classify the contributions according to the type of materials primarily utilized by the authors: 1. Three studies are based on materials drawn from dictionaries and grammatical descriptions: – Kastovsky makes extensive use of comparative grammars of Indo-European languages and of historical grammars of Germanic languages. – Krasukhin refers to a large number of comparative grammars and individual studies of Indo-European languages. – Schöneborn’s comparative study of primary adjectives in English and German draws primarily on a number of etymological dictionaries of English and German. 2. Two chapters base their conclusions on data drawn from large databases and atlases: – Siewierska and Bakker compare free and bound person forms in a cross-linguistic sample consisting of 328 languages; the sample itself is drawn from an even larger database compiled by the authors (see http://www-uilots.let.uu.nl/ ltrc/agreement.htm). – van der Auwera, De Cuypere and Neuckermans’ study of negative indefinites in Brabantic dialects of Dutch is based on the data collected for the recent dialect syntax project ‘Syntactische Atlas van de Nederlandse Dialecten’ (SAND; see http://www.meertens.knaw.nl/projecten/sand/sandeng.html). 3. A total of eight contributions make extensive use of a wide range of linguistic corpora: – Allen’s study of determiners and possessives in Old English is primarily based on the grammatically annotated York–Toronto–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE, Taylor et al. 2003) and Penn–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English 2 (PPCME2, Kroch and Taylor 1999). – Bugaj draws her material from the Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots (HCOS, Meurman-Solin (comp.) 1993, Meurman-Solin 1995). – Fritz’s study of Irish English influence in the development of Australian English utilizes the Corpus of Oz Early English (COOEE) being compiled by the author himself (Fritz, this volume). – Laitinen’s diachronic study of human indefinite expressions in English draws on data from the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC) (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 2003; Raumolin-Brunberg and Nevalainen, forthcoming).


– Nevalainen bases her study of plural was in Early Modern English on dialect data drawn from the Corpus of Early English Correspondence. – Peitsara’s contribution introduces the Helsinki Corpus of British English Dialects (HD), a pioneering corpus of English dialect materials, initiated by Ossi Ihalainen (see Peitsara and Vasko 2002). – Poussa draws on a wide range of data sources, most importantly on the Francis Corpus, a collection of tape-recordings made by Nelson Francis when he was a field worker for the Survey of English Dialects (SED, Orton et al., eds. 1962– 71). – Finally, Sorva includes a total of 11 corpora and 2 electronic dictionaries in her list of primary sources; for a complete list, see Sorva (this volume).

3. Interfaces 3.1 Approaching the issue: typology and grammaticalization The individual chapters in the volume are presented below in terms of the interfaces they produce connecting diachrony, dialectology and typology. Most of the chapters highlight the role of diachrony in approaching issues of typological relevance. Grammaticalization is their common denominator, including the most purely typologically oriented of chapter, Siewierska and Bakker’s contribution. It will serve as a point of comparison for the rest by illustrating the degree to which crosslanguage comparisons and generalizations can be made on the basis of an extensive typological database. It can in fact be argued, as the authors do on the homepage of their agreement database, that their aim is “to determine how grammaticalization affects different person forms, to trace the grammaticalization pathways that different person forms display and to elucidate the factors driving the grammaticalization” (http://www-uilots.let.uu.nl/ltrc/agreement.htm). The synchronic part of their project aims to describe the degrees to which person agreement is grammaticalized in the languages of the world. In this volume Siewierska and Bakker specifically focus on the semantic distinctions encoded in free and bound person forms, relating them to the hypothesis of unidirectionality in grammaticalization. Using a cross-linguistic sample of 328 languages, they seek generalizations regarding the directionality of the asymmetries in the degree of elaboration of the semantic distinctions encoded in free as opposed to bound person forms — that is to say, whether some types of languages are more likely to manifest more elaborate semantic distinctions in free person forms while others encode these distinctions in bound person forms. The authors set out to determine the extent to which the asymmetries in the degree of semantic elaboration of


free and bound forms correlate with various semantic distinctions. Their findings do not lend support to bidirectionality hypotheses, which basically predict that “if the semantic distinctions encoded in free and bound person forms of a language are not identical, the more elaborate semantic encoding will be expressed by the primary exponents of the grammatical category person in that language”. Their findings, therefore, do not challenge the unidirectional hypothesis: since bound forms originate in free forms, bound person forms can be expected to be either equally or less differentiated semantically than the free forms regardless of language type.

3.2 Diachrony and typology All the chapters in this section describe long-term processes in language history. Two of the chapters, Kastovsky and Krasukhin, address issues to do with typological classification of languages including, in Krasukhin’s case, methods of comparative reconstruction; the remaining chapters deal with individual processes of change in languages and language varieties. The ideas introduced include the relations of local changes to global processes in changing language types (Kastovsky), parallel or interlinked developments in related or neighbouring languages (Krasukhin, Schöneborn and Sorva), and co-existing but often typologically opposing trends in the history of a particular language, English in this case (Allen, Bugaj and Laitinen). Dieter Kastovsky explores historical morphology from a typological point of view, drawing his examples from English. Kastovsky’s approach distinguishes what he calls “local changes”, operating over two or three generations and dealing with individual structural features of a language, and “global changes”, which manifest themselves over centuries, sometimes even over millennia, and which eventually result in a new gestalt of the language, a new language type, with markedly different general properties compared to those of the older one. When the systematic changes in a language progress in the same direction, several factors from different levels of the language system interact to produce this cumulative effect. The interaction of various linguistic levels, phonology and morphology, morphology and syntax, and the lexicon and phonology/morphology produces a cumulative effect, and the result may be an incipient typological change, a drift. Kastovsky concentrates on morphological typology, expanding the widely and profitably used morphological models by Humboldt and Schlegel. His contribution concentrates on the additional parameters needed to determine the overall gestalt of the morphology of a language. These include: (1) the morphological status of the input to the morphological processes (word, stem, root); (2) the number and status of inflectional classes; (3) the type of the formal representations of inflectional and derivational markers;

10


(4) the status and function of morphophonemic/allomorphic alternations; (5) the position of affixes/position of the head; 6) the existence and status of morphological levels (e.g., native vs. foreign). The chapters by Krasukhin and Schöneborn both illustrate the convergence and divergence of cognate languages in the grammatical realizations of their “stable semantic features”, to use the term employed by Krasukhin. Schöneborn focuses on the core members of the word class of adjectives, and the parallels found in two closely related languages. Sorva, in turn, discusses the immediate influence that language contact may exert on a process of grammaticalization. Konstantin Krasukhin illustrates the relevance of the present in explaining the past in morphological reconstruction. Following Roman Jakobson, he argues that historical reconstructions should have their basis in living languages. More specifically, he suggests that historical typology should be based on data from cognate languages as they reveal the spread of the realizations of linguistic variables (or “stable semantic features”). Krasukhin illustrates his case by discussing the development of the middle voice in a variety of Indo-European languages, historical and modern, including Greek, Lithuanian and Russian. His comparisons show the layering of old synthetic and new periphrastic forms, suggesting typical pathways of grammaticalization of the middle voice in the language family. In his contribution on diachronic and typological variation in adjectives, Thomas Schöneborn concentrates on the category of primary adjectives introduced by Dixon (1982). Primary adjectives are defined as monomorphemic lexemes that belong to the core vocabulary of a language; they are non-derivable from other lexemes and, as typical adjectives, they denote a property. Schöneborn compares primary adjectives in English and German, and the set he uses in his typological comparisons consists of 36 lexemes. The focus of his contribution is on long-term diachrony: primary adjectives are compared at different language stages going back to Germanic. Schöneborn argues that a systematic diachronic comparison gives us deeper insights into the structure of this set of adjectives and the changes that have taken place in it. He questions the stability of their primariness and prototypicality, and demonstrates the relevance of diachronic studies for typological comparisons of this word class even in genetically related languages. Various etymological dictionaries of English and German constitute his data sources. Elina Sorva addresses one aspect of dynamic typology, variation in the process of grammaticalization.1 She analyses concessive connectives, a typical written-language feature, which usually develops late, and can be borrowed and calqued across languages. Her case study is albeit, which goes back to the Middle English phrase all be it (that). In view of the role of French as the ‘high language’ in the written medium in England in the Late Middle Ages, there is good reason to argue that albeit was modelled on Old French (tout soit it/ce que). Using a large number of electron-


ic corpora and databases, Sorva unravels the 700-year history of albeit from its first appearance in the 14th century to its peak in the 16th century and decline in the 17th. Having investigated large Present-day English corpora and the Internet, she is, however, also able to show that albeit is currently undergoing something of a revival, although it may be structurally less transparent than in the past. Sorva’s study also has wider implications for diachronic typology. The rise and fall of a grammatical element provides counterevidence to the much debated unidirectionality argument in grammaticalization (Janda 2001). Moreover, in functional terms, albeit did not start as an adverb or preposition in English but rather appears to have acquired these functions after becoming grammaticalized as a conjunction. This may be more generally true of calqued items such as this one, and could be used to justify the traditional grammatical category of particles comprising adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions. The chapters by Allen, Bugaj and Laitinen highlight co-existing and typologically competing systems in the history of English. In the case studied by Allen, the recessive feature disappears leaving English with a single dominant predeterminer pattern. Bugaj’s study, by contrast, shows that a typological conflict can remain partly unresolved: both pre- and posthead variants of the neuter possessive continue to exist, although a major corrective was introduced to the system four hundred years ago with the new prehead variant its. Laitinen’s findings reveal even more diachronic variability, this time in the Modern English personal pronoun system, which balances between grammatical and semantic number marking in singular generic expressions referring to humans. Cynthia Allen shows how diachronic linguistics and typology can greatly benefit from each other by making systematic use of corpus material instead of simply relying on earlier syntactic descriptions. She investigates the properties of two constructions in Old English in which a possessive and a determiner co-occur. The determiner preceding a possessive construction (Det Poss) is typologically well known, while the opposite order, possessive determiner (Poss Det) is much less well documented, and has been treated as a variant of the Det Poss construction. Allen’s systematic corpus-based examination shows that the two constructions have different properties and require different analyses. The typologically unusual Poss Det construction is only found with adjectives, and is limited to se used in the role of an article. This Poss Det order is something typologists seem to have overlooked but is common enough in Allen’s data. She argues that the construction was possible because adjective phrases could be complements to determiners in Old English. She observes that the association of Poss Det with adjectives was not unusual postnominally, but that it became unusual when the adjective moved to the prenominal position. The combination of Poss Det did not survive the shift from postnominal to prenominal position in most Germanic languages but, along

11

12


with Old English, it can be found in Old Norse. Both languages developed more article-like determiners. Joanna Bugaj’s chapter is concerned with the long-term typological trend in English towards greater morphosyntactic analyticity. After the levelling of case endings and loss of grammatical gender, the trend is manifest even in possessive pronouns, which gained prepositional periphrases in Early Middle English (of the same, thereof). Bugaj notes that third-person singular possessives do not show grammatical agreement with their heads even in Old English (or, for that matter, in a heavily inflected language such as modern Polish). The topic of her chapter, the rise of the possessive form its in Older Scots in the 17th century, provides a counterexample to this analytic trend. Its replaced the historical neuter form his, which had been shared by masculine and neuter referents. Bugaj’s empirical study of the Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots also shows that the process did not proceed evenly across genres, but that thereof persisted in many contexts and the analytic phrase of it gained ground in the 17th century. As the process coincided with the anglicization of Scots in the later Stuart era, its outcome may have been influenced by language contact. This argument is supported by independent evidence showing that a parallel change had taken place in Southern English a few decades earlier (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 1994). Other relevant factors in the new neuter possessive is the clitic–like behaviour of the genitive suffix ‑s, which could form group genitives from Middle English onwards (e.g., the King of England’s crown), and so provided a model for the neuter possessive. We are nevertheless left with co-existing synthetic and analytic possessives in English: of it and, as a marked form, thereof having both survived the rise of the analogical gap-filler in the possessive pronoun paradigm. The question arises whether this variation constitutes a transitory stage in the history of English, or whether the language will continue as a typologically mixed idiom in this respect as well. Mikko Laitinen explores the markedness values and degree of indeterminacy found in expressions of indefinite human referents in English. His focus is on number, the choice between a singular and plural personal pronoun referring to (a) a generic singular human noun, (b) the generic pronoun one and (c), cataphorically, to the generic relative pronoun who (he who / they who / those who). The question he sets out to answer is whether it is possible to determine any diachronic shifts in the choice between the two paradigmatic alternatives, he and they / those in the Early Modern English period. The notion of markedness he explores is based on the frequencies of occurrence of the paradigmatic alternatives; the material used comes from the Corpus of Early English Correspondence. In broader terms, Laitinen’s study is concerned with the aftermath of the loss of grammatical gender in English. The Agreement Hierarchy proposed by Corbett (1991) predicts that third-person personal pronouns stand out as the most likely cat-


egory to show semantic rather than grammatical agreement with their antecedents. This was even true in Old English. Laitinen’s results suggest another angle to the loss of grammatical gender: number marking continues to display the grammatically determined form in certain categories longer than in others. This is particularly the case with generic singular noun phrases, which are associated with singular personal pronouns more systematically than other generic expressions. The situation is not, however, diachronically stable: generic one began to take plural anaphoric pronouns only after its general increase in frequency in Early Modern English.

3.3 Dialectology and typology The three chapters in this section make use of evidence from dialect morphosyntax and argue that the evidence offered by nonstandard varieties of language can offer fresh insights into many linguistic puzzles. Amongst the ideas highlighted in these contributions are the nature of dialects as primarily spoken codes not supported by the standardizing effects of the written code (Abraham), the uneven influence of language contacts on the formation of a new language variety (Fritz), and the need for sufficient amounts of corpus data in making generalizations concerning systems found in individual dialects (Peitsara). In “Dialect and typology: where they meet — and where they don’t” Werner Abraham argues that the well-known phenomenon of the demise of the simple past (e.g. kam ‘came’) in South German dialects and its replacement by periphrastic constructions (ist gekommen ‘is-come’) is best explained through taking into account the nature of dialects as spoken-only codes and the parsing effects it entails. Abraham suggests that while the written varieties of continental West Germanic languages allow for a considerable amount of word order variation, the spoken and especially dialectal forms of the languages are much more restricted due to the demands of processing and parsing. Kirsti Peitsara focuses on relative clauses in English dialects. In “Somerset relativizers revisited”, she returns to the question of the relative clause structure in traditional Somerset dialect, first discussed by Ossi Ihalainen in 1980. Ihalainen’s study was based on a relatively small sample (seven informants) of the tape recordings he had collected in Somerset, while Peitsara is now able to make use of Ihalainen’s total Somerset Corpus (23 informants), which forms a part of The Helsinki Corpus of British English Dialects. Ihalainen argued in his original study that the relativizer that only occurs as the subject and object of preposition in the Somerset dialect, never as a direct object. As Kortmann (2003) has noted, this result would violate the Keenan–Comrie NP Accessibility Hierarchy. Peitsara is now able to show — with the help of the larger Somerset dialect Corpus — that, while Ihalai nen’s general analysis of the Somerset relativization system can be corroborated,

13

14


his claim about the non-use of that in the direct object position and thus the violation of the Accessibility Hierarchy cannot be maintained in the light of more representative data. Clemens Fritz’s contribution focuses on the role of Irish English in the development of Australian English during the 19th century. Fritz’s study is based on an extensive, 2 million word corpus of Early Australian English compiled by the author. Through his analysis of unbound reflexives and the expression of the perfective and the habitual aspect, three well-known and characteristic features of Irish English, Fritz is able to show that the process of the Irish becoming an integral part of Australian society did not progress at a linguistically uniform speed. Some typically Irish English constructions such as unbound reflexive pronouns (‘Himself was not there’) and the medial object perfect (‘He has the letter written’), Fritz shows, are resilient, unaffected by emigration from Ireland to Australia, while others, such as habitual do are yielding, possibly due to their markedness. Furthermore, Fritz concludes that the influence of Irish English on the formation of Australian English was not significant, with the possible exception of unbound reflexive pronouns.

3.4 Dialectology, typology and diachrony The chapters in this section incorporate the three themes of this book, dialectology, typology and diachrony. The contributions by Johan van der Auwera, Ludovic De Cuypere and Annemie Neuckermans, Patricia Poussa and Terttu Nevalainen each have distinct focus areas whose analyses are complemented with the other two disciplines. A dialectal pronoun construction is examined from a diachronic perspective with an eye to typological macro-variation found in recent typological classifications (van der Auwera, De Cuypere and Neuckermans). Long-term diachronic developments in typologically distinct grammatical subsystems in language/dialect contact situations constitute the focus in an analysis of relative-clause markers (Poussa). Based on a large diachronic corpus, a systematic quantitative analysis of three local varieties is carried out to account for the evolution of a vernacular pattern of default singulars (Nevalainen). Johan van der Auwera, Ludovic De Cuypere and Annemie Neuckermans incorporate all three themes of this book, including dialectology, typology as well as diachrony. Their contribution investigates the use of an affirmative indefinite pronoun with sentential negation, iemand (. . .) niet, literally ‘somebody . . . not’, meaning niemand ‘nobody’, in a small Dutch dialect area in Belgian Brabant. The authors argue that this strategy of positive pronoun and a negator developed from the widely attested Belgian Dutch niemand (. . .) niet strategy, literally ‘nobody . . . not’. The data are drawn from a recent dialect syntax project SAND, Syntactische Atlas van


de Nederlandse Dialecten, where Belgian data exhibit considerable variation. Their diachronic analysis shows that the niemand (. . .) niet strategy is older, attested since the fifteenth century, whereas the iemand (. . .) niet is more recent, first appearing in the twentieth century. The authors’ general conclusion on its diachrony is that the iemand (. . .) niet is a further development of the older type. The typological part of the study applies two recent and contradictory studies of macro-variation of the expression of negative indefinites (Kahrel 1996 and Haspelmath 1997). As a general conclusion it is suggested that even though the change from a negative indefinite sentential negator to the iemand (. . .) niet type has not been attested for any other language, “the resulting iemand (. . .) niet construction may well be the world’s most frequent strategy for expressing what standard English does with bare nobody or with not . . . anybody”. In “The relatives who and what in northern East Anglia” Patricia Poussa presents a wide-ranging discussion of the relative system in the traditional dialects of Norfolk. Poussa’s study makes innovative use of what is called the Francis Corpus, a collection of Norfolk tape recordings made in the 1950s by Nelson Francis, when he worked as a field worker for the Survey of English Dialects. Poussa argues that the East Anglian relative marker system shows evidence of contact between two opposed typologies of relativization: a West Germanic one in the north of the area, characterized by a tendency to use subject zero relativization with personal antecedents but not with nonpersonal ones, and a Scandinavian (Danish) type system in the south, with frequent omission of the relative in object positions, the use of resumptive pronouns in possessives, no animacy distinction at subject position, and zero subject relatives regardless of the type of antecedent. Terttu Nevalainen uses the Late Middle and Early Modern English dialect data of the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC) to investigate the diachronic evolution of was generalization in English, thus offering a very welcome new angle to J. K. Chambers’s (1995, 2004) notion of vernacular universals. Chambers has argued that default singulars (was generalization) in different varieties of English all over the world are one of the prime examples of linguistic phenomena showing evidence of universals that belong to the innate rules and representations of the human language faculty. One of the central claims made by Nevalainen is that the vernacular pattern of the default singular not only evolved with time, but also “interacted with other linguistic subsystems such as personal pronouns”. Nevalainen also presents evidence from colloquial spoken Finnish, where a comparable phenomenon of default singulars is widespread, especially with the auxiliary verb olla (‘be/have’). She points out that the Finnish evidence offers support for Chambers’s claim that the vernacular roots are not restricted to varieties of English and is in line with Greenberg’s (1966) generalizations about number marking in the languages of the world.

15

16


4. Towards a dynamic paradigm In 1990, Croft, Denning and Kemmer proposed that “[t]he unification of diachrony and synchrony found in diachronic typology results from transcendence of the abstraction of the language state”, and concluded by saying that “[d]iachronic typology ‘dynamicizes’ the synchronic model by reinterpreting synchronic language states as stages in a diachronic process” (1990: xiii). In this section, we will sketch the picture that emerges from the studies included in this volume. It is intended to help workers in the three fields become more aware of each other’s methods and approaches, and by doing so, highlight the interrelations between them. We also hope to go part of the way substantiating Croft, Denning and Kemmer’s “transcendence of the abstraction of the language state”. The contributions to this volume focus on linguistic variation both synchronically and diachronically. Most of them problematize the notion of a monolithic language state. Most obviously, languages come in many varieties. Vernacular features typically do not appear in writing, and are not recorded in standard–language grammars, as argued in this volume, among others, by Abraham, van der Auwera, De Cuypere and Neuckermans, and Nevalainen. These non-standard features in one language may nevertheless be common cross-linguistically, as in the case of the English default singulars studied by Nevalainen. Moreover, regional varieties may display competing typologies that differ not only from the standard but also areally, as indicated by Poussa’s study of the relativization strategies in the Norfolk dialect of British English. Linking synchrony with diachrony reveals the constant flux language varieties are in; freezing a variety in a particular synchronic state is particularly difficult when accounting for new dialect formation, such as 19th-century Australian English studied by Fritz. Another relevant aspect of variation is the relation between colloquial and written genres. Written genres are on the whole more conservative than most mainstream spoken ones, and formal writings more conservative than informal ones, as shown, for instance, by Bugaj and Laitinen. A language that has undergone a process of standardization is likely to be ‘out of joint’ synchronically, containing typologically conflicting tendencies such as analytic and synthetic means of expressing the same notion in English. However, written genres can also be innovative in that they may develop grammatical subsystems that slowly if ever find their way into colloquial speech. A case in point here are the concessive connectives studied by Sorva. Variable evidence such as this reveals the extent to which genre differences can complicate both intra- and cross-linguistic typological comparisons. Variety and genre sensitivity will therefore be not only a means of ‘dynamicizing’ synchronic typologies of languages, but also comparing like with like. According to the Uniformitarian Hypothesis, what is true synchronically also


applies to diachrony. All processes of grammaticalization are contextually — socially and textually — embedded, and need not be generalized across the board in all varieties of the language in question. This Labovian Principle of Contingency is also true of genetically related languages, as shown by Allen, Schöneborn and, with cognate languages further removed in time and space, by Krasukhin. On the other hand, borrowing and calquing are not uncommon, as suggested by Sorva. Borrowing naturally complicates any predictions based on unidirectionality in grammaticalization, but awareness of language contacts may contribute valuable information to areal typology. This is also where diachronic typology can benefit from access to historically well documented languages such as the Western European ones. However, accounts of even the best documented languages among those studied in this volume will benefit from the insights offered by typology. Peitsara’s chapter on Somerset relatives shows that an implicational scale such as the Keenan and Comrie NP Accessibility Hierarchy can help a dialectologist strive to discover a ‘missing link’ in earlier descriptions of the dialect. Haspelmath’s semantic map of indefinite expressions is similarly made use of by van der Auwera, De Cuypere and Neuckermans in their chapter on Brabantic negation. Moreover, notions of typological markedness provide tools for interpreting grammaticalization processes unfolding in time. Quantitative markedness is built on, for instance, by Laitinen in assessing the changing proportions of singular and plural pronouns with reference to generic lexemes. To conclude, working our way towards a more dynamic paradigm, typological generalizations have been operationalized in different stages of the process. They have, first of all, pointed to the range of potential paradigmatic alternatives to be accounted for. Contextualized data sources, corpora in particular, have then been drawn on to access the alternatives realized in different localities and/or in successive periods. Quantitative information of the distribution of the paradigmatic alternatives has often been found indispensable for making sense of the directionality of the process, but basic typological notions such as markedness have served to put the findings in a wider chronological and cross-linguistic perspective. Finishing on Kastovsky’s optimistic note, we hope that this baseline information on local changes will continue to accrue, providing the substance for determining more general global drifts. Notes * The editors organized an international symposium on “Diachrony, Dialectology and Typological Linguistics” at the University of Helsinki in October 2003, which attracted a representative body of specialists from all three fields. This volume consists of a selection of chapters that grew out of papers presented at the symposium. We should like to thank the University of Helsinki and members of the Research Unit for Variation and Change in English for their assistance in making the symposium possible. We would also like to express our gratitude to all the

17

18


r eviewers of the papers for their invaluable contribution to the contents of this volume, and to Samuli Kaislaniemi for helping us in the editing of it. 1. Elina Sorva, a young scholar of great promise, passed away unexpectedly in January 2006. This volume is dedicated to her memory.

References Chambers, Jack K. 1995. Sociolinguistic theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Chambers, Jack K. 2004. Dynamic typology and vernacular universals. Dialectology meets typology: Dialect grammar from a cross-linguistic perspective, ed. by Bernd Kortmann, 128–45. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter [Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 153]. Corbett, Greville. 1991. Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Croft, William. 2003. Typology and universals. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Croft, William, Keith Denning and Suzanne Kemmer. 1990. Typology and diachrony in the work of Joseph H. Greenberg. Studies in typology, ed. by William Croft, Keith Denning and Suzanne Kemmer, ix–xviii. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Dixon, Robert M. W. 1982. Where have all the adjectives gone? and other essays in semantics and syntax. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966. Language universals, with special reference to feature hierarchies. The Hague: Mouton. Haspelmath, Martin. 1997. Indefinite pronouns. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Janda, Richard D. 2001. Beyond “pathways” and “unidirectionality”: On the discontinuity of language transmission and the counterability of grammaticalization. Language Sciences, 23(2–3): 265–340. Kahrel, Peter. 1996. Aspects of negation. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Amsterdam. Kortmann, Bernd. 2003. Typology and dialectology. http://www.anglistik.uni-freiburg.de/institut/lskortmann/16ICL. htm. Kortmann, Bernd. 2004. Introduction. Dialectology meets typology: Dialect grammar from a cross-linguistic perspective, ed. by Berndt Kortmann, 1–10. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter [Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 153]. Kortmann, Bernd (ed.). 2004. Dialectology meets typology: Dialect grammar from a crosslinguistic perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter [Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 153]. Kroch, Anthony and Ann Taylor. 1999. The Penn–Helsinki parsed corpus of Middle English 2 (PPCME2). Philadelphia: Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania. Meurman-Solin, Anneli (comp.). 1993. The Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots (HCOS). The University of Helsinki. Meurman-Solin, Anneli. 1995. A new tool: the Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots (1450–70). ICAME Journal, 19: 49–62. Nevalainen, Terttu and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 1994. Its strength and the beauty of it: the standardization of the third person neuter possessive in Early Modern English. Towards a standard English 1600–1608, ed. by Dieter Stein and Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, 171– 216. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter [Topics in English Linguistics 12].


Nevalainen, Terttu and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 2003. Historical sociolinguistics. London: Longman. Orton, Harold, Michael V. Barry, Wilfrid J. Halliday, Philip M. Tilling, and Martyn F. Wakelin (eds.). 1962–71. Survey of English dialects (B): The basic material, 4 vols. in 12 parts. Leeds: E. J. Arnold. Reprinted 1998, London: Routledge. Peitsara, Kirsti and Anna-Liisa Vasko. 2002. The Helsinki Dialect Corpus: Characteristics of speech and aspects of variation. Helsinki English Studies 2. http://www.eng.helsinki.fi/hes/ Corpora/helsinki_dialect_corpus2.htm. Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena and Terttu Nevalainen. Forthcoming. Historical sociolinguistics: The Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Models and methods in the handling of unconventional digital corpora (vol. 1: Synchronic corpora; vol. 2: Diachronic corpora), ed. by Joan C. Beal, Karen Corrigan and Hermann Moisl. Houndsmills: Palgrave-Macmillan. Taylor, Ann, Anthony Warner, Susan Pintzuk and Frank Beths. 2003. The York–Toronto–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE). Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York.

19

chapter 2

Bi-directional vs. uni-directional asymmetries in the encoding of semantic distinctions in free and bound person forms Anna Siewierska Lancaster University

Dik Bakker University of Amsterdam

In languages in which the semantic distinctions encoded on free and bound person forms are not identical, the more elaborate semantic distinctions may be borne either by the free forms or the bound. The present chapter explores two hypotheses which have been advanced to account for the existence of bi-directional asymmetries in the degree of elaboration of the semantic distinctions encoded in free as opposed to bound person forms, both framed in the context of the typological distinction between freepronoun and bound-pronoun languages suggested by Bhat (2004). The first hypothesis associates the more elaborate semantic distinctions of whatever type with free pronouns in free-pronoun languages and bound pronouns in bound-pronoun languages. The second hypothesis distinguishes between the semantic dimensions of person and clusivity on the one hand and number and gender on the other. The former are seen to favour greater elaboration on whatever person forms are the primary exponents of the category person in a language, the latter to favour the secondary person forms. The investigation, carried out on the basis of a comparison of the semantic distinctions encoded in free and bound person forms in a cross-linguistic sample of 328 languages, lends relatively little support to either of the two hypotheses. The results are shown to be in the main compatible with the tenets of grammaticalization.

1. Introduction The vast majority of the world’s languages have both free and bound person forms. More often than not the semantic distinctions encoded in the two sets of forms are exactly the same. This holds with respect to the grammatical categories expressed, i.e. person and typically also number and often also gender and inclusivity. It also holds for the degree of elaboration of these categories, i.e. the variety of oppositions encoded, for example, in the case of number, singular vs. plural or singular vs. dual

22

Anna Siewierska and Dik Bakker

vs. plural or, in the case of gender, masculine vs. feminine only in the third person singular or masculine vs. non-masculine in the third person singular and plural etc. There are, nonetheless, quite a few languages in which the semantic distinctions encoded in free and bound person forms are not identical. In some, the semantic distinctions encoded in the free forms are more elaborate than those in the bound. This is the case, for instance, in the Australian language Ungarinjin with respect to the grammatical category number. As shown in (1) below the free person forms evince a four way number distinction of singular vs. dual vs. paucal vs. plural, while the bound prefixes of the intransitive S have only a singular vs. plural contrast.

(1) Ungarinjin (Rumsey 1982: 31, 83) Free S 1sg ŋin ŋanjin2sg njaŋan — 1du incl ŋarun-njiri 1du excl njarun-njiri — 2du nurun-njiri — 1pauc incl ŋarun-njina — 1pauc excl njarun-njina — 2pauc nurun-njina — ŋar1pl incl ŋarun njar1pl excl njarun gur2pl nurun

In other languages, conversely, the semantic distinctions encoded in the bound forms are more elaborate than those in the free. Such a situation with respect to again number obtains in the Austronesian language Sye. We see in (2) that the S prefixes (the forms given are those in the recent past) manifest a dual in the first person which is lacking in the free forms.

(2) Sye (Crowley 1998: 41, 90) Free S yaco1sg yau ko2sg kik co3sg iyi koku1du incl — kaku1du excl — 1pl incl koh kokli1pl excl kam kakli2pl kimi kucu3pl iror

Semantic distinctions in free and bound person forms

There are even languages in which the free forms exhibit a higher degree of elaboration than the bound with respect to one semantic dimension, while the bound exhibit a higher degree of elaboration than the free in regard to another semantic dimension. We can observe this, for example, in certain dialects of the Papuan language Sentani in which the free forms have an inclusive–exclusive contrast which is lacking in the bound forms, while the bound forms manifest a dual number lacking in the free forms.

(3) Sentani (Cowan 1965: 16, 28) Free S a 1sg da -(j)έ 2sg wa -Ø-w 3sg na 1du -en, e(j) 2du -ew 3du -ej 1incl (e) 1excl me 1pl -an -a(j) 2pl ma 2pl -aw 3pl -aj 3pl na

In the light of the above, two questions pertaining to the distribution of semantic distinctions in free and bound person forms suggest themselves. First of all, is it at all possible to make any generalizations with respect to the directionality of the asymmetries in the degree of elaboration of the semantic distinctions encoded in free as opposed to bound person forms? For example, are some types of languages more likely to manifest more elaborate semantic distinctions in free person forms while others in bound person forms? And secondly, to what extent do the asymmetries in degree of semantic elaboration of free and bound forms depend on the semantic distinction in question? The present chapter seeks to provide answers to these questions by comparing the semantic distinctions encoded in free and bound person forms in a cross-linguistic sample of 328 languages containing both free person forms and bound person forms (for the S). This sample is drawn from a larger computerized data base compiled by the authors over the last ten years available at . The investigation takes as its point of departure two hypotheses which have been entertained in the literature, though not always explicitly articulated as such. Both hypotheses assume that the existing asymmetries in the distribution of semantic distinctions in free and bound person forms are bi-directional rather than uni–directional, i.e. in some instances they favour free forms, in other instances bound forms. Underlying both hypotheses is the not uncontrover-

23

24


sial assumption that languages differ with respect to which person forms, the free or the bound, may be seen as the primary exponents of the grammatical category person (see especially Bhat 2004: 15–18).1 Let us for the time being assume a bifurcation of languages into those in which the free forms are the primary exponents of person, which may be referred to as free pronoun languages, and those in which the bound forms are the primary exponents of person, which may be referred to as bound pronoun languages. The first hypothesis to be examined is: if the semantic distinctions encoded in free and bound person forms of a language are not identical, the more elaborate semantic encoding will be expressed by the primary exponents of the grammatical category person in that language. This entails that in free pronoun languages the more elaborate semantic distinctions will be borne by the free forms as opposed to the bound forms, and in bound pronoun languages the more elaborate semantic encoding will be borne by the bound forms as opposed to the free forms. The second hypothesis is a more refined version of the first in that it takes additional account of the function of the semantic distinctions in question.2 Of the major four semantic distinctions encoded in person forms mentioned above, person and inclusivity relate directly to the identification of the speech roles. Person encodes the speech roles of speaker (the first person), hearer (second person) and other (third person). And inclusivity encodes various combinations of the speech roles, speaker and hearer (1+2) or speaker, hearer and other (1+2+3) or speaker and other (1+3) etc. Number and gender, on the other hand, have more to do with the properties of the discourse referents fulfilling the speech roles in question, either with their cardinality or sex, humanness or animacy. Since the major function of person forms is typically assumed to be the encoding of the distinction between the three persons and especially between the first and second person, rather than the encoding of the properties of the referents of these speech roles, the primary exponents of the category of person in a language may be expected to be particularly well differentiated with respect to the dimensions of person and inclusivity but less well differentiated with respect to number and gender. Accordingly, the second hypothesis is: if the semantic distinctions encoded in free and bound person forms of a language are not identical, the more elaborate person and inclusivity distinctions will be expressed by the primary exponents of the grammatical category person in that language, the more elaborate number and gender distinctions by the secondary exponents of person. In other words, in free pronoun languages greater elaboration of person and/or inclusivity distinctions will be associated with the free forms, greater elaboration of number and/or gender with the bound forms. And conversely, in bound pronoun languages; greater elaboration of person and/or inclusivity will be associated with bound pronouns, while greater elaboration of gender and/or number with free forms.


Both of the hypotheses stated above, and particularly hypothesis two, are somewhat at odds with the widely accepted claim that bound person forms originate from free person forms in the process of grammaticalization (see e.g. Givón 1976; Lehmann 1982b; Corbett 1991; Siewierska 1999). The grammaticalization scenario entails that accompanying the loss of independent status and phonological reduction of forms is semantic reduction or bleaching (see e.g. Lehmann 1982a: 236; Haspelmath 1998: 1050; Croft 2000).3 Accordingly, one would expect bound person forms to be either equally or less differentiated semantically than the free forms irrespective of language type. Yet hypothesis one predicts equal or greater semantic differentiation of bound forms than of free forms in bound pronoun languages, and hypothesis two in both bound pronoun and free pronoun languages, though with respect to different semantic dimensions. While neither of the two hypotheses is actually irreconcilable with the grammaticalization scenario, the corroboration of either would raise the question of the mechanisms leading to the bi-directional as opposed to unidirectional asymmetries in the semantic distinctions encoded in person forms. An investigation of the two hypotheses is thus of interest not only for typological reasons but also for diachronic ones. The chapter will be organised as follows. Section two presents the person forms covered by this investigation, the semantic dimensions which they encode and the way we have determined the degree of elaboration of each of these dimensions in a paradigm. Section three elaborates on the classification of languages in terms of which person forms are the primary exponents of the category person and presents the typology that we have used in our analysis. Section four is devoted to testing the bi-directionality of the asymmetries in semantic distinctions encoded in free and bound person forms as captured in the two hypotheses presented above on the basis of the languages in our sample. In section five we briefly consider how our findings can be accommodated within the context of the grammaticalization scenario. Finally, section six provides some concluding remarks.

2. Semantic distinctions in free and bound forms The distinction between free vs. bound person forms, though so frequently invoked, is not uncontroversial. So before we proceed to consider the semantic distinctions in person forms, a few words about our classification of free and bound forms are in order. Typically, what is meant by a free person form (or its equivalents such as independent, full, disjunctive etc.) is a person marker which constitutes a separate word and may take primary word stress, such as the English I, me, you, she, they. Word status in turn is associated with properties such as the ability to be involved in coor-

25

26


dinations, the possibility of being deleted under appropriate discourse conditions and the possibility of being modified by another word (see e.g. Zwicky 1985; Dixon and Aikhenvald 2002). Most languages have at least one paradigm of person forms which qualify as free in the above sense and many languages have several such paradigms. For the purpose of this investigation we have selected from each language the free nominative or absolutive forms or, in the case of languages lacking such forms, the forms that may be used as single word answers to questions such as “Who is coming?”. The selected forms are thus not homogenous from either the syntactic or pragmatic point of view. They do, however, all satisfy some subset of the commonly used criteria for word status and may carry the pragmatic function of focus. Turning to the notion bound, we have subsumed under this notion what others call dependent or reduced person forms which include so-called weak forms, clitics and affixes.4 In terms of function, the forms in question correspond to what in the wake of Bresnan and Mchombo (1987) are referred to as anaphoric and grammatical agreement markers. As for their syntactic relation, we will restrict our attention to bound person forms used in intransitive clauses featuring unergative predicates such as those illustrated in (4), (5) and (6) below.5

(4) Woleaian (Sohn 1975: 150) (Gaami) gai lag! you:pl 2pl go ‘You(pl) go!’

(5) Marubo (Romankevicius Costa 1998: 66) (Ia-Ø) in=wi’ša–i-ki. I:abs 1sg-write-pres ‘I am writing.’

(6) Cora (Casad 1984: 178) Nyε-yaana. 1sg-smoke ‘I’m smoking.’

Although person forms may encode semantic dimensions other than person, number, inclusivity or gender, our comparison of the free and bound forms is restricted to these four dimensions. Each of these four semantic dimensions may be elaborated to a greater or lesser degree within a person paradigm, including person itself. Therefore in comparing free person forms and their corresponding bound counterparts we have taken into account not only whether a given semantic dimension is present or not but also the extent to which it is manifested in a paradigm. In particular, we have taken into consideration the number of oppositions expressed within each dimension, their distribution within the paradigm and the major pat-


terns of homophonies displayed. How exactly we have assigned weights along each semantic dimension is explicated below.

2.1 Person Of the three persons typically taken to comprise the grammatical category person, the first and second person are generally viewed as being more central to the category than the third. Moreover, the first person is typically ranked over the second. In measuring the degree of semantic elaboration of person paradigms we have assumed the above ranking, i.e. we have used the traditional person hierarchy in (7).

(7) 1 > 2 > 3

Within the three person system, a paradigm fully specified for person is one in which each of the three persons is distinguished from the other by a phonologically distinct form.6 Departures from full specification may involve absence of one of the three persons altogether or the presence of homophonies. Paradigms lacking a particular person distinction are not very common, particularly in the case of free forms.7 Nonetheless, there are languages which have free forms only for a subset of the three persons, typically for the first and second person, the third being rendered by lexical expressions. This is the case, for example, in Salt Yui (Irwin 1974: 32), a Papuan language, where third person is indicated by a specific noun, such as yai ‘male’ or al ‘female’ followed by a demonstrative. Bound forms may also lack one (or more) of the three persons. For example, the Mixtecan language Copala Trique (Hollenbach 1992: 349) has subject clitics for the first and third person singular but not for the second person singular or any person in the non-singular apart from a generalized inclusive. The person–number combinations lacking clitics are expressed by free forms. To give another example, in the Brazilian language Trumai (Guirardello 1999) there are absolutive clitics for the third person but none for either the first or the second, which again are expressed by free forms. And in Noni (Hyman 1981: 77) a Grassfields language of Cameroon, a bound person marker in the form of a homorganic nasal obligatorily occurs on the verb but only for the first person singular, no other person–number combination. Person paradigms which lack a particular person or person–number category such as the above may be referred to as defective. In assessing their degree of defectiveness with respect to person, we have applied the ranking of the three persons in the person hierarchy in (7). Accordingly, absence of the first person has been weighted more severely than of the second, and of the second more severely than of the third. Underspecification for person due to homophony is far more common than are defective paradigms. Homophonies may involve any two persons, as in (8a, b, c) or even all three, as in (8d).

27

28


(8) a. b. c. d.

1 vs 2 = 3 1 = 3 vs. 2 1 = 2 vs. 3 1=2=3

Pattern (8a), homophony between the second and third person with a distinct form for the first can be observed in the Papuan language Wambon in its subject suffixes as illustrated in (9).

(9) Wambon (De Vries 1989: 22) 1sg -ep 1pl -eva 2sg Ø 2pl -e (past)/-na(future)/Ø(present) 3sg Ø 3pl -e (past)/-na(future)/Ø(present)

The second pattern (8b), where the first and third persons are homophonous and distinguished from the second, is illustrated in (10) below on the basis of the singular S/A suffixes of the realis mood in another Papuan language, Koiari. (10) Koiari (Dutton 1996: 23) Present Past 1sg -ma -nu -nua 2sg -a -nu 3sg -ma -nua 1pl -a -nua 2pl -a -nua 3pl -a Pattern (8c), homophony between the first and second person and a distinct form for the third, is shown in (11) from yet another Papuan language, Au. (11) Au (Scorza 1985: 223) 1du 1sg h- 2du 2sg h- 3du m 3sg m/n k- 3du f 3sg f w- 3du n

w- y- t- n- m-

1pl 2pl 3pl m/f 3pl n

mynm-

Pattern (8d), homophony of all three persons, is conditional on there being actual person distinctions in some other person–number combinations of the same paradigm. Such is the case in Koiari, which, as (10) demonstrates, has a 1 3 vs. 2 opposition in the singular and a three way homophony in the plural. While homophonies involving non-distinctiveness of all three persons obviously constitute a more radical departure from a fully specified person paradigm than


those involving non-distinctiveness of two persons, the latter can be further differentiated with reference to the person hierarchy in (7). Although even finer grained distinctions could be made, we have differentiated between homophonies which obliterate the distinction between the first and second person as in (8c) as opposed to ones which do not as in (8a) and (8b). We have sought to capture the various types of underspecification for person in a four-point scale. The maximum 4 points has been assigned to a paradigm fully specified for person, 3 points to one defective with respect to the third person, 2 points to paradigms involving a homophony between other than the first and second persons and 1 point to paradigms defective in the second person or the second and third person. Paradigms manifesting homophony between first and second person or defective for both first and second person as well as those manifesting a threeway homophony have been assigned zero points.

2.2 Number Although there are person paradigms which do not manifest the semantic dimension of number, the overwhelming majority do. Most commonly person paradigms display only a two way number opposition, of singular, denoting exactly one first, second or third person and non-singular, denoting more than one individual. There are, however, person paradigms which also feature a dual as in Sye, Sentani and Au, illustrated earlier above in (2), (3) and (10) respectively. Yet higher numbers, namely trial as in the Austronesian language Larike (12) or paucal (several or a few) as in Southeastern Ambrym (13) are also to be found in person paradigms, though so far they have been attested mainly among the languages of Micronesia.8 (12) Larike (Laidig 1993: 321) sg du trial 1incl itua- itidi- itearua- aridu- 1excl au 2 a-/ai- irua- iridu- 3hum mati3nhum i-

pl amiimiiri-

(13) East Ambrym (Crowley 2004: 666) sg du pauc pl 1incl rali- rati- rimali- mati- mu1excl ni- 2 ui- muli- muti- mu3 i- lali- lati- li-

29

30


The cross-linguistic distribution of number oppositions in person paradigms is seen as conforming to the number hierarchy in (14), i.e. in the main the presence of a trial or paucal implies the presence of a dual, that of a dual a plural, and that of a plural, a singular (see Corbett 2000: 38). (14) singular > plural > dual > trial/paucal Assuming that the unmarked situation is the presence of the same number oppositions, be it singular vs. non-singular or singular vs. dual vs. plural etc. with all three persons, departures from this norm may be treated as instances of homophony, though horizontal as opposed to vertical homophony. Our assessment of the degree of elaboration of number in a paradigm is based on a six point scale. The maximum of 6 points has been assigned to paradigms manifesting a four-way number opposition, 4 points to paradigms with a three-way number opposition, 2 points to paradigms with a two-way number opposition, 1 point to paradigms with only singular number and 0 points to paradigms lacking the dimension of number. Paradigms featuring a horizontal homophony have been penalized by having a point subtracted. Thus, for example, a paradigm with a fourway number opposition and horizontal homophonies has received 5 points rather than 6. We have not taken into account in the point system the type of horizontal homophony present, be it with respect to the person involved or the number oppositions embraced. The former will, however, be taken into consideration in the discussion in Section 4.1.2.

2.3 Inclusivity and the first person complex Inclusivity is associated with the non-singular dimension but is not in itself part of the dimension of number. It relates to some of the possible interpretations of non-singular first persons, namely those that do not involve simply more than one speaker as represented in (15) and illustrated on the basis of examples from English in (16b, c, d). (15) 1+1 1+2 1+2+3 1+3 (16) a. b. c. d.

more than one speaker the speaker and addressee the speaker, addressee and minimally one other the speaker and other

We solemnly swear We’ve got a bond in common, you and I. You, Anne and I are working ourselves to death. Me and Sarah Jones, we went up early.


Although none of the interpretations of the first person non-singular specified in (15) receive special encoding in English, all but the first (1+1) do so on a cross-linguistic basis. The encoding possibilities of the other three interpretations that have been attested cross-linguistically are summarized in (17), taken from Siewierska and Bakker (2005).9 (17) NoWe Unified We Only Inclusive Minimal Inclusive Augmented Inclusive Inclusive–exclusive Minimal Augmented

1+2 = 1+2+3 = 1+3 1+2 = 1+2+3 1+2 vs. 1+2+3 = 1+3 1+2+3 vs. 1+2 = 1+3 1+2 = 1+2+3 vs. 1+3 1+2 vs. 1+2+3 vs. 1+3

The label ‘NoWe’ is used for paradigms which have no separate form for non-singular first person, i.e. they have no ‘we’ as distinct from ‘I’. The label ‘unified we’ (abbreviated UnifWe) embraces paradigms which have one form for non-singular first person covering all three interpretations, 1+2, 1+2+3 and 1+3, as is the case in English and most of the person paradigms cited earlier. We will consider this form to belong to plural number in case there is such a paradigm. The third pattern labelled ‘only inclusive’ (OnlyIncl) is used for paradigms in which there is a special form for 1+2 and 1+2+3 but not for the exclusive 1+3. An example of such a paradigm is given in (18) from Chalcatongo Mixtec, a language spoken in south-central Mexico, in which this pattern occurs both in the independent person forms and the corresponding SA clitics. (18) Chalcatongo Mixtec (Macaulay 1996: 139) 1 rú?ú 1+2 žó?ó 2 ró?ó 1+2+3 žó?ó 3m càà 3f nā?ā 3animal kɨtɨ 3supernatural í?a, íža The fourth pattern called ‘minimal inclusive’ (MinIncl) denotes paradigms such as the one in (19) from the Austronesian language Uma spoken in Sulawesi in which there is a separate form for the speaker-hearer dyad 1+2 and another form covering both 1+2+3 and 1+3.10

31

32


(19) Uma (Martens 1988: 169) Singular Non-singular 1 aku’ 1+2 kita’ 1+2+3 kai’ 1+3 kai’ 2 iko 2+2 koi 3 hi’a 3+3 hira’ In the next pattern, called augmented inclusive (AugIncl), there is a special form for 1+2+3 and another form covering 1+2 and 1+3, as we see in the paradigm in (20) from Bunuba, a language of Western Australia. (20) Bunuba (Rumsey 1999: 139) Singular Non-singular 1 ngayini 1+2 ngiyirri 1+2+3 yaarri 1+3 ngiyirri 2 nginji 2+2 yinggirri 3 niy 3+3 biyirri The penultimate pattern is the traditional inclusive–exclusive distinction (Incl– Excl) which involves the separation of groups involving the speaker and addressee (1+2 and 1+2+3) from those that involve the speaker and some other party (1+3). This pattern can be seen in several of the paradigms given earlier, for example, in (2) from Sye. And finally there is the three way split within the first person non-singular which we call the minimal augmented (MinAug) where there are separate forms for the minimal inclusive, augmented inclusive and exclusive. This pattern is illustrated in (21) from Koh, a language of Cameroon. (21) Koh (Glidden 1985: 230) Singular Non-singular 1 mì 1+2 ná 1+2+3 nári 1+3 bburu 2 mù ì 3 ka i The above encodings may be grouped in terms of the number of formal distinctions made within the first person complex, as in (22) or the degree of separation of the speaker–addressee dyad, as in (23).


(22) MinAug > In/Excl > OnlyIncl > NoWe AugIncl UnifWe MinIncl (23) MinAug > In/Excl > AugIncl > OnlyIncl > UnifWe > NoWe MinIncl In assessing the degree of elaboration of the first person complex we have used the latter scale, with adaptations for higher numbers. This has resulted in a scale from 8 to 0 points. The MinAug has been assigned 8 points, the Incl–Excl 4 points, the AugIncl or MinIncl 3 points, the OnlyIncl 2 points, the UnifWe 1 point and NoWe 0 points. Paradigms with the Incl–Excl contrast in more than in one number opposition have received an extra point for each number opposition in which the Incl– Excl contrast obtains. Some minor patterns, for instance, the existence of an Incl– Excl contrast just in the plural or dual or alternatively a dual just in the inclusive or the exclusive have been treated as split and assigned 6 points.

2.4 Gender Unlike in the case of number, which tends to be distributed uniformly across each of the three persons, gender strongly favors the third person. Gender in the second person is rather uncommon outside of North Africa, where it occurs in the Semitic, Berber, Cushitic and Chadic languages. And gender in the first person is quite rare (see e.g. Siewierska 2004: 105). A paradigm which quite exceptionally manifests gender in all three persons is given in (24) from Ngala, a Papuan language of the Sko family. (24) Ngala (Laycok 1965: 133) sg du pl 1m wn 1ʌyn 1nan 1f ñən 2gwn 2m mən 2bən 2f yn 3m kər 3(kə)bər 3rʌr 3f yn The likelihood of a particular person displaying gender is captured in the hierarchy in (25). (25) 3 > 2 >1 Gender is not only typical of the third person as opposed to the second or first but also of the singular rather than the non-singular. Moreover, among the non-singular

33

34


categories it seems to favor the more restricted ones, i.e. the dual or dual and trial as opposed to the plural, at least in the case of sex-based gender. Since gender in other than the third person is uncommon and is also typically restricted to the singular, we have not treated the absence of gender say in the second person as opposed to the third or the non-singular as opposed to the singular as involving homophony. Rather, in assessing the degree of elaboration of a paradigm for gender we have focused on the person–number combinations that do display a gender distinction. In assessing gender relative to person we have assigned 2 points for gender in the first or second person and 1 point for gender in the third. Additional points have been given for the presence of gender in other than the singular. The maximal number of points assigned in the languages in our sample is 5.

2.5 Summary Using the point scales outlined above, we have assigned the person paradigms of free forms and bound S forms occurring in each language a set of four numerical values which together define a matrix such as the one in Table 1 which provides the values for the two person paradigms in Sye shown earlier in (2). Table 1. Values for each semantic dimension per person form Person form

Person Max = 4

Number Max = 6

Inclusivity Max = 8

Gender Max = 5

Free Bound

4 4

2 4

4 5

0 0

The values on each of the semantic dimensions have then served as the basis of our comparison of the degree of semantic elaboration of free and bound forms within a language.

3. Free vs. bound pronoun languages and the head vs. dependent marking typology The classification of languages in terms of whether the free or the bound person forms are the primary exponents of the grammatical category person into free pronoun vs. bound pronoun languages is highly reminiscent of the head vs. dependent marking typology elaborated by Nichols (1992). In the latter typology the major contributor to a positive value for head–marking is the availability of bound person forms for argument functions. The major contributor to a positive value for dependent marking, on the other hand, is the presence of case marking on free form


arguments. While the availability of bound person forms for argument functions does not logically entail that such forms must be viewed as the primary exponents of the grammatical category person, cross-linguistic studies suggest that this is indeed so. In fact under some analyses the bound person forms in head marking languages and not the free forms are considered to be the realizations of the verbal arguments. In any case free person forms in such languages are seen to be used only sparingly, typically in restricted discourse contexts. Accordingly, one would expect there to be a high degree of correlation between head marking languages and bound pronoun ones. An analogous correlation, though perhaps somewhat weaker, is also to be expected between dependent marking languages and free pronoun ones. Again although overt case marking of free form arguments does not logically entail the unavailability of bound person forms or the availability of such forms just for one of the argument functions, cross-linguistic investigations reveal that this is the dominant pattern. And needless to say, if bound forms are available only for one argument function, typically the subject, it is the free forms rather than the bound which will emerge as the primary exponents of person. Another significant point of similarity between the two typologies is that both are scalar rather than discrete. Thus languages may display various degrees of head and dependent marking and differ with respect to the availability and use of free and bound person forms. In relation to the second point, it is well known that in languages which do have bound person forms these forms need not be obligatory. Thus, for example, in Makuchi, Pari and Retuarã the bound person forms for both the subject and object are in complementary distribution with the free. The same applies with respect to the subject forms in, for instance, Coptic, and Teribe, and the object forms in Candoshi, Guarani, Kera, Kiribatese, Noon and Waura. What is less well known is that free forms are not necessarily available for all grammatical functions. For example, in Kiribatese, an Austronesian language spoken in the Republic of Kiribati, free person forms are used only as single word answers to questions (26a), and as subjects of nominal predicates (26b). (26) Kiribatese (Groves et al. 1985: 64, 104) a. Antaiae e roko? Ngala. who 3sg come (s)he ‘Who came? (S)he did.’ b. Ngala te beretitenti. (s)he the president ‘(S)he is the president.’ As illustrated below, subjects of adjectival (27a) and verbal predicates (27bc) are indicated by weak person forms, and direct objects (27b) and objects of prepositions (27c) by person suffixes.

35

36


(27) Kiribatese (Groves et al. 1985: 106, 86, 110) a. E tikiraoi. 3sg pretty ‘(S)he is pretty.’ b. E noora-i. 3sg see-1sg ‘He saw me.’ c. E kanakoa te reta nako-iu the letter to-1sg 3sg sent ‘(S)he sent the letter to me.’ Significantly, there are no free person forms for direct objects. Other languages which have free forms for at least some types of subjects but not for objects are Anejom, Au, Canela Kraho, Gapun, Geez, Malak Malak, Maranguku, Palikur, Salinan and Sumerian. While both the free vs. bound pronoun typology and the head vs. dependent marking one are matters of degree, only the latter has actually been quantified. In view of this, we have opted to test the hypotheses relating to the distribution of semantic distinctions in free as opposed to bound person forms not directly relative to the free vs. bound pronoun language typology but relative to the head vs. dependent marking one. Our classification of languages in terms of the head vs. dependent marking typology is based on the algorithm adopted by Nichols (1992), which involves adding up all the head marking and depending marking points assigned to clausal arguments on the basis of the marking characteristics that they display and dividing the dependent marking points by the sum of the dependent and head marking ones. Following Nichols, we have classified languages as head-marking if they score between 0.0 and 0.3 points, as mixed if they score between 0.4 and 0.6 points and as dependent-marking if they score between 0.7 and 1.00 point. In terms of this point scale, of the 328 languages in the sample 109 (33%) emerge as head marking ones, 145 (44%) as mixed, and 74 (23%) as dependent marking languages.11

4. Semantic distinctions in person forms and head vs. dependent marking The hypotheses under investigation lead us to expect that there should be a difference between head marking and dependent marking languages with respect to the encoding of semantic distinctions in free and bound person forms. The difference in question is, however, seen to obtain only in the case of languages in which the semantic distinctions expressed in free and bound forms are not the same. Therefore, in or-


der to have some idea of the actual scope of the phenomenon to be investigated, let us first consider the extent of same vs. different encoding of person, number, inclusivity and gender in free and bound person forms among the languages in the sample. In comparing free and bound person forms with respect to the semantic distinctions that they display we have taken two paradigms as displaying the same semantic distinctions with respect to a given semantic dimension only if they achieve identical scores on the numerical scales for the dimension in question. The differences have been divided into two groups, those in which the semantic distinctions displayed by free forms are more elaborate than those manifested by the bound forms (F > B), and the converse, i.e. those in which the semantic distinctions displayed by the bound forms are more elaborate than those present in the free forms (F < B). In relation to the dimension of person we have performed two types of calculations. The first does not consider as third person forms, forms which are homophonous with demonstratives, while the second does. As we shall see below, the above difference in the treatment of third person forms homophonous with demonstratives has considerable consequences on the number of instances of F < B in the sample. The distribution of the same as opposed to different semantic distinctions and the two types of differences along each of the four semantic dimensions is shown in Table 2a and Table 2b. In Table 2a the third person forms homophonous with demonstratives have been disregarded; in Table 2b they have been included. We see that in the vast majority of instances the degree of elaboration of each of the four semantic dimensions in free and bound person forms is the same.12 The biggest difference of 38.5% is with respect to person in Table 2a, i.e. when demonstratives are disregarded. The differences along the other dimensions and also of person when demonstratives are included are all well under 30%. The hypotheses to be tested thus pertain only to the 347 (Table 2a) and 307 (Table 2b) cases manifesting a difference along any of the four semantic dimensions.13 Table 2a. Differences between free forms and bound S forms N = 328 3#Dem Comparison

Person

Number

Gender

Inclusivity

F = B N = 965 F > B N = 239 F < B N = 108

202 (61.5%) 68 (20.7%) 58 (17.6%)

239 (72.82%) 65 (19.8%) 24 (7.3%)

265 (80.8%) 50 (15.2%) 13 (4.0%)

259 (79.0%) 56 (17.0%) 13 (4.0%)

Table 2b. Differences between free forms and bound S forms N = 328 Comparison

Person

Number

Gender

Inclusivity

F = B N = 1005 F > B N = 253 F < B N = 54

242 (73.8%) 82 (25.0%) 4 (1.2%)

239 (72.82%) 65 (19.8%) 24 (7.3%)

265 (80.8%) 50 (15.2%) 13 (4.0%)

259 (79.0%) 56 (17.0%) 13 (4.0%)

37

38


The figures in Table 2a and 2b reveal a significant contrast between the instances of F > B as compared to F < B on every semantic dimension, especially person. This is fully in line with the grammaticalization scenario which leads us to expect that bound person forms should be equally or less well differentiated semantically than their free counterparts. The contrast with respect to the instances of F > B as opposed to F B outnumber those of F B to F B in Table 2b casts doubt on the validity of any hypothesis positing an asymmetry with respect to the degree of elaboration of semantic distinctions in free and bound person forms which is bi-directional rather than unidirectional. But no such doubts arise with respect to the data in Table 2a where the levels of F > B as opposed to F B over F < B, some type of bi-directional asymmetry in the degree of elaboration of the encoding of semantic distinctions in free and bound person forms may well emerge once the data are considered relative to the head vs. dependent marking typology. It is to this that we now turn.

4.1 Hypothesis 1 The first hypothesis is that if free and bound person forms differ in terms of the semantic distinctions that they encode, the semantic distinctions encoded in free forms should be more elaborate than those in bound forms in dependent marking languages, while the converse should be the case in head marking languages. The most liberal interpretation of this hypothesis is that: (a) there should be more instances of F > B in dependent marking languages than in head marking languages and conversely (b) there should be more instances of F < B in head marking than in dependent marking languages.14 For ease of reference we shall refer to these two sub-hypotheses as H1a and H1b respectively. Let us now consider how these two sub-hypotheses fare relative to each of the four semantic dimensions.

4.1.1 Person In considering H1a and H1b in relation to the semantic dimension of person, number and gender we have taken into account both differences affecting any of the three persons and also those affecting only the speech act participants. Therefore in the relevant Tables there is more than one row of figures for both F > B and F < B. In the case of person separate figures are also provided for cases in which demon-


Table 3. Differences in person distinctions in head, mixed and dependent marking languages F > B123 F > B123 3#Dem F > B12 F < B123 F < B123 3#Dem F < B12

H-marking languages

M-marking languages

D–marking languages

24 (22.0%) 21 (19.2%) 7 (6.4%) 3 (2.8%) 18 (16.5%) 0 (0.0%)

33 (22.6%) 25 (17.8%) 12 (8.3%) 1 (0.7%) 28 (19.9%) 0 (0.0%)

25 (33.8%) 22 (29.7%) 18 (24.3%) 0 (0.0%) 12 (16.2%) 0 (0.0%)

stratives functioning as third person forms have and have not been included. For person thus there are three rows of figures for F > B and F < B respectively and for number and gender two. Since inclusivity is tied to the first person complex, only one set of figures is provided. The distribution of more elaborate person distinctions in free forms than in bound forms F > B, and of more elaborate person distinctions in bound forms than in free forms F B in dependent than in head marking languages irrespective of whether demonstratives are or are not treated as third person forms and irrespective of whether all persons or just the first and second are considered. The difference is particularly clear with respect to speech act participants, which evince more elaborate encoding in free forms as compared to bound forms nearly four times as often in dependent marking languages than in head marking languages. By contrast H1b fares not so well. It finds some support in the data when demonstratives are included.. There are no dependent marking languages with F < B but there are such head and mixed marking languages. When demonstratives functioning as third person forms are excluded, however, the percentage of F < B in head marking and dependent marking languages is virtually the same and counter to what one would expect, the highest level of F < B occurs in mixed marking languages. Needless to say, all the cases of F B123 F > B12 F < B123 F < B12

H-marking languages

M-marking languages


24 (22.0%) 10 (9.1%) 6 (5.5%) 2 (1.8%)

22 (15.1%) 6 (4.1%) 15 (10.3%) 5 (3.4%)

19 (25.6%) 2 (2.7%) 3 (4.1%) 2 (2.7%)

39

40


(28) Acoma (Miller 1965: 174, 100) Free S prefixes 1sg sinume, hinume 1 s2 ş2sg hisume 3 g-/s-

4.1.2 Number The relevant data pertaining to H1a and H1b involving the dimension of number are presented in Table 4. The data are less supportive of either H1a or H1b than in the case of person. The predicted asymmetry between head and dependent marking languages is borne out when all three persons are considered. In line with H1a the percentage of dependent marking languages with F > B is higher than of the head marking languages. And in accordance with H1b the percentage of head marking languages with F B is lower than in the head–marking languages (rather than higher) and that of F < B nearly twice as high as in the head marking languages (rather than lower). When number is viewed only in relation to the first and second person, there is no support for either the H1a or the H1b. The data are in fact consistent with predictions that are the very opposite to those captured by the H1a and H1b. The percentage of head marking languages with first and/or second persons manifesting richer number distinctions in the free forms than in the bound is three times higher than that of dependent marking languages. Conversely, the percentage of dependent marking languages with more elaboration for number in speech act participants in bound forms than in free forms is marginally higher than of head marking languages. Again, however, the mixed languages do not behave as might be expected. 4.1.3 Inclusivity A yet different picture of H1a and H1b emerges when they are considered with respect to the dimension of inclusivity. As H1a predicts, in dependent marking languages the dimension of inclusivity is better elaborated in free than in bound person forms (F > B), in fact about 50 per cent more often than in head marking languages. Contrary to H1b, on the other hand, the highest level of F < B with respect to inclusivity is manifested in mixed marking languages such as the West Papuan language Hatam, the person forms of which are illustrated in (29), rather than in head marking ones.


Table 5. Differences in inclusivity distinctions in head, mixed and dependent marking languages F>B F B123 F > B12 F < B123 F < B12

H-marking languages

M-marking languages


15 (13.8%) 3 (2.7%) 6 (5.5%) 0 (0.0%)

21 (14.5%) 5 (3.4%) 3 (2.1%) 0 (0.0%)

14 (18.9%) 1 (1.4%) 4 (5.4%) 1 (1.4%)

4.1.5 Summary The extent to which H1a and H1b are borne out by the relevant languages in our sample for each of the four semantic dimensions is summarised in Table 7. We see that the four semantic dimensions differ with respect to the degree of support that they offer for the two sub-hypotheses. The strongest degree of support comes from person with respect to H1a. H1b is weakly supported and only when demonstratives are included. Inclusivity provides support for H1a but not for H1b. The evidence from number and gender is inconclusive in that the predicted Table 7. The correctness of H1a and H1b among the relevant languages in the sample Person All H1a H1b

+ +

Number 1st & 2nd + ?

All (+) (+)

Inclusivity 1st & 2nd − −

Gender All

+ −

+ +

1st & 2nd − −


asymmetry between head and dependent marking languages is displayed when all persons are considered but not with respect to the speech act participants. Moreover in the case of number, the mixed marking languages behave in an unexpected way. The fact that four semantic dimensions do not behave identically and that for number and gender the hypotheses fare quite differently depending on which persons are taken into account suggests that it is worth considering hypothesis 2.

4.2 Hypothesis 2 The second hypothesis makes different predictions with respect to the distribution of person and inclusivity as opposed to number and gender. What unites person and inclusivity is that they are inherently tied to the discourse roles of speaker and addressee. Number and gender by contrast have to do with the nature of the referents filling the discourse roles of speaker and addressee. The basic assumption underlying hypothesis 2 is that the primary exponents of the category person should not feature information which would detract from their ability to fulfil their primary function which is the identification of the speaker and addressee. In other words, the primary exponents of the category person should be well differentiated with respect to person and inclusivity but should not evince elaborate gender or number distinctions. Thus given that the primary exponents of the grammatical category person in dependent marking languages are free forms and in head marking languages bound forms, hypothesis 2 is as follows: If free and bound person forms differ in terms of the semantic distinctions that they encode, with respect to person and inclusivity free forms should be more elaborate than bound forms in dependent marking languages, and bound forms should be more elaborate than free forms in head marking languages, but with respect to number and gender, bound forms should be more elaborate than free forms in dependent marking languages, and free forms should be more elaborate than bound in head marking languages.

If we apply the same liberal interpretation of H2 as of H1, then we may expect (a) there to be more instances of Fp > Bp and/or Fi >Bi in dependent marking languages than in head marking language, (b) more instances of Fp < Bp and/or Fi < Bi in head marking languages than in dependent marking languages, (c) more instances of Fn < Bn or Fg < Bg in dependent marking languages than in head marking languages and (d) more instances of Fn > Bn and/or Fg > Bg in head marking than in dependent marking languages. We will refer to each of the above as H2a, H2b, H2c and H2d respectively. The first two sub-hypotheses H2a and H2b are equivalent to H1a and H1b as applied to person and inclusivity. H2c and H2d, on the other hand, make the opposite predictions to H1a and H1b. As evidenced by the data in Tables 3 and 5 discussed

43

44


earlier, H2a is confirmed with respect to person and inclusivity. H2b, by contrast, is not confirmed. There are head marking languages in the sample in which the dimensions of person or inclusivity are more elaborate in the bound forms than in the free, but this is just as common or even more common in dependent marking and/ or mixed marking languages It is also of interest to note that the head marking languages in the sample which do conform to H2b have free forms of the NoWe type and lacking number oppositions as is the case in the Tanoan language Kiowa, the person forms of which are illustrated in (31). (31) Kiowa (Watkins 1984: 100, 113, 115) Free S 1 à- 1+2+(3) bà1 nɔ́ 2 ám 2 èm- 1+3 è3 Ø- 2+2(+3) bà Inverse è- 3+3(hum) áAs for H2c and H2d, both find support along the dimensions of number and gender though with respect to speech act participants rather than for all persons. It is, however, precisely with respect to speech act participants that the distribution of number and gender is claimed to differ from that of person and inclusivity. As predicted by H2c, the percentage of dependent marking languages in which the first and second person bound forms have more elaborate number or gender distinctions than the free forms is higher than in head marking languages (2.7% vs. 1.8% and 1.4% vs. 0% respectively) and the percentage of head marking languages in which the free forms of the first and second person evince more number or gender distinctions than the bound forms is higher than in dependent marking languages (9.1% vs. 2.7% and 2.7% vs. 1.8% respectively). It must be remembered, however, that gender marking in speech act participants is in itself very rare. Accordingly, the number of cases supporting H2c and H2d with respect to gender is very low. Nonetheless, the data cited above do provide support for hypothesis 2. Moreover, the support is stronger than with respect to hypothesis 1. Now what remains to be seen is how these hypotheses can be reconciled with the grammaticalization scenario.

5. Bi-directional asymmetries in semantic distinctions and grammaticalization We have seen that for every semantic dimension instances of F > B are more common than of F < B in all three types of languages, head marking, mixed marking and dependent marking. Thus contrary to hypothesis 1 and hypothesis 2 and in line with the grammaticalization scenario, there is no evident bi-directionality with


respect to the asymmetries in free and bound person forms with respect to the semantic distinctions that they encode. Nonetheless we have also seen that there is some support for hypothesis 2, which predicts that the asymmetry in the semantic elaboration of person forms is to some extent sensitive to the nature of the semantic distinctions and type of languages involved. The support in question, however, comes in the main from the distribution of F > B patterns not of F B patterns are precisely what this scenario predicts. The above notwithstanding, it is of interest to consider what implications our findings do carry for the grammaticalization account of the asymmetries in semantic distinctions between free and bound forms. Our data have shown that there are some differences in the levels of F > B between head, mixed and dependent marking languages. Dependent marking languages display higher levels of F > B on each of the four semantic dimensions than the mixed and head marking ones. Within the grammaticalization context this may be interpreted as suggestive of the bound forms in dependent marking languages being diachronically older, more grammaticalized, than those in mixed and head marking languages. The only exceptions to the generally higher level of F > B in dependent marking languages in our sample involve speech act participants along the dimensions of number and gender. In both instances the head marking languages surpass the dependent with respect to the level of F > B. It is this that constitutes the strongest support for hypothesis 2. From the perspective of grammaticalization the higher levels of F > B in head marking languages in the case of speech act participants on the dimensions of number and gender are somewhat unexpected, since there is no obvious reason why the effects of grammaticalization which are typically stronger in dependent marking languages should in this case favour the head marking ones. On closer inspection, however, an alternative explanation for the data is available. Although the most obvious way of viewing the F > B patterns of speech act participant with respect to number and gender in head marking languages is as a consequence of semantic bleaching on the part of the bound forms, it is also possible to see them as the result of the emergence of new free forms with more elaborate semantic distinctions subsequent to the development of the bound. In this case the lower degree of elaboration of number and gender in the bound forms as compared to the free would not be directly attributable to their relative diachronic age or grammaticalization. Currently we do not have enough data at our disposal to verify whether all the relevant instances of F > B in the head marking languages in the sample could be thus analysed. However, supportive of such an analysis is the fact that in head marking languages the free forms often consist of the bound with an invariable stem such as the word for body or human or an emphatic particle or the verb “to be”. Such free forms are thus diachronically younger than the bound.

45

46


Potentially more challenging for the grammaticalization scenario are the patterns of F < B. These, however, can be accommodated within the context of grammaticalization if the free forms are taken to have lost the relevant semantic distinctions after the emergence of the bound forms or if new free forms featuring less elaborate semantic distinctions are taken to have arisen subsequent to the development of the bound forms. Yet another option is the emergence of new semantic distinctions in the bound person forms.16 Whether there is any correspondence between these three possibilities and the four semantic dimensions and/or language type is not clear. Hypothesis 2 leads us to expect loss of semantic distinctions in free forms to be the source of F < B patterns in dependent marking languages with respect to number and gender and the development of new less differentiated free forms to be the source of F < B patterns in head marking languages in the case of person and inclusivity. Our investigation, however, has provided little evidence for the validity of the F < B predictions of hypothesis 2. Crucially, the most numerous group of instances of F < B in the sample which involves absence of third person free forms (when demonstratives are disregarded) does not favour any of the three marking types. Nor does it clearly favour any of the three sources of F < B patterns listed above. Nonetheless it needs to be mentioned that many of the relevant instances of F < B with respect to person involve third person bound forms which are covert. The bound paradigms qualify as exhibiting a three way person distinction rather than a two way one since the zero forms function as paradigmatic zeroes. Such cases of F < B may be viewed as instantiations, though be it perhaps atypical ones, of the third source of F < B patterns, i.e. of a new semantic distinction arising in bound forms.

6. Concluding remarks Our investigation of the bi-directional as opposed to unidirectional asymmetry in the encoding of semantic distinctions in free and bound person forms has lent little support to the two bi-directionality hypotheses. Nonetheless it needs to be emphasised that for reasons of expediency our investigation has been carried out using a typology different from the one with reference to which the two hypotheses have been actually framed. Although as argued in Section 3 one may expect there to be a high degree of overlap between the head vs. dependent marking typology which we have employed here and the free pronoun vs. bound pronoun language typology which yet remains to be elaborated fully, overlap is not the same as identity. And given the relatively low number of instances of F < B, even minor differences in how languages are classified could have significant repercussions on the overall validity of the hypotheses. Our results therefore can only be viewed as suggestive but not conclusive.


Abbreviations abs dem du excl f hum incl m n

absolutive demonstrative dual number exclusive feminine gender human inclusive masculine gender neuter gender

nhum pauc pl pres S sg 1 2 3

non-human paucal number plural number present tense sole argument of intransitive clause singular number first person second person third person

Notes 1. The assumption that in some languages the bound person forms are the primary exponents of the category person is implicit in the so called Pronominal Argument Hypothesis developed by Jelinek (1984) for non-configurational languages within the context of Chomskian generative grammar and in the grammatical vs. pronominal agreement distinction elaborated by Bresnan and Mchombo (1987). In fact this analysis has been advocated for various subsets of languages by many other scholars ever since its first attested formulation by Wilhelm von Humbold in the 1830s. 2. This second hypothesis has been advanced by Bhat (2004: 18–25). 3. For some criticism of the grammaticalization approach and in particular the relationship between semantic bleaching and phonological reduction see Campbell (2001) or Newmeyer (2001). 4. The term weak form is used in the sense of Bresnan (2001), i.e. not for just unstressed versions of free forms but rather for forms differing from free forms both phonologically and in syntactic distribution. 5. In languages which have more than one set of S forms used with unergative predicates, we have used those occurring in main, declarative clauses, in the main, in the past tense or realis mood. 6. We have considered as phonologically distinct also zero forms, provided that they function as paradigmatic zeroes, i.e. they are functionally equivalent to overt forms. This is typically the case with respect to missing bound forms, though not missing free forms. 7. This statement holds provided that in languages in which demonstratives are used in lieu of third person forms the demonstratives are treated as person forms. In investigating the two hypotheses we have used two analyses, one where demonstratives functioning as third person forms are included and one in which they are excluded. 8. Corbett (2000: 21–38) cautions that most trials are in fact paucals and therefore some paradigms traditionally interpreted as having both a trial and paucal or in the case of Sursurunga, a trial and a quadral are better interpreted as displaying a greater and lesser paucal. 9. The typology of the first person complex in (36) is a slight modification of the typology developed by Cysouw (2003). 10. Paradigms with a minimal inclusive pattern are typically treated as manifesting a dual confined to the first person. We, however, recognise the existence of a dual only if it is used in all person categories.

47

48


11. The low level of dependent marking languages in the sample is due to the fact that given the nature of the investigation the only dependent marking languages that we selected were those which have some type of bound person forms for the S. 12. It must be mentioned that unlike in the case of person and number, no difference in gender or inclusivity between a paradigm of free forms and bound forms in the vast majority of cases involves absence of gender or inclusivity respectively. 13. The 307 differences in the encoding of semantic distinctions in free and bound person forms are distributed over 174 languages. 14. A strict interpretation of the first hypothesis would entail that in head marking languages there should be more instances of F B for every semantic dimension and in dependent marking languages there should be more instances of F > B than of F < B for every semantic dimension. 15. The free forms in Hatam display a minimal inclusive pattern , the bound forms a minimal augmented one. 16. An instance of such a development is discussed by Sakel (2003) in the Mosetenan family of Bolivia. A less typical instance of this source will also be mentioned below.

References Bhat, Darbhe Narayana Shankara. 2004. Pronouns: A cross-linguistic study. Oxford: Oxford University Press [Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory]. Bresnan, Joan. 2001. The emergence of the unmarked pronoun. Optimality-theoretic syntax, ed. by Géraldine Legendre, Jane Grimshaw and Sten Vikner, 113–42. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bresnan, Joan and Sam A. Mchombo. 1987. Topic, pronoun and agreement in Chichewa. Language 63: 741–82. Campbell, Lyle. 2001. What’s wrong with grammaticalization? Language Sciences 23: 113–61. Casad, Eugene H. 1984. Cora. Studies in Uto-Aztecan grammar, vol. 4., ed. by Ronald W. Langacker, 151–459. Arlington, TX: The Summer Institute of Linguistics and The University of Texas at Arlington. Corbett, Greville. 1991. Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Corbett, Greville. 2000. Number. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cowan, Hendrik K. J. 1965. Grammar of the Sentani language. ’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff. Croft, William. 2000. Explaining language change. London: Longman. Crowley, Terry. 1998. An Erromangan (Sye) grammar. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Crowley, Terry. 2004. Southeastern Ambrym. The Oceanic languages, ed. by John Lynch, Malcolm Ross and Terry Crowley, 660–70. London: Curzon Press. Cysouw, Michael. 2003. The paradigmatic structure of person marking. Oxford: Oxford University Press [Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory]. De Vries, Lourens. 1989. Studies in Wambon and Kombai. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Amsterdam. Dixon, Robert M. W. and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds.). 2002. Word. A cross-linguistic typology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dutton, Tom E. 1996. Koiari. Munich: Lincom Europa. Givón, Talmy. 1976. Topic, pronoun and grammatical agreement. Subject and topic, ed. by Charles N. Li, 151–88. New York: Academic Press.


Glidden, Suellyn H. 1985. The Koh verbal system. Work papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota 29: 223–82. Groves, Terab’ata R., Gordon W. Groves and Roderick Jacobs. 1985. Kiribatese: An outline description. Canberra: Australian National University [Pacific Linguistics, D-64]. Guirardello, Raquel. 1999. A reference grammar of Trumai. Ph.D dissertation, Rice University, Houston, TX. Haspelmath, Martin. 1998. Does grammaticalization need reanalysis? Studies in Language 22(2): 315–51. Hollenbach, Barbara E. 1992. A syntactic sketch of Copala Trique. Studies in the syntax of Mixtecan Languages, vol. 4., ed. by C. Henry Bradley and Barbara E. Hollenbach, 173–431. Arlington, TX: The Summer Institute of Linguistics and The University of Texas at Arlington. Hyman, Larry M. 1981. Noni grammatical structure. Los Angeles: The Department of Linguistics, University of Southern California [Southern California Occasional papers in Linguistics 9]. Irwin, Barry S. 1974. Salt Yui grammar. Canberra: Australian National University [Pacific Linguistics, B-35]. Jelinek, Eloise. 1984. Empty categories and non-configurational languages. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 2: 39–76. Laidig, Wyn D. 1993. Insights from Larike possessive constructions. Oceanic Linguistics 32: 312– 51. Laycock, Donald C. 1965. The Ndu language family. Canberra: Australian National University [Linguistic Circle of Canberra Publications]. Lehmann, Christian. 1982a. Universal and typological aspects of agreement. Apprehension. Das sprachliche Erfassen von Gegenständen, vol. 2, ed. by Hans-Jakob Seiler and Franz J. Stachowiak, 201–67. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Lehmann, Christian. 1982b. Thoughts on grammaticalization: A programatic sketch, vol. 1. Köln: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft [Arbeiten des Kölner Universalien-Projekts 48]. Macaulay, Monica. 1996. A grammar of Chalcatongo Mixtec. Berkeley: University of California Press [University of California Publications in Linguistics 127]. Martens, Michael P. 1988. Notes on Uma verbs. Papers in Western Austronesian Linguistics 4: 167–237. Miller, Wick R. 1965. Acoma grammar and texts. Berkeley: University of California Press. Morse, Nancy L. and Michael B. Maxwell. 1999. Cubeo grammar. Arlington, TX: The Summer Institute of Linguistics and The University of Texas at Arlington. Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2001. Deconstructing grammaticalization. Language Sciences 23: 187– 229. Nichols, Johanna. 1992. Linguistic diversity in space and time. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Reesink, Ger P. 1999. A grammar of Hatam. Canberra: The Australian National University [Pacific Linguistics C-146]. Romankevicius Costa, Raquel G. 1998. Aspects of ergativity in Marubo (Panoan). Journal of Amazonian Linguistics 1: 50–103. Rumsey, Alan. 1982. An intra-sentence grammar of Ungarinjin. Canberra: The Australian National University [Pacific Linguistics B-86].

49

50


Rumsey, Alan. 1996. On some relationships among person, number, and mode in Bunuba. Studies in Kimberley languages in honour of Howard Coate, ed. by William McGregor, 139–48. Munich: Lincom Europa. Sakel, Jeanette. 2003. A grammar of Mosetén. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Nijmegen. Scorza, David. 1985. A sketch of Au morphology and syntax. Papers in New Guinea Linguistics 22: 215–273. Siewierska, Anna. 1999. From anaphoric pronoun to grammatical agreement marker: why objects don’t make it. Folia Linguistica 33(2): 225–51. Siewierska, Anna. 2004. Person. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Siewierska, Anna and Dik Bakker. 2005. Inclusive and exclusive in free and bound person forms. Clusivity. Typology and case studies of the inclusive–exclusive distinction, ed. by Elena Filmonova, 149–176. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sohn, Ho-min. 1975. Woleaian reference grammar. Honolulu: University Press of Hawai’i. Watkins, Laurel J. 1984. A grammar of Kiowa. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Zwicky, Arnold. 1985. Clitics and particles. Language 61: 283–305.

part ii

Diachrony and typology

chapter 3

Historical morphology from a typological point of view Examples from English* Dieter Kastovsky University of Vienna

This chapter takes a bird’s eye view of language change with the aim of showing that certain linguistic processes persist over centuries, producing far-reaching, cumulative effects which result in a typological restructuring of the language in question. Various factors from different levels of the language system interact to produce this cumulative drift through the “collaboration” of local changes. The chapter argues that these local changes may in turn be affected by the general drift. They proceed in the same direction and create a feed-back mechanism which favours changes that support this drift rather than changes that go in the opposite direction.

1. Introduction People have short term and long term memories, maps can be small scale and large scale, and we can see a landscape from a hill or get a bird’s eye view of it from a plane. Factually, the things we remember or the objects we see will be the same, but they are perceived from a different perspective, and in a different context. The closer we get to things, the more details we discover, but the fewer relationships between these details and their environment are recognisable to the observer. The same is true of history in general and the history of a language in particular. The finer we slice the historical cake, the more we can find out about the actual mechanisms that govern language change, and especially about the extralinguistic, social factors that play a role in creating synchronic variation as a basis for language change. But at the same time, there is a danger that we lose sight of the fact that these individual changes are usually embedded in more general trends, whose direction might become visible only within the span of several centuries. In other words, the closer we get to the speakers of a given period, the more we can discover about the extralinguistic motives that made them choose one linguistic variant over another, which is after all the process that ultimately underlies language change: selection in the sense of the “survival of the fittest”, as has been argued by Keller (1990). This is

54

Dieter Kastovsky

basically the approach which underlies much of the work so fruitfully pursued by Terttu Nevalainen, Matti Rissanen, and many others working in connection with the Helsinki Corpus and the projects resulting from this work. There is no doubt that any history of English has to incorporate the findings of this variationist approach, because it highlights the interaction of language and society in language change and provides a deeper insight into the relationship between the external and the internal history of the language. But this approach necessarily deals with series of what I would like to call “local changes”, operating over two or three generations and dealing with individual structural features of the language. There are, however, also what might be called “global changes”, which manifest themselves over centuries, sometimes even millennia, and which eventually result in a new gestalt of the language, a new language type, i.e. a new structural design with markedly different general properties compared to those of the older one. Such typological changes are very often the basis for recognising major periods in the history of a language, such as Old English, Middle English or Early Modern English, although this is not always made sufficiently explicit in the existing historical descriptions. Their very existence suggests that local changes often operate directionally — although not teleologically –, i.e. they seem to have some internal coherence, which cannot be explained by the same factors that govern the actual selection of a variant in a local change. In other words, there seem to be language-internal forces which also play a role in this selection process, but which are more indirect and less obvious. Because of them, the selection process in a local change may not be totally random but often fits into a more general, long-range development, a drift in the sense of Sapir, which he defines as follows: The drift of a language is constituted by the unconscious selection on the part of its speakers of those individual variations that are cumulative in some special direction. This direction may be inferred in the main from the past history of the language. (Sapir 1921: 165–6)

This conception of linguistic change foreshadows the notion of the “invisible hand” propagated by Rudi Keller (1990), which is certainly a useful attempt at explaining the implementation of local changes in a speech community. But Sapir’s suggestion goes further than that, because it assumes that independent local changes may share a directionality which cannot be explained simply by having recourse to the random behaviour of individual speakers. On the contrary, it is the momentum developed by the accumulation of certain changes in a specific direction which prompt the speakers/listeners to follow a path that is already there, i.e. to favour certain variants that go in this direction rather than another. In other words, it would seem that “drift” in Sapir’s sense is a kind of feed-back mechanism (or “second-order invisible hand”): once a certain number of changes happen to go in the same direction, it is this direction and the resulting incipient restructuring of the lan-

Historical morphology from a typological point of view

guage system which trigger further changes, or at least favour the selection of variants supporting this direction. This view of linguistic change is related to Coseriu’s concept of language change (Coseriu 1988). He also sees linguistic change as a cumulative process, starting at the level of speech (parole), where individual speakers introduce more or less random variation. If, however, such variants increase in number and become directional, they will eventually lead to changes in the norm of the language, i.e. to a change in the preferred realisation of rivalling forms or constructions. This, by the way, is the main domain of variationist research: the interaction of the social forces with the changing preferences for variants and the sorting out of preferred variants. If in this process one variant finally wins out and the other variants disappear, we have a systematic linguistic change, i.e. a change at the level of the linguistic system (langue). And if several such systematic changes at the same linguistic level (e.g. phonology, morphology, syntax, etc.) happen to go in the same direction, or interact with each other in the form of an “interlevel conspiracy” producing a combined cumulative effect, the final result may be an incipient typological change, a drift. This in turn may have a reinforcing feed-back effect, i.e. it may contribute to the selection of those changes that conform better to the emerging new language type, which, eventually, may replace the older type. Thus, drift interpreted as typological shift can also itself be regarded as a triggering factor of long-range global linguistic changes. I would regard the following factors as instrumental is this respect: 1. The interaction of linguistic levels like phonology and morphology, morphology and syntax, or the lexicon and phonology/morphology. 2. The inherent momentum of a change: once it has started and has acquired a certain significance, it may begin to affect areas outside its original domain. 3. Basic design features of a language or language family, which create a “hotbed” for certain changes, which therefore repeat themselves over the centuries.1 Some of these factors will be taken into consideration in the following, which, however, will concentrate on morphological typology and its relevance for historical linguistics, using examples from the history of English.

2. Morphological typology 2.1 Morphological typology goes back to the work of Schlegel and Humboldt in the early 19th century (von Humboldt 1827–9; Schlegel, A. W. 1818; Schlegel, F. 1808). I will, however, propose some modification of their typological considerations by introducing additional parameters that will allow for providing a more precise profile of the respective morphological type.

55

56

Dieter Kastovsky

The Humboldt–Schlegel morphological typology was based on two overlapping scales with one parameter each. The first parameter concerns the relationship between grammatical functions and words (lexemes, word-forms, see 2.2. below), i.e. whether grammatical functions are expressed word-externally (e.g. by prepositions, auxiliaries, particles) or word–internally (e.g. by inflection, incorporation, etc.). The former option characterises so-called analytic languages such as Chinese, but English is sometimes also cited as an example. This is only partly correct, since grammatical categories such as number or tense are not expressed word-externally. The second option characterises the so-called synthetic languages such as Latin, the Slavic languages, or the older stages of the Germanic languages, where grammatical functions are typically marked within the word in terms of a specific inflectional word-form. The second parameter concerns the relationship between form and function, i.e. how grammatical functions are represented formally. In principle there are four possibilities. 1. Isolating languages: here, grammatical functions are expressed word-externally, i.e. this type coincides with the isolating one, and therefore these languages have no morphology. 2. Agglutinating languages: here grammatical functions as a rule are expressed word–internally, with a one-to-one correspondence of a grammatical category and its exponent, as in Turkish, Finnish, or Hungarian. 3. Inflecting languages: here one morphological exponent represents more than one grammatical category, i.e. it functions as a so-called portmanteau morph, cf. Latin am-ō (= 1st pers. sg. pres. indic. act.). 4. Incorporating languages: here, grammatical functions such as subject, object, or adverbial are integrated into the predicate itself; this situation is frequently found in Amerindian languages. Modern English is usually supposed to be fairly close to the isolating/analytic type, but the situation is somewhat more complex, because there are certain phenomena which might be interpreted as reflecting agglutinating and incorporating tendencies. Thus, in Old English, the categories of case and number were expressed jointly by one exponent, i.e. the language clearly belonged to the synthetic/inflectional type, as in the following paradigms:

(1) Nom. Gen Dat Acc.

sg cyning ‘king’ cyning-es cyning-e cyning

pl cyning-as cyning-a cyning-um cyning-as

sg tal-u ‘narrative’ tal-e tal-e tal-e

pl tal-a tal-a tal-um tal-a


In none of these paradigms, the inflectional exponents can be analysed into parts which represent case and number separately; they always represent these two categories together. It would, therefore, be inappropriate to ask how OE nouns formed their plural, because there was no independent plural morpheme. But subsequently, these two categories were dissociated, i.e. they came to be expressed by separate exponents (morphemes). Thus, in Modern English the singular is unmarked, and the only remaining case, i.e. the genitive, is expressed overtly (but usually only in the singular), whereas otherwise the noun is unmarked for case. It might, however, even be argued that the genitive has lost its case function altogether and has become a clitic in view of the fact that it is added to the whole NP and no longer just to N, cf. group genitives such as [[the Queen of England]NP’s children]NP . In the plural, we get the following situation. If the plural is irregular, both plural and genitive are marked separately and overtly, i.e. in agglutinative form. If the plural is regular, the genitive is not marked overtly, but is zero. Note that we have a similar situation in German, except that in this language it is the dative plural that can be marked agglutinatively, as in Kind-er-n, Väter-n.

boy s Ø (2) a. E: ox en s child ren s mices2 pl gen pl gen pl gen pl gen b. G: Kind er n Väter n Frau en Ø Mädchen Ø Ø pl dat pl dat pl dat pl dat

With the verb system, there is a strange complementary distribution of tense and person/number (with the exception of the copula to be). Person/number is overtly marked only in the non-past (3rd sg.), which is unmarked for tense, as in look-s, and tense is only marked overtly in the past, which is unmarked for person, look-ed. Certain English dialects have generalised the -s-marker throughout the nonpast, which raises a problem as to its morphological interpretation. It clearly can no longer be regarded as expressing person/number agreement; rather, it will have to be interpreted as a present tense marker standing in opposition to the past tense morpheme. It would thus seem that these dialects are characterised by a morphological innovation, viz. the emergence of an overt non-past (= present) tense morpheme. Swedish seems to have undergone a similar development (Patricia Poussa, personal communication). It has also been argued that English is moving towards incorporation. The reason for this is the recent explosion of formations such as to proofread, to chain-smoke, to chain-drink, to baby-sit, to stage-manage, where it seems that one of the arguments of the verb has been incorporated into the verb itself. Historically, these are back-derivations from synthetic compounds, that is compounds containing a verb as part of the determinatum, e.g. to proofread < ‘do proofreading’, to stage-manage < ‘act as stage-manager’, etc. (cf. Marchand 1969: 104ff.). But the increasing number

57

58

Dieter Kastovsky

of formations that do not seem to have a nominal basis (e.g. chain-drink, warm– iron, cold-rinse, etc.) seem to indicate that indeed a typological shift towards an incorporating type is taking place, which eventually would result in a word-formation pattern that had not really existed in the Germanic languages before. 2.2. These parameters are certainly important and have been profitably used in morphological typology. But they characterise only a small domain of what determines the overall gestalt of the morphology of a language and therefore have to be supplemented by further aspects, which will lead to a more differentiated picture. The following additional parameters have proved useful in this respect in my work on the history of English morphology (e.g. Kastovsky 1992, 1994a, 1997, 1999): 1. The morphological status of the input to morphological processes (word, stem, root); 2. The number and status of inflectional classes; 3. The type of the formal representations of inflectional and derivational markers; 4. The status and function of morphophonemic/allomorphic alternations; 5. The position of affixes/position of the head; 6. The existence and status of morphological levels (e.g. native vs. foreign). In the following I will try to show how the interaction of changes in some of these parameters affected the morphological type of English during its history.

3. Typological parameters 3.1 The morphological status of the input to morphological processes 3.1.1. Perhaps the most important additional parameter for characterising the typological gestalt of a morphological system is the status of the input to morphological processes. Here, the three-way distinction between “word”, “word-form” and “lexeme”, first introduced by Matthews (1991 [1974]) and then elaborated by Lyons (1977), has proved very useful. The relevant categories can be defined as follows:

(3) a. Lexeme: a simple or complex dictionary entry, i.e. an abstract entity forming part of the lexical inventory of a language, e.g. do, doer, undo, help, helper, helpless, child, childlike, childbed; b. Word-form: an inflectional form of a lexeme, e.g. kiss, kisses, kissed, kissing; c. Word: an independent, syntactic element, susceptible of transposition in sentences (= free form). It may be simple or complex and is the concrete realisation of a word-form in an utterance, e.g. man, men, go, went, mad, madman, writer.


The central question in this connection now is what kind of element functions as typical input to the morphological processes, i.e. what is the “base form”. This can be defined as

(4) Base form: that form representing a lexeme from which all other wordforms can be derived by appropriate rules.

Word-formation (derivational morphology) and inflectional morphology are interdependent in this respect: the typological status of inflectional morphology carries over to derivational morphology, despite the different functions of the two, and although they need not have all properties in common. The morphological status of the base form is relevant for the typological characterisation of the language in question. There are three possibilities: the base form can be a word, a stem, or a root. These two latter concepts can be defined as follows:

(5) Stem: a word–class specific lexeme representation stripped of any inflectional endings, which cannot occur on its own without inflectional or derivational affixes, e.g. G bind-(-en, -e, -est), E scient-(-ist) vs. science, dramat(-ic, -ist) vs. drama.

(6) Root: the element that is left over when all derivational, stem-forming and inflectional elements are stripped away. Such roots can either be affiliated to a particular word–class, or they can be word–class neutral. In this case the word–class affiliation is added by a word-formative process, cf. *gVn (as in Lat. genus, gignere, cognatus), *mVd- ‘measure’ (cf. OE metan), *Vd‘eat’ (cf. OE etan), *wVr- ‘turn’ (cf. Lat. uer-t-ere, uer-m–is, OE weor-þ-an, wyr-m, etc.), with V standing for the ablaut vowel, cf., e.g., Kuryłowicz (1968: 200ff.), Szemerényi (1990: 102ff.), or Sem. k.t.b ‘write’.

The distinction between root and stem is not always necessary; in Modern English the two categories coincide, but it is relevant in other languages such as Indo-European or the Semitic languages, whose morphology is based on abstract lexical entities that should be kept apart from the stems derived from them. On the basis of these three categories one can distinguish three morphological types, viz. word-based, stem-based and root-based morphology. In word-based morphology, the base form is a word, i.e. a free form. This makes words and lexemes identical, i.e. the lexeme is represented by at least one wordform that has no inflectional ending, and this acts as base form and usually also as citation form. In stem-based morphology, no word-form of a paradigm occurs without an inflectional ending, i.e. the base form also contains an inflectional ending and the stem (= base form) must therefore be extracted from the paradigm by cutting off

59

60

Dieter Kastovsky

the inflectional endings; it is not directly given as in word-based morphology. In root-based morphology, word-formational and inflectional processes interact and are not neatly separated. This situation obtains in the Semitic languages and was probably also the case in very early Indo-European. The modern situation in the Germanic and some other Indo-European daughter languages, where inflection and derivation are relatively neatly separated, is fairly recent and is a consequence of the loss of root-based morphology. 3.1.2. Such distinctions would seem to be irrelevant in a purely morpheme-based framework, but they are important in a word-and-paradigm approach (Matthews 1991 [1974]). There it does make a difference if the basis for a morphological operation is given directly or has to be extracted from a paradigm, let alone if it constitutes a very abstract semantic construct as in root-based morphology. In Modern English, only the distinction between word-based and stem-based morphology is relevant, since the categories of stem and root coincide.3 We have, however, to differentiate between inflection and word-formation in this respect. Inflection is almost completely word-based. The only exceptions are some non-native plurals, which as loans from Latin or Greek have kept their stem-based status, cf. cactus ~ cacti, stratum ~ strata. Instances such as keep ~ kep-t, etc. can be handled by postulating a base keep with a base allomorph kep- /kep/, so that these irregular forms are still word-based. In word-formation, on the other hand, there is a dual system with somewhat fuzzy boundaries. Following Marchand (1969), I distinguish between word-formation on a native and word-formation on a non-native, usually Neo-Latin or Romance basis (Kastovsky 1994b). Non-native derivational morphology is characterised by exhibiting properties not shared by the native patterns; this is a structural and not an etymological question, since some originally non-native lexemes and patterns were nativised, whereas others were not. The behaviour of the native patterns is determined by the properties of (regular) inflectional morphology, whereas the non-native patterns have special properties not found in inflection. Native word-formation is always word-based; non-native word-formation is partly word-based, partly stem-based:

(7) help : help-er, help-ing; read : read-able; re-write, un-tie, in-come, housedoor, atom bomb, sun ray (native, word-based).

(8) a. Japan ~ Jàpanése; histór-ic ~ hìstoríc–ity; delímit ~ delimit-átion (nonnative, word-based). b. science ~ scient-ist; drama ~ dramat-ist, dramat-ic; navig-ate ~ navigable; sol-ar; leg-ible; electr-ic ~ electr-ify, electr-ic–ity, electr-ific-ation (non-native, stem-based).


c. astro-nomy, astro-logy, astro-botany; cosmo-logy, cosmo-naut, cosmography, cosmo-biology; tele-gram, tele-pathy (non-native stem-based compounds (“combining forms”). From this point of view, inflection is thus basically homogeneous, while wordformation is heterogeneous. 3.2.1. Let us now look at the history of this state of affairs and the typological changes that have brought it about. In order to understand the train of events we have to go back to Indo-European. It can be assumed that the morphology of the earliest reconstructed stages of Indo-European was root-based. This root is usually represented as a consonantal skeleton, the vowel being supplied by ablaut alternation, as in the examples in (6) above. The actual nominal, adjectival or verbal paradigms are derived by first adding stem-forming and then inflectional endings proper, i.e. the basic structure of IE morphology is

(9) root + stem-formative (± secondary stem-formative elements) + inflection proper.

The lexical status of the IE roots is far from clear, especially as to whether they were word–class-specific or not. Terms such as “(verbal) roots” (Kuryłowicz 1968: 204) would seem to indicate that they were, with verbal roots making up the core of the vocabulary. This may well be correct for IE proper. But in view of the overall structure of the morphology with the pervasive presence of root determinatives (whose function is unclear) and the obligatoriness of stem-formatives, my approach is that many of these roots might at least originally have been word–class-neutral semantic nuclei, comparable to Semitic or Finno-Ugric roots (Lass 1994a). As such they could oscillate between a verbal and a nominal interpretation, and word–class-specific properties were added to them by the various morphological processes which derived word–class-specific stems. This means that the stem-formatives were ambivalent between a derivational and an inflectional function. But the word–class neutrality of IE roots is not decisive in this connection. Rather, what matters is that from these roots both primary nouns and primary verbs could be formed by adding stem formatives and additional inflectional endings (case, number, aspect, and person). Thus at this stage there is no direct derivational connection between verb and derived noun or noun and derived verb; both are only related via their common root, from which they are derived by independent morphological processes, which also determined the quality and quantity of the vowel that occurred in this derived stem. This type of relationship characterises the ancestors of the strong verbs and the nouns and adjectives related to them. From

61

62

Dieter Kastovsky

these primary derivatives further, secondary derivatives could be formed by adding further derivational and stem-forming affixes, so that we get the following system: (10)

Root Verb

Primary stem-formation

Noun

Secondary stem-formation Verb

Noun

Let us now look at the function of primary stem-formation with verbs. The IE verb system was characterised by a mixture of aspectual and temporal categories such as present, imperfect, perfect, aorist, etc., and mode of action categories such as iterative, intensive, durative, inchoative, etc. In Modern English, German, or the Romance languages these categories are neatly separated as either belonging to inflection (tense, aspect) or derivation (mode of action/aktionsart). In IE, however, apparently no such separation was possible: ...die Grenzlinie zwischen Stammbildung und Flexion ist schwankend und dies mehr, als die herkömmliche Darstellung indogermanischer Morphologie vermuten läßt.[...] weit öfter als gewöhnlich zugegeben kann die Entstehung und sogar der Ursprung einer Derivationskategorie beim Verbum nur aus der historischen Entwicklung des Flexionsschemas erklärt werden (Watkins 1969: 19).

Put differently, and simplifying somewhat, the stem-formatives are added to roots, producing verb-stems that belong to these aspect/aktionsart categories, to which finally the appropriate person/number endings are added: (11)

Root

Present

Perfect

Aorist

Whether these present, perfect and aorist stems have to be regarded as separate words or as word forms cannot really be decided. Looked at from our modern perspective, where aspects and modes of action are separate grammatical and lexical categories, they would simply have to be regarded as serving a dual function, i.e. a strict separation of derivation and inflection would be quite arbitrary. There is, however, an important difference between primary verbs and nouns, i.e. those directly derived from the root, and secondary derivatives, i.e. those derived from a root-based noun or verb. Verbs of the first type normally accept quite a variety of stem-formatives, which results in the whole gamut of aspectual/temporal categories that we also know from other Indo-European languages. But the latter type of verbs were much more restricted in this respect and usually occurred only in the non-


perfective (= present). These verbs are the ancestors of the Germanic weak verbs, which go back to present-stem formations, e.g. -āy-e/-o, the ancestor of Germanic -ōj-, the stem-formative characterising class 2 weak verbs. This pattern primarily derived inchoative and causative verbs, from which only an imperfectum could be formed, but no perfect or aorist. This also explains the development of a new preterit form in the Germanic languages, the “dental preterit”, in connection with the typological shift from an aspectual to a basically tense-oriented system, which unfortunately has so far only been investigated from a primarily morphological, but not from a functional point of view. The stem-formative thus originally combined the function of a derivative morpheme with that of creating an inflectional stem, at the same time indicating the membership in a particular inflectional class (Kastovsky 1996a, 1997). It should be added that the same also holds for nouns, where we also have stem-formatives with this dual function, see below and Kastovsky and Kryk-Kastovsky (2005). This legacy of IE morphology was lost in connection with the erosion of final syllables and the concomitant restructuring of the morphology towards a stem-based system, to which I will now turn. 3.2.2. The Indo-European morphonological system was characterised by variable accent (stress and tone), which in turn determined the form of the vocalic nuclei of the stems. This means that ablaut alternations originally were non-functional, but morphologically and phonologically conditioned. One of the major innovations of the Germanic language family was the introduction of a fixed stress pattern with the main stress placed on the initial syllable. In view of the subsequent developments — the progressive weakening and eventual loss of medial and final syllables — one might suspect that this new stress system was expiratory, and perhaps also had stress timing and was the result of language contact. This phonological development had morphonological and morphological consequences — a case of level interaction. It destroyed the partial phonological conditioning of ablaut and paved the way for its morphological exploitation with the strong verbs, where these ablaut alternations came to be re-interpreted as a morphological marker for the emerging past tense and past participle opposition.4 At the same time, the segmental (“dental”) weak preterits and past participles of the weak verbs came into being, obviously also in connection with the still little understood shift from a root-based multiple aspectual system to a binary tense system of the type marked past tense : unmarked base form (= non-past), a system which now has to be interpreted as stem-based, i.e.: (12) stem (+ person/number) = unmarked vs. stem + {past} (+ person/ number) = marked. The growing number of weak verbs in connection with this functional shift from aspect to tense thus also prompted a reinterpretation of the strong verbs: the original

63

64

Dieter Kastovsky

present became an unmarked base form, and ablaut became a tense/past participle exponent, although only imperfectly because of over- and under-differentiation.5 The major consequence of this phonological change and the growing importance of the weak verbs, usually derived from other categories and not from roots, not only replaced root-based by stem-based morphology, but also introduced directional derivation from V to N, Adj., from N to V, or from Adj. to V, which is another major shift in the morphological system. 3.2.3. The Germanic stress shift had a further, although indirect, consequence (again a case of level interaction): it was responsible for the reduction of unstressed syllables, which ultimately resulted in the loss of many inflectional distinctions, since final unstressed syllables usually were morphological exponents, and their loss invariably meant the loss of morphological contrasts. Ultimately, this process was responsible for replacing stem-based by word-based morphology. Let me illustrate this phenomenon first with examples from nominal inflection. According to Voyles (1992), we can reconstruct the following paradigm for IndoEuropean masc. -o-stems (= Germanic -a-stems): (13) Sg. Nom. Acc. Gen. Dat. Pl. Nom. Acc. Gen. Dat.

Root *dhóghw- *dhóghw- *dhoghw- *dhoghw- *dhóghw- *dhóghw- *dhoghw- *dhóghw-

Theme Infl. -o- -s ‘day’ -o- -m -é/ó- -so -Ø/ó:- -í/i -o:- -s(es)/*dhoghw- -ó:- -s(es) -o- -ns -ó:/(?é:)- -m -o- -mis

This paradigm still exhibits the tripartite morphological structure root + stem formative + inflectional ending. But the stem formative exhibits morphophonemic alternations, presumably due to stress placement, which are no longer fully predictable, i.e. the alternation is on the way to becoming allomorphic. In the classical handbooks, this tripartite morphological structure is also postulated for reconstructed Proto-Germanic and common Germanic, but whether such an analysis is justified is rather questionable, when one applies the usual procedures of morphological analysis to the following paradigms based on Voyles (1992). (14) Germanic paradigms a. Masc. a-stems: Sg. Nom. *dagaz ‘day’ Pl. Nom. Acc. *daga Acc. Gen. *dages Gen. Dat. *dage: Dat.

*dago:s/dago:z *dagã *dagõ: *dagamz


b. Fem. o:-stems Sg. Nom. *gebu ‘gift’ Pl. Nom. Acc. *gebo: Acc. Gen. *gebo:z Gen. Dat. *gebu/gebe: Dat.

*gebo:z *gebõ: *gebõ: *gebo:mz

If we take forms like sg. nom. *daga, sg. dat. *dagē, pl. acc. *dagã, pl. gen. *dagõ, and contrast them with the other forms of this paradigm, it is obvious that we can no longer reconstruct a consistent representation of the stem-formative. On the other hand, the loss of final syllables in some of these forms caused the loss of the original case/number endings, and this in turn must have led to a reinterpretation of the original stem-formatives as case endings because of paradigm pressure, since typically all paradigm members were characterised by a case/number ending. It can therefore be argued that already in early Germanic a shift from root-based to stem-based inflection had occurred, with the stem-formative losing its original function. As a result, inflectional paradigms have become implicational (see below and Kastovsky 1997), because they are no longer marked overtly by a stem-formative indicating membership in a particular inflectional class. The tripartite IE morphological structure was therefore replaced by a binary structure of stem + inflectional ending, and terms such as -o-, -ā-, -u-, -n-, -s-stems are at best mnemonic, but have no structural morphological substance as such. For the following, I basically rely on Hogg’s (1992: 126 ff.) reconstruction of the pre-Old English and early Old English paradigms (see (15)), although with a few reinterpretations. Let us first look at the masculine and neuter -a-stems, which quantitatively represent the majority pattern; in order to avoid the complication of the vowel alternation involved in dæġ ~ dagas, I have selected the paradigm of stān, which is parallel but does not exhibit stem-alternation: (15) Masc. a-stems c. 400: Sg. N sta:n ‘stone’ Pl. N sta:n-o:s c.700: Sg. N sta:n Pl. N sta:nas c.800: Sg. N sta:n Pl. N sta:n-as

A sta:n A sta:n-o:s A sta:n A sta:n-as A sta:n A sta:n-as

G sta:n-as G sta:n-o:m G sta:n-æs G sta:n–a G sta:n-es G sta:n–a

D sta:n-ai D sta:n-um D sta:n-æ D sta:n-um D sta:n-e D sta:n-um

One of the major changes since the Germanic period was the loss of the overt sg. nom. and acc. endings, i.e. *stān-az > *stān. The same, incidentally, is also true of the strong neuters. This is also reflected in Hogg’s (1992: 127) paradigm (16), where these endingless forms are marked as containing Ø.

65

66

Dieter Kastovsky

(16) Endings for Masc. a-stems Sg.: -Ø, -Ø, -es, -e Pl. -as, -as, -a, -um But what does Ø mean in this context? The answer to this question depends on how one handles different morphological exponents expressing the same content in a morphology with different morphological paradigms. There are at least two possible answers to this question. a. One can generalise the analysis across paradigms, i.e. set up an inflectional grid on the basis of the most elaborate paradigm with the most numerous inflectional contrasts. In this case one could indeed analyse the lack of an explicit inflectional ending in forms such as stān, etc. as Ø, because it would contrast with forms such as luf-u, gum-a, where the respective inflectional forms have an overt exponent. This would conform to the minimal requirement for accepting morphological zero. b. Alternatively, if one wants to restrict the use of zero to a minimum, one could treat each paradigm as autonomous, so that the paradigms do not affect each others’ morphological analysis. In this case one might argue that the original -astems, which had lost their sg. nom., acc. exponents, were reanalysed as being unmarked for these categories, and the respective paradigms had become wordbased. This is perhaps less plausible for the sg. acc., because this is a marked case, but a good case can be made for the sg. nom., because the nominative is the semantically least marked case in an inflectional paradigm. Thus the loss of the sg. nom. is in a way congruent with the iconicity principle, according to which it should not be surprising that the semantically least-marked category might lose an exponent that is not really required. Under this analysis, which is the one I would argue for, the sg. nom., acc. forms came to be reanalysed as endingless; i.e. the paradigm had switched from stem-based to word-based status, and there is no need for a Ø-element in the respective forms any more. Another argument in favour of this analysis is the further development, viz. the generalisation of word-based morphology. In other paradigms, however, these categories (sg. nom., acc.) remain marked. OE noun morphology thus developed a typological split: the inflection of the majority pattern (the original -a-stems) was word-based; the other patterns (the minority) remained stem-based A number of sound changes, especially the so-called High Vowel Deletion (the loss of unstressed /i/, /u/ after heavy stems (Lass 1994: 98–102, 130–1)), were responsible for further losses of inflectional endings. Of special interest in this connection is the development of the original -ja- and -i-stems. Cf. first the following -ja-stem paradigms:


(17) a. Light stems: Sg. secg, secg, secg-es, secg-e; Pl. secg-as, secg-as, secg-a, secg-um b. Heavy stems: Sg. end-e, end-e, end-es, end-e; Pl. end-as, end-as, end-a, end-um c. Light stems ending in /r/: Sg. her-e, her-e, herg-es, herg-e; Pl. herg-as, herg-as, herg-a, herg-um Note that we find secg instead of the expected form *sege with -e as in the other examples. This needs an explanation. The question is: what was the role of -e? Historically speaking, it was a stem-formative, which had become reinterpreted as a case/number ending and functioned in the same way as -e in tung-e or ‑a in gum‑a. This is reflected by the morphological segmentation above. But since the respective nouns were also masculines like the original -a-stems, and basically having the same endings: (18) Sg. cyning, cyning, cyning-es, cyning-e; Pl. cyning-as, cyning-as, cyning-a, cyning-um an analogical reinterpretation of these -ja-stems along the lines of the -a-stems can be assumed. The -a-stems did not have an overt sg. nom., acc. ending, however. Thus, the final -e of the -ja-stems must have come to eventually be reinterpreted as part of the base, making the sg. nom. and acc. unmarked as with the a-stems, thereby adding to the number of nouns exhibiting word-based morphology. At the same time, this introduced a new morphophonemic rule: if the base ended in a vowel (i.e. -e), this vowel was deleted if it was followed by an inflectional ending beginning with a vowel, i.e. ende >end(e)-as = end-as, end(e)-a = end-a, etc. And the expected sg. nom., acc. *seg-e was analogically replaced by the form secg occurring elsewhere in the paradigm, thus eliminating a morphophonemic alternation which was atypical for this paradigm. A similar development happened with the masculine -i-stems: (19) a. light: Sg. win-e, win-e, win-es, win-e; Pl. win-as, win-as, win-a, win‑um b. heavy: Sg. wyrm, wyrm, wyrm-es, wyrm-e; Pl. wyrm-as, wyrm-as, wyrm-a, wyrm-um Again, -e must originally have functioned as an inflectional ending (as a reinterpreted stem-formative), but was eventually reinterpreted as part of the base, which was facilitated by the endingless heavy stems in (19b). Old English noun morphology was thus heterogeneous: the majority pattern was word-based, the minority patterns were still stem-based. At this stage morphology was still inflectional: the two inflectional categories of number and case were fused

67

68

Dieter Kastovsky

in one exponent. Thus one could not yet speak of “plural-formation” as is the case in Modern English and gender was lexically determined, i.e. grammatical.6 The most important new developments happened at the end of the Old English period in connection with the merger of unstressed final vowels in schwa, i.e. lufu > luf-e /lufə/, gum-a > gum-e /gumə/, etc. This merger makes these forms look like the continuation of the original strong -ja- and -i-masculines, whose (originally inflectional) ending -e > /ə/ had already been re-interpreted as part of the base. The same reinterpretation obviously happened with these originally stem-based forms. These were now also integrated into the emerging generalised word-based noun morphology and their endings lost their inflectional function. A second development concerned the other inflectional forms, especially the sg. gen. and dat. as well as the plural nom. and acc. of these stem-based nouns. With the reduction of the final vowels to /ə/ these forms were now identical with the unmarked sg. nom., i.e. they had become endingless. It is therefore not surprising that at this stage the sg. ‑s-genitive was gradually transferred analogically to these nouns, which had not had this inflectional ending before. At the same time, these nouns also adopted -sforms in the pl. nom., acc., which they also had not had before. This in turn suggests that the ending ‑es by now had been reinterpreted as a general plural marker, without any additional case function. The same apparently happened to the ending -en characterising the weak masculines of the type gum-a(n). This brings about a crucial typological realignment: the categories of number and case became dissociated, because otherwise the analogical transfer of a case ending in the singular and of a plural ending independent of a case function (pl. nom., acc.) cannot be explained. But this also means that already at the end of the Old English period the noun inflection had completely shifted to word-based inflection. The gradual marginalisation of the dative (both sg. and pl.) must have already started at this period as well, being facilitated by the emergence of an uninflected generalised definite article the. In ME it had become an ending whose presence or absence was primarily governed by metrical-stylistic requirements (Lass 1992: 110). This indicates that its actual grammatical function had been lost at this stage (or had at least been considerably weakened), as in German dem Hund-e > dem Hund. The Middle English period is characterised by the gradual generalisation of the s-plural, since eventually most of the -n-plurals (exceptions such as ox-en, childr-en, brethr-en are the last remnants today) adopted this plural form. The -s-plural thus has become the default option for Modern English. Similarly, the -s-gen. sg. came to be generalised, but was only transferred to irregular nouns in the plural (ox-en-s, men-s), but not to regular plural nouns (boy-s’); this phenomenon still needs further investigation. There is one further typological restructuring, again involving a phonological change, probably in the transition from Middle English to Early Modern English.


This concerns the relationship between the regular representations of the plural and genitive endings. Originally, i.e. until Middle English, their underlying representation contained a vowel, first /e/, then /ə/, which was then raised to /ɪ/ in certain varieties of English. During the Middle English period, this vowel could be deleted for rhythmic reasons, so that its presence or absence became optional, except when the ending was preceded by a coronal sibilant, where no deletion was possible. Gradually this vowel–deletion process became more and more general independent of rhythmical factors. Incidentally, the same happened to the surface representations of the regular past and past participle underlying representation /ɪd/, except that here vowel deletion had already started in pre-Old English on the basis of syllableweight, so that already at this stage we had the alternation /ɪd ~ d ~ t/. This generalisation of the vowel deletion except before coronal sibilants (alveolar stops in the case of the past and past participle) led to rule-inversion: the vowel–less allomorph came to be interpreted as underlying, and vowel–insertion replaced vowel–deletion, controlled by phonotactic requirements. 3.2.4. The development of the system of the weak verbs was basically similar. Usually the following four classes of weak verbs are postulated for Germanic, which are still overtly marked by corresponding stem-formatives in Gothic: (20) Class 1: -j-/-i- (Goth. satjan, OE settan), Class 2: -ōi-/-ō- (Goth. salbôn, OE sealfian), Class 3: -ē(j)- (Goth. haban, OE habban), Class 4: -nō- (Goth. fullnan, OE beorhtnian). For OE only the first two classes are relevant. Again, the stem formatives do double duty as derivational affixes and inflectional class indicators. According to Hogg (1992: 157), they are still recognisable as independent morphological elements in the 5th century. But in the paradigms of Early and Late West Saxon, they are no longer segmentable. They have either fused with the person/number endings, or they have been syncopated by High Vowel Deletion (Sievers’s Law), as in the following unsegmented paradigms: (21) trymman (< trum) trymme trymede trymest trymedest trymeð trymede trymmað trymedon

lufian (< luf+u) lufie lufode lufast lufodes lufað lufode lufiað lufodon

Inf. 1st pers. sg. pres./pret. 2nd pers. sg. pres./pret. 1st. pers. sg. pres./pret. plural pres./pret.

At least in Early West Saxon the two inflectional classes can still be kept apart, but only on the basis of general paradigm organisation (i.e. inherent morphological properties of the verb stem), and no longer on the basis of different stem-formatives. In a realistic relatively surface-oriented synchronic morphological analysis

69

70

Dieter Kastovsky

the segmentation of the stem-formatives as a separate morphological category is no longer feasible. Rather, I think that a morphological reanalysis had already taken place or at least was taking place at this stage. In the present there is no consistent exponent of the stem-formatives, and any synchronic morphological analysis without historical bias would result in a structure consisting of a stem and the person/number, infinitive or participle morphemes without an intervening stem-formative along the following lines: (22) Class 1 Stem + Person/Number/Inf. trymm + an trymm + e trym + est trym + eð trymm + að

Class 2 Stem + Person/Number/Inf. luf + ian luf + ie luf + ast luf + að luf + iað

In this analysis, the stems of class 1 exhibit morphologically conditioned allomorphy, as do the person/number morphemes in both classes. The choice of the latter is determined by the class membership of the verb, which is an inherent property of the verb. In other words, the originally phonologically conditioned allomorphy has been replaced by morphologically conditioned allomorphy. But with the demise of the stem formatives as active morphological elements, there is no longer any derivative morpheme accounting for the change of word–class in denominal or deadjectival verbs, i.e. we have derivation by zero. Note that this seemingly innocuous reanalysis has a much more far-reaching implication: it means that the original functional duality of the stem-formatives — derivational morpheme and inflectional class marker — is replaced by the formal/functional separation of inflection and derivation. The inflectional aspect, viz. affiliation to a particular inflectional class, has become an inherent feature of the stem and is not necessarily predictable on the basis of its shape any more. The derivational function, on the other hand, must now be attributed to a zero element commutable with other derivational suffixes, although these are in the absolute minority. This is a major morphological reorientation and consolidates stem-based morphology. The subsequent developments are again characterised by further reductions of inflectional endings. But here we have to notice another interesting phenomenon. At the end of the OE period, final nasals were lost, as, e.g., in the dative plurals ending in -um like cyningum > cyninge. This also happened to the infinitive ending -an > -e(n), especially in the North, whereas the corresponding plural forms like oxen and many others in the South survived as a rival of the dominant s-plurals. For this, there is no simple phonological explanation, since not all final -n-s were deleted across the board: some were preserved as plural markers. The only explanation


possible is morphological: plural had become a dominant morphological category, which required an exponent — therefore -en was preserved. The infinitive, on the other hand, was semantically the least marked inflectional form. Since the nominal system had already moved towards word-based inflection, it is not unlikely that this feature was carried over to the verbal system, creating an unmarked base form by the loss of the infinitive ending, allowing phonological erosion, while blocking it by the system-relevant alternative plural marker. The further development is more or less parallel to the nouns and therefore need not be discussed here. 3.2.5. As this part has shown, the shift from root-based to stem-based to wordbased morphology was accompanied and partly also triggered by developments at other levels such as phonology, but it was also influenced by developments of different domains of the same level, e.g. nominal inflection influencing verbal inflection and vice versa. And, as we will see below, such a development is reversible, because in connection with borrowing, stem-based morphology came to be re-introduced into word-formation in ME.

3.3 The number and status of inflectional classes 3.3.1. An inflectional class is constituted by the global distinctness of a given paradigm from other paradigms. This distinctness can manifest itself in the following ways. 1. Class membership is marked explicitly by a class marker, which is overtly present in all paradigm members, or which is present partly overtly and partly only underlyingly, but the absence of the overt realisation of the class marker can be related to some regular morphophonemic/morphological process deleting the underlying class marker. In this case, class membership has a single overt or at least recoverable exponent, whose presence allows the (almost) unambiguous assignment of the item in question to the respective inflectional class, i.e. we can speak of external/overt class characterisation. This was the case in Indo-European and Germanic. 2. Class membership is based on the overall shape of the inflectional paradigm, i.e. on the set of inflectional endings making up the paradigm as a whole, which might be called “paradigm profile”. This includes the limiting case of a single diagnostic individual inflectional form, e.g. the case of the -as nom./acc. pl., which assigns the lexical item in question automatically to a particular inflectional class. In this case, we can speak of implicational/covert class characterisation. This was the characteristic feature of OE. The first case is the limiting case of the second, since the general presence of a class marker of course also contributes to the paradigm profile. But for the func-

71

72

Dieter Kastovsky

tioning of an inflectional system, and especially for the class assignment of individual items, it clearly matters whether classes can be defined holistically, i.e. by an internal–implicational criterion based on the overall configuration of a paradigm, or externally (overtly), i.e. by referring to a localisable overt class-marker. In the former case, class shifts are much more likely, because for class assignment the language learner has to know the whole paradigm, which s/he may not, in which case “wrong” class assignment on the basis of class overlap is possible; this is hardly possible with overt class characterisation. This class reassignment happened in the transition from OE to ME, especially with verbs. 3. Unless stated otherwise, a member of the respective word class by default follows a given (= “regular”) morphological pattern. This is the inverse of alternative 1. In 1, every class — if there is more than one — is marked by a separate overt class marker. In 3, all lexical items follow a single morphological pattern (i.e. are unmarked) except for those that are lexically marked as deviant, i.e. “irregular”. The “regular” pattern constitutes the default case; anything that deviates form it is “irregular” and has to be marked as such in the lexicon. This is the situation in Modern English. 3.3.2. As we have seen above, originally the various inflectional paradigms had been characterised overtly by appropriate stem-formatives, which assigned the respective nouns and verbs to a particular inflectional class. But the progressive loss or reinterpretation of the Indo-European/Germanic stem-formatives as part of the stem or as inflectional endings caused by the general weakening and eventual loss of unstressed syllables (a local change) had structural-typological consequences for the overall morphological system: the language lost overt marking of inflectional classes, and shifted to holistic–implicational, covert class-marking based on paradigm profiles, unless there was a derivational suffix with inherent class membership. This is why at least in this respect suffixes have to be treated as on a par with lexical items: they determine the grammatical behaviour of the lexical items they form part of. What is of particular interest in this connection is the switch from this implicational system to the default situation that we have in Modern English. With the nouns, the present situation is due to the dissociation of case and number and the development of a dominant number exponent, viz. -es (< OE -as), which was gradually generalised in ME, ousting the remaining rival -en. Thus, -esplurals with invariant base became the norm (the default case), and everything else (e.g. calf ~ calves, ox ~ oxen, mouse ~ mice) became exceptional and now has to be specified in the lexicon. With verbs the situation was somewhat more complex. For a more detailed analysis see Kastovsky (1986a); here I will concentrate on the development of the weak verbs, since the originally strong verbs had already become more and more irreg-


ular during the OE period and, together with a number of originally weak verbs such as buy ~ bought, keep ~ kept, etc. form the core of the Modern English irregular verbs. As we had seen above, the original stem-formatives -e- and -o- had become part of the underlying representation of the past tense and past participle morphemes -ed- and -od-. As to the present tense inflectional endings, the two paradigms partly overlapped, but partly also differed, so that we can analyse the morphology as being implicational. There is one additional factor, however, viz. the vowel of the past tense and past participle morpheme. This was always -o(d)- in class 2, whereas in class 1 we have basically -e(d)-, which however could be deleted under certain phonological conditions (originally after heavy bases or dental stops), producing the allomorphs /d ~ t ~ Ø/: (23) dēm+an : dēm+d+e : ge+dēm+ed ~ ge+dēm+ed+ne ~ ge+dēm+d+e, sett+an : set+t+e ~ ge+set+Ø ~ ge+set+(ed~)Ø+ne, send+an : send+Ø+e ~ ge+send(+ed) ~ ge+send(+ed)+ne. This means that the past tense and past participle forms developed into a dominant diagnostic feature keeping the two paradigms apart, even if the present tense forms were similar, as in ner-ian : ner-ed-e (class 1) and luf-ian : luf-od-e (class 2). Class 1 had either -ed- or a vowel-less form, or zero, whereas class 2 always had -od‑. But the class-membership itself was an inherent property of the verb and could not be predicted on formal grounds. In late Old English, on account of the similarity of the types nerian (class 1) and andswarian, lufian (class 2), and especially their overlapping base form, the infinitive, it is not surprising that we find class shifts in both directions. In other words, the boundary between the two classes had become fluid and class assignment could be ambivalent. An even greater overlap between the two classes was created by the merger of unstressed /e/ and /o/ into schwa. This eliminated the distinction between -od- and -ed- in favour of -ed-, probably in the 10th century. It seems that at this stage one group of forms, viz. the preterits and past participles, begin to develop into a dominant diagnostic feature, which not only serves as primary class-defining parameter, but also as criterion for class assignment, i.e. determines the choice of the remaining inflectional endings, with a concomitant realignment of class membership. This results in many class 1 verbs, which had preserved -ed- (especially light stems), adopting the inflection of class 2 verbs. Thus verbs like fremman : fremede : gefremed, trymman : trymede : getrymed, now show up as fremian : fremode/fremede : gefremod/gefremed, trymian : trymode/trymede : getrymod/getrymed, etc. This shift was facilitated by the fact that only class 2 was really productive in Old English, i.e. loans and new derivatives automatically joined this class and not class 1.

73

74

Dieter Kastovsky

At this stage, the inflectional system had become ambivalent, since the class membership of a given verb could no longer be assigned unambiguously. Put differently, it was no longer obvious on the basis of what differences/parameters the two inflectional paradigms (classes) should be kept apart. The result is obviously great fluctuation of class assignment, which eventually seems to have resulted in a redefinition of inflectional classes on the basis of their preterits/past participles: Class 1 Class 2 (24) Pret./PP -d/-t/-Ø -ed Class 2 is characterised by a preterit and past participle ending which contains a vowel, whereas in class 1 this vowel is syncopated (this is called “thematic” and “athematic” in Lass 1992: 127). Presence vs. absence of the vowel is not predictable on formal grounds, it is an inherent property of the verb, i.e. is morphologically conditioned. Put differently, an originally phonologically governed phenomenon — High Vowel Deletion after heavy stems — has itself become a governing morphological feature distinguishing two inflectional paradigms. Moreover, this realignment now produced two productive morphological classes, since the new class 1 not only contains the continuation of OE weak verbs with heavy stems, or those ending in a dental stop, but also French loans with stem-final consonants, such as joynen, peinten, whereas loans with vowel-final stems usually joined class 2, cf. cryen, preyed, but also chaungen (Lass 1992: 128), which, however, also had class 1 by-forms. The result of this restructuring is the following. English verb morphology is now basically morphologically conditioned. Class assignment has shifted from global paradigm-scanning to one dominant diagnostic criterion — the formation of the preterit and past participle. This is in line with the overall development of English morphology towards agglutination, since in nominal inflection a similar development took place: case and number were dissociated in late Old English, with number becoming the dominant — and class-defining — category. Similarly, with the verbs, tense emerges as the dominant factor from a situation where very often a combination of person/number and tense exponents characterised a given inflectional form, e.g. 1. sg. pres. wrīte : 1., 3. sg. pret. wrāt-Ø : 2. sg. pret. write : pl. pret. writon. As Lass (1992: 128) has shown, the class distinctive feature — presence vs. absence of the vowel — due to rhythmic reasons became less and less reliable: sometimes the person/number-denoting vowel following the preterit morpheme was deleted, resulting, e.g., in luved, and sometimes the vowel of the preterit itself was deleted, resulting in luvde. Thus, a purely morphologically conditioned class-distinctive phenomenon was becoming a matter of phonostylistics. And when finally vowel deletion was generalised also with the other inflectional endings, especially


those of the nouns, this class distinction was given up. The net result was a neat distinction between regular verbs, which delete their vowel in the preterit/past participle, unless the verb ends an alveolar stop, and a set of progressively more and more irregular verbs such as keep : kept, deal : dealt, cut : cut, write : wrote : written, be : am : is : are : was : were : been. The properties of the latter have to be specified in the lexicon as irregular, the former are unspecified and constitute the default case.

3.4 Status and function of morphophonemic and/or allomorphic alternations OE had inherited many nouns and adjectives which were related to strong verbs and which exhibited ablaut alternations, i.e. were responsible for a lot of stem variation: ¯ w-brecþ ‘sacrilege, lit. law-breach’, æ ¯ w-breca ‘adulterer, lit. law (25) brecan: æ breaker’, ġebrecness ‘breach’, brecþa ‘broken condition’; (ġe-)bræc ‘noise, sound’; bræ ¯ ċ ‘breaking, destruction’, æ ¯ w-bræ ¯ ċe adj. ‘adulterous, despising the law’, æ ¯ w-brucol ‘sacrilegious’, broc ‘breach, fragment’, bryċe ‘break, fragment’, hūs-bryċe ‘burglary’, hūs-bryċel ‘burglarious’, bryċe ‘fragile’; drincan: drinc ‘drink, drinking’, ġedrinca one who drinks with another’, drincere ‘drinker’, drenċ ‘drink, drinking’, drenċan ‘give to drink’, drenċ-hūs ‘drinking-house’; druncen ‘drunkenness’, druncennis ‘drunkenness’, druncnian ‘be, get drunk’, druncning ‘drinking’, drynċ ‘drink, potion, drinking’. Moreover, in the course of its development, the language had undergone a number of sound changes, which left behind numerous additional alternations. These originally started out as phonologically conditioned very low-level allophonic phenomena, but in the course of time shifted to phonemic alternations, and eventually, due to the loss of the conditioning environments, to allomorphic, and therefore unpredictable, alternations: (26) i-umlaut (full ~ fyllan, dōm ~ dēman, curon ~ cyre, seċġan ~ sagu, trum ~ trymþ), consonant gemination (gram ~ gremman, wefan ~ webba), palatalisation and assibilation (ċēosan ~ curon ~ cyre, lugon ~ lyġe, brecan ~ brucon ~ bryċe, gangan ~ genġe, genġa, fōn ~ fangen ~ fenġ), Anglo-Frisian Brightening and Retraction (grafan~ græf, græft, bacan ~ ġebæc), etc. (see also Kastovsky 1989). To this has to be added phonologically conditioned quantity alternation of the type cēpan ~ cepte, ċīld ~ ċildru, etc., whose morphological repercussion has still not been investigated systematically. Old English thus was a language with pervasive stem variation, which, however, was not predictable any more and had to be learned word by word. Such a situation

75

76

Dieter Kastovsky

calls for analogical restructuring, and this is precisely what happened. During the Middle English period, most of these alternations were levelled, except for some residual cases in inflection, which now characterise irregular inflectional forms, like keep ~ kept, child ~ children, etc. In derivation, gradually a non-alternating pattern also became the rule, i.e. forms with alternations were replaced by non-alternating ones. This was certainly supported by the emerging tendency towards word-based morphology, which did not favour stem-variability but rather would operate with a phonologically invariant base form. This is corroborated by the fate of the ablaut nouns and adjectives exemplified in (25). In contradistinction to German, where we still have a lot of base variability, basically all ablaut nouns disappeared and were either replaced by non-alternating formations or by loans from French (Kastovsky 1990). There was a countermovement, however, because in connection with the increased borrowing from French and Latin new alternations entered the language, none of which are, however, phonologically predictable. Moreover, these are restricted to word-formation, see the next section.

3.5 The existence and status of morphological levels Old English was extremely homogeneous in this respect. The vocabulary was Germanic, and the Latin loans (about 3% of the recorded vocabulary) had been integrated into the phonological and morphological system of the language and were not recognisable as such. This changed somewhat in the 11th century in connection with the Benedictine Reform, when Latin loans were adopted without adaptation, but these were mainly restricted to written language and specific, scholarly registers. But during the Middle English and Early Modern English periods, the situation changed drastically as a result of massive borrowing from French and Latin. These loans had a different prosodic structure, viz. non-initial, partly movable stress as against fixed initial stress, which was characteristic of the Germanic languages. The latter assigns stress from left to right and stresses the first syllable of the lexical root, regardless of its phonological structure. In Latin and Romance (and the corresponding loans), however, stress assignment operates from right to left, taking into account syllable weight. Stress could therefore be placed on the final (licóur), penultimate (engéndred) or antepenultimate (párdoner) syllable, depending on weight distribution. This automatically leads to movable stress in derivationally related patterns, especially since suffixes could bear stress themselves or determined the position of stress: Japán ~ Jàpanése, hístory ~ históric ~ historícity, admíre ~ ádmirable / admírable, etc. This affected the English phonological system profoundly, especially since stress position led to phonological alternations between full vowels and schwa. Stress alternation in related words thus is an indication of a non-


native pattern, since native derivation is stress-invariant. It has even been claimed that this led to a change from Germanic left-to right (“left-handed”) to right-to-left (“right-handed”) Romance stress assignment (e.g. Lass 1992: 85ff.; Giegerich 1999). I would doubt this and would rather argue that we have two competing stress assignment rules in the non-native vocabulary (see also Dalton-Puffer 2000). And in his contribution on phonology and morphology to the forthcoming one-volume Cambridge University Press History of the English Language, Lass also takes a more conservative stand in view of the persistent variation, stating that “English still, as in ME times, has two competing stress systems” (Lass 2006: xx). Moreover, alternations due to stress assignment were added to by certain shortening processes in connection with the number of syllables involved, e.g. sæ ¯n ~sǽnity, divīn ~ divínity, etc., which after the Great Vowel Shift led to alternations such as /seɪn/ ~ /sænɪti/, /dɪvaɪn/ ~ /dɪvɪnɪti/. Whether such alternations (dubbed Trisyllabic Laxing in Chomsky and Halle 1968) have really become productive in English is questionable (Minkova and Stockwell 1998). But the alternation called Velar Softening, i.e. the alternation between a velar stop and a palatal or alveolar fricative or affricate, characterising historic ~ historicity, magic ~ magician, concept ~ conceptual, etc. certainly is productive, although tied to the respective suffixes, which are non-native. Thus, the borrowing process not only changed the overall phonological system of English, especially with regard to stress alternations and concomitant segmental alternations (still in need of investigation as to their development), but also the morphophonemic system of derivational morphology, establishing two levels here as well. This means that for Modern English we have to accept two strata or levels. But, as Dalton-Puffer (2000) has convincingly shown, these two strata or levels are not neatly separated but compete with each other, i.e. we have to assume that the boundary between them is fuzzy. Nevertheless, the introduction of the French and Latin loans changed the originally very homogenous morphophonemic system drastically, which again can be regarded as a typological change, this time however triggered by extra-linguistic rather than intra-linguistic factors.

4. Conclusion As has been stated at the beginning of this chapter, its aim was to show that certain historical changes have long roots and persist over centuries or even millennia, producing far-reaching, cumulative effects that result in a drastic, typological restructuring of the language in question. Moreover, very often many factors from different levels of the language system interact to produce this cumulative effect, including extralinguistic factors such as borrowing as in the last example. Such a bird’s eye

77

78

Dieter Kastovsky

view is, however, only possible, if we have enough detailed case studies that investigate ongoing changes from a closer perspective. But I also have tried to show that such local changes might be affected by the more general drift a language has gradually adopted through the “collaboration” of local changes, which go in the same direction, and which then create a kind of feed-back mechanism favouring changes that support this drift rather than changes that go in the opposite direction. Notes * Thanks go to an anonymous reviewer, who pointed out a number of errors and shortcomings. 1. This is an aspect that I cannot deal with in the following, but it seems to me to be instantiated by the behaviour of tense (“long”) vowels and diphthongs in English: on the one hand, there is a tendency towards monophthongisation, on the other a tendency towards diphthongisation. Both are exemplified by a series of sound changes in the history of English, e.g. the monophthongisation of diphthongs in the transition of Old English to Middle English, and, very recently, in Modern English, and the diphthongisation forming part of the so-called “Great Vowel Shift”, again being repeated in Southern British English during the last decades under the influence of London English. 2. The vowel alternation in mouse ~ mice is regarded as the representation of the plural, i.e. as a replacive morph /aʊ ~ aɪ/. The same applies to alternation in G Vater ~ Väter in (1b). 3. There is, unfortunately, a terminological problem here, because some morphologists use the term “root” where others would speak of “stems”, cf. Bauer (1983: 20–2), whose use of these terms differs considerably from the one proposed here. 4. This is a typical case of Lass’s idea of “making use of junk”, cf. Lass (1990). 5. Thus the differentiation between the OE 1st, 3rd sg. and 2nd sg. and pl. pret. (e.g. spræc vs. spræ ¯ con) is redundant, whereas the pattern sprecan vs. ġesprecen, bacan ~ bōc ~ bōcon ~ ġebacen is under-differentiated, since the present and the past participle have the same vowel. 6. For the shift from grammatical to natural gender, cf. Kastovsky (1999).

References Bauer, Laurie. 1983. English word-formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chomsky, Noam and Morris Halle. 1968. The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper and Row. Coseriu, Eugenio. 1988. Der romanische Sprachtypus: Versuch einer neuen Typologisierung der romanischen Sprachen. Energeia und Ergon: Sprachliche Variation, Sprachgeschichte, Sprachtypologie, vol. I: Schriften von Eugenio Coseriu (1965–87), ed. by Jörn Albrecht, 207– 24. Tübingen: Narr [Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik 300]. Dalton-Puffer, Christiane. 2000. Is there a social element in English word-stress? Explorations into a non-categorial treatment of English stress: a long-term view. The history of English in a social context. A contribution to historical sociolinguistics, ed. by Dieter Kastovsky and Arthur Mettinger, 91–113. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter [Trends in Linguistics 129]. Giegerich, Heinz J. 1999. Lexical strata in English: Morphological causes, phonological effects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Hogg, Richard. 1992. Phonology and morphology. The Cambridge history of the English language, vol. 1: The beginnings to 1066, ed. by Richard Hogg, 67–167. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kastovsky, Dieter. 1989. Morphophonemic alternations and the history of English: Examples from Old English. Historical English. On the occasion of Karl Brunner’s 100th birthday, ed. by Manfred Markus, 112–23. Innsbruck: University of Innsbruck [Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft. Anglistische Reihe 1]. Kastovsky, Dieter. 1990. Whatever happened to the ablaut nouns in English — and why did it not happen in German? Historical linguistics 1987. Selected papers from the 11th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Los Angeles, 16–20 August 1993, ed. by Henning Andersen and Konrad K. Koerner, 253–64. Amsterdam: John Benjamins [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 66]. Kastovsky, Dieter. 1992. Typological reorientation as a result of level interaction: The case of English morphology. Diachrony within synchrony: language history and cognition, ed. by Günther Kellermann and Michael D. Morrissey, 411–28. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang [Duisburger Arbeiten zur Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft 14]. Kastovsky, Dieter. 1994a. Typological differences between English and German morphology and their causes. Language change and language structure: Older Germanic languages in a comparative perspective, ed. by Toril Swan, Endre Mørk and Olaf J. Westvik, 135–57. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Kastovsky, Dieter. 1994b. Historical English word-formation. From a monostratal to a poly stratal system. Historical English word-formation. Papers read at the sixth National Conference of the History of English, University of Urbino, 24th and 25th September 1993, ed. by Rolando Bacchielli, 17–31. Urbino: Quattro Venti. Kastovsky, Dieter. 1996a. Categorial restructuring of the weak verbs in Late Old English and Middle English. Middle English miscellany. From vocabulary to linguistic variation, ed. by Jacek Fisiak, 29–45. Poznań: Motivex. Kastovsky, Dieter. 1997. Morphological classification in English historical linguistics: The interplay of diachrony, synchrony and morphological theory. To explain the present. Studies in the changing English language in honour of Matti Rissanen, ed. by Terttu Nevalainen and Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, 63–75. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique [Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki 52]. Kastovsky, Dieter. 1999a. English and German morphology: A typological comparison. Words, lexemes, concepts — approaches to the lexicon, ed. by Wolfgang Falkner and Hans-Jörg Schmid, 39–51. Tübingen: Narr. Kastovsky, Dieter. 1999b. Inflectional classes, morphological restructuring, and the dissolution of Old English grammatical gender. Gender in grammar and cognition, ed. by Barbara Unterbeck and Matti Rissanen, 709–27. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter [Trends in Linguistics 124]. Kastovsky, Dieter and Barbara Kryk-Kastovsky. 2005. The restructuring of nominal inflection from Germanic to Modern English: Major typological changes. Life in language. Studies in honour of Wolfgang Kühlwein, ed. by Andreas J. Schuth, Kristine Horner and Jean Jacques Weber. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. Keller, Rudi. 1990. Sprachwandel. Von der unsichtbaren Hand in der Sprache. Tübingen: Francke [Uni-Taschenbücher 1567]. Kuryłowicz, Jerzy. 1968. Indogermanische Grammatik, vol. 2: Akzent, Ablaut. Heidelberg: Winter.

79

80

Dieter Kastovsky Lass, Roger. 1990. How to do things with junk: Exaptation in language evolution. Journal of Linguistics 26: 79–102. Lass, Roger. 1992. Phonology and morphology. The Cambridge history of the English language, vol. 2: 1066–47, ed. by Norman Blake, 23–155. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lass, Roger. 1994a. On ‘root-based’ Indo-European: An embryological or phylogenetic note. Views 3: 31–34. Lass, Roger. 1994b. Old English. A historical linguistic companion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lass, Roger. 2006. Phonology and morphology. A history of the English language, ed. by Richard M. Hogg and David Denison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marchand, Hans. 1969. The categories and types of present-day English word-formation. A synchronic–diachronic approach. 2nd edition. München: C. H. Beck [Handbücher für das Studium der Anglistik]. Matthews, Peter. 1991 [1974]. Morphology. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Minkova, Donka and Robert P. Stockwell. 1998. The origins of long-short allomorphy in English. Advances in English historical linguistics, ed. by Jacek Fisiak and Marcin Krygier, 211–239. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter [Trends in Linguistics 112]. Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language. An introduction to the study of speech. New York: Harcourt. Schlegel, August W. 1818. Observations sur la langue et la littérature provençales. Paris. Schlegel, Friedrich. 1808. Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier: Ein Beitrag zur Begründung der Altertumskunde. Heidelberg: Winter. Szemerényi, Oswald. 1990. Einführung in die vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, 4. durchgesehene Auflage. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. von Humboldt, Wilhelm. 1827–9. Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues. Bonn. Voyles, Joseph B. 1992. Early Germanic grammar: Pre- proto- and post-Germanic languages. San Diego: Academic Press. Watkins, Calvin. 1969. Indogermanische Grammatik, vol. 3(1): Formenlehre. Geschichte der indo germanischen Verbalflexion. Heidelberg: Winter.

chapter 4

Typology and comparative linguistics Jakobson revisited Konstantin G. Krasukhin Institute of Linguistics, RAS, Moscow

The chapter discusses the relevance of the present in explaining the past in morphological reconstruction, arguing that historical reconstructions ought to have their basis in living languages. More specifically, it is suggested that historical typology should be based on data from cognate languages as they reveal the spread of the realizations of linguistic variables. As a case in point, the author traces the development of the middle voice in a variety of Indo-European languages, historical and modern, focusing on Greek, Lithuanian and Russian. The comparisons show the layering of old synthetic and new periphrastic forms, suggesting typical pathways of grammaticalization of the middle voice in the language family.

0. In his famous report on the VIII World Congress of Linguists (1958), Roman J akobson formulated his principles for the application of typological criteria in comparative linguistics: the scholar may not reconstruct a language state with features that have no parallel in living languages. He therefore criticized the traditional reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European consonant system, which contains simple voiceless, voiced, and voiced aspirated series of stop consonants. The voiced and aspirated phonemes are marked; therefore the voiced aspirated series must have a counterpart — a voiceless aspirated one. Thomas V. Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav V. Ivanov supported Jakobson’s ideas: they proposed a phonetic reconstruction according to the markedness or unmarkedness of phonological units. However, this concept is analyzed in more detail by Gamkrelidze and Ivanov (1995 [1984]: 10). They consider the more widespread unit to be unmarked, and the less widespread one to be marked. For example, among voiced stops, /b/ is more prevalent in the languages of the world than /g/; therefore /b/ is unmarked, and /g/ is marked. Among voiceless stops, /k/ is more widespread than /p/; thus it is unmarked. In other words, the markedness of a phoneme depends not on its distinctive features themselves, but rather on the frequency of their occurrence in languages. This example shows that the concept of typological reconstruction lacks a generally accepted definition and scope. 0.1. I think that the most fruitful strategy in historical typology is the comparison of cognate languages (cf. Krasukhin 2004: 373–4). Here we can consider several

82

Konstantin G. Krasukhin

ivergent developments of cognate structures, and convergent developments of d originally distinct structures. Some scholars think that languages have stable semantic features that are assigned to several morphemes in the processes of protolanguage split and language evolution. For example, John Costello (1993) considers modal auxiliaries in Old English. Disagreeing with David Lightfoot (1979: 90–114), Costello postulates the existence of modal auxiliaries in the oldest texts; moreover, he believes that Proto-Indo-European had an analogous category. Many languages are found to have had verbs functioning as modal auxiliaries: Hittite kisari, lit. ‘become’, can mean ‘possible’; Greek ἐθέλω ‘wish’ → ‘want’; in the optative, OInd śak-, ‘be strong, powerful’, can mean ‘be able, can’ (śakéma tvā samídham (RV I 94: 3), ‘may we be able to kindle you’); Lat. posse means ‘can, may’ (< potis esse ‘be strong’). According to Costello, the presence of such functions in several root languages indicates that the proto-language had one emic unit, or modal auxiliary tagmeme (in Pike’s sense): a verb form with the function of describing the utterance in a modal frame (in other words, expressing the relation of the speaker to the spoken). Or, in other words, Costello has reconstructed the process of replacement according to Henry Hoenigswald (1960: 119–21): if in two sister languages two parallel states are attested (which exist in the same contrastive and characteristic environments), one can project the analogous state onto the proto-language. Costello thinks that the function of verbs as modal auxiliaries in several languages is sufficient for the reconstruction of this proto-category. 0.1.1. Some examples used by Costello, however, need a more precise definition. First, Hittite kis- can function as a modal auxiliary in very special conditions: when it is a copula for the so-called supine I and infinitive II:

(1) man tukma uarrissuuanzi UL kisari (Muuattalli–Duppi–Tessub contract I 23) ‘If it isn’t possible for you to help.’

However, this function depends on the modal meaning of these verbal forms: another auxiliary – es- ‘to be’ can also assume a modal meaning:

(2) INA KUR URUAsuua lahhiauanzi esun (KBo XXIII 12; III 9) ‘I intended to go in Asuua (= Asia) country.’

Without a copula, supine I is also a modal:

(3) NINDA KUR4.RA parsiiauanzi NU.GAL (KBo XII 12; V 32) ‘The bread must not be broken.’ 0.1.2. Secondly, Greek ἐθέλω/θέλω often means ‘be able’:

(4) τὰ δένδρα οὐδέν μ’ ἐθέλει διδάσκειν (Plato, Phaedr, 230 d) ‘The trees couldn’t teach me anything.’

Typology and comparative linguistics

Later, during the Byzantine period, this verb regularly indicated the future tense: ‘θέλω ἱνα + conjunctive’; this has developed further into Modern Greek θά (future marker). This seems very similar to the development of the English verb will. Thirdly, the modern “modal auxiliary” in Slavic can be transformed into a modal particle: Russ. dialectal može can either mean ‘can’ or ‘probably’. Cf.

(5) on zemliu pakhat’ može ‘He is able to plough the earth.’

(6) može, jёn pride (Northern dialect) ‘Probably, he’ll come.’

0.2. How can we evaluate Costello’s reconstruction? 1. In the cited languages, with the exception of Modern English, there are no special modal auxiliaries; any verb can function independently. In Hoenigswald’s terminology, if such a split occurs in the functions of a verb, its modal function is secondary beyond question. 2. The necessity of projecting any feature of the proto-language is conditioned by the common material, not by the semantic features. 3. One cannot say which modal auxiliary is more archaic or what was replaced. Any cited root may have acquired its new function during the history of the given language. A more precise formulation would be: we cannot postulate the presence of modal verbs in the PIE language state, but the language showed a tendency to use verbs as modal auxiliaries. The daughter languages inherited this tendency. 0.3. This example shows the main directions in typological reconstruction, as well as its difficulties. One must define the main structural features of the proto-language, and reconstruct, if possible, the unit used in its plane of expression (phonemes, morphemes, models of word formation, and syntactic patterns). Is it necessary to compare these reconstructed data with living languages? We know languages with unique features exist, such as the Khoisan (Hottentot–Bushman) languages, which contain the so-called “click” consonant series. The correct reconstruction of any feature is sufficient, if all the procedures are followed correctly. The typological verification must be based firstly on the data of cognate languages. In other words, processes of change and categorical development reconstructed in a proto-language can be continued in the daughter languages. A good example is the palatalization that took place in the eastern dialects of Proto-Indo-European in prehistoric times, then three times in Slavic (also in prehistoric times: the first one probably between the sixth and fifth centuries BC, the second one at the beginning of the modern era, the third one before the first written texts). An analogous development also took place in Romance (starting in the third century AD: see MeyerLübke 1921: § 125–7). The change /k + i, e/ → /ć + i, e/ occurs frequently in the history of language; therefore it is attested in several languages. The study of such

83

84


cyclical processes is the immediate task of historical typology. The correspondence between reconstructed proto-language data and such processes in a given language family serves as an important verification of the reconstruction. I would also emphasize that Hoenigswald’s models, cited by Costello, are very instructive for typological reconstruction. They show general tendencies of language evolution. 1. Let us now consider the expression of the middle voice in Greek, Lithuanian, and Slavic. But first, we must say some things about the middle as a grammatical category, and the reconstruction of middle inflection in Indo-European. Then we will try to show that several morphemes (the middle inflection and the reflexive pronoun) are developing in a similar manner. 1.1. The middle voice has been considered from a cross-linguistic perspective by scholars representing several points of view (cf. Kemmer 1993; Fox and Hopper 1994; Bakker 1994; Kølln 1969). In general, a verb in the middle voice indicates that an action is either self-directed or performed on behalf of the actor (direct reflexive middle: to wash oneself, Russ. umyvat’sja, Greek. λούoμαι ‘wash myself ’); or that the action is performed in the actor’s own interests, in which case the verb can take a direct object (indirect reflexive: λούομαι τὰς χεῖρας ‘I wash my hands’); or that the actors are performing a reciprocal action towards one another (Russ. drat’sja ‘fight with’). Moreover, middle morphemes can also express other meanings: an intransitive action or state (Greek νέμω ‘divide’ – νέμομαι ‘live’ ( *-to (Stang 1932; Kuryłowicz 1932; Neu 1968). According to the latter theory, the original denotation of the middle is a state or process (as for PIE Perfect). Our material, however, shows that a verbal form with a reflexive marker and the primordial meaning of self-directed action can also have stative or passive meaning. A stative verb’s models of government can support this process. 5.1. The stative category existed in Proto-Indo-European: *guhene ‘(such a state of affairs that one) is murdered’. It was not passive, but the description of an event without any obligatory attention drawn to the actor; a “disagreed verbal adjective” (Kuryłowicz 1964: 61ff, 1977: 64; Stepanov 1989: 24–8, Krasukhin 2000: 61–2). It has been retained: (1) in the non-standard (non-dental) middle and its derivatives; (2) partially in the Indo-European perfect; (3) in the Greek aorist with zero grade root vocalism, and the similar Lithuanian verbs. These preserve the vocalism and meaning of the old forms of the stative. 5.2. The main features of the non-dental middle are the following: 1. The stative meaning: OInd. (Vedic) śrnóti ‘hear’ – śrnvé ‘be heard, listened to’, bráviti ‘say’ – bruvé ‘be said’, dógdhi, dóhati ‘milk’ – duhé ‘give milk, nourish’. The last form is especially instructive. It differs from the standard middle duhaté (< *dhugh-nté) ‘they milk for themselves’, and also from the passive duhyate ‘is milked’. Cf.: (27) śukrám duhaté páyah (RV IX 19: 5) ‘They are milking for themselves a shining drink.’ (28) ātmanván nábho duhyate ghrtám payo rtásya na bhir amŕtam ví jāyate (RV IX 74: 4) ‘The vivid moisture drips with moisture and fat; the omphalos [i.e. center] of the Law is born.’ (the two passive verbs duhyate and jāyate have similar grammatical meaning). (29) dive-divé iḻā dhenumátī duhé (RV VIII 31: 4) ‘The cow gives pleasant drink day-to-day.’


(a process which is uncontrolled, but not caused by external forces). 2. The unstable actant frame, a tendency to impersonal constructions: Hitt. tiiammi ‘stand, be found’ – tiiari ‘(one) appears’, tuhsammi ‘break’ – tuhsaru ‘let (something) be broken’. Cf. (30) tuhsaru apiel UD-az EMEHI.A tuhsaru apiel UD-az uddar hurtaus (KBo II: 13 ff) ‘Let tongues be broken in that day; let words and oath be broken in that day!’ (the nouns EMEHI.A, uddar, hurtaus are in the accusative plural; the verb tuhsaru is in the 3rd sg.; this proves its disagreement with nouns, and its impersonality). The importance of these examples is based on the circumstance that these verbs belong to the mi-conjugation. Non-dental inflection is here a marker of the impersonal verb (cf. also: halziiattari ‘is called’ vs. halziiari ‘(one) calls’ (Neu 1968: 174– 5)). Impersonal passives with the inflection *-e/or are also attested in Italic and Celtic languages. The Umbrian verbal form ier (cf. Lat. it ‘s/he goes’) indicates an impersonal verb: (31) ehesu poplu nosue ier (TI VIb 55) ‘Let him go away from these people.’ Let us compare this with the Old Irish passive no-m berar (< *nu-me-bheror), ‘I am carried’ (lit. ‘me is carried’).9 The OIr passive form –berar strongly differs from the deponent bertha(i)r < *bher-tor-: the first form denotes a passive state only; the second is no different from the active verb berta(i)r = beraid ‘he carries’. In strong class I Irish verbs, the deponent developed from the standard mediopassive; it lost its middle meaning. 5.3. Intransitive IE perfect: Greek ὄλλυμι ‘destroy’ – ὄλωλα ‘I am destroyed’, πείθω ‘persuade’ – πέποιθα ‘I am persuaded’, τρέφω ‘feed’ – τέτροφα ‘I am fed, grew’; OInd tanoti ‘pull’ – tatāna ‘is pulled’. One can compare the old intransitive perfect ἔφθορα ‘I was destroyed’ (φθείρω ‘destroy’), and late ἔφθαρκα ‘I have destroyed’. The intransitive perfect is the oldest type of IE perfect; this category subsequently developed into the resultative and the simple preterite (Meillet 1927; Renou 1925; Chantraine 1927). 6. The Baltic and Slavic languages also contain some reflexes of IE stative forms: 6.1. Lithuanian stative: verbs šãla ‘it is cold’, skaûda ‘ashes’, and adverbs gàna ‘it is enough’, gaĩla ‘sorry’; these denote state, and are used to create impersonal constructions: čiandiên šãla ‘it is cold today’; mán gal̃vą skaûda ‘my head aches’; mán gàna válgimo ‘I have meal enough; this meal is enough for me’; jìm pinigų̃ gaĩla

93

94


‘money gives him sorrow’. Both verbs and adverbs have the same endings (-0 after a thematic vowel; the latter is a remnant of the accent shift), a similar meaning of uncontrolled state, and the same government (dative subject of state). 6.2. The Baltic and Slavic participles in *-to: neuter form with zero ending, impersonal government, stative and/or eventive meaning: kaimýno iškùlta ‘the neighbor gathered in the harvest’ (lit. ‘it is gathered of the neighbor’), jų̃ ižvaziúota, sakýta, darýta ‘they went out, said, worked’ (lit. ‘It is gone, said, worked of them’). Such participial constructions seem verbal and adverbial, as considered above: mán (gal˜vą) skaûda (verb) – mán šálta (part.) ‘it is cold for me’. Such a correspondence supports the idea that the oldest type of PIE stative was really a verbal adjective lacking agreement; compare the Northern Russian participial constructions Pesnja/pesnju ne slyšno ‘the song isn’t heard’ (with the equivalent of the subject in the nominative or accusative); doroga/dorogu idëno ‘(one) is gone on the road’; u volkov korovu s’ jedeno/s’ jevši ‘the cow (acc.) is eaten by wolves’ (subject in genitive with the preposition u – possessive construction). Such constructions have the same meaning as the perfect had in early European languages: the state as the result of the action, and subsequently the preterite. 7. Let us return to Hoenigswald’s model of development. A. Proto-Indo-European State: (1) reflexive verbal form in –tó; (2) stative verbal form in –é; (3) passive-stative participles in –tó-. B. Proto-Greek: (2) splits into (2) and (2’), an aorist with zero grade root vocalism; (1) and (2) merge, influence (= partial merger) between (2’) and (3). C. Proto-Baltic: loss of (1); (2) splits into (2a) verbs with zero grade of root vocalism; (2 b) impersonal verbs; (2c) adverbs of state; (1) is replaced by (4) reflexive –si/-s; influence (= partial merger) between (2a), (2b), (2c), and (3). The development of Greek (1) and Lithuanian (4) is similar. The historical typology of the grammatical subsystems of middle/reflexivity can be used to support their origin. 8. In the Indo-European languages there are the following stable semantic features: 1. Outer Action, denoting the activity of the subject. 2. Self-directed Action, denoting any activity that the subject performs in his own sphere. 3. State and Event, occurring without the subject, or without the speaker focusing attention on the agent. The development of verbs denoting self-directed action can thus be schematized as follows: An action in the subject’s sphere → indirect reflexive → direct reflexive (loss of explicit object) → intransitive action → intransitive process/state (non-controlled by subject) → passive → impersonal form. The development of stative forms: state/event → state as result of former action → former action (preterite).


Notes 1. Cf. the classification of Zeno Vendler (1967): verbs of action have a controlled dynamic meaning, verbs of position a controlled static one, verbs of process an uncontrolled dynamic one, verbs of state an uncontrolled static one. The concept of control is one of the most important for the description of verbal voice. 2. This circumstance depends on phonetic change: cf. OE burnan (trans.) – byrnan (intrans.) corresponding to ModE burn. In many cases, phonetic and morphological evolution have obliterated all differences between causative and non-causative verbs. 3. Verb of cognition can be explained as being more controlled than emotional verbs. However, Kemmer’s examples also contain verbs of uncontrolled action. 4. The causative counterpart is the sigmatic aorist ἐπέλησε, ‘he concealed’, and it governs the object in the genitive. 5. More precisely, I can say that such genitive nouns reflect the PIE ablative, as testified by the preposition ἀπό. 6. Homeric and Attic -χ- can be explained as a reflex of the old sigmatic suffix: *δεκσομαι (OInd. daksati) > δέχομαι. 7. The Lithuanian example lacks the object. 8. In Old Russian and Old Church Slavonic, the particle są was formally independent from the verb. According to Wackernagel’s Law, it was placed after the first accented word in the clause. 9. For several meanings, see Kümmel 1996; Pooth 2001; García Castillero 2002.

References Ambrazas, Vytautas (ed.). 1985. Grammatika litovskogo yazyka (A grammar of Lithuanian). Vilnius: Mokslas. Bakker, Egbert. 1994. Voice, aspect, and aktionsart: Middle and passive in Ancient Greek. Voice: Form and function, ed. by Barbara Fox and Paul Hopper, 23–47. Amsterdam: John Benjamins [Typological studies in language 27]. Bechert, Johann. 1964. Die Diathesen von ἰδεῖν und ὁρᾶν bei Homer, vols. I–II. München: J. Kitzinger. Bertolín Cebrián, Reyes. 1996. Die Verben des Denkens bei Homer. Innsbruck: Verlag des Institutes der Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck. Chadwick, John and Lydia Baumbach. 1963. The Mycenaean Greek vocabulary. Glotta 41(3/4): 157–271. Chantraine, Pierre. 1927. Histoire du parfait grec. Paris: Klincsieck. Costello, John. 1993. Modal Auxiliaries in Proto-Indo-European. Comparative-historical linguistics: Indo-European and Finno-Ugric (Papers in honor of Oswald Szemerényi III), ed. by Bela Brogyanyi and Reiner Lipps, 73–90. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Croft, William. 1994. Voice: Beyond control and affectedness. Voice: Form and function, ed. by Barbara Fox and Paul Hopper, 89–117. Amsterdam: John Benjamins [Typological studies in language 27]. de Boel, Gunnar. 1988. Goal accusative and object accusative in Homer. A contribution to the theory of transitivity. Brussel: Koninklijke Akademie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België. Fox, Barbara and Paul Hopper (eds.). 1994. Voice: Form and function. Amsterdam: John Benjamins [Typological studies in language 27].

95

96


Gamkrelidze, Thomas V. and Vyacheslav V. Ivanov. 1995 [1984]. The Indo-European language and the Indo-Europeans, trsl. by Johanna Nichols. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter). García Castillero, Carlos. 2002. Zum indogermanischen Typ śáye śére. Historische Sprachfor schung 115: 151–85. Geniušiene, Emma Š. 1983. Reflexivnye glagoly v baltiyskikh yazykakh i tipologiya reflexivov (Reflexive verbs in Baltic languages and the typology of reflexives). Vilnius: Ministerstvo Vysšego Obrazovaniya. Hirt, Hermann. 1907. Zum Ursprung der indogermanischen Verbalflexion. Indogermanische Forschungen 15: 51–87. Hoenigswald, Henry W. 1960. Language change and linguistic reconstruction. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press. Jakobson, Roman O. 1958. Typological studies and their contribution to historical and comparative linguistics. Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Linguists, ed. by Eva Sivertsen, Carl H. Borgstrøm, Arne Gallis and Alf Sommerfelt, 17–25. Oslo: Oslo University Press. Kemmer, Suzanne. 1993. Middle voice in cross-linguistic perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kemmer, Suzanne. 1994. Middle voice, transitivity, and the elaboration of events. Voice: Form and function, ed. by Barbara Fox and Paul Hopper, 149–250. Amsterdam: John Benjamins [Typological studies in language 27]. Kølln Hermann. 1969. Oppositions of voice in Greek, Slavic, and Baltic. København: Munskgaard [Det Konigelige Danske Videnskabernes selskab. Historisk-filosoviske meddelelser 43(4)]. Krasukhin, Konstantin G. 2000. The Indo-European root dheugh-: Its morphology, meaning, etymology (in comparison with similar forms). Journal of Indo-European Studies 28 (1–2): 37–64. Krasukhin, Konstantin G. 2004. Aspekty indoevropeyskoy rekonstrukcii: Akcentologiya. Morphologiya. Syntaxis (Aspects of Indo-European reconstruction: Accentuation. Morphology. Syntax). Moscow: Yazyki Slavianskoi Kultury. Kümmel, Martin. 1996. Stativ und Passivaorist im Indogermanischen. Göttingen: Vanderhoech & Ruprecht [Ergänzungheft zu Historische Sprachforschung 39]. Kuryłowicz, Jerzy R. 1932. Les desinences moyennes de l’indo-européen et de l’hittite. Bulletin de la Sociéte de Linguistique de Paris 33: 1–4. Kuryłowicz, Jerzy R. 1964. The inflectional categories of Indo-European. Heidelberg: Carl Winter [Indogermanische Bibliothek III: Forschungen]. Kuryłowicz, Jerzy R. 1977. Problèmes de linguistique indo-indoeuropéenne. Wrocław, Warszawa, Krakow and Gdansk: Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk. Lightfoot, David W. 1979. Principles of diachronic syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meillet, Antoine. 1927. Linguistique historique et linguistique générale, vols. I–II. Paris: Klincksieck. Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm. 1921. Historische Grammatik der französischen Sprache. Heidelberg: Carl Winter’s Universitätsbuchhandlung [Sammlung romanischer Elementar und Handbücher 1]. Neu, Erich. 1968. Das Hethitische Mediopassiv und seine indogermanische Grundlagen. Wiesbaden: Otto Harassowitz. Palmer, Leonard R. 1961. Mycenaeans and Minoans. Aegean prehistory in the light of the Linear B tablets. London: Faber & Faber.


Perel’muter, Ilya A. 1995. Zalog drevnegrečeskogo glagola: teorija, genezis, istorija (Voice in the Ancient Greek verbal system: theory, genesis, history). St Peterburg: Noach. Pooth, Raimond. 2001. Studien in frühindogermanischen Morphologie I. “Stativ”, “Medium” und “Perfekt”. Historische Sprachforschung 114: 221–58. Renou, Louis. 1925. La valeur du parfait dans hymnes védiques. Paris: Klincksieck [Collection linguistique publiée par la Société de Linguistique de Paris 18]. Stang, Christian. 1932. Perfectum und Medium. Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskab 6: 29–39. Steinbach, Markus. 2002. Middle voice: A comparative study in the syntax-semantics interface in German. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Stepanov, Yuriy S. 1989. Indoevropeiskoe predloženie (The sentence in Indo-European). Moscow: Nauka. Vendler, Zeno. 1967. Linguistics and philosophy. Ithaca: University of Cornell Press. Ventris, Michael and John Chadwick. 1956. Documents in Mycenaean Greek. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

97

chapter 5

Primary adjectives in English and German Variation and change in diachrony and typology Thomas Schöneborn University of Konstanz

This chapter compares primary adjectives in English and German. Primary adjectives are monomorphemic and arguably belong to the core vocabulary of a language; many of them are also regarded as prototypical. The set used in this analysis consists of 36 lexemes and has been widely used in typological comparisons. The main focus is on diachrony, and the adjectives are compared at different historical stages, going back to Germanic. This diachronic comparison allows deeper insights into the structure and diachronic change of this set of primary adjectives. Thus, the chapter questions the stability of their primariness and prototypicality, and demonstrates the importance of diachrony for typological comparisons of members of the word class adjective.

1. Introduction The word class adjective has gained much attention in typology since the publication of Dixon’s article with the provocative title “Where have all the adjectives gone?” (1982 [1977]).1 Many substantial and widely cited works have been published since then, along with many articles dealing with the existence or non-existence of the class of adjectives in various languages, work which usually refers directly to Dixon’s original article.2 Until now, almost all research has focused on the synchronic cross-linguistic variation of classes of lexemes that denote properties in various ways. What Dixon and other authors regard as an adjective is a lexeme that is basic on two levels: it has to be monomorphemic, i.e. not derived from other lexemes, and it has to denote a property which is typical of adjectives. Lexemes which fulfill both conditions can be called both primary and prototypical. Within this concept, the prototypical status is derived from the primariness of an adjective: among monomorphemic adjectives, the denoted properties that turn out to be typical meanings for adjectives have to be identified and classified. This is what Dixon did for English: Examining all those forms in English that appear to be basic members of the adjective class, I set up seven universal semantic types, on the basis of the semantic and grammatical properties of the forms. (Dixon 1982: 15)

100 Thomas Schöneborn

The semantic types in Dixon’s analysis are AGE (A), COLOUR (C), DIMENSION (D), HUMAN PROPENSITY (H), PHYSICAL PROPERTY (P), SPEED (S), and VALUE (V). The typological comparisons by Dixon and others (Wetzer 1996; Bhat 1994) showed that the types AGE, VALUE, DIMENSION, and in part COLOUR,3 constitute the prototypical adjectival types, while HUMAN PROPENSITY, PHYSICAL PROPERTY and SPEED do not appear to be prototypical. One aspect that needs to be analysed further is the possible difference between the prototypical and non-prototypical types. The “basicness” or primariness of adjectival lexemes has some importance for the whole concept of adjectives and their prototypicality in typological comparisons between languages: adjectives can only be prototypical if they are primary. Since prototypical adjectives denote typologically universal or, at least, frequent properties, it is assumed that these adjectives can be expected to be stable over time. Regarding the synchronic and diachronic features of primary adjectives, the following questions need to be answered: a. What is a primary adjective? Ideally, and normally, one would use this term for a lexeme that denotes a property and consists of a single lexeme (inflectional morphology excluded). Primariness therefore implies that the lexeme is not derived and that it belongs to the core vocabulary of a language. It may, however, be a loan (borrowed as a whole, and including derivational morphemes) if the borrowing process has become opaque. b. How far back in language history does the non-derived status of a primary adjective have to be traceable? Ideally, an English or German lexeme could be shown to be primary in Proto-Germanic (or in even Indo-European). Normally, a primary adjective should be traceable as far back in time as a native speaker is unable to recognize it as derived or borrowed. However, the authors discussing primary adjectives in several languages have not dealt with the problem of whether primariness is a synchronic or diachronic issue. As a feature on the synchronic level it would be relevant for one language stage only. As the above questions indicate, we intuitively assume that primary adjectives are among the oldest lexical elements of a language, not only because they consist of a single lexeme, but also because they denote prototypical properties, i.e. those that are central and possibly universal. It seems quite natural that these prototypical properties are expressed by lexemes which belong to the lexical core, those lexemes that are basic and can be found in the oldest stages of a language.4 To find out if these intuitions are correct, it is necessary to have a closer look at primary adjectives at older language stages, and to see how far back in time each individual lexeme could actually be considered to be primary in related languages. To my knowledge no one has so far analysed primary adjectives from a diachronic viewpoint

Primary adjectives in English and German 101

addressing these typologically relevant issues. My aim in this chapter is to provide a diachronic and typological comparison of primary adjectives in two genetically related but typologically different languages, English and German.

2. Outlining the analysis 2.1 General questions The lexical basis for my analysis will be the set of 36 lexemes Dixon used for his work. Dixon compiled a list of 150 adjectives in English which he considered to be basic. From this set he chose 36 lexemes that covered all of the seven semantic types he discovered for the class adjective:5 Quick, slow, big, small, long, short, wide, narrow, deep, shallow, sharp, blunt, hot, cold, wet, dry, open, raw, whole, heavy, light, black, white, red, fierce, cruel, kind, generous, jealous, proud, happy, clever, good, bad, new, old. (Dixon 1982: 36)

The aim is to compare this group with their equivalents in Germanic, i.e. those adjectives that express a similar meaning in languages, from Present-Day English and German to Old English and Old High German and even the (reconstructed) Germanic stage. The general questions considered are: I. Stability over time of the membership of primary lexemes in the word class adjective 1. How many adjectives are still primary at a certain language stage or have already become primary at a certain language stage? 2. Are the primary adjectives of this group related, i.e. do they derive from the same stem? II. By what means can a form become a new primary adjective? 1. How many adjectives were borrowed at a certain stage and are now regarded as primary since their borrowing has become opaque? 2. How many are of unknown origin at a certain stage? 3. How many have replaced other adjectives at a certain stage? III. Semantic types English and German have acquired or lost (of a type which may be expressed by a primary adjective in general) 1. How many semantic types are covered by the lexemes at the Germanic stage? One important fact should be noted: both languages have more primary adjectives than those investigated here. I have counted more than 300 for Present-Day German,6 and Dixon’s counts go up to as many as 150 for Present-Day English. Thus the results in this chapter cannot be generalized to all primary adjectives in English and


German. However, this group of lexemes gives an overview of the meanings covered by primary adjectives. Since they are often mentioned in typological literature, it appears to be useful to carry out a diachronic analysis on them. My data sources were various etymological dictionaries of English (the Oxford English Dictionary (OED); Hoad 1986; Skeat 1963) and German (Kluge 1999) and the historical dictionary of Germanic primary adjectives by Heidermanns (1993).

2.2 The dimensions of comparison The analysis presented here is part of a broader investigation. Due to the limitations of this chapter, I have to restrict the number of dimensions of comparison which I used. Following the division into primariness (form) and prototypicality (meaning) of the adjectival lexemes, the dimensions can be arranged in three pairs for possible comparisons between the two languages: A. B.

synchronic comparison diachronic comparison Sub-dimensions for synchronic and diachronic comparison a. comparison of different forms with the same meaning b. comparison of different meanings that are expressed by the same form Sub-dimensions for diachronic comparison i. backward comparison: modern lexemes with older lexemes ii. forward comparison: older lexemes with modern lexemes

The combination of these dimensions results in six possibilities, which allow for six different analyses. Only two of them are relevant for this chapter: A. a. (synchronic comparison of different forms with the same meaning) and B. a. i. (diachronic comparison of different forms with the same meaning backwards – modern lexemes with older lexemes)

3. The group of primary adjectives in English and German 3.1 Part one: Present-Day English compared to Modern German The analysis will be done in several sections. The first section will be the comparison between Present-Day English and German. For this section, I will take Dixon’s classification and assume that all of these lexemes are primary in Present-Day English, even though there are some problematic cases, especially the loans from French. For German, the primary status will be checked for every lexeme.7 I will focus on the following questions, derived from to the general questions formulated in 2.1:


I.1) Are all the adjectives primary in both languages? If all the lexemes are primary in English, how many of their equivalents in German are primary? I.2) Are equivalent lexemes related? Do they belong to the same stem? The results of this comparison are:

Table 1. Primary adjectives in German compared with English English

German

bad big black blunt clever cold cruel deep dry fierce generous good happy heavy hot jealous kind light long narrow new old open proud quick raw red shallow sharp short slow small wet white whole wide

schlecht groß schwarz stumpf klug schlau kalt grausam tief trocken wild freig(i)ebig großzügig gut glücklich schwer heiß eifersüchtig nett leicht lang schmal neu alt offen stolz schnell roh rot flach scharf kurz langsam klein nass weiß ganz weit

Primary in German

Same stems

+ + + + + + ? + + + – + – + + – + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ? + + + + +

− − − − − + 0 + − − 0 + 0 − + 0 − + + − + + + − − + + − + − 0 − − + − +

Note: + = Yes, − = No, ? = Status unclear, 0 = does not apply


I.1. Thirty-one of the 36 German adjectives are also primary at the stage of PresentDay German. Non-primary (i.e. derived) are: grausam, großzügig, glücklich, eifersüchtig and langsam. I.2. Of the 31 primary adjectives only 14 lexemes are related to their English equivalents. Relatedness is here understood as having the same stem and meaning, e.g., cold and kalt. This means that the majority of the German adjectives (17) do not have an English relative with the same stem and meaning. The English adjectives generous and jealous could be regarded as non-primary, because they are clearly loans and, as indicated by the suffix -ous, they are arguably derived. However, Dixon may have chosen to treat them as primary because the derivation took place in French, before they were borrowed into English. Also, they were derived during two different periods: the French forms are genereux (Middle French) and jalous (Old French). The suffix -ous is only the borrowed form of the French suffixes -eux and -ous. Therefore, these adjectives are treated as primary in this analysis. This first comparison illustrates that the membership of the adjective group differs in the two languages. Not all adjectives seem to be primary in German, when Dixon’s reference group is the basis for the comparison. Only a small number of the lexemes are directly related, having the same stem. Even in such closely related languages as English and German there are significant differences in the lexical group of the primary adjectives, resulting in a large number of different non-related lexemes of two languages belonging to the same language family. The comparison so far has been restricted to one stage of the languages concerned. To achieve a more complete picture we need to include diachronic processes and cover several stages of comparison. Changes of lexemes over different language stages are generally of a complex nature, which is also true for primary adjectives. We therefore have to extend the comparison and adopt a diachronic perspective, which will enable us to explore variation during the history of English and/or German.

3.2 Part two: Old/Middle English and Old/Middle High German In exploring diachronic developments, the questions of the first part of the chapter are reformulated and extended to include Old English/German and Middle English/ German. I.1a. Are these adjectives primary at older language stages? II.1. At a given stage, how many lexemes have been borrowed which are no longer recognized or regarded as loans? II.2. Are there any lexemes of unknown origin in this group? II.3. Are there any lexemes that replaced other lexemes with the same meaning?


The replacement can take place in various ways: a. A primary lexeme replaces a primary lexeme, b. A non-primary lexeme replaces a primary lexeme, c. A primary lexeme replaces a non-primary lexeme (i.e. derivations, loans, and participial forms) I.1a. These comparisons yield the following results: in Middle English, 34 lexemes are primary, whereas in Middle High German the number is 31. The relationship between these languages, with German having a smaller number of primary lexemes, does not change from New High German to Middle High German. In Old English there are only 24 primary lexemes whereas Old High German has 29. We can state that Old High German had a larger number of lexemes in this group that are still in use in Present-Day German with (roughly) the same meaning than Old English compared to Present-Day English. Within the time span from Old High German to Middle High German fewer lexemes were included in this group by borrowing or derivation than in English. Similarly, fewer lexemes in German have been replaced or become obsolete than in English. II.1. In English there is only one lexeme in this group that was borrowed between Middle and Modern English: generous (from Middle French). Three lexemes were borrowed from Old French in the Middle English period: cruel, fierce and jealous. It is possible that Old English proud was borrowed from Old French and hap as the nominal basis for the adjective happy from Old Norse. In German we do not find loanwords from other languages in the time span between Middle and New High German. However, there are two Low German lexemes in the group that found their way into High German: schlau (before early New High German), and in the Middle High German period klug (both possible equivalents to English clever). During the Middle High German period, nett was borrowed from French, and kurz had already been borrowed from Latin in (pre-)Old High German. With the total of six lexemes in English, more lexemes in this group were borrowed from other languages than in (High) German, which shows only two loans from the Romance languages and two from Low German. This comparison relates to the number of primary adjectives at the earlier language stages analysed in I.1a). II.2. Due to lack of documented instances in Old English, two English adjectives are referred to as of unknown origin: big and blunt. In German, the origin of one adjective, schlau, is unclear. In English there are two additional adjectives whose origin could not be clarified, but for which it is possible to make derivations from other lexemes: bad and clever. For big we only find instances in Middle English. Some sources assume a Scandinavian/North Germanic origin (Hoad 1986: 40; Skeat 1963: 59). The same is true for blunt. Old English does not show any examples of this lexeme, whose origin is unclear (Hoad 1986: 44; Skeat 1963: 65). Bad has no


Table 2. Adjectives in Old/Middle English and Old/Middle German Present-Day English

Middle English

Old English

Present-Day German

Middle High German

Old High German

bad big black blunt clever

badde big blak blunt ?

OS. bæddel? ? (Scand.?) blac ? –

schlecht groß schwarz stumpf klug

sleht grôz swarz stumpf –

cald –

schlau < NLG. slû kalt grausam

sleht grôz swarz stumpf kluoc < MLG. klôk ?

kalt –

deop dryge –

tief trocken wild

kalt grûwe-sam < grûwe ‘Schauder’ tief trocken wilde

–

frei-g(i)ebig

cold cruel deep dry fierce generous < MF. genereux

cold, cald cruel < OF. cruel deep druge fiers Such a use of the masculine possessive pronoun for neuter reference is strongly determined semantically. It can therefore be stated that the original Old English pattern with a syncretic genitive form his employed for the masculine and neuter pronoun had already gone out of use. The reason why the syncretic form became associated only with male antecedents was the collapse of grammatical gender in English and Scots (see the previous section). In this situation the language looked for other ways to convey the meaning of neuter possession.

2.2 Analytic constructions in neuter possessive contexts in Older Scots vs synthetic its The fact that personal pronouns can still be claimed to be a synthetic category in Scots (as well as in English) proves that tendencies in language change are by no means uniform for all grammatical categories, viewed from a typological angle (Croft 1990). Personal pronouns seem to run counter to the tendency in Scots and English to make the language more analytic: there are no forms like *to he, *of he, which would have no structural redundancy. As for the possessive, the [+human] antecedents have actually never developed analytic forms, such as *of she, *of he, in attributive positions.18 Periphrastic constructions of hers or of his in predicative positions would be a different case here (see the discussion of pronouns used predicatively, Section 1.1.). Interestingly enough, the pronoun its is still restricted in its absolute use – *of its (cf. note to Table 1). After the demise of grammatical gender and the restriction of his to [+male] antecedents, the problem how to render the possessive neuter appeared. In Older Scots texts a variety of syntactic constructions rendering neuter possession can be encountered. It seems that such forms were created within the general

The use of neuter possessives in Older Scots texts 181

tendency in the language to switch to analytic structures, visible in the promotion of periphrastic prepositional structures and the collapse of inflectional paradigms. Three syntactic patterns for expressing neuter possessives are recurrent in Older Scots: thairof, of the samyn and of it. Even though thairof is just one lexical item and one could say it is not a syntactic analytic construction, it has been included in the group of analytic postnominal variants. Here one could argue that since it consists of two morphemes (an old synthetic pattern of pronominal adverbs (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 1994: 177–8)), it should be treated as a synthetic form. However for the sake of clarity I will restrict the sense of ‘synthetic’ to items built of a root and an inflectional marker, be it an affix or internal modification (see n. 7 and the discussion of terminology in the introduction). Thairof was not created by means of any inflectional processes, it does not attach any inflectional morphemes and may as well be called a syntactic blend because two syntactic elements are blended into one lexical item. It is a very productive structure in Older Scots, parallel to quhairof (introducing relative clauses). It may function as: (14) A neuter possessive and because they are not equall breadthe, wee measure the breadth thereof at two or three sundrie partes, as the fashion of the ground requires. <SHAND2> (15) A verbal complement I answerit as I wes instructed, that the Quen thocht litle or nathing therof. <SBIO2> (16) A nominal complement Sche said again, that the tryall and declairation therof wald be haisted fordwart, according to the Quenis gud behauoir. <SBIO2> (17) A prepositional phrase indicating location (compare thar-to) and al man is bor~n of the hewyn~e, banist þarof in pouerte fore his synis, redemyt thar-to agan~e by the faith and the passion~e of cryst, he vynand the meryt þarof [POSS] by gud dedis and trew lawbor, or ellis to remayn~e in that banasing fore euir in hell. <SEDUC0A> The use falling within the scope of the present chapter is only the possessive construction illustrated in (14), see the discussion of research procedure in Section 3.2. The two remaining constructions (of the samyn and of it) clearly express possession by means of a prepositional phrase, an analytic construction used also when [−human] nouns appear in the same semantic context, e.g., of the town, of a book, etc. They were also used in a number of other functions:

182 Joanna Bugaj

(18) Possessive plural I dar baldye say, nochtvithstandynge þat they baith allege the scriptouris peruerstlye by þe godlye menynge of the sammyne, lat ony man of Iugement diligentlye considder all þe testimonyis of scriptouris alleget be theme baith. <SPAM1C> (19) Possessive + masculine referent Thomas Chalmour, burgess of the said burgh, vnder silence of nycht, he beand in the kingis seruice, and presoning and withhalding of the samyn be James Forbes of Auchintouill <SREC1E> (20) A preposition + pronominal referent (cannot be rephrased by means of its) covering the wound with a Plaister of Cowes dung and clay compound; if the bark be pilled by hares, conies or mice, apply a Plaister of the same; <SHAND3B> (21) A preposition + object (following adjectives, nouns and verbs as a prepositional complement) any sinne that ye comitt not being a singill sinne procuring but the fall of ane, but being ane exemplaire sinne & thairfore drauis uith it the haill multitude to be guiltie of the same <SEDUC2A> Such occurrences of of the samyn and of it were disregarded in the present analysis. Popular in the Older Scots period, these syntactic constructions did not make their way into Modern Scots. Instead, a new synthetic form its entered the pronominal paradigm and filled the empty slot. There are at least three reasons why this inflected pronoun, with a possessive {S} morpheme added, was adopted in Scots. The first reason for the introduction of its into Scots morphology could be purely structural. By analogy to the regular possessive marker in nouns, the morpheme {S} was adopted as a possessive feature also in the 3sg neuter pronoun. Another analogical development with the {S} morpheme was the introduction of periphrastic pronominal constructions hers, ours, theirs, which can point to a general trend in grammar as these forms start appearing roughly in the same period (late 16th century and later). Secondly, this form could have been brought together with the anglicising tendencies present in Scots from the second half of the 16th century onwards (on anglicisation see e.g. Devitt 1989; McClure 1994; for a detailed discussion of the introduction of its into English see Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 1994). The English language of the time started introducing this inflected form because of the gap left after the restructuring in the gender system (see above). In Scots, the adoption of its was easy because English and Scots shared most structural features. It is


difficult to say whether this form developed independently in Scots but it does not seem very likely as the sudden switch from analytic constructions to the synthetic form is chronologically later than the period of anglicisation in Scotland, which is going to be illustrated with data analysis. Finally, perhaps it was just easier and quicker to have such a clear and short form as its instead of complex syntactic constructions. The principle of the least effort seems to have played a role here as well.

3. Data analysis 3.1 The material The research, aiming to trace the changes in the possessive neuter forms in Older Scots texts, was based on the Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots (HCOS, Meurman-Solin (comp.) 1993). This corpus includes a variety of prose genres: acts of Parliament, burgh records, trial proceedings, histories, biographies, travelogues, diaries, pamphlets, educational treatises, scientific treatises, handbooks, private letters, official letters, sermons and the Bible. These are machine-readable versions of early prints and the best editions, amounting to 850,000 words of running text. The material has been subdivided chronologically into four periods: Period 0 Period 1 Period 2 Period 3

Word count in the HCOS

1450–1500 95,900 1500–1507 200,500 1570–1640 302,300 1640–1670 247,000

Total

845,700 (Meurman-Solin 1993)

It was necessary to adapt the corpus for the purpose of the study and disregard some text types. Excerpts from the Bible were excluded as possessive neuter constructions were not found there. Four other text types (diaries, histories, sermons and trial proceedings) were excluded because the form its, which is of major importance in this study, did not surface in the samples of these genres in the HCOS. Thus, the material which was used in the present study amounted to almost 600,000 words. The text chosen to supplement the corpus study was the Wigtown Burgh Court Book (Wgt Ct Bk) (1512–1534), a little-known collection of public records from the south-west of Scotland, which is at the same time the first extant text from the area.19 As the material has not been sampled, it is about 75,000 words long. It was interesting to see whether the same tendencies can be noticed in the burgh records from the HCOS and in their south-western counterpart (see 3.3.3. below).

184 Joanna Bugaj

3.2 The procedure First, the material was checked for the remnants of the Old English pronominal possessive marker his used for neuter reference (see Section 1.2.). The findings confirm the obsolete and limited character of this function for his. Next, the texts were searched for the four different possessive neuter constructions: of the samyn, of it, thairof and its, with a host of their spelling variants (Table 4). The analysis concentrated on formal equivalents of a neuter possessive context. Thus, the decisive question for the inclusion of a structure was whether a given analytical possessive neuter construction could be directly paraphrased by means of its. For instance the fruit thairof in (22) can be now changed into its fruit: (22) Item he sais, deill thi met to the trawelouris and pilgremys, for þow sal finde the froyt thar-of mony ʒere eftirwart and sal slok mekile syn~e. <SEDUC0D> Here I follow the methodology of Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (1994: 185), where definiteness is the crucial feature: [f]or the postnominal variants thereof, of it and of the same, we set a uniform criterion: their noun phrase (NP) heads had to be marked as definite by the use of the definite article. In other words, formal equivalence was established between ‘its + NP’ and ‘the NP + of it’.

Adopting this approach, I also encountered the problem mentioned by the authors of the paper, connected with the change of definite marking on abstract and verbal nouns in the 16th century. Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (1994: 186) decided to exclude such cases as by the authority of the same (1640–71 Statutes) and by auctoritie of the same (1500–70 Statutes) as they wanted to employ the same criteria for a two-hundred year period. They obviously make the reader aware of the consequences of this approach in the interpretation of their data. Table 4. Spelling variants collected in the study of the samyn

of the samyn, of the samyne, of the sa~myn~, of the sammyn, of the sammyne, of þe samyn, of þe samyne, of þe sa~myn, of þe sa~myn~, of þe samyn~, of þe samy~, of þe sa~my~, of þe sammyne, of the same, of þe same, of the samen, of þe samen, of þe samen~, of the samin, of the sami~, of þe samin, of þe sami~

of it

of it, of itt, of it self

thairof

tharof, thareof, thairof, yairof, thairoff, thar-of, þarof, þairof, þairoff, þareof, tarof, therof, theroff, theirof, thereof

its

its, its self


In my opinion, however, these equivalent constructions should be included in the present analysis as the time span in this case is longer (1450–70), the periodisation Scots is different (Robinson 1985)20 and, which is perhaps most important and is reflected in the periodisation as well, during that time Scots was undergoing changes under the English influence (see for instance Devitt 1989). So discarding structures equivalent in their meaning and degree of definiteness on the grounds that they are not identical formally, I could actually leave out cases which would be still perceived as neuter possessives by contemporary users. For the above reasons, I could not discard equivalent structures where a noun is overtly unmarked by a definite article but the context points to the definiteness of the NP and, moreover, there are later or contemporary uses of the same phrase with a definite article in the same or equivalent context. Hence, examples such as (23), where definiteness of the phrase can be seen from the context, were included in the analysis: (23) Then vas scho brocht to me, quhen scho declarit that quhat vas done # vas aganist her vill; and to gif pruif thairof scho remanis sensyne vith hir # fathir and mothir, … <SPRIV2> Schir Henry Hervy, chaplane of Sanct Michalis altar, for his # gude service and continuauioune tharof to be done be him in tyme to cum… <SREC0B> Another problem encountered in the selection of relevant material was the occasional difficulty in judging whether a certain syntactic construction referred to possession or expressed a prepositional relation between items. As mentioned above, all the studied constructions had more than one syntactic-semantic function (see Section 2.2.). Therefore, I used the threefold distinction of semantic roles proposed by Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (1994: 193): agents (as in (24)), possessors (as in (25)), and other (constructions corresponding to objects in a nominalization, as in (26)). (24) and it being found that the said wall had not beene # onlie ane former great bleessing, but evin many at this tyme had felt the good # effectis therof in cureing the gravill, … <SREC3B> (25) who sall have power to enter and admitt friemen and # to seclude and debarr all others from working within the toun and # territories therof, … <SREC3A> (26) the passage quhair the wall of the tovne suld be set and # consider the samin, that quhen the werk is begynnand that the interprisaris # thairof be nocht cummerit in the setting fordward of the said wall, <SREC1D> Sometimes it was not clear whether the antecedent was [−human].21 Therefore, structures such as (27) were discarded:

186 Joanna Bugaj

(27) The lord~ think~ expedient þat na sic abbasyis na vþ~ benifice quhilk~ was neu~ at þe court of Rome of befor be purchasit be na secular na religiose p~son~s bot at þe said plac~ haf fre eleccion~ of þe samyn~ as vse & custum has~ beyn~ in þe said plac~ <SPARL0> Here, of the same may refer both to the court and personis. Usually in such debatable cases the plural reference was intuitively the preferred interpretation, so these structures could have as well been excluded on the grounds of referring to plural antecedents. All the uses of thairof and of the samyn clearly referring back to plurals were not included in the analysis.

3.3 Registers and thematic groups When it comes to the organisation of the material, the division into text types and periods employed in the HCOS was used. As mentioned above, I concentrated on ten different text types (biographies, educational treatises, handbooks, official letters, pamphlets, acts of parliament, private letters, burgh records, scientific treatises, and travelogues) from four periods (0 > 1450–50, 1 > 1500–70, 2 > 1570–1640, 3 > 1640–1700), with almost 600,000 words of running text. The Wigtown Burgh Court Book (Wgt Ct Bk) would fit into the category of burgh records from Period 1, but I decided not to mix the sources. Hence, the findings were obtained separately for the HCOS and the Wgt Ct Bk. For each text type the frequency of the four possessive constructions was analysed. All instances with allographic spelling were added up and the ratio of occurrence for 10,000 words was counted. It was then possible to study the temporal distribution of the four possessive constructions in each group of texts and trace the chronological tendencies. Unfortunately, the texts differ significantly in the overall ratio of neuter possessive structures (normalised per 10,000 words in the graphs, see Appendix 1 for raw data), which is mostly due to the topics rendered by each genre. Sometimes there is a limited possibility for a neuter possessive form to be used, especially when the genre is concerned with the dealings of people (e.g. private letters, biographies) and not objects or phenomena (e.g. handbooks, burgh records, scientific treatises, etc.). Therefore, the presentation below has been arranged into three groups of texts, depending on the scale adoptable for the results: – scale to 60: handbooks (3.3.1.) – scale to 30: Acts of Parliament (3.3.2.), burgh records (3.3.3.), travelogues (3.3.4.), scientific treatises (3.3.5.), pamphlets (3.3.8.) – scale to 10: educational treatises (3.3.6.), official letters (3.3.7.), private letters (3.3.9.), biographies (3.3.10.)


I have decided to present the results for all the genres, even those where neuter possessives do not surface frequently, in order to show why one needs to be sensitive to genre even during an analysis of a seemingly simple grammatical structure.

3.3.1 Handbooks It does not come as a surprise that the genre which exhibits the highest ratio of neuter possessive structures is handbooks. In this text type one can expect numerous references to inanimate objects, their features, function or use. The samples of handbooks included in the HCOS are concerned with weight and area measurements, husbandry, agriculture and gardening. Consider the following examples (with neuter possessive constructions marked in italics): (28) To wit, the breadth of the land with the length thereof, and the quantitie of the number of Acres, Roodes, and Falles that riseth vppon everie severall length and breadth <SHAND2> (29) The said Lyne is ever drawne, or imagined to come downe Square-wayes, from any corner of the Triangle to some of the sides thereof, as the descending Lyne in this figure... <SHAND2> (30) THE Kitchen-Garden is the best of all Gardens, but to returne. In all Gardens it is ordinary first to make a Bordure at the Wall. Secondly a walke. And thridly a Bordure on the other side thereof; <SHAND3B> (31) To level as the ground lyes, let its slop be what it will you need neither level nor Rule (except you please to try how much it slops after its done for satisfaction) <SHAND3B> The ratio of neuter possessive structures normalised for 10,000 words amounts to almost 60 in Period 2, which is the highest score among all the examined text types and periods, and to about 25 in Period 3 (see Figure 1).

60 50

of the samyn of it thairof its

40 30 20 10 0

<SHAND2>

<SHAND3>

Figure 1. Neuter possessive constructions in handbooks

188 Joanna Bugaj

In the sample from the second period the use of thairof is not only quite frequent but also very consistent. In fact, this is the only choice of the author. Interestingly, this form gives way to its in the subsequent phase. The overall ratio of neuter possessives drops significantly in Period 3, however it is still quite high if compared to its counterparts in other genres (only scientific treatises and travelogues score higher in the overall ratio of neuter possessives). The striking feature of Period 3 is the differentiation of structures into two dominating (thairof, its) and two minor types (of the samyn, of it). It seems that the minor types must have been an option before, but they do emerge only in a text composed in a period when there was no straightforward tendency in marking neuter possession (see the tendency for thairof in Period 2, Fig.12).

3.3.2 Acts of Parliament Neuter possessives are quite frequent in the Acts of Parliament, although not as common as in handbooks. There is a clear preference for two structures to be used: of the samyn and thairof (see Figure 2). At first both of the samyn scores slightly higher than thairof but later it is the syntactic blend that gains dominance (which is typical especially of Period 2, see Section 3.4. on the chronological distribution). Very often both structures are used interchangeably to avoid repetitive wording in the text (see the italics in the following examples): (32) ITEM Quhair the haill tenement efter it be biggit be set in few within the auale thairof for the vphald of the samin and beis brint. <SPARL1> (33) hauand the ground annuell vpone ony brint land quhilk is or beis reparellit be the awnar thairof that makis na contributioun to the bigging of the samin <SPARL1> (34) The qlk desire the said~ Estaittis thocht ressonable And hes ratefeit and approvin Lykas be the tennor of this pn~t act Ratefeis and appreves the 30 25


20 15 10 5 0

<SPARL0>

<SPARL1>

<SPARL2>

<SPARL03>

Figure 2. Neuter possessive constructions in the Acts of Parliament


said acquittance exoneratioun and discharge grantit be his hienes in fauor~ of the said lord of dunbar in the haill pointis articles & clauss~ thairof eftir the forme and tennor of the sami~ <SPARL2> (35) And if ther shall be any greater number of Persons then afoirsaid in any house or Inn within Burgh or suburbs therof or within tuo myles of the Same <SPARL3> The introduction of the its alternative in Period 3 may have been the cause of the drop in frequency of the longest postnominal variant of the samyn. Still, thairof is in the lead, having probably fossilized as a formal expression characteristic for legal language of parliamentary acts.

3.3.3 Burgh records This text type presents similar characteristics as the Acts of Parliament in terms of language and topics rendered, which is not surprising when the stylistic features of both text types are borne in mind. Therefore, the tendency to choose either of the samyn or thairof should not come as a surprise, either (see Figure 3a), although the figures for the first variant decrease steadily. When it comes to the introduction of the new form its, it appears only marginally (1 instance) in Period 3; see (36). Hence such a low ratio for this variant in 10,000 words. (36) and now the said spring appeiring in its wonted place, and the wateris found to be of the same qualitie <SREC3B> Set against this background, the usage of neuter possessive constructions in the Wigtown court book (whose composition falls within the years of Period 1) exhibits a contradictory preference. The syntactic construction of the samyn is the dominant form, with thairof used rather sporadically (see Figure 3b). This difference in structure preference between individual burgh records may indicate regional norms even within the same text type. The sample from the years 30 25


20 15 10 5 0

<SCREC0>

<SCREC1>

<SCREC2>

<SCREC3>

Figure 3a. Neuter possessive constructions in burgh records

190 Joanna Bugaj

30 25


20 15 10 5 0

Wgt Ct Bk

Figure 3b. Neuter possessive constructions in Wgt Ct Bk

1500–1700 in the HCOS includes the records of the burghs of Stirling, Peebles, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and the Carnwath Barony Court Book. In fact all of them prefer the thairof variant, just the Aberdeen records <SREC1E> show a more or less equal frequency of the competing forms. If one bears in mind that Aberdeen and Wigtown are most distant geographically from the capital and the norms employed there for the composition of official records, it is quite logical why these two locations should exhibit a difference in syntactic patterns.

3.3.4 Scientific treatises Perhaps the most surprising chronological distribution of neuter possessive constructions is encountered in scientific treatises. This genre was created within the Renaissance wave of interest in natural phenomena and new areas of modern science,22 hence it is represented only by texts dating back to the second half of the 16th century and later. Figure 4 presents the scores for all the options in both periods. In Period 2, the form thairof clearly prevails, with of the samyn as the remaining choice. In this particular time-span the usage is similar to the patterns visible in burgh records and Acts of Parliament. (37) Inferiour causis ar quhilkis occupeis ane Realme, ane people, ane Citie, or ane house thairof. Cause thairof is standand vatter, sic as Stank, Pule, or Loche moste corrupte, and filthie. <SSCIE2A> 30 25


20 15 10 5 0

<SSCIE2>

<SSCIE3>

Figure 4. Neuter possessive constructions in scientific treatises


(38) (\Taxus barbatus\) is also of greit strenthe, quhilk brutall beists techis vs as the quhittrat beand hurt be venome of serpent, seikis & eittis thairof als certan it is the Iuce of the samyn drunkin with small vyne of gud odour, baith preseruis fra pest, & curis the same.<SSCIE2A> (39) it appeiris be gude ressoun to be participant of bryntstane, as the cullour thairof also witnessis. <SSCIE2B> The sample taken from the years 1640–1700 shows a totally opposite distribution: the new form its is used most often, while of it, a direct analytic counterpart, comes as the second option. (40) I say, it must swim, because if the Water I, was able to sustain the Water E, which is put from its own place, surely it must be able to sustain that body also, that did thrust it from its own place, seing both are of the same weight, namely six ounces. <SSCIE3> (41) Here it swims also, because the weight of it becomes just the weight of so much Water, as it hath put out of its own place. <SSCIE3> Such a usage in Period 3 resembles the preferences in travelogues and pamphlets (see below), although the latter exhibit a lower ratio of neuter possessives altogether. One may wonder whether the choice of topics in the samples from both periods could have had some impact on the treatment of neuter possessives. There are two samples from Period 2, by the same author: the first one is a description of pest, with numerous quotes from Latin, written in quite elaborate language (see examples (37) and (38)), while the second one presents technical details concerning a well (see example (39)). The Period 3 sample contains theorems on hydrostatics (examples (40) and (41)) so in principle the choice of structures depending on the choice of the topic or the formality of the genre should be similar for both periods. The drastic change in preferences for neuter possessives may be connected with the fact that the time gap between the actual samples is over 100 years. The first sample for Period 2 was composed in 1568 (so it could even belong to Period 1), the second in 1580, while the treatise on hydrostatics comes from the years 1672/1683. In Period 1 and 2 the two primary types of structures are of the samyn and thairof, which is the same as the choices in contemporary scientific treatises. In Period 3, there is a stronger tendency to use of it and its (even though thairof is still the most frequent variant in some text types, e.g. Acts of Parliament or burgh records), which is again visible in the scientific treatises.

3.3.5 Travelogues With the advance of technology and possibilities to travel to distant lands, a new genre, travelogues, came into being in the 16th century. As for the neuter possessive

192 Joanna Bugaj

30 25


20 15 10 5 0

<STRA2>

<STRA3>

Figure 5. Neuter possessive constructions in travelogues

constructions, it is in this genre that the new synthetic form its appears for the first time in the HCOS (see (42) and Figure 5). (42) Whence Coasting Sicilie, a tripled view I tooke of AEtna: Time discussing you A miracle of Mettall; for its Kind Is nurs’d by Raine, and suffled up with wind <SSTRA2a> (1632) Judging from the late emergence of its in the corpus, much towards the completion of Period 2, one may advance a hypothesis that the alleged 16th-century introduction of its happened at a later date in Scotland. This time lag in comparison to the situation in England (see Section 1.2. for the sketch of the parallel development in England and Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (1994) for a detailed discussion) could have been caused by the strong position of periphrastic structures, especially thairof, and their multifunctional character (see Section 2.2.). In the third period the form its is employed most frequently of all text types. The discrepancies in the ratios for its point to different preferences in the syntactic structures depending on the genre, style and perhaps on the level of formality. The travelogues from Period 3 were composed in the form of a manuscript in the second half of the 17th century, roughly at the same dates as the scientific treatises analysed in 3.3.4. The pattern for neuter possessive structures is almost the same in both cases (compare Figure 4), even though the genres are not that close in their stylistic character. A similar pattern (although with a lower overall ratio of neuter possessives) is exhibited by pamphlets (see 3.3.6. and Figure 6).

3.3.6 Pamphlets Pamphlets do not show a clear preference in neuter possessive structures. They may, however, illustrate an interesting tendency to adjust to the current trend within each period: of the samyn is at its peak in Period 1, thairof in Period 2, while its dominates in Period 3 (compare Section 3.4. on chronology). The common feature of the three genres (travelogues, scientific treatises and pamphlets) which may have some explanatory force in terms of preference for the


30 25


20 15 10 5 0

<SPAM1>

<SPAM2>

<SPAM3>

Figure 6. Neuter possessive constructions in pamphlets

its variant is the fact that all of them were introduced more or less at the same time. For that reason, new grammatical patterns, modelled on the existing pronominal forms, may have been taken on with greater ease as there were no earlier fashions or rules to follow. It should also be remembered that Scottish texts in the 17th century were affected to a great extent by the English language (for English influences on various text types see Görlach (2002)) and the use of its may have been adopted first in the genres written under the influence of English conventions.

3.3.7 Educational treatises Educational treatises do not show a clear preference pattern, either. It seems that the authors rendered neuter possessive structures with a host of variants, with thairof being the prevalent choice, especially in Period 2 (which is quite typical of all the text types in that period, see 3.4.). The synthetic form its does appear in Period 3, however its ratio of occurrence is rather low. 10 8


6 4 2 0

<SEDUC1>

<SEDUC2>

<SEDUC3>

Figure 7. Neuter possessive constructions in educational treatises

3.3.8 Official letters The characteristic feature of this text type is a strong position of thairof, which loses to of it in the third period (see Figure 8). It is difficult to talk about any other tendencies because raw figures in official letters are rather low (see Appendix). It seems that in Period 3 the new form its was being slowly introduced by authors of official letters, although of it was a preferred option at that time.

194 Joanna Bugaj

10 8


6 4 2 0

<SOFF0>

<SOFF1>

<SOFF2>

<SOFF3>

Figure 8. Neuter possessive constructions in official letters 10 8 6 4 2


0

<SPRIV1> <SPRIV2> <SPRIV3> Figure 9. Neuter possessive constructions in private letters

3.3.9 Private letters Neuter possessives are quite a rare grammatical structure in private letters. This is understandable because the genre itself does not presuppose frequent references to things or places (and their features) but rather to people. Interestingly, this text type shows a strong tendency for the of it variant, rather unpopular in other genres. Such a use may be indicative of differences between formal and informal registers or it may reflect spoken practices of the letter-writers (see Figure 9).23 Again, the synthetic its appears only in the last chronological period. 3.3.10 Biographies Biographies contain the lowest amount of neuter possessive structures (see Figure 10). As in the case of private letters, the pronominal reference in biographies usually concerns people, hence little chance for neuter possessives to surface in this text type. The new form its is introduced in Period 3 (1 instance), the other two variants are used twice each so it is difficult to reach any conclusions about authors’ choices. 3.4 Chronological distribution It is interesting to see how the preferences for different types of neuter possessive structures changed over time. To form a picture of the chronological distribution,


10 8


6 4 2 0

<SBIO2>

<SBIO3>

Figure 10. Neuter possessive constructions in biographies

the same material has been arranged according to periods, all the occurrences of particular structures were added and the ratio of their frequency for 10,000 words was counted. It was then possible to trace the chronological tendencies and see which forms were losing importance and which ones were becoming widespread and when (see Figure 12). The overall frequency of neuter possessives also looks interesting. In the earliest period the neuter possessive constructions are encountered least often. Their highest ratio of occurrence is typical of Period 2 (19.15 for all constructions) and 3 (17.24). The growth in use of neuter possessive structures may be due to the fact that after 1500 Scots started to be used in new genres: handbooks, pamphlets, scientific treatises, travelogues, etc., which exhibit quite a high ratio of such constructions. Another reason can be connected with the avoidance of neuter possessive contexts by earlier authors. Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg suggest that even early English grammarians (e.g. Ben Jonson in his 1640 English Grammar) may have avoided discussing this grammatical issue “in an unstable linguistic situation” (1994: 180). 20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Period 0

Period 1

Period 2

Period 3

Figure 11. Frequency of neuter possessive constructions – based on the HCOS (Period 0 (1450– 50), Period 1 (1500–70), Period 2 (1570–1640), Period 3 (1640–1700))

196 Joanna Bugaj

14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

of the samyn of it thairof its Period 0

Period 1

Period 2

Period 3

Figure 12. Chronological distribution of individual neuter possessive constructions – based on the HCOS (Period 0 (1450–50), Period 1 (1500–70), Period 2 (1570–1640), Period 3 (1640– 1700))

Figure 12 presents tendencies for each of the neuter possessive variants in a chronological order. As for the individual forms, of the samyn reaches the highest score in Period 1 and later decreases steadily in frequency. The next construction, of it, is not very frequent but its rate of occurrence rises in the third period.24 The construction used most often in the whole corpus, regardless of the time of a text’s composition, was thairof, most frequent in Period 2. Interestingly, though, this form drops significantly in Period 3 when the synthetic variant marks its strong position: its enters towards the end of the second period but rapidly grows in frequency in the third period (the second half of the 17th century).

4. Conclusions The fate of the analytic structures in Scots shows that changes in the typological character of a language are by no means uniform for all grammatical categories (cf. Croft 1990). Even though Scots had already been using analytic constructions for possessive neuter (of the samyn, thairof), it abandoned these forms in favour of the inflected its, the late seventeenth century being the transitional period. One can observe a gradual departure from the longest form of the samyn, which would substantiate the claim about the least effort, connected perhaps also with stylistic choices. Thairof emerges as a potential candidate to fill in the empty slot for neuter possessives, growing in frequency to reach its peak in Period 2 (1570–1640). Then, however, it looks as if the incoming its took over some of the potential uses of thairof as its frequency drops by half. Interestingly, the construction of it, although not as frequent as thairof, exhibits a steady increase in use. This is the exact analytic counterpart of its, it is short and parallel in form to nominal possessives, so this form could have been a potential rival for its in a later period, especially in genres


close to speech and with a low ratio of neuter possessives, if we assume that thairof’s decline continues. It would be rewarding to see whether this trend was maintained, which forms fought for some time and which gave up to its immediately. It seems that analytic structures do not ‘work’ in the function usually performed by possessive pronouns or concord–inflected genitives, even though they operate perfectly in marking nominal possession in a language mostly analytic in structure (especially on the syntactic level), such as English or Scots. The gap in the inflectional paradigm was filled with an analogical construction to return balance to the system. In the case of this development in the paradigm of Older Scots possessive pronouns, the influence of English is quite evident. The form its was created in English earlier, in the 16th century (see 1.2.), while the first attestation in the HCOS dates back to 1632, which is about 80 years after the first symptoms of anglicisation. Therefore, it appears that its could have entered the language through contacts with English. Moreover, the first genres to pick up this new form are travelogues (with the highest ratio of occurrences in Period 3 – 29.71), scientific treatises and handbooks, so the genres quite heavily affected by English and southern fashions. If it had not been for the English influence, perhaps the analytic form thairof, frequent in use, not confined to possession only, with a greater degree of referential flexibility (not confined to singular or [‑human] antecedents) could have been adopted as a general pronominal marker for neuter possession, regardless of stylistic conventions. However, the analytic constructions lost the battle and the inflected neuter pronoun its completed the paradigm. Appendix Neuter possessive constructions in the HCOS – raw data

of the samyn of it

thairof its

no. of words

<SBIO2> <SBIO3> <SEDUC0> <SEDUC1> <SEDUC2> <SEDUC3> <SHAND2> <SHAND3> <SOFF0> <SOFF1> <SOFF2> <SOFF3> <SPAM1> <SPAM2> <SPAM3> <SPARL0>

0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 2 0 0 10 1 0 14

3 2 10 0 14 2 41 9 1 11 5 0 4 28 1 9

8,567 15,009 50,482 9,964 19,713 7,846 6,900 10,936 1,396 34,903 11,364 7,381 29,341 21,376 17,062 27,212

0 2 3 0 4 3 0 2 0 1 0 3 2 10 2 0

0 1 0 0 0 1 0 15 0 0 0 1 0 0 8 0

198 Joanna Bugaj

Neuter possessive constructions in the HCOS – raw data (cont.)

of the samyn of it

thairof its

no. of words

<SPARL1> <SPARL2> <SPARL3> <SPRIV1> <SPRIV2> <SPRIV3> <SREC0> <SREC1> <SREC2> <SREC3> <SSCIE2> <SSCIE3> <STRA2> <STRA3> Total

23 39 9 0 0 0 6 33 9 9 9 0 0 0

36 112 67 0 3 1 1 59 47 44 16 1 5 0

31,542 49,671 40,720 1,161 14,780 18,249 15,987 46,374 20,424 26,843 8,871 15,542 14,293 13,127 597,036

1 0 2 1 1 9 2 2 0 0 0 16 3 14

0 0 5 0 0 2 0 0 0 1 0 27 1 39

Notes * I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer whose invaluable comments helped me to revise the chapter. 1. There are obvious connections between English and Scots as far as this development is concerned, especially because of its approximate time of occurrence: the 16th–17th centuries, when Scots was subject to a strong English influence. The development of a synthetic neuter possessive its in English was given a thorough discussion in Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (1994). The research section of the present study will largely draw on the methodology adopted in that paper. 2. For the discussion why thairof is not treated as a synthetic construction, even though it is one word, see Section 2.2. 3. At the same time, the inflectional endings which did survive in Scots and English testify to a trend towards syntheticity, as their grammatical meaning has been reduced to a single marker, e.g. plurality (see Danchev 1992: 26). 4. “In inflectional expression, each semantic element is expressed in an individual unit, but these units are bound into a single word. Inflectional expression may be in the form of affixes added to a stem, or in the form of a change in the stem itself ” (Bybee 1985: 11). 5. “A structural type is represented by a particular structural feature associated with a particular construction in a particular language”, which means that there may be more than one linguistic type at work, depending on the actual grammatical function (Croft 1990: 38). 6. And the major role of the possessive marker is definiteness, see the criteria for the choice of research material in Section 3.2. 7. The syntheticity is visible in the presence of internal or bound morphological marking in a single lexical item. 8. Go is an enclitic form in a phonetically reduced position (Grzegorczykowa, Laskowski and Wróbel 1984: 281), compare Nie było go tu wcześniej [not was he+g/ it+g here before] ‘It/He


wasn’t here before’ vs Jego tu wcześniej nie było [he+g/it+g here before not was] ‘It/He wasn’t here before’. 9. The forms niej and niego are used after prepositions which take their complement in the genitive (Długosz-Kurczabowa and Dubisz 2001: 230–1), e.g. in dla Anny = dla niej ‘for Anna = for her’ or do jeziora (neut) ‘(in)to a lake’ = do niego ‘to it’, see also examples in (2b). 10. The agreement strategy between the head-noun and its modifying adjective where both elements have to ‘agree’ in gender, number and/or case, is a common form in European languages (Croft 1990: 30). 11. Some historical grammars (Baugh and Cable 20025; Wełna 1996; Lass 1994; Millward 1989) do not mention the reflexive possessive pronoun and concentrate on the role of the lexical sylf in marking reflexive contexts. 12. The new neuter possessive its is not concord–inflected with the head of the nominal phrase either, but it is inflected in the sense that it attaches a suffix and stands in the possessive case. 13. Interestingly, the 3rd person forms may be considered less marked than the first or second person in terms of their frequency, counted regardless of the word class (pronouns, proper and common nouns) (Greenberg 1966: 42–4). However, as Croft (1990: 88) observes, in terms of pronouns alone, the 3rd person may be, in fact, more marked than the pronominal forms for other persons. 14. As Baugh and Cable put it, “[o]ne of the consequences of the decay of inflections ... was the elimination of that troublesome feature of language, grammatical gender” (20025: 166). 15. Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (1994: 173) quote two examples of such use dating back to 1597 and 1615. 16. For the treatment of possessive modifiers as synthetic forms belonging to an inflectional paradigm see the discussion in Section 1.1. 17. More conservative genres seem to have resisted its and favoured the outdated his, e.g. Shakespeare’s original writings or the Authorised Bible of James I (OED; Nist 1966: 235). 18. Obviously the situation is different for common nouns, which mark possession by periphrastic structures (e.g. the windows of the house) and, to some extent for proper nouns, which choose a synthetic or periphrastic construction depending on the semantic context (the cheeses of England vs England’s cheeses (Greenbaum and Quirk 1995: 103–4)). 19. For a scrutiny of morphological features of the 16th-century south-western Scots on the basis of Wgt Ct Bk, see Bugaj 2004. 20. The Scots language between 1450 and 1700 can by no means be treated as uniform. The period is traditionally divided into Early Middle Scots (1450–1550), Late Middle Scots (1550– 1700), with anglicising trends acting as a distinguishing factor between both subperiods. 21. As observed by Martti Mäkinen (personal communication), of the samyn is also used with human referents in English herbals, for instance. 22. In discussing the emergence of new genres I concentrate on the developments in Scotland (Görlach 2002) which one can view in a wider European context. 23. Private letters, especially those written by inexperienced authors, have been identified as a source of data for the analysis of spoken language (Meurman-Solin 1999). 24. Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (1994) see the crucial role of this periphrastic variant in the gradual departure from using his and it in neuter possessive contexts.

200 Joanna Bugaj

References Primary sources Meurman-Solin, Anneli (comp.). 1993. The Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots (HCOS). . University of Helsinki. Wigtown Burgh Court Book (Wgt Ct Bk). 1512–34. Unpublished MS, a typed transcript by Alfred Truckell. Dumfries and Galloway Archives. Secondary sources Anttila, Raimo. 1989. Historical and comparative linguistics. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 6]. Aronoff, Mark. 1994. Morphology by itself. Stems and inflectional classes. Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press. Baker, Peter S. 2003. Introduction to Old English. Oxford: Blackwell. Baugh, Albert C. and Thomas Cable. 20025. A history of the English language. London: Routledge. Bugaj, Joanna. 2004. Middle Scots inflectional system in the south-west of Scotland. Peter Lang: Frankfurt am Main [Studies in English Medieval Language and Literature 8]. Bybee, Joan L. 1985. Morphology. A study of the relation between meaning and form. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Campbell, Alistair. 1959. Old English grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Corbett, Greville. 1991. Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Croft, William. 1990. Typology and universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Danchev, Andrei. 1992. The evidence for analytic and synthetic developments in English. History of Englishes: New methods and interpretations in historical linguistics, ed. by Matti Rissanen, Ossi Ihalainen, Terttu Nevalainen and Irma Taavitsainen, 25–41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Devitt, Amy. 1989. Standardising written English. Diffusion in the case of Scotland 1520–659. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Długosz-Kurczabowa, Krystyna and Stanisław Dubisz. 2001. Gramatyka historyczna języka polskiego (An historical grammar of the Polish language). Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. Görlach, Manfred. 2002. A textual history of Scots. Heidelberg: Winter. Greenbaum, Sidney and Randolph Quirk. 1995. A student’s grammar of the English language. London: Longman. Greenberg, Joseph. 1966. Language universals, with special reference to feature hierarchies. The Hague: Mouton. Greenberg, Joseph. 1974. Language typology. A historical and analytic overview. The Hague and Paris: Mouton. Grzegorczykowa, Renata and Roman Laskowski and Henryk Wróbel (eds.). 1984. Morfologia (Morphology). Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. Jespersen, Otto. 1962. Growth and structure of the English language. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. King, Anne. 1997. The morphology of Older Scots. The Edinburgh history of the Scots language, ed. by Charles Jones, 156–81. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Lass, Roger. 1994. Old English. A historical linguistic companion. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.


McClure, J. Derrick. 1994. English in Scotland. The Cambridge history of the English language, vol. 5: English in Britain and overseas, ed. by Robert Burchfield, 23–93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meurman-Solin, Anneli. 1999. Letters as a source of data for reconstructing early spoken Scots. Writing in nonstandard English, ed. by Irma Taavitsainen, Gunnel Melchers and Päivi Pahta, 305–22. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Millward, Celia. 1989. A biography of the English language. New York and Philadelphia: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Nevalainen, Terttu and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 1994. Its strength and the beauty of it: The standardization of the third person neuter possessive in Early Modern English. Towards a Standard English 1600–1800, ed. by Dieter Stein and Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, 171– 216. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Nist, John. 1966. A structural history of English. New York: St. Martin’s Press. OED = Simpson, John A. and Edmund S. C. Weiner (eds.). 1992. The Oxford English Dictionary on CD-ROM [OED]. (Electronic version of Oxford English Dictionary. 1989. Second edition, ed. by John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Purves, David. 2002 [1997]. A Scots grammar. Edinburgh: The Saltire Society. Robinson, Mairi (ed.). 1985. Concise Scots dictionary [CSD]. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language. An introduction to the study of speech. New York and London: Harcourt Brace. Seppänen, Aimo. 1980. Possessive pronouns in English? Studia Linguistica 34: 7–22. Wełna, Jerzy. 1996. English historical morphology. Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszaw skiego.

Chapter 9

Expressing human indefiniteness in English Typology and markedness of pronouns* Mikko Laitinen University of Helsinki

This chapter takes a diachronic approach to a topic whose research has mainly concentrated on present-day synchronic linguistics. The contribution focuses on third-person pronoun variation with a set of indefinite human referents in English. The contexts studied include two types of paradigmatic alternative: (a) anaphoric references to generic one and generic nouns, in which the pronoun variants are the overtly singular he and plural they, and (b) cataphoric personal reference with the variants he or they/ those followed by a relative clause, The data come from the Corpus of Early English Correspondence, and statistical tools are used to analyse the observed variation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The concept of typological markedness is applied in order to understand the variation in pronominal number and its diachronic development. On the basis of empirical corpus data, the chapter elaborates the personal pronoun target types in Corbett’s Agreement Hierarchy (2000). The cross-linguistic pattern which we have described as typological markedness, or more specifically structural coding, is the result of the competing motivations of economy and iconicity. (Croft 2003: 102)

1. Introduction This is a diachronic study of a closely defined set of English pronouns. The chapter takes a dynamic approach to this set of pronouns, studying them as stages in the diachronic development of English. The study looks into one function in language, human indefinite reference, and examines its pronominal forms in Early Modern English. More specifically, we set out from constructions in which the writers express unknown human reference, and study the use of two pronoun variants, the singular and the plural, as expressions of indefiniteness through time. Two types of context are explored. Firstly, there are the anaphoric references in which the pronoun variants are the overtly singular he and plural they.1 Secondly, in cataphoric contexts, in addition to he and they, the plural variant can also be expressed with the demonstrative those (Poussa 1993).2 The examples below from Shakespeare’s plays illustrate the pronoun uses under scrutiny (Evans and Tobin (eds.) 1997).

204 Mikko Laitinen

(1) If one be mad or hang or drown themselves, thither they go, (The Two Noble Kinsmen IV iii 34–5) (The bold emphases in the examples are mine.)

(2) No more but that I know the more one sickens the worse at ease he is; and that he that wants money, means, and content is without three good friends; that the property of rain is to wet, and fire to burn; (As You Like It III ii 23–7)

(3) Such mortal drugs I have, but Mantua’s law Is death to any he that utters them. (Romeo and Juliet V iii 66–7)

(4) How poor are they that have not patience! (Othello III i 370)

(5) Casca: Who ever knew the heavens menace so? Cassius: Those that have known the earth so full of faults. (The Tragedy of Julius Caesar I iii 43–5)

In (1), the plural variants are used in an anaphoric relationship to a generic pronoun, one, whereas in (2), the variant is he, both in the anaphora to one and in the forward referring cataphora. (3)–(5) illustrate the three Early Modern English pronoun variants in cataphoric reference. He followed by a restrictive relative clause is still used today, but the plural variant they in these contexts, (4), has been replaced by those, (5). The focus of the chapter is whether these human indefinite uses are expressed with the singular or the plural pronoun. The study is a corpus-based variationist work, and the data, presented in more detail below, are drawn from The Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC) (Raumolin-Brunberg and Nevalainen forthcoming).3 The material used here is more representative of the oral end of the oral– literate continuum of texts (Biber 1988: 104–8). Singularity and plurality in human indefinite expressions is examined with an eye on diachronic typology (Campbell 2003). This perspective refers to a typology of indefinite functions in language, thus intersecting with synchronic studies. Furthermore, typology means the study of markedness values of the variants, which in diachronic corpus linguistics are mainly manifested in the token frequencies of the variants, viz. the corpus material used here. This diachronic approach to markedness searches for shifts in these token frequencies. Moreover, the long diachrony of the material used here permits us to suggest explanations for why either of the variants, the singular or plural, is more frequently used at any given stage of English (Croft, Denning and Kemmer 1990: xiii). I will first suggest a typology of indefinite expressions. Parallel changes in other pronouns are then discussed, illustrating how pronouns are used as cohesive devices in indefinite contexts. The chapter then turns to the discussion of diachronic typology manifested in the markedness values of pronouns. After the theoret-

Expressing human indefiniteness in English 205

ical framework, the material used here and the criteria for relevant constructions are presented. The number variation in third person pronouns is then illustrated with two studies on how human indefiniteness is expressed in Early Modern English.

2. Typology of indefinite expressions This section discusses the function in which the linguistic forms under scrutiny here, the pronoun variants, are used in the corpus. A common functional property in languages is the possibility of expressing indefiniteness in propositions (Lyons 1977: 177–81). This may be carried out by having a denotatum/referent in the real world that is not known to the speaker at the time of reference.4 Such indefinite propositions may be made to animate and inanimate entities. Indefinite expressions that include pronouns typically fit into seven ontological categories, reflecting the major constituents in human conceptual structure. These ontological categories include ‘person’, ‘thing’, ‘property’, ‘place’, ‘time’, ‘manner’, ‘amount’, and ‘reason’. More concrete types, like colour and size, are typically absent from such categorisations (Haspelmath 1997: 29–30). This chapter deals with the ontological category of ‘person’, expressed with indefinite and personal pronouns. The next sections define what is meant by indefinite reference (2.1), and, more importantly, how the singular and plural pronoun variants are used by writers when they refer to denotata in the real world that are not known to the speaker at the time of reference (2.2).

2.1 Indefiniteness specified Extensive discussions of indefiniteness and reference mainly occur in the fields of formal theoretical semantics and logic (e.g. Lyons 1977). Our emphasis is on descriptive linguistics, and on the functional properties, that is to say, on the discourse-semantic and grammatical descriptions, of such structures. It is the distribution of the variants used in indefinite expressions which are the focus of this chapter. The study follows Haspelmath’s (1997) typological division of the functional distinctions of indefinite expressions, dividing expressions on a broad scale into indefinite and definite; the latter are naturally excluded here. Indefinite expressions may then be seen either as specific or non-specific (Figure 1). Expressions with non-specific denotations are mostly those whose identity we do not know, or they are irrealis. Most of the expressions in this chapter fall into this category. For specific expressions, a distinction may be made between known or un-

206 Mikko Laitinen

Specific

Known to the speaker Unknown to the speaker Irrealis

Non-specific

Negative polarity

Conditionals, questions, direct/ indirect negation, etc.

Free choice

Figure 1. Functional distinctions of indefinite expressions (adapted from known identities of the real-world denotata of the word. The distinction here is best illustrated by examples from the written part of the British National Corpus (BNC).

(6) I really genuinely thought I was speaking for everyone, but they would now say they didn’t particularly agree with me. (BNC file AT1 1175)

(7) Somebody, in the privacy of the back garden, was working away at Deborah’s bars, and they were very good at their job, because Geoffrey could not hear a thing. (FPS 2233)

In (6), the reference can be described as specific and known to the speaker, and such cases are excluded from the analysis. In contrast, (7) is specific, i.e. there is a person in the garden, but the reference is unknown, since we do not know the identity of the individual(s). Figure 2 visualises the contexts relevant to the analysis (for the linguistic forms in these categories, see Section 6 below).

2.2 From the concept of indefiniteness to indefiniteness in pronouns The concept of indefiniteness set out above is not of interest as such in diachronic corpus linguistics. The focus is not on the formal semantic properties of indefinite expressions, but on how the concept is first expressed by writers and later referred to in anaphoric pronouns (Wales 1996: 110–12), or in cataphoric personal reference in which the personal pronoun holds no overt reference to the preceding text and is followed by a restrictive relative clause (Halliday and Hasan 1976: 56–7). Examples (8)–(9) illustrate the relationship between antecedents and pronouns, and (10) shows instances of cataphora.

(8) When someone is regularly and edifyingly prophesying with fruitful results, then it may be he will become known to have the ministry of a prophet. (C8L 1603)


– Generic – Personal non-specific – With indefinites

– Personal specific – Substitutive

Non-specific

Specific unknown

a diagram illustrates the terminology in Haspelmath’s typological classification of inThis definiteness (1997) and Rissanen’s six pronominal types of one. Haspelmath’s functionally distinctive terms are in bold, and Rissanen’s types in italic style divided in the three categories. Note that since indefiniteness is a scalar phenomenon (Chesterman 1991: 182–3), there is a certain degree of overlap between the function, i.e. the referent in ‘personal specific’ is a particular individual, but not necessarily defined (Rissanen 1997b: 89).

Specific known – Personal spec. – Prop-word – Substitutive

This chapter concentrates only on non-specific and specific unknown contexts, the lighter part of the diagram. Studying specific and known contexts for the realisation of pronominal number would be futile, since the number system in language, for the most part, is based on the concept of naturality, i.e. singular entities referred to in the singular, and vice versa.

Figure 2. Indefinite contexts used in this study

(9) And who could bear to live with one he despis’d? (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 1710?; CEEC collection montagu, I,30)

(10) Debt has been proverbially frowned on: ‘He that borrows must pay again with shame or loss’; ‘He that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing’…‘Let him that sleeps too sound borrow the debtor’s pillow’. (CCT 6) There are several alternatives that could be used to replace the hes in the sentences, the most common today being they, or in the cataphoric use (10), those. Other alternatives, albeit minor ones, include for instance she, he/she, s/he, and he or she (see Gerner 2000).5 To make this type of corpus-based study feasible, and to enable statistical testing of the results, only the number distinction between the singular and plural will be made. It is these paradigmatic alternatives in form, the overtly singular he and plural they, that are used to determine the markedness values of this communicative function.6 It is the letter writers’ perspective and subjective interpretation of the meanings which are highlighted. Writers have the possibility to express an unknown (or unspecified) reference either in a more individualised (singular) or a more general (plural) way.7

208 Mikko Laitinen

The variants he and they may be in free variation, expressing the same discourse semantic value; in this case, the only difference between the variants would be a matter of style. What we might have in expressing animate indefiniteness is a paradigmatic isomorphism, i.e. a correspondence between meaning (indefinite human reference) and form that can be realised in various ways. As very few diachronic studies of the topic have been published, my suggestion, based on a study of this linguistic phenomenon in Present-day English, is that there simply are not enough data to determine it yet (Laitinen 2002).

3. Singular and plural variation in English The previous section defined the functional focus of this study, as well as specifying the linguistic category of number as its object. In this section I will provide an example of number variation involving pronouns, a well-known instance of change in English, and find correspondences to third person variation in indefinite expressions. Moreover, I will elaborate on the functional load of the third person pronouns, showing that even though we tend to think of the senses of pronouns as homogenous, their functional variation is large. Wales (1996), discussing generic he and unisex they (her terminology), notes that there seem to be correspondences between a) singular noun phrases and they, and b) between they and you in diachrony. She argues that the concept expressed by a singular common gender generic NP, like a writer, is ‘not actually a specific, singular individual, but rather a generic representative of a class’ (1996: 131). She continues that it is indeed the concept ‘not restricted to one’ which motivates the use of plural pronouns, as is the case with indefinite pronouns both in spoken and written British English today (Gerner 2000; Laitinen 2002). Diachronically, it was masculinity versus femininity which was highlighted when grammatical gender was in operation in English. In Old and Early Middle English the singular he was used predominantly in human indefinite references, although they was used occasionally (Curzan 2003: 70).8 There seems to have been a slow change away from gender distinctions towards number. Curzan argues that most of the subjects in Old English texts were men, and he, therefore, tended to be a logical choice (2003: 62). If it was necessary to highlight the concept, the scope of they, being overtly plural but allowing singular uses as well, as in (11) below, allowed more flexibility in number, and it was selected for cohesive reasons. (11) Cancer doesn’t make saints of people, you know, and just because someone’s dying doesn’t mean they can’t be a complete creep at the same time (quoted in Wales 1996: 129)


Wales argues that the indeterminacy of they, being both singular and plural, resembles the originally plural second person pronoun you, with its number distinction neutralised. The number distinction in the second person was lost with the reorganisation in the plural paradigm (the plural subjective ye replaced by you), and the use of you extended to the singular, replacing thou.9 Making a number distinction is more logically redundant in the second person than in the third. The addressee tends to be present in the context of the situation, and such information becomes unnecessary, since it can be visually observed.10 The third person, on the other hand, may be unknown both in number and gender, or evasiveness may symbolise withholding information, as in (12) in which a feminine referent receives an overtly plural anaphoric pronoun. (12) [you] would have to find an incredibly young or rather young girl who’d lost their birth certificate (SEU, S–2-6–13; conversation 1976, as quoted in Wales 1996: 132) The reorganisation in the second person would be impossible without the functional flexibility of pronouns. Similar versatility is apparent in the third person;11 in their prototypical forms he/she/it and they are used to refer to the ‘other/others’, either anaphorically or cataphorically. He and she can be used generically to refer to humans. It and they are sometimes coreferential with generic noun phrases (it – singular; they – plural phrases with zero article). They also has a generic sense, denoting the mysterious forces controlling the ordinary people’s lives, in generalised exophoric reference to persons unspecified (13), or reference may be to some other ‘persons adequately specified for purposes of discussion by the context’, as in (14) (Halliday and Hasan 1976: 53). (13) They’ve raised the taxes again. (14) They don’t make good cars anymore. Third person pronouns can be used to denote people in general – a topic elaborated on in this chapter. An example of the functional spread of the third person forms is their (mainly anaphoric) use with certain singular non-specific antecedents with human reference.12 This occurs with nouns of common gender (such as agentive nouns person, friend, and occupational nouns doctor, writer, etc.), and with indefinite pronouns. The indefinites are of course singular in verb concord, but may be notionally plural, as in the examples (15) and (16) below. (15) Did you see anyone in the library? Yes, several people. / *No, several people. (Quirk et al 1985: 344) (16) Everyone knows that a Street Directory of Dublin is essential to the reading of joyce [sic]. (A1B 111)

210 Mikko Laitinen

If a grammatically singular word is subsequently referred to in the text, a pronoun is needed to avoid repetition of the noun phrase. Speakers have several choices available, but the variants tend to be interpreted as problematic in grammars and inspected from various ideological points of view (Wales 1996: 112–19). He and she are considered sexist, the coordinated forms awkward, and they grammatically incorrect, with problematic verb agreement. There is no singular pronoun of common gender in English, as there is for the relative pronouns – who. To provide context for functional number variation in he and they, this chapter argues that there are two functional extremes in third person use. There are the specific uses of he/she/they, (17) and (18), and at the other end of the scale, the generalised exophoric senses inferred from the context of situation, (19). (17) Police1 said David2 had been to a pal’s3 engagement party at a nearby pub but how he2 was killed remained a mystery (HAF 56) (18) It is more important that Conservative Members1 read Labour party policy documents, because they1 might learn something. (HHW 10213) (19) I knew nothing about sex. They1 never tell you anything. (AA8 333–5) Expressions of human indefiniteness using he or they fall somewhere between the prototypical senses. They are not known, but they are not generalised exophoric either. (20) [I]t was understandable that no-one had been brave enough to voice their concern. (AR9 1212) (21) Always put a knowledgeable and reliable person at the tail, and remind them only to hold the tail down if that is necessary to move the glider easily. (A0H 161) There may be a person (persons) to which these pronouns refer or not. The singular/ plural pronoun variation could be interpreted as either singular or plural, i.e. the singular pronoun may have a plural sense, and vice versa.13 It has been the aim in this section to show that the functional load of personal pronouns is heavy, and that they act as powerful devices in textual cohesion. It is possible for writers to manipulate the readers’ interpretation of utterances.

4. Diachronic typology and markedness of the variants In the previous sections both the function of indefiniteness (Section 2) and the forms under scrutiny (Section 3) were discussed. In this section the notion of markedness is applied as a theoretical framework to help us explain the variation of he

Expressing human indefiniteness in English

and they/those in the corpus material. This notion essentially deals with the asymmetries of grammatical properties, which are otherwise symmetrical (Crystal 1980: 219–21). This entails that the opposition between he and they/those is not balanced, one variant being unmarked and the other one marked with respect to their use in texts. Various levels of markedness have been recognised (Corbett 2000: 153–4), and the contemporary view, based on textual frequencies, is quite different from the binary oppositions of the Prague scholars (Croft 1996).14 What is important in determining markedness patterns is that the variants must be paradigmatic alternatives in a category. Typical examples include the category of number between singular and plural forms. It is typically held that ‘for number, the singular is typologically unmarked and the plural is marked’ (Croft 2003: 89).15 The discussion of singularity versus plurality in common gender should be distinguished from Greenberg’s facultative uses (1966b: 72), since markedness is not a neutral value, i.e. the unmarked form, whether the singular or plural, cannot be used to refer to either of the values in certain contexts. In the case studies below determining markedness involves applying quantitative methods in examining the behavioural potential of both he and they/those in context.16 Before proceeding further, a concept essential for studies in markedness must be introduced, namely conceptual value. The term is borrowed from Croft (2003: 110– 12), who argues that ‘typological markedness is a property of conceptual values, not linguistic forms’. What matters here is the meaning of the reference, not necessarily the form. This is the reason why both anaphoric and cataphoric relations are included in the case studies. The cataphoric cases are pronouns whose meaning is defined by a following restrictive relative clause as a postmodifier, (22)–(24). (22) but they that love to carie a greater shew then theyre substance will beare, must either pull down theyre sayles or sincke yf fowle weather come (John Chamberlain, 1615; chamberlain, I,594) (23) and hee that is found worthy of this hath obteyned great favour from the Lord: and hee that is established in this (Oliver Cromwell, 1647; cromwell, 319) (24) but that God uphoulds and defends those who trust in him (Sir Thomas Barrington, 1632; barrington, 243) Such forms have only sporadically been touched upon in previous literature, but they must be included here, since the research question here concerns whether writers use more singular or plural sets of entities when referring to unspecified humans. He who types seem to have decreased in use (see Raumolin-Brunberg 1991: 226, 274), and in Present-day English they are considered archaic and proverbial (Quirk

211

212 Mikko Laitinen

et al. 1985: 352). The plural demonstrative, those who, is preferred today. The nominative they followed by a relative clause, obsolete today, was also used in the Early Modern period, as in (22). It is noteworthy that before any systematic corpus data it is impossible to determine values in pronouns. The underlying factor in language use is that the structure of language in some way reflects the ways our experiences are organised (Croft 2003: 101–2). It has been suggested that typological markedness overall is the result of the competition of iconic motivations and aim of economy of expression, corresponding with Halliday’s notions of language in context having meaning potential (1973: 55–8). Surprisingly little data on human indefiniteness exist, considering it is an interplay of iconicity, namely conflicting semantic content (i.e. plurality), and economic expressions in the form of grammatical reality (singularity).

5. Indefinite expressions and pronominal number in diachrony To emphasise our interest in linguistic processes, rather than synchronic states, we have to look at the development of the words with which the personal pronoun variants occur. Space permits us to look at only a limited stock of antecedents (see Section 6), but this brief overview of a heterogeneous group shows that the conflict between the singularity and plurality in indefinite expressions is obvious in long diachrony. It also provides evidence that before the time period examined in the case studies, the singular variant, he, was more frequently used, but in Present-day English the situation has been reversed (Laitinen 2002). In Middle English human indefinite forms tended to have the meaning ‘one single human being, a person’, i.e. one, man, and body (Mustanoja 1960: 148–50, 219– 27). Of these the generic man has been replaced by one, and its various pronominal types have been distinguished in different periods (Rissanen 1997b: 88–9; Rissanen 1997a; see also Figure 2). In the independent determiner forms every, some, any, and no, some tends to be plural, both grammatically and notionally (Jespersen 1949: 439, but see below). Curzan’s suggestion based on the frequency of he in Old English is that the polysemous man (the noun ‘person’, ‘man’, ‘hero’ and indefinite pronoun man ‘one’ or ‘people’) may have influenced the fact that he came to be used when expressing unspecified gender (2003: 68). Evidence from Middle English seems to support this. Illustrations (25)–(31) are from the Canterbury Tales (Benson 1988), clearly showing that he tends to be used in various types of constructions and with various antecedents, even with words that typically are plural, such as some.17


(25) Whoso shal telle a tale after a man / He moot reherce as ny as evere he kan (Prologue 731–2) (26) Who lyved euere in swich delit o day / That hym ne moeved outher conscience (The Man of Law’s Tale 1135–6) (27) Of man and womman seen we wel also… / This is to seyn, in youthe or elles age – / He moot be deed, the king as shal a page; / Som in his bed, som in the depe see, / Som in the large feeld, as men may see (Knight’s Tale 3027–32) (28) What is this world? what asketh men to have? / Now with his love, now in his colde grave (Knight’s Tale 2777–8) (29) “Right as there dyed nevere man,” quod he, / “That he ne lyvede in erthe in some degree, / Right so ther lyvede never man,” he seyde (Knight’s Tale 2843–5) (30) That noon of us ne speke nat a word, / Ne clepe, ne crie, but be in his preyere (Miller’s Tale 3586–7) (Note that the reference group here includes also women) (31) Hym boes serve hymself that has na swayn, / Or elles he is a fool, as clerkes sayn (Reeve’s Tale 4027–8) Examples in (25)–(30) show anaphoric constructions, and (31) is a cataphoric reference. The writers have an option to express this meaning in various forms, i.e. to choose between two numbers, the singular or plural followed by a relative clause. Even though he dominated, it is noteworthy that they seems to have existed an option in Middle English as well. As shown by Newman, the manuscript versions of the Canterbury Tales contain internal inconsistencies in the pronoun use, varying between he and they (1997: 21). In the Riverside Chaucer (Benson 1988) it is only in specific contexts that we find plural pronouns, as in (32), in which hir is interpreted as a plural, on the grounds of the subject matter in the context. (32) Ne how som caste hir sheeld, and som hir spere (The Knight’s Tale 2947) As the singular forms persisted, it must have been necessary for the writers to use other means to show their evaluative and perceptual views of the expression and subjective attitudes of the propositions. The pronoun variants are in competition balancing between economy of communication and iconicity.

214 Mikko Laitinen

6. Material and criteria for inclusion The data have been retrieved from the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC), currently consisting of over 4 million words of personal letters from the early 15th century to 1800 (Raumolin-Brunberg and Nevalainen forthcoming). The examples originate from letters written for personal communication. The corpus is based on edited letter collections with original spelling, and much of the material has been checked against the original manuscripts to ensure quality. To put it briefly, the aim is to make the best use of the ‘bad data’ in historical linguistics (Labov 1994: 11; Nevalainen 1999). Previously, the corpus has been used to study several grammatical phenomena of average frequency. The expressions selected for this study fall into the lower half of the ‘average’ scale, and the token frequencies enable statistical testing. The corpus was searched for a set of lexemes used in human indefinite expressions; the propositional content was defined in Section 2. The reference types include the anaphoric and cataphoric cases, both with different types of lexemes, as illustrated in Figure 3. In the anaphoric case it was determined, first with nouns and then with one, whether any co-referential pronouns, he and they, were used with the antecedents. In cataphora, the pronoun type and number were recorded. The lexeme forms studied are here divided into three categories. The first one includes a set of agentive NPs with common gender, equivalent to ‘a person’. The list below contains the list of nouns used in the queries, based on Quirk et al.’s class of nouns of dual gender (1985: 315–16). In Present-day English research a similar method has been used by Pauwels (2001).18 Body, child, English, Englishman, fellow, friend, human, individual, Londoner, member, mind, neighbour, parent, person, servant, stranger, tenant, traveller, traitor, soul, such NP Anaphoric one

Reference type

Form

Cataphoric Figure 3. The reference types and the lexemes

Pronoun + relative clause


The lexemes had to be morphologically overtly singular, and the verb form was not accounted for in the analysis. The nouns were generic NPs, referring to indefinite entities, in the sense of a single human being (Section 2). Certain chronological inconsistencies in the lexemes are apparent, since for instance individual became common in the sense searched here in the seventeenth century (Oxford English Dictionary (OED) s.v. individual, 5a.), whereas body and person cover the entire chronological range. Some of the lexemes are rare in the material, and overall, the number of occurrences of generic NPs with common gender sense is low. Secondly, one used alone with generic reference to humans, (33), was included in the study.19 The cases with compound indefinite pronouns, as in (34) and (35), were excluded. (33) For ther commonly thei have every thinge at will, thei feale the want of nothinge, wherwith, yf one be not somewhat acquainted in his yeouth, I judg yt will be the worse for him (in his age). (Nathaniel Bacon, 1570s; bacon, I,12) (34) and you know how ordinari a thing it is, that everi on at his time should inioie his degree, unles there be sum wunderful great let to the contrari (Gabriel Harvey, 1573; harvey, 2) (35) Looke upon the rest, and for the most parte your Lordship shall finde no better frutes, but every one seeking to set themselves up a name. Thus with their covetous example, they have done farr more harme then they have done good by their preaching. But in this point, I (Thomas Wood, 1576; wood, 20) Thirdly, cataphoric personal references consisting of the third person pronoun (or a demonstrative in the plural) followed by a restrictive relative clause were searched for. The criteria of indefiniteness had to be fulfilled, as in (36)–(39). (36) My Lord, He yt will write news cant want matter, for he will have enought to contradict one post wt he writt by ye former. (Daniel Finch, 1688?; hatton2, 113) (37) Those few words, “Thy will be don,” settle the soul more then the loadstone can possibly operate upon the needle, which still varies, and hath the motion of trepidation; but he that resignes himself into God’s hands heartilly and without praevarication, (Brian Duppa, 1650; duppa, 15) (38) and my desyre shall never be to make my selfe a delight in hard tydings, but to rejoyce when mesages of peace to God’s church and good to those that love and feare him in the generall or particular (Thomas Barrington, 1632; barrington, 241)

216 Mikko Laitinen

(39) I ame sorry yor mothrs industry & yor fathrs p~rimony should be so wasted by p~ud & p~digall children. & or aged lives made bittr by them who should be or Comforts. I have but yu to take care for. (John Pinney, 1686; pinney, 46) Four questions are examined in the material. The first deals with markedness. As argued above, previous quantitative studies to determine marked and unmarked values have mainly been based on nouns. The question asked here is, when talking about human(s) in general using pronouns, do writers tend to talk about singular entities more often than plural ones? Each of the three types of form introduced above were examined in an attempt to answer this question. Secondly, is pronoun number conditioned by the lexemes in these expressions? For this question, the cataphoric personal references are of primary interest. In their study on Bible translations, Raumolin-Brunberg and Kahlas-Tarkka (1995) have shown that he as the antecedent of a restrictive clause disappears, or at least becomes archaic, towards Present-day English. The present study traces the processes involved in the use of the variants in cataphoric types. The question is also approached from another perspective, i.e. when they as the antecedent is replaced by the demonstrative those, as is the case in Present-day English. The third question concerns NPs. Since it is possible to use words of singular form when referring to notionally plural entities, do we find Early Modern English examples with an overtly singular antecedent with a plural anaphoric pronoun, as in (40) from present-day spoken British English (Curzan 2003: 81–2)? (40) round about three thirty today, so if you’ve lost touch with a friend, relative or neighbour we could find them for you if they’re still in the East Midlands. (BNC spoken HMD 278) It has been argued that such cases are a recent phenomenon appearing only after the 1960s (Haegeman 1981: 236). Lastly, data will be provided of personal pronoun use following generic one. In the sense ‘any person of undefined identity or a person in general’, the OED notes that the plural pronoun they was ‘formerly also used in such contexts on account of their indefiniteness of gender’ (s.v. one, 17.a). The examples in the OED contain both the singular and plural forms of anaphoric personal pronouns, as in (41)–(44), the examples with they being from the 17th and 18th centuries. (41) Whenne on hath done a synne, Loke he lye not longe there-ynne. (1450) (42) He herde a man say that one was surer in keping his tunge, than in moche speking, for in moche langage one may lightly erre. (1477) (43) To whom one giveth love, one giveth also their will and their whole self. (1665)


(44) One ought always to endeavour to their utmost to do what they promise. (1747) In a seminal study on the pronominalisation of one Rissanen notes that the question of personal pronoun variation following the lexeme is largely an unexplored area (1997b: 130). His conclusion is that one has been an easy target for changes in meaning owing to subjectification; this study aims at contributing to the discussion in terms of writers’ conceptualisation of number.

7. Number variation following common gender one and NPs The results are discussed in two parts, firstly one and the NPs grouped together, and then cataphoric personal reference, due to its inherent dissimilarity, is discussed separately in Section 8.

7.1 Third person pronouns with one The uses of one, and its typological categorisation into various types based on semantic criteria, have previously been discussed by Rissanen (1997b: 88–9, 114–17). The senses of one accounted for here include personal-specific and personal-nonspecific referents, generic, and substitutive one (see Figure 2). Overall, the uses of pronominal one in these senses are infrequent in correspondence, and the cases with anaphoric third person forms in the co-text are sporadic. Table 1 presents the normalised figures divided into 50-year periods. It shows that, throughout the two hundred years included in the table, the singular variant is more frequent than they. The numbers for he remain almost constant; there is an increase in the second half of the seventeenth century. The most striking result with one is that the plural variant becomes common towards the end of the seventeenth century; this will be discussed below. The great majority of anaphoric pronouns with one are in the singular in the 16th century. The following examples illustrate the singular uses. The antecedents in them could be paraphrased as personal-specific, meaning that there is a referent for one, which may be a particular individual, although it may not necessarily be defined in the context, resembling the present-day someone/body. Alternatively, the Table 1. Normalised count of he and they with one (normalised to 100,000 words) He They

1500–1549

1550–1599

1600–1649

1650–1699

1.2 –

1.6 0.4

1.6 0.9

3.1 1.8

218 Mikko Laitinen

antecedents are personal non-specific, the referent paraphrased as anyone/body, or substitutive uses of one with specific unknown sense. (45) vnmoved by me or any other for me, and indede vnlooked for told me, that forasmuche as he thought it expedient, that somme man of experience in this Countrey service shold succeed Mr Chaloner in the place of Secretarie, one not being hable in his busie tyme to supply the whole (Lodowick Bryskett, 1581; bryskett, 26) (46) I could be content, howsoever either my discreduit or undoing hang therof, to committ government to a faithful man. To betray the church to one who resorteth to masse whan he might have bene absent (Mr Tompson, Mr Secretary Walsingham his secretary abyding than in Paris a dayly witnes with divers), whom al the papistes cherish and countenaunce as ther darling, (John Becon, 1578; bacon, II,8) (47) Yea, if one lewd aduocat, perchance hired for the nonest, dar pronounce a sentence for them, thogh one of like state denye the same, his word must not take place. (Elizabeth I, 1593; royal i, 91) In the 16th century, the only occurrences of they used with one are found in Queen Elizabeth I’s letter to James VI of Scotland, (48). Elizabeth’s letters also contain singular cases. (48) you wyl wondar that one accownted wise wyl use suche matter so fondly. But no marvel, for whan the ar giuen to a reprobat sence the offen make suche slip. (Elizabeth I, 1586; royal i, 39) It is noteworthy that the distance between the antecedent and the pronoun in Elizabeth’s example may be seen as a factor contributing to the selection of an anaphoric pronoun, since the antecedent is separated by a sentence boundary. The focus of attention in such cases shifts away from the overtly singular indefinite word to the concept, which has been highlighted thematically, since the first third-person form is in the subjective position of the passive clause (Quirk et al 1985: 1377–91). The greater the distance between the lexemes, the greater are the chances that the relationship between them is bound less by grammatical constraints of singularity, and more by propositional content, and therefore the reference is based more on iconicity. The situation resembles the principles found to condition the Northern subject rule (Klemola 2000) or the factors affecting the loss of grammatical gender in early ME (Curzan 2003: 98–9). This observation corroborates Balhorn’s observation of the greater likelihood of the semantically more distinctive they outside the clausal domain of the quantifier (2004: 90–2). This is, however, an initial discovery, requiring further systematic corpus-based studies.


The singular cases in the sixteenth century mainly occur in situations in which one is in the subject position and could be seen to be the sentential discourse topic in the context, (49). To use Rissanen’s categories, the uses of one with singular forms fall more into personal-specific and personal-non-specific contexts. (49) occations in diseases are very often suddaine, therefore one ought to have a Physitian that should be governed only by his iudgment, as one puts the best men to the Helme in a storme least he should mistake for the turning of the Helme either to the right or left hand (Edward Conway sr., 1651; Conway, 30) In (49), the writer has another indefinite proposition, namely that of a physitian, receiving a singular pronoun in the following relative clause. As the passage continues with a personal-non-specific use of one in the subject position, the reference could be interpreted as more individualised, which is apparent also in the writer’s use of a finite verb in the singular.20 In the next illustrations from the data with personal-specific (or a borderline case between that and the personal-non-specific), but not necessarily known, uses of one, it can be found in the subject position and used as the sentential topic. The use of the individualising singular third person forms makes these propositions easier to process than those with the plural pronoun, in which case the reader could be forced to search for the antecedent’s referent in the co-text. It is argued that with etymologically conditioned antecedents, such as one, the overtly singular he is a more transparent variant (cf. Hopper’s principles of grammaticalisation 1990). (50) And truly I think one yt is truly armd with this Christian armature, as he is very invulnerable from Fortune, so he will not be able to stab himself wch I speak in reference to your story (Henry More, 1658?; conway, 536) (51) For if one be a good Divine, he may probably have a good liveing bestowed upon him, & continue in ye University; whereas no good Lawyer can be made out of ye Inns of Court; and to keep one there above 7 yeares (Daniel Fleming, 1689; fleming, II,262) In (50) the selection of the singular may also be influenced by the letter’s content. Daniel Fleming’s letter, (51), deals with the life in university, and it could be expected that the referents in the real world were male. Based on the figures in Table 1, the seventeenth century is of interest to the use of they with one. The plural examples quoted in the OED are from the same time period (Section 6). The material in the CEEC supports the idea of the increase in indefiniteness of one and the loss of its individualising capacity, as suggested by Rissanen, as a by-product of the grammaticalisation process it underwent (1997b:

220 Mikko Laitinen

125). Even though the majority of the relevant occurrences are with he, the increase in plural anaphoric pronouns used with this clearly singular antecedent is apparent in the data when compared with the sixteenth century. Rissanen’s analysis shows that overall generic uses of one steadily increase towards the end of the century (1997b: 119). The results in the CEEC suggest that it is logical that they, which emphasises the concept of indefiniteness, tends to be used with such expressions. The use of generic one, with its etymological burden, must, whenever anaphoric pronouns follow it, be accompanied more and more with the plural pronoun variants. The change in meaning of one is clearly linked with subjectification and expressiveness in propositions, increasingly based on writers’ attitude towards what is being said. In the following examples, the plural form could be argued to be economic and iconic, since the reader avoids mixing the two NPs in the preceding context. The proper noun would, of course, require a singular pronoun, and the genericness of one is reinforced with they. (52) By the example of Sampson that one might and (if they be not too foolish to live in this world) must speake riddles to theyr frends and try the truth of offred love (Arabella Stuart, 1603; stuart, 130) (53) ’twould make one very cautious how they applied the mysteries of the Revelation unto this angle, (Justinian Isham, 1651; duppa, 38) When used with the generic one, the more transparent plural variant is used in (52) and (53). It is of interest, however, that in several occurrences of one followed by a plural pronoun, the antecedent is in a non-subjective position, (54)–(56). That is to say, it does not function as the sentential topic. (54) whether it be lawfull to goe against one’s conscience? to doe that wilfully which they know will offend God and all good people? to refuse the Sacrament at Easter in that church which yet they daily frequent? to beare us in hand they stay still with us to be satisfied (John Cosin, 1651; cosin, I,278) (55) Not those which come meerely from the schooles or out of the cell, how good and learned soever they be, can so wel worke upon those who have bin conversant in Courts, and really standing high are apt to think the rest of the world beneath them but when such meet with one bred up to the same civilities as themselves, so knowing in their owne arts…and yet to be so severe in letting them know that religion and vertue are not meere pedantick termes (Justinian Isham, 1653; duppa, 72) (56) If my cosin Nedd Hunne wear in Towne nowe I thinke he mighte doe a great deale of good in this busines, for we lacke one to goe betwixt vs in the


agreement; for if we knewe what thay would demaund I thinke we showld soon agree. (Thomas Knyvett, 1625; knyvett, 65) It is suggested that they maintains textual cohesion better that the singular, reinforcing the indefinite and generic senses of one. It is the writers’ intention to return to the concept, to the propositional meaning, with the use of they. This is illustrated by Dorothy Osborne in the mid-seventeenth century, (57). (57) sure the whole worlde could never perswade mee…to marry one that I had noe Esteem for, and where I have any, I am not lesse scrupulous then your father, for I should never bee brought to doe them the injury as to give them a wife whose affections they could never hope for (Dorothy Osborne, 1653; osborne, 62) A woman marrying a single person, typically a male, is the norm, even though in her letter the reference is carried out by the personal-non-specific one in the objective function, and it is followed by a plural third person form. Her selection of one is repeated by a personal pronoun, and she returns to the concept of an indefinite and unspecified (male) person, extending the range of the overtly plural pronoun towards singularity, much the same way as the range of plural you was extended to the singular.

7.2 Third person forms with NPs of common gender The figures in Table 2 for the third person forms of personal pronouns used with noun phrases resemble those for one presented above. The frequencies are slightly higher, and they confirm the tendency found with pronominal one that the singular in Early Modern correspondence is used more frequently in these human indefinite contexts. This result is expected, considering the morphological singularity of the antecedents. In some contexts determining the relationships between third-person pronouns and nouns proved to be difficult, since some nouns may also receive Early Modern neuter it/his forms. In (58) and (59) below, the NPs could receive a neuter pronoun, but such cases of his forms were determined to be non-neuter in this study.

Table 2. Normalised count of he and they with NPs (normalised to 100,000 words) He They

1500–1549

1550–1599

1600–1649

1650–1699

2.6 1.6

4.6 2.4

4.6 1.2

7.9 1.8

222 Mikko Laitinen

(58) By which occasion men are forced (as it were) and beaten to learne by experience eche one to take the benefite of the present tyme with feare of the tyme to come, and so often tymes even the honest mynde bent from his straight course (Lodowick Bryskett, 1582; bryskett, 33) (59) Ife the Ethiopian can not chaunge his skynne, nor the leopard his spottes, nor some men theyr manneres, the camelion can not chaunge her selfe into the colour of white (John Percival, 1585?; bacon, II,302) The it/his variation was undergoing a rapid change in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 1998). This reorganisation in the neuter paradigm,21 with the innovation and spread of its, has parallels with the pronoun variants of human indefinite reference, since it includes a gendered variant (his in the neuter and the overtly singular masculine he in the indefinite uses), along with a neutral one (it and they). As Table 2 above shows both the pronoun variants used with singular generic NPs appear in the texts, and it is the singular which is more frequent. Expressions with he occur both in the subjective and objective positions, as in (60)–(62). (60) there is no creature1 living upon the earth from the greatest prince to the basest begger, but that he1 is the creature of God2 created and made by him2; and the chiefe ende of his1 creation is that he1 must serve God and set fourth his2 glory. (Sir Francis Hastings, 1588; hastings, 39) (61) Howghe! What a plecer it ys for a man for see his chylde goo forwarde to be prassed of his master! It ys above a grete dele of rytches! (John Tupholme, 1548; johnson, 1041) (NB. The anaphoric relationship in this case was determined to exist between the lexemes in bold.) (62) They saye that an Englishe man in al feates excellith, if he coulde leave whenne it is wel, which they cal tollere manum de tabula. (Stephen Gardiner, 1545; gardiner, 180) When more formal subject matters are discussed in the letters, as in the example below concerning legal issues, the use of he is the norm, (63). (63) The fifte, 5. that in cases criminal the party accused might bring in witnesses to clear himselfe, was denyed by his Majesty (John Pory, 1610; pory, 66) Determining anaphoric relationships is difficult in some cases, and plural uses occasionally occur in expressions with singular antecedents in which there is a shift in pronoun number. Such a shift has been suggested by Schlauch to have been used to make the situation either more general (i.e. with a shift from he to they) or more


concrete, from they to he (1958).22 The results based on systematic corpus data show that contrary to her arguments, in Early Modern correspondence this type of shift is not restricted to people of low status, which was the case in Schlauch’s analysis, but also occur with nouns denoting ecclesiastical entities, as in (64) where the referent is preacher and minister. (64) And where have I refused any one preacher or good minister to doe for him the best I could at all times, when they have need of me either to speake or write for them? I thinke no man will thinke (Robert Dudley, 1576; wood 13) The figures in Table 2 allow us to compare the variant correlations with independent variables. Overall, women tend to select the plural third-person forms with NPs more often than men, (65)–(67), although in the seventeenth century there are also sporadic cases of men using they, (68). Considering the nature of the research question, correlating the variants with the writers’ gender will be a topic for a further study (Laitinen forthcoming a). (65) and wer within filled with suche venom as hathe burst out sins your departure with most lewd offers to another king to enter your land, with declaration of ther assured perfourmance of ther by-passed helpes (Elizabeth I, 1586; royal i, 58) (66) and hath almost made me hate fruitles professions, yett ther is no freind more sensible of what they owe to another, nor fuller of earnest desiers to deserve well of them, than my hart can wittnes I am towards you (Lucy Russel, 1623; cornwallis, 86–7) (67) now I am in my closet I give my self up to my griefe and mallancolly thoughts and you may belive tis a great comfort that I have a friand in the world to rit them to I hope it wont be long now before I shall go to Breda (Mary Stuart, 1678; royal iii, 89) (68) (in any thing I haue written priuate, or publique) giuen offence to a Nation, to any publique order or state, or any person of honor, or Authority, but haue aequally labord to keepe theyre Dignity, as mine owne person safe; (Ben Jonson, 1605; jonson, 195) In the cases above, the writers determine the anaphoric pronoun form by the communicative function of the indefiniteness. The use of they seems to be more common in non-subjective positions when the thematic weight is not as important as that of the subjects. When the corpus queries for the variants of he and they were carried out, there were only very sporadic occurrences of the feminine she variants

224 Mikko Laitinen

used in the Early Modern period. The only uses of she with any indefinite expressions of common gender in the CEEC are found in Elizabeth I’s letters, which could be a self-reference (see n. 23). (69) And as I reioyse to haue had, iven in this hammering worlde, suche presant profe of your sincerite, so shal you be sure to imploye it upon no gileful person, nor suche as wil not take as muche regard of your good as of her owne. (Elizabeth I, 1586; royal i, 30)

7.3 Discussion of the results of one and NPs The results in this section clearly confirm that both the variants he and they were in use in Early Modern English. Neither is a recent phenomenon arising as a result of social development, as has sometimes been suggested. On the basis of textual frequencies, the singular he seems to be the unmarked variant, although a considerable proportion of third person pronouns also agree with the notional meaning, that is to say, with the plural interpretation of the expression. When third-person pronouns are used anaphorically with pronominal one in Early Modern English, the singular variant was found to be more common. The situation does not remain stable, and it is important to relate the use of the variants to the diachronic development of indefinite expressions. When considering the increasing frequency of plural pronoun use with one in the time frame, the figures may of course be due to random variation. The results, however, corroborate the provisional evidence in the OED, and also fit into the larger picture of the development of one, as illustrated by Rissanen (1997b). As the generic uses of one increased, and the individualising senses diminished, it was necessary to emphasise the iconic property more with the use of they. Moreover, considering the Middle English evidence in Section 5, it is during the Early Modern period when the plural variant began to spread; however more research is needed into the other antecedent types, particularly the compound indefinite pronouns (Laitinen forthcoming b). When anaphoric pronouns used with singular generic NPs were examined, the singular variant was found to be more frequent. The illustrations also suggest that pronoun variation with NPs correlates with the writers’ gender. This will be left as a hypothesis for further studies. It is noteworthy that the results in Early Modern correspondence corroborate the corpus data from Present-day English. The results in Laitinen (2002) show that it is women who tend to prefer the plural variant over the singular in common gender. This observation is highly remarkable, since contrary to our modern times, in Early Modern England the use of singular they was not proscribed as a more politically correct variant, nor was it grammatically incorrect. The use of these pronouns in Present-day English is often above the level of


consciousness, i.e. people recognise that there is a preferred, gender-equal variant. In the Early Modern period, there are no overt descriptions to my knowledge which would indicate that this construction was recognised to contain something incorrect in the linguistic sense (Bodine 1999).

8. Cataphoric personal reference The two types of reference presented above (one and NPs) were fairly infrequent in the texts. In this section, we will take a closer look at cataphoric personal reference, which is the most common type of construction to express indefinite common gender in personal correspondence. The results are divided according to the pronoun type, since such constructions do not have an overt antecedent, and the writers’ selection of the variants includes the singular variant he, and the two plural ones, they and the demonstrative those. I would argue that the three are paradigmatic alternatives for writers conveying the human indefinite sense, and that these alternatives can, therefore, be exchanged in order to produce the intended interpretation on the writers’ part. The next examples illustrate how the alternatives are used in Early Modern correspondence, showing that the reference can be repeated in the following co-text, as is the case with anaphoric references in the preceding section. In (70) and (71) the cataphoric forms are used as the antecedents for the repeated personal pronouns. (70) Your letter that came then had been twice broke open. They that did it is posible hath been used to the trade a great while, but yett they are not their craft’s masters at it. (Elizabeth Oxinden, 1662; oxinden, II,264) (71) I have learned that hee that is discontented with any man ought first to meditate and weigh his owne power, and if they are so powerfull as that they are able to discover themselves as enemies and openly oppresse him, then ought he planely goe (Henry Oxinden, 1641; oxinden, I,240) Occasionally, the variants also occur interchangeably in Early Modern letter material, as in (72) in which the two plural variants are used in the same context, or in (73), with he who repeated in the singular him and then in the plural them. In (74) the singular him who is followed by several singular pronouns, and it is subsequently replaced by a more general them who in (74), shifting the point of view. (72) I will endeuor to see wheather any will contribute to buy a hors; but thos that hhaue harts haue not means, an they that haue means haue not harts. (Brilliana Harley, 1643; harley, 206)

226 Mikko Laitinen

(73) But what of all this, if he who most aught, did naught to assure him, or to requite them? Now, of late, by a fortunate good hap, a lewd felowe hathe bine apprehended with lettars and instructions. (Elizabeth I, 1593; royal i, 73) (74) I have now seene so much of the world that like him who, when he hath gon a great way, looks back, considers how he hath hastened, where gon about, where amiss, and from that very looking behind learnt afterward to looke better before him; some wayes being so rugged, and others (through too much smoothness) as slippery, make the jorney dangerous. To looke therefore upon them who are gon so long before (Justinian Isham, 1650; duppa, 16) It goes without saying that editing was required to delete the contexts in which the indefiniteness requirement was not fulfilled. The step between specific known contexts and those contexts which are either unknown or non-specific (Figure 2) is not a long one. Certain borderline cases exist, and care has been taken to discard them from the data. Table 3 shows the normalised figures for this category. If the markedness value is examined first, the data obviously show that the unmarked category, based on textual frequencies in cataphoric personal reference, is the plural. These results can be contrasted with the anaphoric relationship in the previous section in which the singular was more frequent. Considering the structural differences between the constructions, the greater tendency to use the singular in anaphora is natural, since it includes two lexemes, of which the antecedent carries a singular form (but may be notionally plural). The selection of pronominal number is conditioned by the co-text more than in cataphora in which no overt antecedent is found, but instead the writers must express plural meaning with a plural form. It is, therefore, suggested that the selection of the plural variants, and unmarkedness, can be explained by intra-linguistic factors. With no overt antecedent, the writers’ tendency to select the plural over the singular is apparent on semantic grounds of iconicity. A considerable share of the constructions in personal correspondence is in the singular, although the numbers of he in Table 3 are decreasing, corroborating the reTable 3. Normalised frequencies of cataphoric personal references (normalised to 100,000 words) He They Those

1500–1549

1550–1599

1600–1649

1650–1699

13.1 12.0 5.4

11.5 18.7 6.2

10.0 14.9 10.1

8.4 14.9 11.9


sults obtained by Raumolin-Brunberg and Kahlas-Tarkka from data retrieved from Bible translations (1995). The singular uses remain an option throughout the time period studied. In the sixteenth century material he followed by a relative restrictive clause is more frequent than in the following century. The decrease in the numbers of he actually observed in Table 3 is statistically significant in the chi-square test (p < .05). The following examples illustrate the uses of the singular variant, which can be used in the objective position, typically in him, and also in the subjective, the reference of which can be repeated in the context, as in (76). (75) For the marshall hath made all the serche that he can possyble, to know who wrote my letter, to the entent to cause my Lorde Abbot to put hym that wrott yt to dyspesure, yf he myght know who yt were (Gilbert Godbehere, 1530s; brereton, 87) (76) and remember that we be all synners, and what mervaile is it that we be sklaundered when we delite in sklaundering of our selfes. He that wold have a good name may not make bost of his synnes (Thomas Darby, 1530s; willoughby, 87) (77) there is a fearme, which nowe one Cresseye dothe occupie, verie meete to be used with the hed house, if he that shoulde dwell therin delighted in husbandrie (Sir Edward Clere, 1580; bacon, II,135) This decrease in he could be seen as an interplay between intra-linguistic factors and societal change. With a few exceptions, the topics discussed in these constructions had male referents, as in (77), discussing individuals engaged in husbandry. This, however, remains only a hypothesis, since it is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss the role gender in Early Modern society. It is noteworthy that often the variants are used in the same sentence, as in Brilliana Harley’s letter from 1643, (72) above, in which one finite clause has a those that construction, and the immediately following one has they that as the subject, providing us with an example of layered variation. Based on the results in Table 3, it can be argued that the demonstrative variant, preferred today, eventually replaced the they variant. The increase in the actually observed numbers of the demonstrative during the time period is highly significant (p < .001). Throughout the period the plural they and the demonstrative those remain the preferred options for writers. All the variants can appear in both subject and object positions. The demonstrative of course has no inflected forms, and it is therefore more versatile, appearing in more grammatical contexts, as in (78)–(80). (78) If it wer the truth that is set forth for truthe, if those that sette it forth had any qualites wherby a man might gather sum good opinion of the matier, (Stephen Gardiner, 1545; gardiner, 160)

228 Mikko Laitinen

(79) My cumfort is, that as God, so those that ar neerest to God, and his presentatives uppon earth, will accept the hart, which none shall carry one more faithfull (John Holles, 1631; holles, III,418) (80) others to fynd hym ther wull be a suffycyent spure to prycke yow, besydes that ther can be no more godlye thynge done than to helpe forwarde those that be studyous. (Henry Grey, 1530s; willoughby, 67) The third-person pronoun, with its nominative and oblique forms, is more specialised. The nominative occurs in the subject position, both in active and passive sentences, as in (81)–(83). (81) or that I tak upon me to rule my selfe, for I knowe the ar most disceved that trusteth most in themselves, wherfore I trust you shal never finde that faute in me (Elizabeth I, 1585; royal i, 157) (82) than two monethes paie to the capteine, and, in like sort, I see your lordship hath care, that theie which shall have the disposing of the treasure be directed so to dispose it as it maie cum trewlie and indifferentlie to the use of the soldier. (William Cecil, 1586; cecil 357) (83) if ever I may attaine hir Majesties presence I shall receive the like gratious countenance for all this that I have ever donne. They I say who have made most triall what promises, othes, vowes, threatnings, unkindnesse kindnesse faire meanes and fowle (Arabella Stuart, 1603; stuart, 128) The oblique them can be found in the object position of the main clause, and the pronoun then subsequently functions as the subject of the restrictive relative clause, as in (84)–(86) below. (84) You write further that this will make others afrayde what waie to take with the litle they have. The office of trust is a burden to them who will perfourme the same honestlie (Nathaniel Bacon, 1592; bacon, III,219) (85) I can affirme I desire not a haire from anie of their heads for anie unkindnes to mee, I could blesse them yt curse and praie for my persecutors as they are myne. (Thomas Harrison, 1656; jones, 257) (86) My meanyng was to ease my selfe of my great burden and yet therewhithe to shewe what pleasure I cold to theym that cold understand what pleasure ys (Thomas Bentham, 1561; bentham, 201) The argument put forth here is that the decrease in the frequency of the third person form in these contexts, and its replacement by the demonstrative in the Early Modern period, can be accounted for by the functional flexibility of those. That is to say,


a single form, those, functions in environments for which the competing variant requires more than one form. There are also occasional possessive forms of the third person pronouns in determiner positions. It should be mentioned that in such contexts the borderline between relevant occurrences and those that are known (i.e. discarded) is fuzzy.23 The following examples were included in the data. I would argue that the reference here falls into the unknown group of specific referents in Figure 2 in Section 2. (87) I trust my place, all things considered, shold crave some indifferency also, spetially at their handes of whom I have deserved best of and who for many respects ought rather to be means to preserve my credite then to hinder it. (Sir Robert Dudley, 1576; dudley, 15) (88) however I faile not to represent ye truth of things and should any inconvenience or disorder happen I hope at least by being in ye place, I shall acquit myself of ye blame, and ye fault will rest at their doors, who are contrivers of these mischiefs: (Arthur Capel, 1676; essex, 40)

8.1 Third person and demonstrative variants in cataphora The larger proportion of the plural pronominal variant throughout the time periods in Table 3 above, when compared to those, is caused by the fact that in the cases of demonstrative cataphoric reference, the subsequent repetitions of the concept are carried out using the third person form, instead of the demonstrative, as in the example below. (89) that if any such thing shall fall out as you seeme to foresee and foresaye, then shall those that perhaps accompt of me as an enimye, find more faithfull and proffitable frendship and servise for them and our country then they looked for (William Allen, 1593; allen, 235) If the data in Table 3 above are processed further so that the pronoun repetitions after each individual construction in the plural are excluded, the shift from the third person towards the demonstrative is more apparent. Figure 4 shows the normalised figures of the two alternatives. The increase of the demonstrative those followed by a restrictive clause is highly significant (p < .001), and, similarly, the decrease of the third person forms is significant (p < .05). Based on the results it seems that within the plural variant paradigm, it was the more versatile demonstrative those, with its larger potential to occur in more grammatical contexts with fewer morphological forms, which took over functions from the third-person variant. Moreover, the demonstrative variant is also deictic, functioning as the more transparent variant in texts, not necessarily

Normalised frequency

230 Mikko Laitinen

1500–1549 1550–1599 1600–1649 1650–1699

14.0 12.0 10.0 8.0 6.0 4.0 2.0 0.0

Time

Figure 4. Comparison of the normalised frequencies of they vs. those + a relative clause. (The absolute figures are shown in the appendix) structurally related to the preceding text, but being part of textual pointing devices, used for cohesive purposes (Halliday and Hasan 1976: 58). They is of course prototypically anaphoric, meaning that it often has an antecedent in the text. The demise of the constructions with they seems to continue in the eighteenth century. The data from the Corpus of Early English Correspondence Extension (CEECE), being currently compiled by the Historical Sociolinguistics team at the Department of English at the University of Helsinki, show that the normalised frequencies (to 100,000 words) of they plus a relative clause in roughly one million words of personal correspondence drop to 2.1. This shift from the third-person form towards the demonstrative seems to merit further study. With the development of methods in modern corpus linguistics, it will be possible to study whether the trend away from the personal pronoun is mainly linguistically motivated or whether it correlates with social factors, such as gender.

8.2 Discussion of cataphoric reference To my knowledge the results presented in the previous section are the first systematic corpus-based study of cataphoric reference. The data should be seen in the light of diachronic development of English. The major variants in Early Modern English correspondence, the pronominal he and they, were gradually replaced by the demonstrative, in a development which spread in the sixteenth century. In terms of markedness, the plural variants seem to be more frequent than the less economic singular variant, since he usually tends to evoke a gendered reference, not that of human indefiniteness. Moreover, it was the more versatile demonstrative those, which can be used in more syntactic positions, which took over functions from the they variant. If we search for explanations for this shift towards the demonstrative, it seems that in the plural variant paradigm the shift corroborates the other Germanic lan-


guages. Raumolin-Brunberg and Kahlas-Tarkka, in their study of Bible translations throughout the history of English (1995), argue that the decrease of he can be explained typologically, since in other Germanic languages the antecedents in similar restrictive relative clauses (i.e. personal reference) tend to be similar to the pattern found in Old English, in which the demonstrative se ‘comprised over a third of the indefinites examined’ (1995: 189). Swedish den som and German derjenige der are closer to the English those followed by a relative pronoun, which in correspondence data increases in frequency, than they are to he who/that. If the results in Table 3 and Figure 4 are compared with other text registers, it could be suggested that the shift towards the demonstrative was motivated from below in terms of contemporary sociolinguistic patterns. As noted in the introduction, the material used in this study falls more towards the oral end of the oral–literate continuum of texts (Biber 1988: 104–8). The persistence of he followed by a restrictive relative clause in the seventeenth century is hardly surprising, since the Authorized Version of the Bible (1611) heavily prefers the singular variant, as illustrated in Table 4 below. A search of the electronic version of the Bible returns frequencies for the variants which are different from those of correspondence, i.e. representing higher registers.24 Linguistic change from below tends to be transmitted through more informal communication channels (Labov 2001: 437), which is the case in the demise of the cataphoric he and they and the increase of the demonstrative those. It should be noted that the criterion of indefiniteness was not considered as a factor, and therefore the figures in Table 4 provide an indication of the high prestige variant at the time. The following sentences illustrate the variants in the Authorized Version. (90) For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. (Matt. 7: 8) (91) Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. (Matt 7: 21) (92) God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. (John 4: 24)

Table 4. The frequencies of the cataphoric variants in the Authorized Version of the Bible. Type

Number

He that They that Those that

324 104 18

232 Mikko Laitinen

(93) Nevertheless God, that comforteth those that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus (2Cor. 7: 6) The singular variant, he + a restrictive relative clause, is by far the most common choice, and the spreading demonstrative those + relative pronoun represents only a fraction of the indefinite cataphoric personal references in the Authorized Version.

9. Conclusions This chapter focuses on human indefinite expressions in Early Modern English correspondence. The study examines whether writers tend to select the singular or plural third person pronoun variants when making a reference to unknown human entities. The aim was to explore how certain concepts used in typology could be applied to diachronic corpus linguistics in English. The expressions under scrutiny were specified to meet the requirement of contemporary corpus linguistics, and a typology of indefinite expressions was provided. One category, person, was then examined in detail in the corpus data. Plenty of diachronic research on English pronouns exists, and the present work aims at supplementing our knowledge on indefinite and personal pronouns. Preliminary steps were taken to find intralinguistically conditioned parallel changes in English, in order to elaborate the concept of a common core in pronouns (cf. Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 1998: 108–9). The concept of typological markedness was applied here in order to understand the variation in pronominal number in human indefinite contexts. Markedness in corpus data was seen to be manifested by the flexibility to occur in various grammatical contexts, and by textual frequency on the token level. The results show that the markedness value of pronouns in context seems to be more complex than that of nouns (Croft 2003: 111). In cases in which the pronouns had an overt antecedent, pronominal one or a noun phrase of common gender, the singular variant he, tended to be used with greater frequency. Furthermore, the results suggest that by studying anaphoric third-person forms, it is possible to supplement previous results on lexico-grammatical changes, as was the case with one. The results here strongly support Rissanen’s findings concerning the increase in indefiniteness and the loss of individualising capacity of one (1997b: 100). As regards cataphoric personal reference, the results suggest that the decrease of the singular he and plural they followed by a restrictive relative clause started in the Early Modern period. The data from corpora show that their replacement by the plural demonstrative variant, those, started in the sixteenth century so that the demonstrative remains an option in the presentday usage (Quirk et al. 1985: 352). It was argued that the shift towards the demon-


strative was linguistically motivated. A promising topic for further studies will be to analyse the role of extralinguistic factors in this shift. Putting these results in a broader context, this corpus-based study on pronouns is concerned with the loss of grammatical gender in English, in which grammatical agreement was lost and replaced with semantic/notional criteria, and its aftermath in morphologically singular lexemes (anaphora) or in a closely-related construction (cataphora). The Agreement Hierarchy proposed by Corbett predicts that third-person pronouns show the greatest likelihood of semantic rather than grammatical agreement with their antecedents (2000: 190). The empirical corpus results presented in this chapter suggest that the typological evolution in English in terms of the loss of grammatical gender took various paths, depending on linguistic cotext. Certain antecedent categories continue to display number marking with the grammatically determined form longer than in others. This is particularly true with singular generic noun phrases, which are associated with singular personal pronouns more systematically than the other generic expressions examined in this study. Cataphoric personal pronouns tend to be on the opposite end of the continuum, showing the greatest likelihood of semantic number agreement. The situation is not, however, diachronically stable: generic one began to take plural anaphoric pronouns only after its general increase in frequency in Early Modern English as shown in the corpus data. Appendix The absolute numbers of the frequencies of they versus those + a relative clause used in Figure 4. 1500–1549

1550–1599

1600–1649

1650–1699

They Those

39 23

55 32

66 78

49 96

Total

62

87

144

145

Notes * The research reported here was supported by the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence funding for the Research Unit for Variation and Change in English at the Department of English, University of Helsinki. 1. The nominative forms he and they are used as generic terms in this chapter, including the more adjectival possessive pronouns his and their, the non-reflexive oblique cases him and them, and the reflexive pronouns ending with ‑self and ‑selves. It has been shown that sometimes the singular ‑self forms are used with the plural they in cases in which they are used with a singular antecedent (Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 494). 2. The use of the overtly plural demonstrative those but not that+relative, which Poussa calls Jespersen’s Gap, is excluded from the analysis; a rough chronology of the development of the Gap can be found in Poussa (1993).

234 Mikko Laitinen

3. Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC). 1998. Compiled by Terttu Nevalainen, Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, Jukka Keränen, Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi and Minna Palander-Collin at the Department of English, University of Helsinki. Corpus of Early English Correspondence Extension (CEECE). In progress. Compiled by Samuli Kaislaniemi, Mikko Laitinen, Minna Nevala, Terttu Nevalainen, Arja Nurmi, Minna Palander-Collin, Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, Anni Sairio (née Vuorinen) and Tuuli Tahko at the Department of English, University of Helsinki. 4. The criteria of indefiniteness and non-specificity are discussed in Laitinen (2002). The present study follows the arguments presented there. The discussion here is extended towards the typological classification of the concept. 5. While searching for the variants, two cases of she were found, the first in late sixteenth century letter from Queen Elizabeth I and the second from Mary Wollstonecraft in the late eighteenth century. The compound variants of he or she, sometimes labelled as a recent phenomenon, were used in legal texts in the Early Modern period (the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts, E3 STA LAW STAT7 VIII,587; my thanks are due to Dr. Heli Tissari for pointing this out to me). 6. Limiting the variants to two means that the chapter recognises the so-called Zadeh’s uncertainty principle, meaning that complexity and precision bear an inverse relation to one another. This includes the idea that, as the complexity increase, it diminishes the archived precision (e.g. Leech 2004: 124–5). The principle could also be applied to corpus linguistics; when using several linguistic variants, the complexity of corpus queries increases, but this reduces the level of generalisations that can be made based on the size of the corpus evidence. Excluding the feminine variant from the paradigm is a choice made also on linguistic grounds, since a) diachronically number prevailed over gender in English (Lass 1992: 103–2) and b) typologically number is a higher grammatical concept (Croft 2003: 226). It is commonly held that the masculine tends to be used as the unmarked gender in language, even though there are languages with unmarked feminine, such as for instance Nilotic Maasai and several Iroquoian languages (Corbett 1991: 220–1). 7. Traditionally this type of research on pronouns falls outside the core areas of language. If a more functional perspective to language is adopted, such as Givón’s discourse-oriented model of language, anaphoric relations, reference, and pronouns establish referential coherence in the grammatical system (Givón 2001: 11–42). 8. Distinguishing the masculine singular forms from h-forms of the plurals (him Old English 3sg. masc. dat. vs. him OE 3pl. dat., or Middle English he 3sg. masc. nom. vs. he ME 3pl. nom.) in corpus data is a difficult task, and any quantification based on such forms should be approached with caution. 9. See Barber (1976: 152–7) and especially Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (2003: 141–2) for the social diffusion of the variants ye/you, and Nevala (2002) for thou/you variation. 10. In many regional and social language varieties the distinction between singular and plural second person forms is valid, with forms such as yous, you guys, etc (Biber et al. 1999: 330–1). 11. Only the third person pronoun variation is included here, the functional range of the first and second person are discussed in Quirk et al. (1985: 343–54). Prototypically, the first person singular I indicates the speaker, and the equivalent plural form we may be the speaker plus one or more other persons, i.e. at least two or more. Its functional range is even more extensive, since we can be used authoritatively to indicate deontic modality (we will not smoke in here), or in reference to the second person or even the third person (Quirk et al. 1985: 350–1). Similar variation appears also in the second person (1985: 354). 12. The neuter it is excluded at this point since it is not typically used with human referents, except in cases of infants, i.e. baby – it.


13. In some studies the term ‘singular they’ has been used (e.g. Haegeman 1981). 14. As noted by Greenberg (1966a; 1966b: 64) textual frequency was included in some sense in Trubetzkoy’s pioneering work. He shows that both Trubetzkoy and Zipf arrived, from different routes, to the same conclusion that the marked feature is relatively more complex, and therefore, less often used (cf. Zipf ’s law). 15. The unmarkedness of the plural in semantics has been argued (Ojeda 1992). 16. An example of marked values involving number in English can be found in the verbal agreement of collective nouns, which throughout the history have tended to take both singular and plural verbs (Kytö 1993). 17. Balhorn’s study of euery, ech, and euerich in the Canterbury Tales shows that they occurs with the universal paradigm (2004: 90). It is worth noting that his study deals with a limited set of antecedents, and his results showing the rise of they do not correspond with Curzan’s observation in Old English. This clearly indicates that more research is needed to arrive at a more comprehensive picture of the pronoun variation in diachrony. 18. Pauwels (2001) distinguishes between agentive and occupational nouns. For a study of the Early Modern period, occupational nouns were excluded, since incumbents of most occupations at the time were men. 19. The pronominal uses of one have been discussed in Rissanen (1997b). He divides the senses into six categories. One of them (prop-word) is excluded, since it does not fulfil the criteria of indefiniteness, as specified above. The five other senses can be found in the material. These are: personal-specific, corresponding to someone; personal-non-specific used in non-assertive contexts; predominantly subjective personal-generic one; one in compound indefinite pronouns; and substitutive one (1997b: 88–9). The development of the compound indefinite pronouns is discussed in Raumolin-Brunberg (1994) and in Raumolin-Brunberg and Kahlas-Tarkka (1997). 20. Dekeyser’s results from 19th century British English show that there is strong formal agreement between the morphologically singular subject and the verb (1975: 77). 21. Similar reorganisations include the development of the relative pronouns with the division of labour between who, which and that (Dekeyser 1984). 22. These shifts are discussed in more depth in Laitinen (2006). 23. We must remember that categorical fuzziness is inevitable in studies of indefiniteness and anaphora, and all quantificational findings tend to be strong tendencies rather absolute frequencies. For instance, an inherent property of anaphora as a syntactic phenomenon is that it requires the addressee to find the antecedent and its real world referent. Anne Curzan formulates this position succinctly by writing that in historical analysis ‘the addressee is the linguistic historian who is many centuries removed from the texts and the language they contain’ (2003: 202). 24. The original electronic text for this version of the Bible is provided by the Oxford Text Archive. The Authorized Version was accessed at .

References Balhorn, Mark. 2004. The rise of epicene they. Journal of English Linguistics 32: 79–104. Barber, Charles. 1976. Early Modern English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Benson, Larry D. (ed.). 1988. The Riverside Chaucer. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Biber, Douglas. 1988. Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

236 Mikko Laitinen

Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad and Edward Finegan. 1999. Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow: Longman. Bodine, Ann. 1999. Androcentrism in prescriptive grammar: singular ‘they’, sex–indefinite ‘he’ and ‘he or she’. The feminist critique in language. A reader, 2nd revised ed., ed. by Deborah Cameron, 124–38. London and New York: Routledge. British National Corpus (BNC). 1995. Oxford: Oxford University Computing Services. . Campbell, Lyle. 2003. Summary: major recent developments in historical linguistics. HISTLING Mailing List. 2 Feb, 2003. . Chesterman, Andrew. 1991. On definiteness. A study with special reference to English and Finnish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 56]. Corbett, Greville. 1991. Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics]. Corbett, Greville. 2000. Number. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics]. Croft, William. 1996. ‘Markedness’ and ‘universals’: from the Prague School to typology. Multiple perspectives on the historical dimensions of language, ed. by Kurt R. Jankowsky, 15–21. Münster: Nodus. Croft, William. 2003. Typology and universals. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics]. Croft, William, Keith Denning and Suzanne Kemmer. 1990. Typology and diachrony in the work of Joseph H. Greenberg. Studies in typology, ed. by William Croft, Keith Denning and Suzanne Kemmer, ix–xviii. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins [Typological Studies in Language 20]. Crystal, David. 1980. A first dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. London: André Deutsch [The Language Library]. Curzan, Anne. 2003. Gender shifts in the history of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [Studies in English Language]. Dekeyser, Xavier. 1975. Number and case relations in 19th century British English. A comparative study of grammar and usage. Antwerpen and Amsterdam: Nederlandsche Boekhandel. Dekeyser, Xavier. 1984. Relativizers in Early Modern English: a dynamic quantitative study. Historical syntax, ed. by Jacek Fisiak, 61–87. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter [Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 23]. Evans, G. Blakemore and J. J. M. Tobin (eds.). 1997. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. New York and Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Gerner, Jürgen. 2000. Singular and plural anaphors of indefinite personal pronouns in spoken British English. Corpora galore. Analyses and techniques in describing English. Papers from the nineteenth International Conference on English Language Research on Computerised Corpora (ICAME 1998), ed. by John M. Kirk, 93–114. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi. Givón, Talmy. 2001. Syntax: an introduction, vol. 1. Rev. ed. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966a. Language universals, with special reference to feature hierarchies. The Hague and Paris: Mouton [Janua Linguarum, Series Minor LIX]. Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966b. Language universals. Current trends in linguistics, vol. III: Theoretical foundations, ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, 61–112. The Hague and Paris: Mouton.


Haegeman, Liliane. 1981. Singular they: a recent development? Moderna Språk LXXV: 235–8. Halliday, Michael A. K. 1973. Explorations in the functions of language. London: Edward Arnold [Explorations in Language Study]. Halliday, Michael A. K. and Ruqaiya Hasan. 1976. Cohesion in English. Harlow: Longman [English Language Series 9] Haspelmath, Martin. 1997. Indefinite pronouns. Oxford: Oxford University Press [Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory]. Hopper, Paul J. 1990. Principles of grammaticalization: towards a diachronic typology. Language typology 1987. Systematic balance in language. Papers from the Linguistic Typology Symposium, Berkeley, 1–3 December 1987, ed. by Winfred P. Lehmann, 157–70. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 67]. Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey K. Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jespersen, Otto. 1949. A modern English grammar on historical principles, vols. 1–7. London: George Allen & Unwin; Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard (f.p. 1909–4). Klemola, Juhani. 2000. The origins of the Northern Subject Rule: a case of early contact? Celtic Englishes II, ed. by Hildegard L. C. Tristram, 329–46. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter. Kytö, Merja. 1993. Third-person present singular verb inflection in early British and American English. Language Variation and Change 5(2): 113–39. Labov, William. 1994. Principles of linguistic change. Internal factors. Oxford: Blackwell [Language in Society 20]. Labov, William. 2001. Principles of linguistic change. Social factors. Oxford: Blackwell [Language in Society 29]. Laitinen, Mikko. 2002. Singular he and plural they in indefinite anaphora in written Present-day English. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 7(2): 137–64. Laitinen, Mikko. 2006. Dialogue with generic terms. Constructing meaning with he and they. Dialogue language use, ed. by Irma Taavitsainen, Juhani Hārmā and Jarno Korhonen, 363– 80. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique [Mémoirs de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki 66]. Laitinen, Mikko. Forthcoming a. Variationist approach to pronouns of common gender: a corpus-based study of he and they. Paper presented at The First International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English (ICLCE), Edinburgh, June 2005. Laitinen, Mikko. Forthcoming b. The development of English indefinite pronouns and anaphoric he and they in 1500–1800. The change of meaning and the meaning of change, ed. by Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, Roderick W. McConchie and Matti Rissanen. Lass, Roger. 1992. Phonology and morphology. The Cambridge history of the English language, vol. II: 1066–1476, ed. by Norman Blake, 23–155. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leech, Geoffrey. 2004. A new Gray’s anatomy of English grammar. English Language and Linguistics 8(1): 121–47. Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mustanoja, Tauno F. 1960. A Middle English syntax, part I: Parts of speech. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique [Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki XXIII]. Nevala, Minna. 2002. Youre moder send a letter to the. Pronouns of address in private correspondence from Late Middle to Late Modern English. Variation past and present. VARIENG studies on English for Terttu Nevalainen, ed. by Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, Minna Nevala,

238 Mikko Laitinen

Arja Nurmi and Matti Rissanen, 135–59. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique [Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki 61]. Nevalainen, Terttu. 1999. Making the best use of ‘bad’ data: evidence for sociolinguistic variation in Early Middle English. Neophilologische Mitteilungen 100(4): 499–533. Nevalainen, Terttu and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 1998. Its strength and the beauty of it. The standardisation of the third person neuter possessive in Early Modern English. A reader in Early Modern English, ed. by Mats Rydén, Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade and Merja Kytö, 73–117. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang [University of Bamberg Studies in English Linguistics 43]. Nevalainen, Terttu and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 2003. Historical sociolinguistics: language change in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Longman. Newman, Michael. 1997. Epicene pronouns. The linguistics of a prescriptive problem. New York and London: Garland. Ojeda, Almerindo E. 1992. The markedness of plurality. The joy of grammar. A festschrift in honor of James D. McCawley, ed. by Diane Brentari, Gary N. Larson and Lynn A MacLeod, 275– 88. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Oxford English Dictionary (OED). 1989. 2nd ed. by John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner; Additions (1993–1997) ed. by John A. Simpson, Edmund S. C. Weiner, and Michael Proffitt; 3rd ed. (in progress Mar. 2000–) ed. by John A. Simpson. OED Online. . Oxford University Press. Pauwels, Anne. 2001. Non-sexist language reform and generic pronouns in Australian English. English World-Wide 22(1): 105–19. Poussa, Patricia. 1993. Pragmatics of this and that. History of Englishes. New methods and interpretations in historical linguistics, ed. by Matti Rissanen, Ossi Ihalainen, Terttu Nevalainen and Irma Taavitsainen, 401–17. Berlin and New York: Mouton. Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London and New York: Longman. Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. 1991. The noun phrase in early sixteenth-century English. A study based on Sir Thomas More’s writings. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique [Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki L]. Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. 1994. The development of the compound pronouns in ‑body and ‑one in Early Modern English. Studies in Early Modern English, ed. by Dieter Kastovsky, 301– 24. Berlin and New York: Mouton. Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena and Leena Kahlas-Tarkka. 1995. Whoever and anyone who: what was there before? Observations on biblical English. The New Courant 3: 181–93. Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena and Leena Kahlas-Tarkka. 1997. Indefinite pronouns with singular human reference. Grammaticalization at work. Studies of long-term developments in English, ed. by Matti Rissanen, Merja Kytö and Kirsi Heikkonen, 17–86. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter [Topics in English Linguistics 24]. Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena and Terttu Nevalainen. Forthcoming. Historical sociolinguistics: the Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Models and methods in the handling of unconventional digital corpora, vol. 2: Diachronic corpora, ed. by Joan C. Beal, Karen P. Corrigan and Hermann Moisl. London: Palgrave. Rissanen, Matti. 1997a. Whatever happened to the Middle English indefinite pronouns? Studies in Middle English linguistics, ed. by Jacek Fisiak, 513–29. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter [Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 103].


Rissanen, Matti. 1997b. The pronominalization of one. Grammaticalization at work. Studies of long-term developments in English, ed. by Matti Rissanen, Merja Kytö and Kirsi Heikkonen, 87–143. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter [Topics in English Linguistics 24]. Schlauch, Margaret. 1958. The generic singular in English: a supplement. Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny 5: 235–9. Wales, Katie. 1996. Personal pronouns in Present-Day English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

part iii

Dialectology and typology

chapter 10

Dialect and typology Where they meet — and where they don’t Werner Abraham University of Vienna This chapter argues against the canonical view that dialects need to be defined by sociolinguistic and/or historical criteria. The position defended here is that dialects are to be seen as spoken codes without any support from written coding. A lot follows from this stance. First, decoding spoken language is controlled by parameters quite different from reading decoding, the main difference being that decoding spoken linguistic signs occurs strictly online and allows for no backtracking. Second, due to the absence of backtracking, the syntactic and morphological characteristics of complex structures and sentences in dialect meet conditions of discourse organization (among which those of Thema and Rhema structure) more prominently than those of written and reading signaling. Third, if at least part of the discourse organization of the spoken code is syntactically motivated in a non-ambiguous way, as has been claimed for German (and likewise, at least partly, for the rest of the continental West Germanic languages, Dutch, Afrikaans, and West Frisian; see Abraham 1999b, 2004; Abraham and Conradie 2001), and if the written code allows for considerable freedom of word order as is the case in the continental West Germanic languages, the grammars of the spoken vs. the read and written codes should differ considerably. Couched in terms and conditions of sentence processing and parsing, an attempt will be made to account for the morphosyntax of dialect codes as opposed to the written code — in other words, assumptions based on the optimally early recognition of acoustic online signaling in dialects will be tested against an array of empirically attested dialectal structures. It will be seen that a certain long-discussed phenomenon, namely the “Upper German demise of the simple preterit” (ist gekommen ‘is-come’, but not kam “came”) in the authentic dialects of Austria, Bavaria, and Switzerland and the general dialectal characteristics in these areas find a unified explanation that has been dearly missed for a long time.

1. Line of argument: What is a dialect essentially? In this chapter it is maintained that a dialect is not a social/stylistic variant of a standard language, but that, by contrast to standard language, orality/acoustic receptivity and their specific parsing criteria play the determining role. The best access to this question can be gained by the Darwinian view (variation, natural emergence by variant competition).

244 Werner Abraham

Since dialects are spoken vernaculars only, it is plausible to ask what the conditions are under which oral and acoustic parsing conditions rise to their most obvious and substantive effects? Let us look at German, Dutch, and West Frisian (and, partly also Afrikaans and Yiddish) under the established view that these languages follow SOV-typology and provide extensive scrambling. Then the crucial data from the South German preterit demise confirm the position that dialects follow discourse parsing principles more faithfully and fruitfully than the written code of the language. On the other hand, it will be seen that the written code is determined to a greater extent by grammatical parsing criteria because first, grammatical coding (parts of speech recognition), rather than discourse categorial decoding, facilitates the semantic interpretation more expediently. We shall argue and illustrate this point extensively below in Section 2 as well as later. A central issue appears to be to align, in some transparent and plausible way, the concepts of parsing availed in this chapter mainly for acoustic decoding, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the concept of Universal Grammar used, as may appear — wrongly so — for purposes of grammatical, written (de)coding (i.e., not for acoustic decoding). The concrete questions to be addressed are as follows.1 If dialects, being spoken-only codes, are analysed under parsing constraints, why would they be determined by a Chomskyan UG in the first place? Likewise, if children learn their own language in the spoken code only, what makes this L1-code amenable to an analytical UG inventory, if the latter is aimed at, and motivated by, written standards only? This tension, unsolved to this point, extends to the use of UG nomenclature such as AgrP, CP, as used in the present chapter to quite some descriptive and explanatory extent. Are they more than pure name-dropping (as one reviewer appears to suggest)? This is the position advocated in the present chapter. Neither parsing nor UG can be thought to stand alone for the attempt at describing the linguistic faculty and its linguistic output in a comprehensive and explanatory way. Parsing is indispensable because it answers to the linguistics needs of the hearer. Likewise, UG is assumed to congeal the core properties of linguistic evidence across human languages. Even if the two stay without any interrelation (for the time being), both are indispensable: one approaching the central linguistic questions from the psychological side, the other from typological side. However, there is a plausible way to speculate about an interconnection. Since parsing appears to be able to explain exceptional phenomena — i.e., phenomena outside the core grammar in the sense that they do not belong to standards of a single language such as dialectal or regiolectal characteristics; phenomena of L1 and L2, among which are (L1-) faulty, but parsing-explicable phenomena — what UG may boil down to is the set of the most regular linguistic representations still explicable under parsing criteria. UG, in other words, may just be parsing, but, since so very recursive in all or most languages, elevated away from standard parsing con-

Dialect and typology 245

cepts and nomenclature and congealed under U-grammatical conceptualisation and terminology. The gist of this preamble is that neither approach is dispensable for the present discussion of phenomena of nonstandards — not because standard and nonstandard, or written and acoustic decoding, are so different, but, just to the contrary, because they have so much in common. The title of the present essay — “Dialect and typology: where they meet — and where they don’t” — intends to invoke exactly the issue explained above: Typology usually runs under UG-premises, dialectology under exceptional codes. No criterion other than that of “UG-for-nonstandard exceptions” or, under common dialectologist premises, “grammar evasions” are invoked. This essay tries to demonstrate to what extent this is correct — and simultaneously wrong, and in what way right and wrong. This chapter is organized as follows: Section 1 makes the general claim that dialect grammars should be accounted for as spoken-only codes. Section 2 draws connections between dialects as spoken-only codes and prerequisites of a Darwinian scenario of dialect emergence and dialect change. In Section 3, concrete links are drawn between the Darwinian constituents of adaptation and propagation (linguistic emergence and change) and the typological specifics of German as a head-final language. The crucial discussion of how a spoken-only code is parsed takes place in Section 4. Illustrations are adduced from the demise of the simple preterit past in South German dialects and its replacement by the composite past. In the Conclusion, the highlights of the discussion are wrapped up. Five tables and one map add to the illustrative component of the chapter. The position taken vis-à-vis the prevalent accounts in (German) dialectology is that the present account for the specific phenomena in dialectal morphosyntax is superior to any prior traditional account in as much as more empirical data are covered in the framework of a hierarchically dependent inventory of methodological premises. The position is taken that the present account for specific phenomena in dialectal morphosyntax and the demise of the simple preterit is superior to any prior traditional account in as much as more empirical data are covered in the framework of a hierarchically dependent inventory of methodological premises and fewer exceptions need be made to these explanative lines.

2. Dialect and typology: the concepts and how they are embedded If criteria of sentence processing and, more specially, of purely acoustic parsing are addressed for an understanding of the purely spoken code of dialects, we envision that performance and competence are distinguished carefully, but are likewise linked in a principled way. More specifically, performance in itself is split into the

246 Werner Abraham

code of the speaker and that of the hearer. However, to all appearances, the split between a hearer and a speaker code makes sense only if accompanied and controlled by typological criteria of morphosyntax. Such claims can best be supported and substantialized in the following way: Dialects (vs. standard language) are best considered in a Darwinian scenario of constant linguistic emergence and change.2 As noted above, the notion of dialect needs to be seen subordinate to a hearer’s code. Linguistic orality and likewise hearer decoding is principally different from written coding (Standard language) to the extent that it follows restrictions of parsing and linguistic processing. The ins and outs of parsing (more generally, linguistic processing) are controlled by the specific linguistic type of language: SVO-languages (Romance, English) will parse differently from SOV-languages (Japanese) and again from SVOV languages like German. The crucial distinction is based on the availability of a narrow notion of scrambling, which only German displays. Certain morphosyntactic properties of German dialects follow readily from the typological SVOV structure and its specifics of parsing for oral/acoustic (de)coding. This will be illustrated later by what has been called ‘South German preterit demise’ (“oberdeutscher Präteritumschwund”; see, in great detail, Abraham and Conradie 2001).

3. L-change and L-learning as Darwinian processes of selection: concepts Within the conceptual framework indicated above, the following questions receive a direct analogical status in Darwin’s causal system of change as adaptation by selection. The notions of Linguistic Performance and Linguistic Competence as well as Dialect vs. Standard language fit into this conceptual scenario in the following way. Performance is equivalent to ‘disturbance’, or ‘noise’, in the acquisition process which is subject to mutagenic change (i.e., subject to mutation inducing effects on grammar acquisition) and from which new variants of expression (the ‘innovative component’) emerge. The latter is a paramount characteristic of dialect/oral coding. Likewise, learning conditions are to be seen as selection factors. Against this background, dialects are the result of social propagation (‘gradual transmission of codes across populations of speakers’) as much as languages are. However, dialects are recorded and acquired only by ear, never by visual coding/sound imitating writing. In such a framework, the individual Linguistic Competence is a biological Phenotype of the human linguistic ability. On the other hand, the biological Genotype is the collection of cognitive capacities in the human brain responsible for linguistic processing. It controls grammar selection, i.e. linguistic learning.


Language change then, is due to mutation. Mutation presupposes variation on certain expression elements as well as innovative triggers. Languages are subject to change because of disturbances in the performance (i.e., to faulty copying or replication, for mutation). It follows by inference from the above that differences between languages are due to the multiplication of species and local dissemination, or to segregation. It is a function of ‘variation + selection + segregation’. Given the higher performance and variants exposition in the oral code, dialects can be said to be germane to external variation, while the learning child is subject to internal variation. Quite naturally, dialectal external variation is much wider and far more frequent than internal variation. The emergence of different language families (which, in line with the definitions above, constitute themselves as recognizable mutation lines) is due to different periods of the population splits. Since change is gradual and divergent (i.e., environmentally and contextually specific), specific language families and relations can be reconstructed. Darwinian adaptation applied to language is cognitive mutation (i.e., change under innovative as well as economic determinism) + expressive selection (i.e., successful replication/reproduction). Distinguishing between online and offline linguistic adaptation, dialects (i.e., oral coding and, most prominently, acoustic decoding) are online products of linguistic adaptation. Clausal and textual (text portioned) online processing implies short time memorizing. Since linguistic processing is head dependent (against the background of notions such as ‘valence’, ‘operator’, and ‘head’ etc.). The crucial difference is that between head-initial and head-final status. In particular, the place of the verb, or predicate controlled, i.e., the typological structure status of the category of head, or predicate, is of paramount impact on the sentence processing skills to be developed by the respective speakers and hearers. An SVO language will require processing different from an S(V)OV languages — in particular, processing SVO will occur with a concrete difference in the capacity of the interim memorizer that is developed for S(V)OV languages. German listeners mastering a fundamentally head–last language are used to short term memorizing a lot more than English listeners. It follows that German speakers/writers are used to producing longer sentences, or text portions, than English writers/speakers. German dialect listeners will even go beyond listeners of Standard German because of the additional difficulty of grammatical parsing and the ensuing reliance on discourse-directed parsing (i.e., parsing according to Thema and Rhema categorization). Table 1 below surveys the principled match between the grammatical categories (subject, object, in Minimalist configurations in line 2) and discourse function such as Thema and Rhema. Notice that what this relates to is syntactic recognition

–

Coord –

[cp/ip Spec CP/IP

Thema/rhema

gibt turns

wann if

Co/Io

–

’s ’m it him

–

-ts you

–

sie she/her/they/ them/you

(es) you

WP for (clitic) AgrS/OP pronouns

⇐Thema

–

denn then

denn then

auch also

mir (to) me

[vp

pünktlich abgeben? on time turn in

pünktlich ab on time in

des this

[vp

sag-ts tell.2pl

Vo ]]]

Rhema ⇒

heut today

Extra position

Thema

ga

ga

Table 1. Field topology: Verbal bracket, discourse categories and the distribution of default accent (GA) (WP = Wackernagel position)

i sie she/they/you –

’s it

ca

ga

ga≠ca

ii

Aber But Wieso Why

–

⇐ Rhema Rhema

iii – Wieso Why

Thema ⇒

iv

ihm abgeben? him turn in pünktlich on time


and computability of discourse categories in German. The same, it appears, holds for Dutch, West Frisian, and with some reservations, also for Yiddish and Afrikaans (Abraham 1997b, 1999b). Notice the principled ambiguities of the English glosses corresponding to the German lexicals as e.g. in line (ii) under AgrS/OP. Recall that English has no case to be linked to clausal NP-status. (WP = the syntactic Wackernagel position; recall that SpecCP/IP is the designated subject position, while any position of a topicalized object is higher than — i.e., to the left of — SpecCP/IP.) The crucial overt property of a true discourse-prominent language such as German is Scrambling (the alleged ‘free’ leftward displacement of governed arguments in the ‘Middle Field’). Scrambling is defined in German by the following necessary characteristics (partly Haider and Rosengren 1998). See (1a–c) below.

(1) a. Scrambling presupposes morphologically distinct valence/government (L-command) — i.e., it presupposes pre-Merge disambiguation of case assignment and serialization of the lexically assigned arguments. b. Scrambling presupposes uniquely distinct linear clausal sequence in terms of basic position vs. derived/moved position as well as unique focus distinctions (‘grammatical accent’ (= GA) vs. ‘contrastive accent’ (=CA) and the parallel semantic presupposition distinctions). c. Scrambling presupposes the structural extension of the traditional notion of the ‘Middle Field’ (‘MF’) between [CP _[C V2 . . . ] and [ . . . Vlast] inside v/VP. The overt structural form of the scrambling process is as follows:

(2) Co [AgrP XPi [VP YPj Vo]] ⇒

Co [AgrP YPj [VP XPi ej Vo]]

where XP and YP are part of the valence pattern of Vo, and where further [XPi YP j Vo] is the basic, underived valence designated sequence. On the basis of (1)–(2) the following (Germanic) languages are excluded from the German type of scrambling (and refocusing) language: Danish, Norwegian, Swedish (since these languages have no OV and, consequently, possess no critical object distinctions); Icelandic and Faeroese (no OV and no critical object distinctions, despite dative object marking); Dutch, Frisian, and Afrikaans. Yiddish needs to be given a partly exceptional status (with respect to a somewhat modified generalization on Yiddish see more recently Haider and Rosengren 2003); Afrikaans has been discussed in details by Abraham and Conradie (2001, chs. 2, 7). Due to their better developed — since head-final (and, consequently V-last dependent) — capacities of the interim memorizer, speakers/hearers of languages with head-finality (V-last such as SOV, SVOV— left governing) are expected to

250 Werner Abraham

evelop discourse compartmenting and discourse processing strategies a lot more d than head-initial (V-early: V1, V2-right governing) languages. The typological trait of V-last will trigger typological discourse prominence. German is such a language, and, quite logically, German dialects are even more so since, in the absence of backtracking (as well as looking-ahead) possibilities in the online discourse code, priority is rendered to the identification and distinction of (con-)textual Thema and Rhema. While written standard languages are one-dimensional (i.e., topologically uniform) I-languages, dialects are two-dimensional in as much as they add the domain of a diachronically uniform development. In other words, dialects are the uniform results of topologically uniform — as well as the result of diachronically uniform, though of course not identical — developments.

4. Oral dialect and the typological parameter: Parsing in the hearing domain — the structural rise of discourse prominence For one, decoding by hearing is identifiable by word-, morpheme-, or phrase-incremental processing. At this point of the processing inventory of the cognitive linguistic apparatus, it is performance oriented. However, understanding (as distinct from hearing/perceiving) is processed by projection/mapping of the perceived data Table 2. Steps of reanalysis by parsing convergence on the composite perfect in non-standardized Southern German (Austrian, Bavarian, Alemannic) Top-down ‘constituency assignment toward grammatical/functional relations’ • Perfectivizing gi-Vi ≠ Vi • narrative Past ≠ completive/ futural Perfect • habên ≠ Auxiliary • no sequence of tenses

• no Perfective; ge-Vi = Vi • narrative Past ≠ completive/ futural Perfect • hân = also Auxiliary • no sequence of tenses

• no article lexemes • massive genitive valence

• definite article • V-genitive weening

• no Perfective; no ge-V • narrative Past ≠ completive/ futural Perfect • haben = also Auxiliary • sequence of tenses, double perfect • (in)definite article • no genitive valence

OHG MHG ModG [IP[I [V habeta [VP [boum. acc. [IP[I [Aux hâte [VP boum. acc. [IP[I [Aux hatte [VP einen. acc. sg gipflanzotan.acc.sg]]] sg [V gepflanzt tAux]]] sg Baum [V gepflanzt tAux]]]

[V habên] [Predicative Participle gipflanzotan.acc.sg.]

[Aux habên] [Predicative Participle gepflanzt]

[Aux haben] [Predicative Participle gepflanzt]

Bottom-up ‘lexical insertion and meaning assignment’


onto possible grammatically and semantically and referentially calibrated structures (i.e., appropriate in sense as well as socially proven successful; in the German valence tradition: Satzbaupläne/Valenztypen; in Construction Grammar: construction types). Rightward government (in SVO-languages) will be more successful (in other words, will project much fewer possible projections) than leftward government (S(V)OV-languages). The latter, most prominently, will have to lay aside, on an interim memorizer, elements for later grammatical projection and clausal identification until they have reached, in the processed clausal chain, the governing chainfinal head (i.e., the clausal predicate extending verbal valence to the left (SOV)). It follows that decoding by online hearing (performance) implies the incremental, bottom-up parsing of words or morphemes and the attempt to integrate them into syntactic identification in process (competence = compiled knowledge system). The top-down competence assignment will principally consist of look-ahead efforts (via ready-made structure applications) and back-tracking efforts (i.e., new attempts at the parsing of elements in the chain that have remained unparsable so far). Both processes are there to make sure that the correct and most plausible structuring result has been achieved. The ideal goal in online sentence-processing (i.e., in the processing of pure audio coding) is to minimize look-ahead attempts as well as back-tracking efforts. See Table 2 for an illustration (on an Old High German example from Tatian up to Modern German). The parsed sentence is, in Modern German: . . . habe einen Feigenbaum gepflanzt “. . . have planted a fig tree”. Table 2 should be read as follows: The Old High German stage (OHG: 750–1050) kept the simple past and the composite past form disambiguated; the form of the latter was restricted to perfective predicates (verbs or complex predicates). In Middle High German (MHG: 1050–1350) perfective verbs gradually disappeared as a separate morphologically marked class (loss of the gi-/ga-prefix); consequently, the lexical restriction on the composite form had been dropped allowing haben/ ‘have’ to attain Auxiliary status. The status of the composite past in MHG differed from that in Modern German only in as much as it was still linked to a wide class of genitive-governing imperfective verbs. This class disappeared completely, in rapid succession, in the pre-modern period of Early New High German (ENHG: 1350– 1750) because the aspect opposition (perfectives vs. imperfectives) of transitive twoplace predicates was no longer signalled by case assignment (accusative for perfectives, genitive for imperfectives; cf. Leiss 1991; Abraham 1997a). Modern Standard German allows only for the accusative as a successor to the old accusative, while the genitive gave way to other cases, mostly under extra prepositional government. This is what Table 2 is meant to demonstrate. Parsing considerations can help to explicate a diachronic process — in the case at hand the change of habên as a full possessive verb in Early Old High German (OHG) to Aux status in Modern German (ModG). The test case is the long periphrasis for the expression of the past (to

252 Werner Abraham

become the only mode for the past tense in South German) discussed in some detail further down; see Table 5. The catalyzing period was that of the demise of aspect at the end of Middle High German (MHG). Once the aspect (perfectivizing) status of the prefix ge- was no longer paradigmatically safeguarded — in the wake of which the simple preterit and the new periphrastic perfect were no longer clearly distinct (“? Preterit ≠ Perfect” in Table 5), the parsing of the new haben+V yielded no distinct result for the young Middle High German hearer — with the result that this MHG-speaker decided to opt for what was the more analytic expression for the past function. However, the periphrastic constituent was able to satisfy the need for the past function only by recategorizing the prior possessive verb haben to auxiliary status. This recategorization included changes in the selectional and subcategorization constraints (semantic and syntactic valence) of haben as well as in the whole temporal paradigmatic system of the language in question (such as the new invention of a future tense — something that at the time of aspectual OHG was taken over by the present tense of perfectives; see Russian for such a procedure). The upward arrows signal the assignment of grammar to the chain of lexical formatives, whereas the downward arrows signal reanalysis processes to do justice to losses such as the aspect distinctions during OHG and MHG: Parsing steps to signal explicitly which reanalytic steps had to be taken to cope with morphosyntactic changes (erosions etc., not excluding new modes of expression aiming at higher “expressivity” (Detges and Waltereit 2002), and conscious innovation and “impressiveness” (Leh mann 1985; Haspelmath 1999)). No stance is taken as to whether such sociolinguistic positions are also appropriate. However, it is claimed that, if they prove to be appropriate, the specific parsing tasks of the hearer for decoding are at the bottom of each such explanation. For synchronic data see Table 3 below as well as examples (3)–(4). Discourse category parsing makes use of left-to-right incremental parsing identical to grammatTable 3. Top-down ‘Thema vs. Rhema parsing toward discourse/text functional relations’ Top-down input (uneven numbers): ‘Constituency assignment toward clausal parts/meaning assignment’ -0 Standard German: Wenn when Southern German: Wann-[Th -ts 1

2

ihr you (ēs)

3 4 5

mir das sagt-0 me that tell mia dēs] [Rh-GA sog-ts] 6

7 89

10

11

[C Wann-[WP ts [AgrP (ēs)] [VP mia dēs [VP[V sag-ts]]]]]

Bottom-up (even numbers): ‘Insertion of lexical items into the chain’


ical parsing in SVO languages that assign only different grammatical categories. See the illustration in (3). (flex = inflective morpheme.) Examples (3b) and (4b) are the equivalents in Standard German.

(3) a. b.

Wann-[ThP ts (ēs)] [RhP heut pünktlich [Rh kumm-ts]] . . . ga come-2pl-flex.2pl when flex.2pl (you) today on time ‘when you will come on time today’ Wenn ihr heute pünktlich kommt

(4) a. b.

wann-ts (ēs) mia dēs sag-ts . . . ga when-flex.2pl (you) me that report-flex.2pl ‘when you will tell me that’ Wenn ihr mir das sagt

Examples (3) and (4) are spoken-only South German (Austrian-Bavarian, not, to the best of my knowledge, Alemannic) varieties. The written standard of German does without conjunction inflection as in the (b)-versions. Table 3 and the ensuing (5) are meant to project convergingly in as much as the horizontal arrows in (5), symbolizing disambiguating parsing steps, align with the points of even-numbered clause-constituency parses: either for South German, with the additional conjunction inflection information, or for Standard German without that. The fact that not each of the (even-numbered) parse points is reached symbolizes failure of successful constituency parsing and temporary lay-away on the interim working memory.

(5) Processing grammatical functions (GF) and its yield: GF-processing Processing steps: reach (parsing steps in Table 3) 2 1 2 1-IMS (higher processing deferral than for 3 Standard G. South German) 4 3 South G. 6 1-IMS 5 6 2-IMS (high deferral) 7 6 9 10 11

Legend and explanation of example (5): 1/n-IMS= Interim memory saving-staple (processing is stepwise halted yielding that the semantic interpretation is deferred): 1-IMS = single ambiguity to be solved (= one undecided element processing deferral); n-IMS = n-fold ambiguity to be solved (= n undecided element processing deferrals): the chain mia-des-sagts containing 3 steps, thus involving a 3-fold identification deferral.

254 Werner Abraham

As parsing proceeds step by step, from left (acoustic “early”) to right (acoustic “later”) (1 to 11 in Table 3 above), morphosyntactic ambiguities (in Standard German: step 3 on the missing identification of GF, 5 on ihr “you” (case?); in both Standard and South German: steps 7 on mir “me” (case?), 9 on das “that/the” (case?)) defer the step-by-step processing aiming at the identification of grammatical functions (“GF”). This is mirrored by halting the processing reach (forward steps, 1–11, in (5) above). See, in (5), where the right-pointing arrows do not, for each morpheme (uneven numbers in Table 3 and in (5)), reach the next successive stage of unambiguous semantic and functional identification (even numbers, 2–10). See (6) below. Functional disambiguation (and, consequently, subsequent semantic interpretation), on the other hand, has to wait for more context which, in the worst of cases, lies beyond the single sentence or no sooner than on the last lexical or morphemic item under head-finality. (The arrow heads symbolizing the processing steps from 1 to 11 are to be checked with the morphemes — lexical or affixal — in Table 3.) Deferred disambiguation, and, as a consequence, downloading on the interim memorizer, is shown massively between 5–11, i.e., from mia “we/(to) me” via dēs “that.1/4sg” down to the unambiguous (sagt)-s “(say.)2.pl”. Notice that the subject is pre-identified by South German (wann)-ts in step 3, but not by Standard German, where the subject clitic on temporal wenn is canonically missing.

(6) Interim memorizing staple (GF=grammatical function identification; DF=discourse function identification) — ad (4) above: Parsing step Standard German 3-GF 5-GF 7-GF 9-GF

South German regiolects

no subject identifiable subject preidentified as 2pl es “you” subject identified subject preidentification confirmed as 2pl ihr “you” mir “(to) me” valence mia valence object/ethical dative object/ethical dative das “that”: verbal valence dēs “that”: verbal valence object? object?

What is the yield, and what is the loss and/or the compensating measure(s), of the two oral/hearing parsing strategies induced by the two typological types? What do we expect a discourse prominent L to execute in terms of its unfavorable grammar parsing? See the following assumptions with respect to the verbal complex in Austrian–Bavarian-Alemannic dialects (spoken-only vernaculars). See the illustration in (7) which is prevalent in the German dialects of the South — the examples leading through all the three tenses. (8) is Standard German, which forbids tun in Aux


function. Compare (7a) and (8), which are in complementary distribution. (% = less typical, although not impossible.3)

(7) South German dialects (see, in far greater detail, Abraham 2002; Abraham and Conradie 2001): a Wir tun jetzt einmal schauen/%Wir schauen jetzt einmal . . . Present tense ‘we look now once’ ‘we do now once look’ ... Past tense b Wir haben jetzt einmal geschaut ‘we have now once looked’ ... Future tense c Wir werden jetzt einmal schauen ‘we shall now once look’ gleich kommen . . . 2nd subjunctive d Wir täten ‘we did.2nd subj promptly come’

(8) Standard German: a ** Wir tun jetzt einmal schauen/Wir schauen jetzt einmal . . . Present tense ‘we do now for once look/we look now for once’ gleich kommen/Wir kämen gleich . . . 2nd b ** Wir täten subjunctive ‘we did.2nd subj promptly come/we came.2nd subj promptly’

Example (9) generalizes for the spoken-only codes of the dialects:

(9) The Aux Filter in spoken German vernaculars: complete “clause bracket” throughout all tenses and modi: ⇐Th ⇐ Filter: *[c V] . . [c Aux]

where:

⇒ Rh ⇒

⇐Th

. . [VP [V0 t] . . [VP[V0 V]

. . in independent clauses . . in independent clauses

(9i) [c=Aux sein/haben] for South German Anterior (9ii) [c=Aux tun] for South German Simul/Present tense/2nd Subjunctive

Table 4 aligns grammatical functions, discourse categories, and clausal accent. It is crucial to notice that by mapping accent positions on linearized syntactic categories, discourse functions such as Thema and Rhema can be computed. Scrambling from basic (merge) positions and subsequent refocusing are sufficient and unambiguous identifiers of discourse functions serving to make text portions cohesive. No other Germanic language does it the economical way German does it. This legitimates the question whether or not the two past forms, the simple, “synthetic” past and the composite, “analytic” past are in functional and semantic

WP for (clitic) AgrOP pronouns

⇐Thema

mir (to) me

[VP

⇐ Rhema

des this

[vp

Rhema

sag-ts tell.2pl

V o ]]]

heut today

Extraposition

Rhema ⇒ Thema

ca

ga

ga

ga≠ ca

–

(es) you

ga

Thema ⇒

Co/Io -ts you

ab in

Table 4. Field topology: Verbal bracket, discourse categories and the distribution of default accent (GA) (WP = Wackernagel position) Thema/rhema Coord [CP/IP Spec CP/IP wann if

pünktlich on time

– –

sie auch she/her/they/ also them/you

ga

i – gibt gives

pünktlich abgeben? on time turn in

sie she/they/you

denn then

ii Aber But

–

–

’s ’m it him

Wieso Why

sofort at once

iii –

denn then

heute? today –

zeigen show ’m ’s him it

wieso why

denn then

iv Aber But

–

abgeben? turn in ’s it

Wieso Why

–

v

ihm him pünktlich on time


c ompetition and how this might have changed in history. In Table 5 it is charted out for ease of comparison how synthetic and composite pasts are areally and longitudinally distributed.4 In what follows a concrete example is discussed of the implications that parsing of a spoken-only code might have. The topic is the demise of the simple past in South German regiolects and dialects (Austrian, Bavarian, Alemannic). This means that a speaker of South German cannot use the simple past form of both weak and strong verbs — it simply does not exist. Instead, such speakers use the periphrastic past. Since the simple past (formerly narrative Aorist functions) is functionally more restricted, using only the periphrastic past saves the speaker from losing anything functionally. The traditional explanation of this demise of the simple past centered on the loss of the schwa ending in the simple preterits yielding forms that were ambiguous between present and past tense (past hatte ‘had’ eroded to hat in equivocation with the present tense, hat ‘has’). There are several weaknesses with this explanation, the first and weightiest being that erosion could have affected only the weak verbs exempting the strong verbs from this development. Other explanations showed severe weaknesses also: The erosion took hold of the 3rd singular only. Moreover, such an explanation does not bring into the picture the virtually simultaneously occurring emergence of the likewise periphrastic future tense innovation employing the lexical morpheme werden (Leiss 1985). An account of the preterit demise along very different lines was developed by Abraham (1999b; Abraham and Conradie 2001). The key observation was that the preterit demise, pervasive in European languages, fully developed only in the nonstandard, spoken-only regio- and dialectal variants of German. Thus, parsing conditions under spoken discourse criteria could be applied. See, first, the distribution of simple and composite past expressions in the languages of Europe in Table 5 and the ensuing Map 1 (see p. 267). What the level distribution in Table 5 suggests (according to Thieroff 1995) is a growth of the analytic perfects across most of the European languages. Focusing on those languages where this process has come to full bloom we detect that only the non-literate variants of German are part of this development: level 3 comprising South German (regio- and dialects, not the North German ones, among which “Platt”), Yiddish, Pennsylvanian Dutch, Dutch dialects, and, foremost, Afrikaans. The most convincing evidence is provided by those variants in which the substitution of the simple past by the composite form emerged independently of the written standards: Pennsylvanian German, Afrikaans (Dutch), Yiddish in their mother-tongue exclaves. This is how this scenario is explained in accordance with parsing conditions under discourse criteria (Abraham 1999b, 2004; Abraham and Conradie 2001). Under enforcement of acoustic decoding as in spoken-only jargon, the identification of discourse categories has priority over grammatical identification. In other words,

Status of the Preterit

Emergence stage Anterior on level 0 + future = future perfect cf. German PP+ haben weden +

Stage 1

+

Anterior on level 0 + past = pluperfect cf. German PP + hatte -

Stage 2

+

+

Anterior on level 0 +Anterior on level 0 = double perfect cf. German PP+ gehabt haben -

Stage 3

-

-

-

-

modal use of Anterior on level 0 cf. Russian byl’

Stage 4

Scandinavian, Dutch, WFrisian, English, Finnish, Estonian, Spanish, Catalan, Basque High German, North Frisian, Standard Italian, Upper Sorbian, Albanian Serbo-Croatian, Romanian, French South German, Yiddish, Pennsylvanian Dutch, Afrikaans, Dutch dialects Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, Russian, Ukrainian, Slovenian

Language representatives: groups with areal and subareal relations on different diachronic levels

Table 5. The European demise of the simple preterit/emergence of the analytic perfect — European temporal systems and their specific developmental stages Relation: simple vs. periphrastic preterit:

+

+

+

+5

level 4

level 3

level 2

level 0

+

-

+

present-Anterior ≠ simple preterit form

+

-

level 1

-

present- Anterior = simple preterit form Simple preterit form: marginal no simple preterit form (= ‘preterit loss’) no simple preterit form (= ‘preterit loss’)


classification of Thema (old, already known information) and Rhema (new, unknown information) is of foremost importance. This discourse-related analysis is guaranteed by the linearization in the German clause: Categorial old information (pronouns, NPs with definite article) goes to the left of the middle field (Tables 1 and 4), Rhema material resides in the left middle field. Displaced material is highlighted by contrastive accent. Thus, parsing under discourse identification is the prime task of the German hearer. Grammatical analysis turns out to be cumbersome since the valence carrying element, the lexical predicate, is placed in clauselast position in embedded sentences as well as in matrix clauses with particle verbs (a considerable subset of the verb lexicon in German and Dutch, both SO languages, German, in addition, with scrambling freely bare case). In order to facilitate grammatical parsing early on, (partial) conjunction inflection helps detect the subject as early as possible. Consider again (3)–(4) as well as Table 3 above. For the remainder, the working memory will be arrogated until the last position in the clause, with Vlast, is reached to identify the laid-back morphemes and discharge the staple on the working memory. In order to satisfy the foremost discourse-processing task, the identification of Thema vs. Rhema, the Aux Filter in (9) is applied. This forces the expansion of the predicate across all tenses: in the present with the auxiliary tun, in the past with the periphrastic past (with the auxiliaries haben and sein), and in the future tense with werden. No other Germanic SVO language (i.e., English, all Scandinavian languages) follows this typological SOV-induced systematics — not even Standard German to its full extent. This is because spoken-only codes require their specific decoding economies. Level 3 in Table 5 unites the areas with head-final clause types, the convergent verbal bracket in all tenses and modi, as well as the spoken-only code status. See the languages highlighted in bold face in the right-most column. Map 1 (p. 267; gleaned from Drinka 2003) illustrates the areal distribution of what is already inherent in Table 5 above. Since, in subordinate head-final clauses with V-last and optimal discourse parsing, grammatical parsing is highly disadvantaged and dispreferred since deferred until the V-last position, some early support for grammatical parsing is expected. This is borne out: See pervasive “Conjunction agreement” in (3)–(4) as well as Table 6 below, which illustrates the extreme faithfulness with respect to discourse/TH–RH-structure in South German solely oral nonstandard. Structural constraints as opposed to Standard German: Aux in Co/Inflo ≠ *V in o C /Inflo — i.e., no full/lexical verb in the 1st verbal bracket, or in T0/AGR0l — where tun “do” in the Present tense, haben/sein “have/be” in the periphrastic Perfect, and werden “become” in the Future tense.

vi

v

iv

iii

ii

i

–

Matrix clause

Sein

Siepl

Siepl

SpecCP/IP

Prefield

TH/RH

Derfn 2pl.cl-

ha(b)m

Wia schnai-ts2pl

ob-st2sg

tut

tutsg

tutsg

Co/Io

-s3pl.cl

’ma1pl

(ihr/)es

as

’s/

’s/

–

WP

1st verbal ⇐ Thema bracket/v2/ agro

–

(mia1pl)

–

–

–

–

siesg

TP/AgrP

Thema ⇒

nachher

heute gleich

–

denn

ja gar nicht gerne ja

ja gar nicht gerne

[VP

⇐ Rhema

–

was

–

EAM

aso!

–

in Schwierigkeiten

[VP

Rhema ⇒

V

zahlen

gmacht

fahrt-s2pl

angesehen ast2sg h

–

abgeben!

bringen

Vo/I ]]]

heute

–

–

–

–

–

so ganz ohne Anlaß

Extraposition/ Tail/ Defokus

2nd verbal Postfield bracket/vlast

Table 6. Facilitation of structural parsing in South German (Bavarian-Austrian ≠ Standard German)

viii Da

vii

–

I/Aux

V+Aux

TH

ix Matrix clause

1.vk/v2/agro comp

Middlefield Middlefield Rhema

x

Embedded clause

TH

xi


Glosses and translations for Table 6: (iv) she does her not likely into trouble bring

‘She is not prepared to get her into trouble.’ (v) she does it not likely turn in ‘She does not like to turn it in.’ be does it this way ‘It is this way.’ (vi) if you it (on) him recognized have ‘whether you saw it on him’ (vii) how fast.infl you drive ‘how fast you drive.infl!’ (viii) there have.infl we.cl we today immediate- ‘We did something right away.’ ly something done (ix) may.infl afterwards pay today ‘You may pay right at the end.’

In Table 6, (iv)–(viii) betray optimal balancing between discourse and grammatical parsing: conjunction inflection, economizing on subject identification, is realized in (vi)–(vii), the Aux Filter is satisfied in (iv)–(v) as well as (ix). Notice that clausal accent identifies thematic vs. rhematic discourse status. Table 7 further illustrates South German/oral deviations from the written standard as well as Standard German discourse specifics. Processing principles: Parsing from left (head/Xo) rightward (Compl); discourse: TH left (or in accordance with grammatical category), RH right (possibly RH-Echo = ‘discourse parsing’) Table 7. South German between discourse parsing and grammatical parsing. grammatical phenomenon

pattern

discourse/parsing-based explanation

i

Pronominal adverb

(i) Was ist denn da etwa Double structure: [CP [TH da dabei? (ii) Da hat er dafür (haben wir uns nichts) [VP [RH gestimmt. dabei] gedacht]]; [CP [WP da/hier/ wo] . . . [VP . . . [PP da/hier [P P] V]]]. Notice: among the two linear links, the WP-(=TH-) link overwrites the grammatical link of government direction: however, the government direction restriction (German left government) is not being suspended. Discourse-oriented distribution: da = thematic/left, da= governee position of P-governer

ii

Multiple negation

koa Bier net trunka net

strong/weak Negation: strong RHNegation followed by weak EchoNegation (‘Rhema strengthening’)

iii

Verb group parsing

[C dass . . . [vp . . . [ kommen3 wollen4 ]]]

Verb group Coherence and Parsing condition for SOV (not, however, for SVO): early finite Aux

262 Werner Abraham

Table 7. (cont.) grammatical phenomenon

pattern

discourse/parsing-based explanation

iv

Proper name article

*(der) Peter, der . . .

v

Rhematization of proper names

[Th-pendens Der PETER], [CP [Rh DER] kommt heute nicht]

throughout Definite (= Thema) signal: ‘encyclopedic Thema’ contrastive RH-Dislocation

vi

dass-Trace

[CP1 Den Peteri [CP2 wenn ich ti sehe ti [C erschlage ich [VP t t t]]]]

vii

Th/Rh-Distribution in the Attribute-P

Thema control: Extraposition/ [DP [D′ x [AttrP y [N][CP . . . ||[Präd y] Aux]]] Tail safeguards Top/Rh-Download (i) y = TH-Attribute (ii) y = RH-Attribute in Relative Clause

viii

Apokoinu (‘Mirror construction’)

A[Top=Rh so a Saui ] hamma no nia khapt [Extrapos=Th so anei/so a Saui]

ix

(i) restrictive: nur der Bär, Relative clause reference and Modal der gefährlich ist (ii) non-restrictive: der particle Bär, der ja gefährlich ist

x

All-ThemaDiscourse

(i) Diei habt Ihr schön präpariert, die Pisteni (ii) Das hat ihmi gar nicht gefallen, dem Jungeni

Pronominal clause + [Tail full referent NP], where Tail in Extraposition functions as Theme–Reference confirmation

xi

tun in prosodic Function (Aux in Co/ Inflo ≠ *V in Co/Inflo)

Sein tut’s ja aso/ Gewesen ist’s ja aso/ Gehabt hat er’s ja eh/ Da tu ich gar nicht dran denken!

Rigorous Aux Filter: Comp hosts nothing but finite Aux: (in bridge accent constructions)

xii

Subjunction inflection

Want’s des tuat’s, dann . . .

Subjunction inflection to facilitate early identification of the subject

xiii

De-endocentriza tion of Compounds

eine Mords- eine Sache/ *die Mords die Sache

Discourse structure over Grammatical structure: extreme Topicalization (in expanded CP)

Topicalized Rhema echo: facilitates memorizing

non-restrictive Relative clause is the marked variant since it is nonrhematic: viz. Modal Particle ja only in the non-restrictive RC

xiv

Dialect and typology 263 novel Participle forms outside of canonical paradigmes

strong: I hob mir °gwunschen-gewünscht/ eam °gwunken-gewinkt/ eam °dawuschen-erwischt weak: I hob °denkt ≠ gedacht

‘wrong’ strong inflexion since the simple preterit form is missing: novel, most frequently following Class 3 (binden–band– gebunden ‘bind–bound–bound’) ‘wrong’ weak inflexion since unconfirmed by strong simple preterit

Glosses and translations of the illustrations in Table 7: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi) (vii) (viii) (ix) (x)

Was ist denn da etwa dabei? what is then there now thereby ‘Why worry?’ Da hat er dafür gestimmt. there has he therefore voted ‘He then voted for it.’ koa Bier net trunka net no beer not drunk not ‘. . . drunk no beer’ daß . . . kommen3 wollen4 that has can come will could has ‘that . . . was able to want to come’ *(der) Peter, der . . . the Peter, he . . . ‘Peter, who . . . ’ Der Peter, der kommt heute nicht the Peter, the comes today not ‘Peter — he is not coming today.’ Den Peteri wenn ich sehe erschlage ich the Peter if I see kill I ‘Peter — when I see him I will kill him’ the good man vs. the man who is good A so a Saui hamma no nia khapt so anei/a so a Sau a such a swine have we yet never had such a/a such as wine ‘We have never had such luck’ nur der Bär, der gefährlich ist only the bear which dangerous is ‘only the bear which is dangerous.’ der Bär, der ja gefährlich ist the bear, which dangerous is ‘the bear, which is dangerous’ Diei habt Ihr schön präpariert, die Pisteni those have you nicely groomed, those tracks ‘You’ve groomed those tracks nicely.’ Das hat ihmi gar nicht gefallen, dem Jungen that has him not at all pleased, the boy ‘He did not like that at all, the boy.’

264 Werner Abraham

(xi) (xii) (xiii) (xiv)

Sein tut’s ja aso be does it that way ‘It is this way.’ Gewesen ist’s ja aso been is it this way ‘It’s been this way.’ Gehabt hat er’s ja eh had has he it anyway ‘He had it anyway’ Da tu ich gar nicht dran denken! ‘I don’t even think of it.’ Want’s des tuat’s if-you that do-you ‘If you do that, then . . . ’ eine Mords- eine Sache/*die Mords die Sache a devil’s a thing/ the devil’s the thing ‘a terrific thing’ I hob mir °gwunschen-gewünscht ‘I wished to myself.’ eam °gwunken-gewinkt ‘I waved at him’/eam °dawuschen-erwischt ‘I caught him.’ I hob °denkt ≠ gedacht ‘I thought.’

The examples in Table 5 demonstrate optimal balancing between discourse parsing and grammatical parsing.

5. Conclusion Dialects are spoken-only communications; their characterization as evolutionary factors has a specially resonant tint due to this communicative medium. Dialects are subject to a high degree of variation in at least three dimensions: the regional variation; the diachronic variation; and the optionalities that the national written standard does not admit. All three together form a breeding ground for selection, adaptation, and propagation of the fittest, much different from the written canon of Hochdeutsch, i.e., Standard Written German. Spoken vernaculars execute this threedimensional competition within the limits of their structural typology (mainly SVO vs. SOV). As a consequence, they develop strategies following either a version of discourse parsing or grammatical parsing and compensating acts of outbalancing shortcomings in one of these two strategic efforts. A striking illustration of this is the loss of the simple preterit and the emergence of the analytic perfect in the languages of Europe (‘Präteritumschwund’ = the demise of the simple past.). Any


Table 8. Steps of reanalysis by parsing convergence on the composite perfect in non-standardized Southern German (Austrian, Bavarian, Alemannic) Top-down ‘constituency assignment toward grammatical/functional relations’ • Perfectivizing gi-Vi ≠ Vi • narrative Past ≠ completive/ futural Perfect • habên ≠ Auxiliary • no sequence of tenses

• no Perfective; ge-Vi = Vi • narrative Past ≠ completive/ futural Perfect • hân = also Auxiliary • no sequence of tenses

• no article lexemes • massive genitive valence

• definite article • V-genitive weening

• no Perfective; no ge-V • narrative Past ≠ completive/ futural Perfect • haben = also Auxiliary • sequence of tenses, double perfect • (in)definite article • no genitive valence

OHG MHG ModG [IP[I [V habeta [VP [boum. acc. [IP[I [Aux hâte [VP boum. acc. [IP[I [Aux hatte [VP einen. acc. sg gipflanzotan.acc.sg]]] sg [V gepflanzt tAux]]] sg Baum [V gepflanzt tAux]]]

[V habên] [Predicative Participle gipflanzotan.acc.sg.]

[Aux habên] [Predicative Participle gepflanzt]

[Aux haben] [Predicative Participle gepflanzt]

Bottom-up ‘lexical insertion and meaning assignment’

explanation on the basis of specific characteristics of one single language cuts short and unduly simplifies a much deeper and far more pervasive, since far more cognitive-fundamental, scenario into which the Präteritumschwund is to be embedded. The novel account of this phenomenon rests crucially on merging aspects of spoken coding, typological status and adherent grammatical phenomena, and discourserelevant categorization. Any account short of these empirical components neglects empirical adequacy (see Abraham and Conradie 2001). Table 8, repeating Table 2, illustrates this convergence of criteria on the history of the split of the ‘long’ and the ‘short’ pasts. Notes 1. Thanks are due to an anonymous reviewer and to Maura Bayer/Vienna. Clarification of the present issue “parsing vs. UG” and whether the two are not in contradiction has been urged by the anonymous reviewer. 2. My background to this section is work by Croft (2000) and Seiler (2003), though not in every detail nor in complete consensus. 3. Every modern dialect is subject to media influence nowadays, more so rather than less. Every dialect, consequently, will have grammatical structures that are not purely authentically dialectal and typical of the spoken code only. I take forms such as those marked by % to be of this nonauthentic category. 4. I have neglected completely the precise structural designation of “Coord(inator)” in column 2, Table 4, under CP-expansion à la Rizzi 1997.

266 Werner Abraham

5. Exemplifiable by German: instead of the grammatical and semantically meaningful Wenn es regnete(Prät.), bliebe (Prät.) ich zuhause, the Russian version would have to be transliterated by Wenn es geregnet hat, bin ich zuhause geblieben — which is no option in any of the German vernaculars.

References Abraham, Werner. 1997a. The interdependence of case, aspect, and referentiality in the history of German: the case of the verbal genitive. Parameters of morphosyntactic change, ed. by Ans van Kemenade and Nigel Vincent, 29–61. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Abraham, Werner. 1997b. The base structure of the German clause under discourse functional weight: contentful functional categories vs. derivative ones. German: syntactic problems — problematic syntax, ed. by Werner Abraham and Elly van Gelderen, 11–42. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Abraham, Werner. 1999a. SVOV im Deutschen: Schnittstelle zwischen Diskursprominenz und Subjektidentifkation als Parsingbedingung. Das Deutsche von innen und von außen. Ulrich Engel zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. by Andrzej Kątny and Christoph Schatte, 3–7. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe. Abraham, Werner 1999b. Präteritumschwund in German: the parsing trigger. Folia Linguistica 33(1): 39–58 [special thematic volume: Characteristic properties of spoken vernaculars]. Abraham, Werner. 2002. Characteristics of spoken vernaculars: parsing strategies? The case of German. Present-day dialectology. Problems and findings, ed. by Jan Berns and Jaap van Marle, 1–34. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter [Trends in Linguistics 137]. Abraham, Werner. 2004. The European demise of the simple past and the emergence of the analytic perfect: Areal spread or autonomous evolution? Focus on Germanic typology, ed. by Werner Abraham, 241–72. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag [Studia Typologica 6]. Abraham, Werner and Jac C. Conradie (eds.). 2001. Präteritumschwund und Diskursgrammatik. Präteritumschwund in gesamteuropäischen Bezügen: areale Ausbreitung, heterogene Entsteh ung, Parsing sowie diskursgrammatische Grundlagen und Zusammenhänge. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Croft, William. 2000. Explaining language change. An evolutionary approach. Harlow: Longman. Detges, Ulrich and Richard Waltereit. 2002. Grammaticalization vs. reanalysis: a semantic-pragmatic account of functional grammar. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 21: 151–95. Drinka, Bridget. 2003. Areal factors in the development of the European periphrastic perfect. Word 54(1): 1–38. Haider, Hubert and Inger Rosengren. 1998. Scrambling. Lund: Germanistisches Institut der Universität Lund [Sprache und Pragmatik 49]. Haider, Hubert and Inger Rosengren. 2003. Scrambling: nontriggered chain formation in OV languages. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 15(3): 203–67. Haspelmath, Martin. 1999. Why is grammaticalization irreversible? Linguistics 37(6): 1043–68. Lehmann, Christian. 1985. Grammaticalization: synchronic variation and diachronic change. Lingua e stile 20: 303–18. Leiss, Elisabeth. 1985. Zur Entstehung des neuhochdeutschen analytischen Futurs. Sprachwissenschaft 10: 250–73. Leiss, Elisabeth. 1991. Grammatische Kategorien und sprachlicher Wandel: Erklärung des Geni tivschwunds im Deutschen. Proceedings of the XIVth International Congress of Linguists, Berlin/GDR, August 10–August 15, 1987, vol. 2, ed. by Werner Bahner, Joachim Schildt and Dieter Viehweger, 1406–9. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.


Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. Elements of grammar: handbook in generative syntax, ed. by Liliane Haegeman, 281–337. Dordrecht: Kluwer [Kluwer International Handbooks of Linguistics 1]. Seiler, Guido. 2003. What is the role of functional factors in language change? Evidence from dialect variation. Paper presented at the XVIth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, University of Copenhagen, August 15, 2003. Thieroff, Rolf. 1995. Tense systems in European languages II. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.

Ice Far

Nor Swd Swd

SCGL IR WLS Eng

[Prt] {Cast}

Ltv (Lith)

(Rus) Frs (Blr) Dut LSrb (Pol) Yidd St Grm (USrb)

Fr

Bsq

(Est)

Dan

Brt

[Glc]

Fin

S Grm

(Cz) (Slva)

(Ukr)

Hng Rmns Frin Lad {Occ} NIt Slve SCr {Ctl}

StIt

{Srd} Sic

Rum

Mcd Alb Cal

Blg

Gag Trk

Arm

Grk

Map 1. HAVE/BE auxiliation in perfect (from Drinka 2003) Bold: BE + HAVE Underline: BE only Italics: HAVE only (excluding archaic Gk. Perf. in HAVE/BE in periphery) (Parentheses): historically BE, with some examples of HAVE (esp. W. Slav, N. Rus dialects, etc.) Crossed out: Preterit greatly preferred over Perfect (Sic, Cal) or Periphrastic Perfect not found (Rus, Blr, Ukr, Pol, LSrb, Slve): old BE Perfs. > Past (BE usually lost); likewise Hng. Trk: no Periphrastic Perfect per se, but categories which are closely related. Gag: no Perf., no aux’s. [Brackets]: tener used as aux {Curly brackets}: haber remains as aux, but main verb > tener CAPS: BE (+ ‘after’) + verbal noun (Ir, Wls, ScGl)

chapter 11

Somerset relativizers revisited* Kirsti Peitsara University of Helsinki

Relativizers in the Somerset dialect were first described by Ossi Ihalainen in his article ‘Relative clauses in the dialect of Somerset’ (Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 81: 187– 96). His study was based on recordings from a few informants of a Somerset Corpus collected by himself. Ihalainen’s conclusion that the relativizer that never occurs as a direct object, only as the subject and object of preposition, has been considered suspicious, since it violates the Keenan–Comrie Accessibility Hierarchy. This chapter considers Ihalainen’s larger Somerset Corpus, showing that adding to the data will both corroborate Ihalainen’s results and correct what was suspicious in them, viz. the relativizer that also occurs as a direct object in the Somerset dialect. The revised Somerset figures of relativizer distribution are finally compared to respective distribution figures in other corpora of British traditional dialects.

Somerset relativizers were first ‘visited’ by Ossi Ihalainen in his article ‘Relative clauses in the dialect of Somerset’ (1980: 187–96). This was the first of his studies based on the spoken material recorded by himself in Somerset in the early 1970s. Ihalainen’s conclusion (1980: 189) that the relativizer that ‘only occurs as a subject or as the object of preposition, never as a direct object’ was considered suspicious by Bernd Kortmann (2003a: 11), because it violates the Keenan–Comrie Accessibility Hierarchy (AH) (Keenan 1985, as quoted by Kortmann 2003b: 3): S > Od > Oi > Oblique > Gen. > O of comp. (Oprep.) The implication here is that the relativization of a certain position on the hierarchy means that all positions to the left of it (i.e. higher up) can also be relativized in the respective language or variety. Thus it should not be possible to relativize the object of preposition (or oblique) if the direct object is not relativized. Kortmann suggested that the reason for Ihalainen’s statement would be too few data. This chapter will reconsider relativizers in the Somerset dialect, showing that adding to the data will both corroborate Ihalainen’s results and correct what was ‘suspicious’ in them. The Ihalainen Somerset Corpus is one of the subcorpora of the computerized Helsinki Corpus of British English Dialects (HD), a sister corpus of the diachronic

270 Kirsti Peitsara

elsinki Corpus (HC). The other HD subcorpora consist of recordings from the H rural Devon, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely, as well as from urban Essex and Lancashire. The tape-recordings of continuous spontaneous speech were made by Finnish undergraduate and post-graduate students in the 1970s and the late 1980s. Since the original purpose was to supplement the Leeds Survey of English Dialects (SED), the informants were chosen according to the same principles as those used in the Survey. The orthographically transcribed material has been edited into a machine-readable corpus (Word Cruncher version) by the Dialectology team of the Research Unit for Variation and Change in English (VARIENG) at the University of Helsinki (cf. http://www.eng.helsinki.fi/varieng/team3/index.htm; for HD, see Peitsara and Vasko 2002). In his study Ihalainen used his recordings from seven informants from seven villages, amounting to some seven hours of spontaneous speech. My study was based on the whole of The Ihalainen Somerset Corpus, including 23 informants from 15 vil lages, which means tripling the amount of spoken material. The total word count of this corpus is 164,653. Since two of the informants, whose recordings were relatively short (around 900 to 1,000 words, as against the average of some 7,000 words) did not use the relativizing strategy at all, the actual study was based on the recordings of 21 informants. As points of comparison, I used my earlier studies on the relativizers in The Pasanen Suffolk Corpus (Kekäläinen 1985; Peitsara 2002) and Poussa’s comparative summary on relativizers in British English dialects (Poussa 2002). This study considers clauses which postmodify an antecedent in the matrix clause and are introduced with markers called relativizers (also called adjectival relative clauses) (Biber et al. 1999: 608). Clauses introduced by the so-called relative adverbs (where, when, why), which have been included in some other studies (e.g. Kekäläinen 1985), were, however, excluded. The examples were drawn from the Ihalainen Somerset Corpus, with the village and the initials of the informant provided. In the HD orthography, the symbol = indicates a longer pause where the informant stops to think and the persons mentioned are anonymized by the use of ** instead of their names. The symbol # is used to indicate the zero relativizer. The grammatical functions are referred to with capital letters: S – subject, O – direct object, Op – object of preposition, C – subject complement, A – adverbial. The sentence structure of spontaneous speech is often difficult to determine because speakers, particularly non-standard ones, do not always even attempt to produce well-formulated sentences. Repetition, hesitation, breaks and change of structure are commonplaces in speech and even the intonation is not always a reliable guide. Therefore categorizing grammatical units for a quantitative study is not without problems and an individual scholar’s decisions may well be contested by others. For example, in the following passage, the antecedent of who is only implied in the pronoun mine in the matrix clause and in the context:

Somerset relativizers revisited 271

(1) but if you wen’ out there an’ start’ talkin’ to a chap out there, his language ‘ould be altogether different what mine is, who you are talkin’ to now. (Wedmore: LV)

It is also possible to interpret, for example, what-clauses, especially those occurring with the verb call, either as appositive noun clauses or as non-restrictive sentential relative clauses of the type that is usually introduced by which in Standard English:

(2) Informant: Bottle o’ whisky. Fieldworker: Uhhuh. Scotch? Informant: Yes, what somebody give me for a weddin’ present. (Stogumber: JC)

(3) an’ then they pull ‘em (i.e. the eel) out, what they call peckin’ now. (Wedmore: TB)

Granting the loose sentence structure of non-standard speech, these examples can nevertheless be considered to conform to the definition of relative clauses, as given above. Relative clauses are considerably less frequent in speech than in written registers, as is shown by the Biber et al. (1999: 610–11) frequencies for different registers. Excluding the adverbial relativizers, which are not considered in this chapter, and converting the Biber et al. figures from 1,000,000 to 1,000 words, to facilitate comparison with the smaller dialect data, we can see that conversation (3.7) only shows one third or fourth of the amount of relativizing found in the other registers: fiction (11.2), news (12.8), academic prose (9.9). The corresponding figures for the Helsinki Somerset and Suffolk corpora (2.82 and 3.4) are close to that of the conversation register in Biber et al. There is, however, considerable idiolectal variation between the individual informants, both in the frequency of relative clauses (Som. 0.72–5.90; Suf. 1.4–9.0) and in the inventories of relativizers. One and the same informant may vary even when telling about the same topic in almost the same words, as illustrated by the pairs of examples below:

(4) Well, then you screw it out to the layer an’ = screw all # you can out o’ this cheese, we did call it a cider cheese. You screw all as you can out o’ there. (Wedmore: BB)

(5) All these men # I shouts out their names step forward. (Stogumber: JC)

(6) All these men # I call step forward. (Stogumber: JC)

In his 1980 study, Ihalainen found six relativizers: zero, that, what, which, who and as. In addition to these, Ihalainen included a group of ‘others’, consisting of seven instances with a copy (resumptive) pronoun and five with a personal pronoun

272 Kirsti Peitsara

Table 1. The percentaged proportions of relativizers in the Ihalainen (1980) study and the Somerset Corpus Ihalainen 1980

Somerset Corpus

Relativizer

n

%

n

%

Inf./Tot.

zero that what which who as Total n

30 26 18 21 2 6 103

29.13 25.24 17.48 20.39 1.94 5.82

129 148 65 51 14 10 417

30.94 35.49 15.59 12.23 3.36 2.39

20/21 19/21 17/21 10/21 11/21 3/21

Note: The column Inf./tot. indicates the number of informants/the total number of informants in the corpus who used the respective relativizer.

used as a relativizer. Owing to the difficulty of eliciting the latter two types from an untagged computer corpus, they were omitted from the quantitative study, but they will be briefly discussed below. The mutual proportions of the six relativizers in both Ihalainen’s study and the whole of his Somerset data used in my study are given in Table 1. The most conspicuous differences between Ihalainen’s results and mine are an increase in the proportion of that and a reduction in the proportions of which and as. Zero loses its place as the most frequent relativizer to that. Though the proportion of what remains practically the same, it rises to the third place owing to the relative loss of which. Who remains proportionally uncommon, in spite of an increase in occurrence, and as is marginal. One half of the Somerset informants (10/21) use three variants of relativizers, mostly zero, that and what. Six informants use varying combinations of four variants and the rest (5/21) use five to six variants. The grammatical functions of the relativizers in the relative clause are shown in Table 2. That, which and who are mostly found in the subject function, zero, what and as mainly as objects. What and zero are not infrequent as subjects either. The three most frequent relativizers (that, zero and what) also show the greatest variety Table 2. Somerset relativizers: function (n, with percentages in brackets) Relativizer

n

S

zero that what which who as

129 148 65 51 14 10

33 (25.58) 103 (69.59) 22 (33.85) 33 (64.71) 11 (78.57) 2 (20.00)

O 61 (47.29) 24 (16.22) 30 (46.15) 10 (19.61)

C

Totals

417

204 (49.16)

133 (31.65)

1 (0.67) 1 (1.54)

8 (80.00) 2 (0.49)

Oprep

A

12 (9.30) 17 (11.49) 11 (16.92) 4 (7.84) 3 (21.43)

23 (17.83) 3 (2.03) 1 (1.54) 4 (7.84)

47 (11.27)

31 (7.43)


Table 3. Grammatical functions realized with variant relativizers in the Somerset Corpus (n, with percentages in brackets). Function

zero

what

which

who

as

S 204 O 133 C 2 Op 47 A 31

33 (16.18) 103 (50.49) 61 (45.85) 24 (18.04) 1 inst. 12 (25.53) 17 (36.17) 23 (74.19) 3 (9.68)

22 (10.78) 30 (22.56) 1 inst. 11 (23.41) 1 (3.23)

33 (16.18) 10 (7.52)

11 (5.39)

2 (0.98) 8 (6.02)

4 (8.51) 4 (12.90)

3 (6.38)

n

129

65

51

14

417

that

148

10

in functions. Table 3 shows how the different grammatical functions are typically realized by the variant relativizers in the Somerset Corpus. The subject slot in the relative clause is mostly filled with that, the object slot with zero. As the object of preposition we mostly find that, but zero and what are not uncommon either. The adverb function is mostly expressed by zero. The relativizing subject complement (C) is altogether rare. In the standard grammar, relativizers differ from the natural three-gender system (cf. personal pronouns) in distinguishing only two genders: animate and inanimate, mainly realized in the opposition of who and which. The relative infrequency (see Table 1) of who, the only variant that is overtly animate, suggests that the twogender system of the standard type may not be observed by these dialect speakers. The few instances of who in the Somerset data all refer to people and those of which never do so, but the most common relativizers in the Somerset corpus refer to both animates and inanimates, as shown in Table 4. Relativizers in the subject function (‘agents’) could be expected to refer to animates and those in the object function to inanimates. Only the latter is confirmed by Table 4: in the subject function relativizers refer about equally to animates and inanimates. All the three relativizers behave in the same way: there is hardly any preference for referents of either gender in the subject function, in the object function all three occur mostly with inanimate referents. The only obvious differences are Table 4. The most common relativizers and their main grammatical functions (S, O, Op), with percentages of animate and inanimate reference in the Somerset Corpus S

O

Op

Relativizer (%)

Anim.

Inanim.

Anim.

Inanim.

Anim.

Inanim.

zero that what

57.89 54.55 40.91

42.11 45.45 59.09

19.30 37.04 10.34

80.70 62.96 89.66

63.64 56.25 11.11

36.36 43.75 88.89

Average

51.12

48.88

22.23

77.77

43.67

56.33

274 Kirsti Peitsara

found in the column of objects of preposition, where the zero is more often found with animate referents while what tends to refer to inanimates. However, the numbers of instances in this function are rather small (see Table 2). The conclusion is that gender is not an important factor in the choice of relativizers in the dialect. In the following discussion of the individual relativizers, the principal results of Ihalainen’s study (1980: 189–92) are supplemented by the results derived from the whole of the Somerset Corpus. For the sake of brevity, the latter are referred to as ‘my study’. The relativizers are taken up in the same order as done by Ihalainen, except that the category ‘others’ is discussed last. That. According to Ihalainen (1980: 189), the relativizer that only occurs as the subject or object of preposition, never as a direct object, which would mean that instances like I know the man that Mary likes might be unidiomatic in Somerset. This statement was proved to be wrong in my study, with nearly six times as many instances of relative that as Ihalainen’s study. Though that is mostly found in the subject function, it is also found as the direct object, even more often than as the object of preposition (see Table 2). In the object function it, however, often loses the competition to two other, more popular, relativizers: zero and what. The antecedent of that is mostly a definite noun phrase, often in the plural. It may be separated from the relative clause by an adverbial element. The preposition with that is stranded. The clause may be identifying or explanatory. Examples:

(7) Farmers used to watch out for the boys that leave school, you see. (Stogumber: FB)

(8) Ol’ Mr **, that was the boss, come along. (Fitzhead: JM)

(9) they that liked a pint used to walk two miles to get one. (Isle Abbots: HA)

(10) Then you put a bridle on ‘en an’ some tacklin’ that we did call it, (Wedmore: BB) (11) There’s the big house there that I married my wife from in that photograph. (Wedmore: BB) (12) Cross anywhere, unless there’s any place that they’re = they’re never allowed. (Fitzhead: JM) (13) I’ve done everything on the farm that you can mention. (Fitzhead: JM) The antecedent may also be a non-head of the noun phrase: ‘e was passin’ a = a gentleman’s house that he didn’ like. (Wedmore: TB). Here the implication is that he did not like the gentleman, which becomes clear when the story continues. Zero. According to Ihalainen (1980: 189), the zero is more frequent (30 instances) than that (26 instances), though the difference is small, owing to the small


total number of instances. In my study, the proportions are reversed (see Table 1), though, again, the difference is rather small, implying that, depending on the data, these two might actually be more or less equal in occurrence. The most common use for the zero relativizer is in the object function of the familiar short type: the best dog # I had; etc., though it also occurs as the object of preposition, e.g.: that were the one # I were thrashing with, a farmer, an’ he was crippled up for years. (Wedmore BB). In the adverbial function (the last time # I went there; etc.), the zero relativizer is the predominant variant. Ihalainen’s suggestion that zero would be mainly found in certain environments is corroborated by the instances in the subject function. Two thirds of them are found in existential and other, semantically related, sentences. Examples: (14) There ain’t many # know about that. (Wedmore: TB) (15) ‘t were two old maids # lived there. (Wedmore: BB) (16) I had one out there at Upton Farm # ‘ad kick flashes. (Fitzhead: JM) (17) that was all because wadn’t many of us # had any bicycles to go anywhere (Kingsbury: HT) Which. In the regular relativizing use, which mostly functions as the subject, refers to inanimates, including twice to lower animals (ferrets), and is often sentential. It can also be adjectival. The preposition with which can be either stranded or not. The which-clauses are often explanatory and thus non-restrictive. Examples: (18) There’s no cure for that sweetage, which is a bad thing.(Wedmore: LV) (19) Oh well, when I left school at thirteen, which we had to do then, course I went out in service. (Kingsbury: HT) (20) an’ you did make kind o’ what we did call cheese, cheeses with which was lissoms. (Wedmore: LV) (21) two or three of you would get hold of the pig, tip ‘em on the stool which he couldn’t get off and then he’d s- = cut that pig’s throat... (Wedmore: LV) (22) X Road, Wedmore, is my postal address. X Road, Wedmore, which Wedmore is a mile an’ half from here, Wedmore village. (Wedmore: LV) (23) There was fairs held at = there was one at Wedmore, Wells, Cheddar, Shipham and Barnwell, which them fairs did come annually, once a year. (Wedmore: LV) Ihalainen (1980: 190) further mentions a connector which, as in: I was in Cheddar just for the evening, which there was different things going in Cheddar. (Wedmore:

276 Kirsti Peitsara

LV). He suggests that further research be made to show whether this use is common or not. There are some further instances in the whole of the Somerset corpus, but the type does not seem to be common. Another interpretation for this which might be a kind of temporal subordinator, i.e. a kind of adverbial use. The above can be compared to: when the ferret had run through, which you thought he’d a-found all that was in there, he would come out (Exford: FM). As. Ihalainen’s study (1980: 191) corroborates Elworthy’s statement that the relativizer as is restricted to East Somerset. Ihalainen supposes that indefiniteness might be significant in the choice of as. In his data the antecedent of as is modified with all or an indefinite antecedent in an existential clause. He also suggests that further study is needed to see whether sentences of the type John saw the man as sold this horse are at all idiomatic in the Somerset dialect. My study proved that such sentences are not found in the Somerset Corpus. All the ten instances with the relativizer as derived from three informants (BB, TB, LV) in Wedmore, which is in East Somerset. The antecedent was all (4), all + noun (3) or an indefinite noun phrase in an existential clause (3). As predominantly (9/10) referred to inanimate antecedents, often to material and the like. As was mainly found in the object function, where its main rival was the zero relativizer. The few informants using as had a large inventory of relativizers, using most of the other variants available. Examples: (24) You screw all as you can out o’ there and then we did = put it in barrels, (Wedmore: BB, referring to cider-making) (25) Because all things as is grown today is lushed up with chemicals (Wedmore: BB) (26) but = there was a = a man as would go around an’ do the job for you. (Wedmore: LV) What. The relativizer what does not seem to be so common as many descriptions of dialect speech let us understand. In the Somerset data it is only the third in frequency of the inventory of variants, zero and that occurring twice as often. However, what is found in all functions both with animate and inanimate reference. The preposition with what is stranded. Ihalainen (1980: 192) draws attention to the frequent extraposition with the relativizer what and there were further examples of that in my data. The what-clauses often add extra information or explanation and thus resemble non-restrictive which-clauses in Standard English. Examples: (27) They was up to a farm yere then, what they call Wood Farm. (Kingsbury: BT) (28) they was goin’ on an’ likely to go on into grammar school what the parents could afford to pay for, you see. (Kingsbury: BT)


(29) The men what had to go on in the war. (Kingsbury: BT) (30) his sister left their mother, what was a cripple, (Kingsbury: HT). (31) The older men used to go firs’ what been there so many years = before, they go firs’ (Stogumber: JC) (32) My boss he used to, what I finished off with, he uset’ do quite a lot o’ church work. (Kingsbury: BT) Who. Ihalainen (1980: 192) corrects Elworthy’s remark that the relativizer who is not used in Somerset, but says that it is extremely rare. He draws attention to the fact that both of his instances refer to pronouns. The rarity of who was corroborated in my study (see Table 1), but reference to pronouns was not predominant (6/14). Who occurred mostly in the subject function, with only 3/14 instances as objects with a stranded preposition. Like relative clauses in dialects in general, most of those introduced by who were restrictive. Examples: (33) No, well, the men who go roun’ the highway, course, we call them travellers. (Kingsbury: HT) (34) My mate, who the sheep an’ that belong to, he fix = we got a proper = come off the main, (Stogumber: JC) Others. Ihalainen (1980: 190) introduces a structure in which the relativizer is followed by a personal pronoun: All farmers belong to that club which they don’t kill their own. (i.e. rabbits, but sell shooting licences). (Wedmore: LV). He suggests that it might be a relic from earlier periods. There are further instances in the Somerset Corpus, where the type seems to be favored by certain informants. The relativizer (which, that or what) is followed not only by a personal pronoun but also by that. Examples: (35) Well, I have heard people talk about him which they all liked him. (Wedmore: LV) (36) the ol’ old-fashion ones used to hold seventeen gallons, which that would be pretty well two hundred poun’ all to all. (Wedmore: LV) (37) Well, really most people’d like to get lambs fit for Easter, which that’s about in April. (Wedmore: LV) (38) the shepherd that he was there, he reported it to the bar. (Stogumber: FB) Particularly in cases where the resumptive pronoun is separated from the relativizer and is in the oblique case, the impression is rather that the speaker has changed the sentence structure, resulting in a mixture of hypotaxis and parataxis. The same

278 Kirsti Peitsara

attern was also attested in the Helsinki Suffolk Corpus (Kekäläinen 1985: 354). p Examples: (39) An’ I still got the certificate upstairs now that the schoolmaster and = and another Mr ** signed it, an’ I never wen’ back to school after. (Stogumber: FB) (40) Down the road there was = there was six, what we called ‘em the = almshouses. (Stogumber: JC) Another structure referred to by Ihalainen (1980: 188) is the use of a personal pronoun as a linking device instead of a relativizer, the function being revealed by the intonation: I was workin’ wi’ one man he used to kill pigs, too. (Stogumber: JC). A thorough investigation into this type would require relistening to the recordings, which was not possible within the scope of this chapter. Additional examples could, however, be found in the Somerset Corpus, e.g.: I had one uncle he was killed at the Hill Sixty. (Wedmore: TB). This structure was also attested in the Helsinki Suffolk Corpus (Kekäläinen 1985: 354). The conclusion of my study is that the added data mainly corroborate the results of Ihalainen’s study. This is not surprising, because the few informants chosen by him for his material were most likely those he considered best representatives of the dialect. But the added data also show that Somerset speakers do not violate the Keenan–Comrie hierarchy of functions. Smaller data may thus suffice for tentative conclusions. When studying non-standard speech, one should, however, be careful with definite statements, particularly if they contradict some generally accepted principles. In Ihalainen’s case, he must be excused because the AH theory was not yet generally known when he wrote his pioneering study. The quantitative results of this chapter can be used to correct the comparative table of relativizers in South-Western and East-Anglian dialects given as appendix D in Peitsara 2002. In Table 5, the Devon, Somerset, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk figures are based on studies on HD subcorpora: the Stigell-Devon Corpus, the Ihalainen Somerset Corpus (with corrections based on the present study), the Ojanen Cambridgeshire Corpus and the Pasanen Suffolk Corpus. The Norfolk figures are based on Poussa 1994 and her study on the Francis Corpus (Poussa 2002: 17). The Dorset figures come from van den Eynden 1993. The information given in the respective studies has been slightly reworked so as to make them comparable. The category “others” in the Dorset and Norfolk corpora includes sentential and connective relativizers, which are not separated from other relativizers in the other corpora. The variant at separated in the Francis Corpus was considered a phonetic variant of that in the corpora of the HD and thus included in the respective figures. The symbol + in the Somerset column refers to the types classified as ‘other’ in Iha-


Table 5. Percentaged proportions of relativizers in three South-Western and three East-Anglian dialects Relativizer Devon

zero that what which who as

Somerset Cambridge Suffolk shire

Norfolk NE

Norfolk

(Stigell)a (Van den Eynden)

(Ihalainen) (Ojanen)

(Pasanen) (Poussa)

(Francis)

24.3 33.5 14.8 22.2 3.9 1.3

24.9 37.1 7.1 11.6 14.5 –

30.94 35.49 15.59 12.23 3.36 2.39

37.4 19.2 17.7 18.2 6.2 1.3

30 7.6 24.9 15.7 19.3

44 3.4 45.7 1.1 5.1

4.8

+

2.5

at 0.6

518

417

446

175

Others n

Dorset

230

38.3 1.6 53.1 3.4 3.4 0.2 444

390

a The surnames in brackets refer to the fieldworkers. Source: Appendix D in Peitsara (2002), with revised Norfolk figures given personally by Poussa.

lainen’s study and this chapter, the exact numbers of which could not be counted. According to Table 5, as far as relativizing is concerned, the Dorset dialect is somewhat different from the dialects of its South-Western neighbour counties, Devon and Somerset. The Cambridgeshire dialect of the transition area resembles that of southern Norfolk (Francis’ SED data) more than it does those of north-eastern Norfolk (Poussa’s Hickling data) or Suffolk. The most conspicuous difference between South-Western and East-Anglian dialects is the scarcity of relativizer that in the latter. The obvious reason for this has been discussed e.g. by Poussa (2002: 17– 18). The Cambridgeshire dialect stands out for its frequent use of the relativizer what, which is also common in the smaller Norfolk data (Francis). The use of who and which seem to show most variation between the dialects and as is rare everywhere. When considering these figures, one must, however, remember that the studies on which they are based were not conducted according to exactly the same principles. Even if their informants were chosen according to the same SED criteria, there may be differences e.g. in the treatment of restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses. Note * The research reported here was supported by the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence funding for the Research Unit for Variation and Change in English at the Department of English, University of Helsinki. The paper was read at the DIATYPE symposium in Helsinki, in October 2003.

280 Kirsti Peitsara

References Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad and Edward Finegan (eds.). 1999. Longman grammar of spoken and written English. London: Longman. Ihalainen, Ossi. 1980. Relative clauses in the dialect of Somerset. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 81: 187–96. Kekäläinen, Kirsti. 1985. Relative clauses in the dialect of Suffolk. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 86: 353–7. Kortmann, Bernd. 2003a. New prospects for the study of English dialect syntax: Impetus from syntactic theory and language typology. http://www.anglistik.uni-freiburg.de/institut/lskortmann/SAND_Kortmann_final.htm. Kortmann, Bernd. 2003b. Typology and dialectology. http://www.anglistik.uni-freiburg.de/institut/lskortmann/16ICL.htm. Ojanen, Anna-Liisa. 1982. A syntax of the Cambridgeshire dialect. Licenciate Thesis, University of Helsinki. Peitsara, Kirsti. 2002. Relativizers in the Suffolk dialect. Relativization on the North Sea littoral, ed. by Patricia Poussa, 167–80. München: Lincom Europa [Lincom Studies in Language Typology 7]. Peitsara, Kirsti and Anna-Liisa Vasko. 2002. The Helsinki Dialect Corpus: Characteristics of speech and aspects of variation. Helsinki English Studies 2. http://www.eng.helsinki.fi/hes/ Corpora/helsinki_dialect_corpus2.htm. Poussa, Patricia. 2002. North Sea relatives: Introduction. Relativization on the North Sea littoral, ed. by Patricia Poussa, 1–26. München: Lincom Europa [Lincom Studies in Language Typology 7]. van den Eynden, Nadine. 1993. Syntactic variation and unconscious linguistic change. A study of adjectival relative clauses in the dialect of Dorset. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

chapter 12

Resilient or yielding? Features of Irish English syntax and aspect in early Australia Clemens Fritz Free University of Berlin

The author has finished a thesis on the development of Australian English between 1788 and 1900. The Corpus of Oz Early English (COOEE), a self-collected and ‑edited corpus of two million words, formed the basis of the study. Included in COOEE are 164,000 words by Irish immigrants. These can be compared to 47,000 words written in Ireland between 1791 and 1906 which were collected alongside the compilation of COOEE. This comparison is intended to provide insights into the development of the language of speakers of Irish English in Australia. Moreover, the influence of IrE on an emerging AusE can be traced. This chapter investigates unbound uses of reflexive pronouns, the expression of the perfective and the habitual aspect. Some structures were found to be resilient, others yielding. An influence on developing AusE seems doubtful.

1. ‘Begorrah, Ned or maybe g’day?’ While the actor Heath Ledger has made it clear he has no regrets about giving Ned Kelly an Irish accent in the movie which has its world premiere in Melbourne tonight, the matter may yet prove to be the film’s most serious historical issue. Did Kelly really speak that way? It’s a touchy question. By making Australia’s No. 1 folk hero sound like an Irishman, has the movie stripped him of much of his Australian identity? Expert opinion is divided. The theory that Kelly spoke with an Irish accent is supported by two Kelly biographers, but opposing them are leading linguists who argue it is inconceivable that someone who was born and raised in Australia in the mid-19th century, and mixed as widely as Kelly did, would have spoken with anything but an Australian accent. [Sydney Morning Herald, March 22 2003; also the headline]

The use of Irish English (IrE) was widespread in nineteenth century Australia due to the large numbers of Irish immigrants. Its influence upon the formation of Australian English (AusE), on the other hand, has always been under intense debate. The majority hold that IrE contributed little or nothing (see Bernard 1969; Görlach 1998; Ramson 1966), the claim often being based on fact that the phonologies of AusE and IrE are alien to each other. Only select lexical items, e.g. sheila, an

282 Clemens Fritz

a dverbial use of but and the expression good on you are acknowledged. (Interestingly, the latter two cannot be found in the corpus of early English in Australia as described below.) Bernard is quoted here as representative of that school of thought (1969: 65): Yet as the nineteenth century brought its disasters to Ireland, it was the Irish element which accounted for a greater proportion of the convicts – in the 1830s almost a half. Since few indeed have likened Australian and Irish dialects, it would seem that the Irish cannot have played a great part in shaping the new speech form even if they perhaps nudged its subsequent drift. That the speech of Tasmania, which received no Irish convicts, cannot be shown to differ from that of NSW, which received the bulk of them, argues against even this and the lack of Irish involvement generally supports the suggestion of Australian pronunciation establishing itself quite early in Sydney town. Once established, by whatever means, the local form would have been impregnable and the Irish must simply have been too late.

Others have striven to find elements of IrE in AusE (see Fritz 1996; Horvath 1985; Mitchell 1995; Taylor 1997, 1998, 2001, 2003; Troy 1992; Trudgill 1986), starting from the premise that the Irish formed a considerable contribution to early white Australian society (between 10 and 25 per cent of the total population depending on the period looked at). Morphological elements like youse and the suffix –o are claimed to be IrE contributions. Another question concerns the fate of the Irish and their language in Australia (Fritz 2000a, b). Here lexical replacement studies were carried out. What is missing so far is an investigation of syntactic elements of IrE and their possible continued existence in Australia and in AusE. This is done with the help of a self-collected large corpus, a major step forward in this field.

2. The sources and the questions 2.1 The sources A Corpus of Oz Early English (COOEE) forms the basis of the dissertation From English in Australia to Australian English 1788–1900. This corpus was collected by the author between 1995 and 2002 and contains ca. two million words. The corpus is divided into four time periods (ca. 500,000 words in each period: 1788–1825, 1826– 50, 1851–75 and 1876–1900) which correspond to major sociolinguistic boundaries in Australian history. Registers and text types were defined. For a detailed description of the corpus see Fritz (2004). For the present study material was taken from COOEE to establish two sub-corpora. The first contains sources written by Irish who had emigrated to Australia (Irish English in Australia = IrE-Aus), the second sources written by native white Australians (Native-Aus). In addition, a third sub-corpus of nineteenth century IrE

Resilient or yielding? 283

(Irish English in Ireland = IrE-Ireland) was formed with material which had been coincidentally collected alongside the sources for COOEE, but which did not fit the parameters set for this corpus. All writings in IrE-Ireland were composed by native Irish in nineteenth century Ireland. The sub-corpus IrE-Aus consists of ca. 164,000 words from 340 sources. They are mainly taken from O’Farrell (1984) and Fitzpatrick (1994), both of which use migrant letters for historical investigations. Most of these sources are private correspondence, i.e. letters written to families and friends and diaries. Some 80% were written by males, a fact which is not surprising since Irish men were far more likely to be literate than Irish women in the nineteenth century. Most writers were poor immigrants who had to work hard to make a living and yet could never feel secure. The material available increases considerably in the course of time. This is due to the fact that Irish men and women came in numbers only later in the century. More than two thirds of the letters were written home to Ireland, the rest within Australia or to Britain. Figure 1 displays the number of words correlated with the length of Australian abode of the Irish immigrants. There are sizeable numbers for almost every year, which facilitates the study of change related to length of stay. The sub-corpus IrE-Ireland contains ca. 47,000 words in 76 sources. Again, O’Farrell (1984) and Fitzpatrick (1994) contributed most to this collection of texts. All are letters written from Ireland or Great Britain to relatives or friends in Australia. Female sources make up a good third of it. Texts mainly come from Ulster (57%), the rest from Southern Ireland.

Number of words (× 1,000)

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

Length of abode Figure 1. Number of words and length of abode

7

8

9

10+

284 Clemens Fritz

The sub-corpus Native-Aus is the largest of the three at ca. 403,000 words, which come from 194 sources drawn from a great number of different publications. Some of the most important are SETIS (The Scholarly Electronic Text and Image Service of the library of the University of Sydney), the works of Manning Clark (1957, 1975, and 1977) and Ward and Robertson (1972). Naturally, the amount of writings by native white Australians increases considerably in the course of the nineteenth century. Again, ca. 80% of the texts were written by men, most of whom are of higher social status. The registers are much more diverse than in the other sub-corpora. Almost half come from the public written register, including such text types as newspapers, reports, histories, novels, etc. Parliamentary and court proceedings account for 19%, and private letters and diaries for 27 per cent. At the end of this chapter, an appendix lists information about the authors and the texts quoted. All quotes are identified by a number in angle brackets which can be looked up in the appendix.

2.2 The questions The three sub-corpora were investigated for various features known to be important in IrE. Two basic questions drive these investigations. The first question asks whether the social and linguistic experiences of the Irish immigrants to Australia influenced their use of the features under investigation. The Apparent Time method, widely followed in historical linguistics, holds that the language of grown-up individuals does not change substantially in the course of their lifetime. Their use of language is assumed to be impervious to change or resilient. Some of the results of the investigations below show examples of such resilience. Other features, however, proved not to be resilient, but yielding. Here the immigrants changed their linguistic behaviour. This should caution against the uncritical application of the Apparent Time model. The second question is whether the Irish immigrants succeeded in influencing early AusE. As shown above, opinion is divided on the matter and empirical evidence has hardly ever been put forward. Evidence from the nineteenth century is still rarer and therefore this study contributes greatly to the question of the Irish component in the formation of Australian English. The division into the three sub-corpora helps to answer the above questions. IrEAus contains instances of language used by Irish immigrants to nineteenth century Australia. These can be investigated, and the findings grouped according to length of abode to establish whether certain features are either resilient or yielding. If the frequencies in IrE-Aus are compared with those of IrE-Ireland, then differences and similarities can be established. When the results are similar then the feature under investigation is likely to be a prominent and resilient feature of nineteenth century


IrE. Matters become more complicated when differences appear. These have to be accounted for. Since both IrE-Aus and IrE-Ireland overwhelmingly consist of private letters and diaries written by men, an influence of register and gender is unlikely. Dialects could play a role and also developments in the course of the nineteenth century. But the most acceptable interpretation seems that Irish migrants changed some of their language as a response to utterly changed social and linguistic surroundings. A comparison between IrE-Aus/IrE-Ireland and Native-Aus can establish whether the features looked for can be found in the speech of native white Australians. It is important to find out if these features are either remnants from BrE dialects or represent genuine influences from IrE. Filppula (1999) has published a superb grammar of Irish English which serves as the basic reference work for this study. His findings are also based on corpus work, but Filppula mainly draws from informal interviews conducted with elderly, uneducated speakers of IrE from four dialect areas (158,000 words). The data are supplemented by British dialect corpora and historical corpora. When his results are compared with those from IrE-Aus, IrE-Ireland and Native-Aus two major caveats have to be borne in mind. First the temporal distance and second the different registers. The latter is less important than it could be assumed since the letters and diaries collected are mostly very informal and much closer to spoken language than, say, the literary letters of educated nineteenth century writers. The writings exhibit many features of oral style, like exclamations, direct address, interactive questions, etc. An example from IrE-Aus clearly shows that the letters at hand do not fall neatly into the ‘written language’ register: Actualy my Dear Father I fancy I am speaking to you verbaly while I am writing this scroll to you but my grife I am not. O wouldnt I be glad if I could have one glance at Derry People and especaly you dear Father and family. Good by. I expect I will never see yea.

3. Unbound reflexive pronouns Reflexive pronouns require the presence of another nominal element in the same clause or sentence which they relate to in present-day StE. An example is the following sentence from Native-Aus: Let every woman contemplating matrimony ask herself if she loves her prospective husband

This does not hold true for IrE where reflexives can occur without reference to an antecedent (Filppula 1999: 77ff). Unbound reflexives can occupy subject position (s), object position (o) or they can be part of a prepositional complement in adverbial phrases (p). Consider the examples from IrE-Aus:

286 Clemens Fritz

(s) We would have done so only awaiting to See your uncle John who came down to See us both Himself and aunt Mary.

(o) It was 5 pounds from me & the remnd [remainder] from himself when send it I said I would - the next mail.

(p) [. . .] if I hear nothing new by the next mail that I will write to himself by it and I realy cannot write what I would write. This suggests that reflexive pronouns almost function like free pronouns in IrE. But if they indeed expressed exactly the same function as normal pronouns then there would be no reason not to employ the latter. Apart from that, standard uses of reflexives are much more common in all three sub-corpora than unbound uses. The following example from Native-Aus shows an interesting combination of a non-standard and a standard use of a reflexive pronoun occurring during a parliamentary debate. The highlights are my own. Seeing that they are elected by ourselves, and represent us, I am prepared to entrust them with […] Filppula states that unbound reflexive pronouns (UBRs) seem to be employed with reference to someone who constitutes the ‘topic’ of the utterance, but admits that this is only convincing for reflexives in subject position but not for those in object position. Macafee and Ó Baoill (1997: 271), working on UBRs in Scots, argue for emphatic or polite readings of this structure. This is also a possible explanation for some instances in IrE. Table 1 lists the frequencies of UBRs in their respective syntactic functions. Note that doubtful cases were counted among normal uses of the reflexive. The last line includes the results of the corpus work done by Filppula (1999) with his corpus of present-day spoken IrE. The numbers in Table 1 in themselves are not revealing, and have to be tested for statistical significance. The questions to be asked are of the following kind: “If there are altogether 45 UBRs in the 164,000 word corpus of IrE-Aus and 10 UBRs in the 47,000 words corpu of IrE-Ireland, does this mean that the freTable 1. UBRs in subject or object position or as prepositional complement and normal reflexives per 10,000 words Corpus

Subject position

Object position

Prepositional complement

Normal reflexives/ doubtful cases

IrE-Aus (164,000) IrE-Ireland (47,000) Native-Aus (403,000) Filppula (158,000)

1.52 0.85 0.60 1.27

0.49 0.64 0.32 0.06

0.73 0.64 0.15 1.39

16.77 10.43 13.62 –


quency of UBRs in the two corpora is significantly different from each other?” In most cases the proportion test was applied to the data since it is most applicable here. Having tested the frequencies from Table 1 the following can be stated: a. IrE-Aus and IrE-Ireland do not differ significantly in total number of UBRs compared to corpus size; they are in fact very similar. The two corpora do not differ from the Filppula findings. This suggests that UBRs are a very stable feature of IrE. It was already established in the nineteenth century and the frequencies have not changed considerably since then. Moreover, even Irish emigrants kept up this feature to the same extent as the ones who stayed behind. b. On the other hand, IrE-Aus and Native-Aus differ significantly at a level of confidence of 0.001. The same is true for a comparison of the Filppula data and NativeAus. IrE-Ireland and Native-Aus also differ significantly at a level of confidence of 0.05. This shows that all speakers of IrE, in nineteenth century Australia and Ireland and in today’s Ireland, differ in their use of UBRs from native white Australians in the nineteenth century. Table 1 also reveals that UBRs in object position are much more frequent in the nineteenth century than in today’s IrE to the detriment of the numbers for UBRs as prepositional complements. Although UBRs are significantly less frequent in Native-Aus than in the other corpora, they are still comparatively high. For this there are two possible explanations. Either this is a remnant of earlier forms of English or this is due to the influence of IrE on a forming AusE. Quoting from Henry (1957: 120), Filppula (1999: 82) mentions that reflexives were used ‘unbound’ in Shakespeare. This feature is, however, not noted in Görlach’s investigations of eighteenth century or of nineteenth century English (2001 and 1999, respectively). Denison, on the other hand, mentions unbound reflexives as part of a prepositional phrase and, less frequent, in object or subject position in nineteenth century English (1998: 112f). Recently, Lange (2003) has shed more light on the historical development of selfforms and has found examples of unbound reflexives in Middle English and Early Modern English. Lange (2004) distinguishes five different triggers for unexpected self-forms (USFs). (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v)

Group constructions Coordination Comparatives Prepositional phrases Reflexives as the sole subject in a clause

288 Clemens Fritz

She argues that (i)–(iv) are found in the history of English and thus should not be regarded as peculiar to IrE. Lange cites examples from historical stages of English and from the present (for this see also Hole 2002). She concludes that (i)–(iv) in IrE are superstrate influences. Trigger (v) alone Lange found to be highly restricted in historical and present-day EngE, but thriving in IrE. Here she suggests substrate influences. As indicated in Table 2, only (i) and (ii) come up with any frequency at all; (iii) and (v) are very restricted. Triggers (i), (ii) and, surprisingly, (v) are statistically undistinguishable, i.e. the origin of the author does not influence the frequency. This is in contrast Lange’s assumption that (v) should be a genuine substrate development in IrE which is not available in StE. According to the data at hand, (v) could also be an archaic feature of English dialects retained in present-day IrE. But writers from Ireland are significantly more likely to use (ii) than writers from Britain. The difference between Irish and Australian writers for (iii) is not significant, although it is very close to being so. This shows that USFs are a valid feature of nineteenth century English world-wide and are not restricted to IrE. All of this means that the origins of UBRs and USFs in early AusE are obscure. They could result from an influence of IrE on an emerging AusE, or they could be retentions of earlier EngE dialects. It is also possible that both sources reinforced each other. Findings from IrE-Aus, IrE-Ireland and Native-Aus highlight that UBRs are much more frequent with some reflexives than with others. Tables 3–5 show the distribution of reflexive pronouns in the three syntactic positions looked at in the three corpora. The last column shows the total frequency for the respective reflexive (excluding UBR use). Only those reflexives were listed that had at least one occurrence as a UBR in one of the three corpora. As seen in Tables 3–5, myself is by far the most frequent reflexive pronoun used as a UBR in all three corpora. Subject position predominates, but object position and myself as a prepositional complement also occur. In IrE-Aus and IrE-Ireland it is also the most frequent reflexive. This is not true for Native-Aus where it comes third, lagging far behind themselves and himself. In Native-Aus, therefore, the tendency to use myself as a UBR is much more pronounced than in the IrE data. Yourself also shows a strong tendency to appear as a UBR. In all three corpora the frequencies Table 2. USFs in COOEE and IrE-Ireland by origin of author; normalized per 10,000 words Origin

(i)

(ii)

(iii)

(iv)

(v)

Corpus size

England Scotland/Wales Ireland Australia

0.26 0.13 0.29 0.17

0.40 0.39 0.43 0.35

0.01 0 0.14 0.02

not counted not counted not counted not counted

0.03 0.07 0.10 0.05

1,027,000 153,000 211,000 403,000

Other/unknown

0.12

0.27

0.04

not counted

0

256,000


Table 3. UBRs and type of reflexive pronoun in IrE-Aus (164,000) per 10,000 words IrE-Aus

Subject position

Object position

Prep. complement Normal

himself myself ourselves themselves yourself yourselves

0.18 1.28 0 0 0.06 0

0.06 0.37 0.06 0 0 0

0.18 0.18 0 0.06 0.18 0.12

4.76 5.85 0.79 3.11 2.13 0.12

Table 4. UBRs and type of reflexive pronoun in IrE-Ireland (47,000) per 10,000 words IrE-Ireland

Subject position

Object position



0 0.18 0.06 0 0 0

0.06 0 0 0.06 0.06 0

0 0.06 0.06 0 0.06 0

0.30 0.91 0.49 0.37 0.55 0

Table 5. UBRs and type of reflexive pronoun in Native-Aus (403,000) per 10,000 words Native-Aus

Subject position

Object position



0.12 1.22 0.12 0 0 0

0 0.37 0.18 0 0.24 0

0 0.18 0.18 0 0 0

10.06 5.30 3.11 10.73 1.28 0.06

of UBRs compared to normal uses are very high for this reflexive. All three corpora agree, too, in the usage of ourselves. Frequencies of UBRs compared with that for normal use are very high. IrE-Aus and IrE-Ireland are different from Native-Aus in the frequencies for himself and themselves. In subject position we also find himself (5), ourselves (3) and yourself (1), but the frequencies are considerably lower than for myself. The reflexive pronouns found in object position and as a prepositional complement are much more evenly distributed than those for subject position. Summing up, it can be stated that the likelihood of a reflexive pronoun to be used as a UBR depends on the type of pronoun, on the syntactic position of the pronoun and on the variety looked at. Table 6 looks at the frequencies of UBRs in writings of Irish immigrants related to the number of years that had elapsed since immigration. As seen in Table 6, length of abode does not significantly contribute to a decrease in UBRs. In the last line, frequencies are even significantly on the rise and in one instance a UBR is found in a diary written 37 years after the writer, David Blair, had emigrated to Australia!

290 Clemens Fritz

Table 6. UBRs in IrE-Aus compared to length of abode Length of abode

UBRs

N/10,000

Total no. of words written

0–2 years 3–5 years 6–9years 10+ years

12 6 7 16

2.5 1.8 1.9 6.3

48,293 32,665 36,785 30,183

Dined, and then dressed for the levee – a great crowd there, […], and some hundreds of common citizens in swallow-tail coats (myself one of them) looking as dignified as they each knew how – […] Clearly, UBRs are such a deeply ingrained component of IrE grammar that they easily survived emigration. Moreover, the Irish may also have managed to influence their surroundings with respect to this feature. This, however, cannot be proven.

4. The perfective aspect In IrE the perfective aspect can be expressed in various ways, making it a highly interesting object of study. Therefore numerous publications have been devoted to its investigation, e.g. Harris (1984), Kallen (1989) and Filppula (1996, 1999). The expression of the perfective aspect in IrE differs in several respects from Standard English (StE). IrE has a number of unique forms and generally divides up the time frame for past states and events differently from StE. This is shown in Table 7 which is based on Harris (1984: 313) and Filppula (1996: 34). The terminology is taken from Filppula (1999). Table 7 provides a rough insight into the system IrE uses for the expression of the perfective aspect. Verbs in present tense and past tense form are ambiguous in IrE compared to the same forms in StE. Both forms can denote certain perfective as-

Table 7. Tense–aspect distinctions in IrE as opposed to StE Time Reference / Aspect

StE Form

IrE Form

Term for IrE Form

Perfect: Extended now time Perfect: Resultative

have + V-en have + V-en

Extended Now Perfect (ENP) Medial Object Perfect (MOP)

Perfect: Hot News Perfect: Indefinite Anterior

have + V-en have + V-en

V (present) have/had + obj + V-en be + V-en after + -ing V (past)

BE-Perfect (BEP) After Perfect (AFP) Indefinite Anterior Perfect (IAP)


DYNAMIC MOP AFP BEP RECENT AFP V (present) BEP TRANSITIVE MOP

have +V-en

have +V-en MOP

have +V-en AFP V (present)

STATIVE V (present)

REMOTE V (present)

INTRANSITIVE BEP

Figure 2. Semantic factors governing lexical choice of perfect markers

pects. Note, too, that the meaning RESULTATIVE is represented by two forms depending on whether the verb is dynamic (have + obj + V-EN; e.g. wash, eat) or mutative (be + V-EN; e.g. come, go). Another approach to the classification of IrE perfects is shown in Figure 2 which is based on Kallen (1989: 35). His data consist of contemporary spoken IrE collected via the participant observation method. Kallen stresses that the ‘one form – one meaning’ equation suggested in Table 7 does not hold. Rather, there is a tendency for a particular meaning to be expressed by a certain construction. The default choice for Kallen is always the StE have + V-en. This does not mean that the StE form of the perfect is rare in IrE. It has been and still is the dominant form used. One look at the data in IrE-Aus and IrE-Ireland confirms this. MOP, AFP, BEP and the others are only used when an author felt an urgent need to express a particular meaning in the perfect aspect. The low numbers found show that they hardly ever did. Only two of the forms mentioned above are discussed here, namely the AFP and the MOP, since BEP is considerably rarer than even the other two.

4.1 After perfects (AFP) The AFP has also been labelled the Hot News Perfect, because the sentences that contain it often emphasize the aspect of the recentness of an event/activity. It is said to occur mainly in informal discourse (Kallen 1991). Filppula (1999: 101) finds that it is much more frequent in his Dublin and Wicklow data than in the sources from Clare and Kerry. Constructions with after can be of three types: Type 1: after + V-ing (the normal form in present-day IrE; Hot News meaning) We are just after receiving a letter from Kate of Farside. [IrE-Aus].

292 Clemens Fritz Type 2: after + NP (found earlier IrE texts; Hot News meaning) We are after 3 days and 3 nights rain which fell in torents the same as a cascade. [IrE-Aus]. Type 3: will be after + V-ing (the earliest form; future reference) An[d] will you be after giving me the Moidore indeed? [Bliss 1979: 300; from A Wife Well Managed 1715].

Table 8 gives the frequencies of all types in IrE-Aus, IrE-Ireland and Filppula (1999). As seen in Table 8, the infrequency of type 1 in nineteenth-century IrE is remarkable. Numbers are significantly lower than those found by Filppula. The earliest instance is in a letter by William Dalton written in 1851 [IrE-Ireland]. Interestingly, he comes from the county of Tipperary which is closer to Clare and Kerry than to Wicklow and Dublin, where most of Filppula’s examples are from. It is worthwhile mentioning that when the frequencies in the Clare and Kerry data are compared with those in IrE-Aus and IrE-Ireland no significant difference can be found. It can be surmised that regional dialects are a stronger factor on use and nonuse of the AFP than the temporal distance between data from the nineteenth and the late twentieth century. The different registers used for IrE-Ireland, IrE-Aus and Filppula (1999) offer another, perhaps better, explanation. But it should be stated that the need to talk about Hot News is of course not restricted to spoken language. In fact, letters and diaries often record Hot News items. AFPs of type 2 were almost extinct by the nineteenth century. Type 3 does not seem to have made it at all into that period. Looking at the origins of the Irish immigrants to Australia in IrE-Aus, it can be seen that the one instance of type 2 comes from County Clare, whereas the authors of the three instances of type 1 are from Kerry and Cork. This is contrary to expectation taking Filppula’s findings for the distribution of this feature in present-day IrE as a basis.

Table 8. AFPs of Type 1, 2 and 3 in IrE-Aus, IrE-Ireland and Filppula (1999) Corpus

after after + V‑ing + NP

will be after + V‑ing

Total

N/10,000

Corpus size

IrE-Aus IrE-Ireland Filppula (all) Filppula (Clare) Filppula (Kerry) Filppula (Wicklow) Filppula (Dublin)

3 1 25 3 1 9 12

0 0 0 0 0 0 0

4 1 25 3 1 9 12

0.3 0.2 1.6 1.0 0.2 2.1 2.9

164,000 47,000 158,000 30,000 44,000 42,000 42,000

1 0 0 0 0 0 0


4.2 The medial object perfect (MOP) MOPs are of the form have/had + obj + V-en. This syntactic string bears a surface resemblance to a well-known structure in StE which, however, encodes a totally different meaning. The sentence I have my car washed, is normally interpreted by a user of StE as the speaker having someone else wash their car. A user of IrE decodes a different piece of information, namely that the speaker is emphasizing the result of the action, i.e. that the car is now clean. Resultative and/or stative are the meanings which best describe the use of MOP. The subject of a sentence containing a MOP is the agent of the verb phrase. Filppula (1999: 108) writes that do, make, build, get and forget are the verbs most commonly found in MOPs in his corpus. He also reports that Harris (1983) and (1984), using data from northern IrE speakers, also has do and make as the most frequent verbs. The same goes for Kallen (1989), who studied southern dialects, including the one of Dublin. Here is an example from IrE-Ireland: […] and the are all well at present and the had a younge son Born and the called[?] him Joseph after you.

The numbers of instances found in the corpus are listed in Table 9. They are disappointingly low considering the prominence the MOP enjoys in the literature. Testing the results in Table 9 for proportionality, it can be shown that the data from the nineteenth century are related to each other whereas they are significantly different from Filppula’s end of twentieth century observations. But the frequencies agree with Filppula’s (1999) observation that the MOP is much more frequent than the AFP. When Filppula (1999: 111) discusses the origins of the MOP, he suggests ‘a rather late emergence of this feature’. This is in line with the findings of this study which has examples starting only in the middle of the nineteenth century. The earliest example from Ireland is found in a letter in 1843 and from Australia by an Irish writer in 1849. Numbers increase through the years, but not steeply enough for statistical proof. Table 9. Frequency of MOPs in IrE-Aus, IrE-Ireland and Filppula (1999) Corpus

MOP

N/10,000

Corpus size

IrE-Aus IrE-Ireland Filppula (all)

6 4 40

0.4 0.9 2.5

164,000 47,000 158,000

The actual instances of the MOP are interesting to look at. Clearly, the structure was still developing. Out of six instances of the MOP in IrE-Aus, three have future reference, but still with a resultative meaning [highlights by C. F.]:

294 Clemens Fritz

We will have our wheat finished in about another week. Now, as to people going out, I decidedly think young people are the right sort, who will have their habits to form and not have to break up old habits or long contracted associations. You would not be happy out of it and I must say I am thankfull you have your health and strength to work to be independent if it is ever so little. Time will pass much more plesently to have your time occupied, if not too laborious. It would not do to be that in your time of life. Especially the last two examples are hard to classify. In my opinion the contexts of the highlighted structures suggest a MOP reading. Looking for the effect emigration had on the frequency of the MOP, no statistical relevance can be shown (Table 10). This table contains only five out of the six instances since for the author of , no date of emigration could be established. Table 10. Use of the MOP in IrE-Aus compared to length of abode Length of abode

no. of MOP

N/10,000

Total no. of words written

0–2 years 3–5 years 6–9 years 10+ years

3 0 0 2

0.6 0 0 0.7

48,293 32,665 36,785 30,183

Both the AFP and the MOP are relative newcomers in the history of IrE. Nevertheless they do make an appearance in nineteenth century IrE writings. That they are not marginal to the language of the emigrants can be seen in the fact that they were used even decades after leaving Ireland. In the case of AFPs this is 9, 17, 17 and 18 years and for the MOP this is 1, 2, 2, 20 and 26 years after arrival in Australia! Yet an influence on the developing variety of AusE could not be established in either case, since no instances could be found in Native-Aus.

5. The expression of habitual aspect The perfective aspect system is not the only linguistic feature that greatly distinguishes IrE from other varieties of English. The expression of the habitual aspect has also received great attention. There are a number of structures for the expression of the habitual. Some scholars have tried to establish relationships between some of the forms and habitual, iterative, frequentative and generic meanings. But there is also the thought that regional, i.e. dialectal, variability could explain the existence of a number of different, yet


similar, forms. The constructions in question are the following: do + V, do be, do be + V-ing, and inflected be, cf. Kallen (1985, 1989), Harris (1993) and Filppula (1999). The construction do + V is also known in StE with emphatic meaning. It was not always easy to distinguish between an emphatic and a habitual reading of do + V, but great care has been taken and doubtful examples were invariably excluded. In my interpretation the phrase do write in the quote below is an emphatic use, whereas does think suggests that the brother in law is wont to think in this way, i.e. it is his habit to do so [highlights by C. F.]. But Dear Joseph when you do write you mite say some thing to William as some like to be mentioned by Name for he is very Kind to Mary Ann. But your Brother in Law does think that as you have no Brothers or Sisters in Ireland but Mary Ann and him. [IrE-Ireland] Another example, this time from IrE-Aus, contains many examples of do + V. Both instances of do know are doubtful examples but I am inclined to consider them emphatic, whereas does leave clearly expresses the habitual aspect. Dear Sir I would wish to write a few more lines to you but realy I scarcely do Know what to write to you as there is very little new here that I do Know or remember as this does leave us in our useual health Praise the Lord for His continued merceys to us as we are very unworthy of the least of His notice […]. It has been suggested that in this example does leave could also be emphatic or purely a tense carrier, but I disagree. The reading of hundreds of emigrants’ letters strongly suggest that both interpretations do not do justice to the meaning the writer intended to convey here. Naturally, not all verbs are equally well suited to be used with a habitual meaning. Some are more likely candidates than others (e.g. ‘leave’ in the example above) and more often found in this structure. The sequences do be and do be + V-ing are, however, not part of StE and therefore easily classifiable. Examples are given below: My Mother requests of you to write every 2 months even but a few lines that she dose be very down-harted when she dose be a while from hearing from you as it is one of the greatis means of chearing her to hear from you. [IrE-Ireland] I often do Bee sick But the Weder is verry dark and cold. [IrEIreland] I do be drawing goods from Maitland all kinds of Stores. [IrEAus]

296 Clemens Fritz

Closely related to habitual do is habitual be in IrE, often considered to be typical of northern dialects. Looking at the data it was sometimes hard to decide if the sentence contained habitual be or was simply elliptical (missing subject, missing repeated modal verb, especially would). I hope Margret Will arrive safe and be happy here after. [IrE-Aus] You no doubt would get a situation in Perth and be one of the first in the place on account of your education. [IrE-Aus] In many cases be was found to express subjunctive mood in a way that seems archaic today. […] and do let us Know whether our old friend Jane McShane be yet alive. [IrE-Aus] This left a very small number of instances and even these are not beyond doubt. They all show the same structure, namely be + not + V-ing, and may well be more related to a certain negation pattern than to habitual be. Nevertheless, the examples counted all support a habitual reading. I am Surprised that Michael does not be enquiring after me, […] [IrE-Aus] She would have to make up her mind to stay and not be thinking long for home as bush life is quite different to what she has been used to. [IrE-Aus] Table 11 provides the frequencies of the various constructions in the corpora investigated and in Filppula (1999). There were no examples for habitual do or habitual be in Native-Aus, except for a solitary example in a short story by John George Lang (1859) where it is uttered by an uneducated speaker. But this could be due to deliberate use of an non-standard feature rather than a true depiction of the language of a non-Irish white Australian: “Why don’t you go home, John, and see your friends and relations?” asked Smith; “you be now very warm in the pocket; and, mark my words, they would be very glad to see you.” [Native-Aus] In order to facilitate comparisons, the Filppula data had to be re-organized. Apart from do + V, do be and do be V-ing he also lists negated phrases, questions, imperatives and other constructions (1999: 132). These are subsumed under the heading ‘Other’. Since he does not tell us the frequencies of the instances of habitual be in his corpus, these cells contain question marks. Comparing total frequencies of habitual do in Table 11, it can be stated that IrE-Ireland and Filppula (1999), both similar to


Table 11. Expression of habitual aspect in IrE-Aus, IrE-Ireland and Filppula (1999) per 10,000 Corpus

do + V

do be

do be V-ing

Other

Total N / 10,000

Habit. be

N/10,000

IrE-Aus IrE-Ireland Filppula (all) Filppula (Clare) Filppula (Kerry) Filppula (Wicklow) Filppula (Dublin)

14 7 21 0 11 8 2

1 4 10 1 1 6 2

1 0 3 0 0 2 1

0 0 14 1 3 8 2

0.98 2.34 3.04 0.67 3.41 5.71 1.67

4 1 ? ? ? ? ?

0.24 0.21 ? ? ? ? ?

each other, differ significantly from IrE-Aus. The same holds true for the sequence do be. Habitual do in general and the construction do be in particular is a feature of IrE, both past and present. Emigration to Australia affected use of this highly conspicuous feature, an example of a yielding structure. On the other hand, there are no statistically valid findings for the number of instances of do + V, do be + V-ing and habitual be. In short, some syntactic strings of habitual do and all forms of habitual be were not affected by emigration. This is an example of resilience. It is possible that the surface similarities of do + V (emphatic) and uninflected be (subjunctive, ellipsis) slowed the erosion of these forms in the language of Irish immigrants, since they were not readily perceived by white Australians of other extractions as instances of IrE. Do be + V-ing is alien to StE but so infrequent as to elude measurement. According to Filppula (1999: 136ff), the habitual do and do be structures are rather recent developments in IrE. Montgomery also documented that habitual be, bes and does be do not occur before 1860 in his letter corpus (1995: 35ff). This is corroborated by the late and rare occurrences of the data in the corpora at hand. All instances of habitual forms of do and be are post 1850. Another factor supporting their late development is the fact that there are only a limited number of people using such a construction. Evidently they were leaders in an ongoing linguistic change. Again, an influence on early native AusE cannot be established. Although NativeAus was carefully studied, no instances of habitual do or be could be found.

5. Conclusion The emigrant reassured the Irish reader by employing an idiom scarcely touched by Australian colloquialism; the writer in Ireland used dialect and familiar phrases to reinforce the emigrant’s fading link with ‘home’. (Fitzpatrick 1994: 495)

Eventually the Irish succeeded in becoming an integral part of Australian society. One factor in this process of re-defining one’s identity and confirming the adoption

298 Clemens Fritz

of new values is the use of language. Since nineteenth century IrE was clearly distinct from other contemporary varieties of English, various accommodation processes were necessary before the Irish could linguistically blend in. This process did not progress at uniform speed. Lexical items were most easily recognized and adapted to. They could also be deliberately avoided if the setting called for it, as claimed by Fitzpatrick above. Other areas of language, e.g. aspect, are much less conspicuous. Neither can they be as easily discerned as features of IrE by other white Australians, nor are they always consciously used by speakers of IrE. Not all structures looked for could be found. Partly this was due to them being comparatively recent developments in the English spoken by the Irish, for instance After Perfects (AFPs) of type 1, the Medial Object Perfect (MOP), habitual do (all forms) and habitual be. This raises the question why IrE developed so many new forms in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth century? The answer is simple. This was the period when Irish was rapidly replaced by English in many hitherto relatively ‘untouched’ parts of Ireland, not the least because of the introduction of compulsory schooling. This favoured substratal influences, especially since the teachers were themselves bilingual. But the temporal development is not the only possible explanation for the differences between IrE-Ireland/IrE-Aus and Filppula (1999). Register must always be considered a second factor. However, as stated above, the letters investigated generally follow a comparatively oral style. This weakens the explanatory power of register variation as the decisive factor. Some of the features looked at proved to be resilient, others yielding. Factors influencing this were linguistic importance and the distinctness of the structure in question. Examples of resilient structures are Unbound Reflexive Pronouns (UBRs), habitual be, habitual do be + V-ing, habitual do + V and the MOP. They support the Apparent Time approach of historical linguistics. Core parts of the system of IrE were not influenced by emigration. They stood tall and proud in nineteenth century Australia. But all was not well. Habitual do (overall frequencies) and do be were shown to be yielding, probably because of their markedness. These categories quickly became extinct even with the first generation of immigrants. Although many Irish continued their use of certain features of IrE, they did not manage to influence the formation of AusE. They did not even succeed in being linguistic models for their children. Peer-group pressure and the unique sociolinguistic situation of nineteenth century Australia ensured that the use of IrE died with its original users. With the single exception of UBRs, almost no trace of what makes the language of the Irish interesting can be found in the language of the native white Australians. But UBRs are also features of other English dialects/varieties, so this result is tentative. If, however, UBRs should be found to be significantly more frequent in present-day AusE than in other varieties, excluding, of course, IrE, then the case for an IrE influence is considerably strengthened. This is a job for the future.


References Bernard, John R. L. 1969. On the uniformity of Australian English. Orbis 18: 62–73. Bliss, Alan J. 1979. Spoken English in Ireland 1600–1674. Dublin: Cadenus Press. Clark, Manning. 1957. Sources of Australian history. London: Oxford University Press. Clark, Manning. 1975. Select documents in Australian history 1850–90. Sydney: Angus & Robertson. Clark, Manning. 1977. Select documents in Australian history 1788–850. Sydney: Angus & Robertson. Denison, David. 1998. Syntax. The Cambridge history of the English language, vol. 4: 1776–997, ed. by Suzanne Romaine, 92–329. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Filppula, Markku. 1996. Investigating the origins of Hiberno-English perfects: the case of ‘PII’. Speech past and present, ed. by Juhani Klemola, Merja Kytö and Matti Rissanen, 33–55. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Filppula, Markku. 1999. The grammar of Irish English: Language in Hibernian style. London: Rout ledge. Fitzpatrick, David. 1994. Oceans of consolation. Cork: Cork University Press. Fritz, Clemens. 1996. Early Australian letters: A linguistic analysis. MA thesis, University of Regensburg. Fritz, Clemens. 2000a. Language, change and identity: The Irish in 19th century Australia. IrishAustralian studies. Papers delivered at the ninth Irish-Australian conference, Galway, April 1997, ed. by Tadgh Foley and Fiona Bateman, 57–66. Sydney: Crossing Press. Fritz, Clemens. 2000b. The Irish in Australia: Aspects of linguistic accommodation. The Celtic Englishes II, ed. by Hildegard L. C. Tristram, 57–74. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Fritz, Clemens. 2004. From Plato to Aristotle – Investigating early Australian English. Australian Journal of Linguistics 24(1): 57–97. Görlach, Manfred. 1998. Varieties of English world-wide: Where we stand. Links & Letters 5: 13– 36. Görlach, Manfred. 1999. English in nineteenth-century England. An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Görlach, Manfred. 2001. Eighteenth-century English. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Harris, John W. 1983. The Hiberno-English ‘I’ve it eaten’ construction: what is it and where does it come from? Teanga 3: 30–43. Harris, John W. 1984. Syntactic variation and dialect divergence. Journal of Linguistics 20: 303– 27. Harris, John W. 1993. The grammar of Irish English. Real English, ed. by John Milroy, 139–86. London: Longman. Henry, Patrick Leo. 1957. An Anglo-Irish dialect of North Roscommon. Dublin: University College Dublin. Hole, Daniel. 2002. Spell-bound? Accounting for unpredictable self-forms in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter stories. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 50(3): 285–300. Horvath, Barbara. 1985. Variation in Australian English: The sociolects of Sydney. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kallen, Jeffrey L. 1985. The co-occurrence of do and be in Hiberno-English. Perspectives on the English language in Ireland, ed. by John Harris, David Little and David Singleton, 133–48. Dublin: Trinity College Dublin. Kallen, Jeffrey L. 1989. Tense and aspect categories in Irish English. English World-Wide 10: 1–39.

300 Clemens Fritz

Kallen, Jeffrey L. 1991. Sociolinguistic variation and methodology: after as a Dublin variable. English around the world: Sociolinguistic perspectives, ed. by Jenny Cheshire, 61–74. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lange, Claudia. 2003. Reflexivity and intensification in English: A study of texts and contexts. Ph.D. dissertation, Freie Universität Berlin. Lange, Claudia. 2004. Reflexivity and intensification in Irish English and other New Englishes. Paper presented at The Celtic Englishes IV conference, Potsdam, 22–6 September 2004. Macafee, Caroline I. and Colm Ó Baoill. 1997. Why Scots is not a Celtic English. The Celtic Englishes, ed. by Hildegard L. C. Tristram, 245–86. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Mitchell, Alexander G. 1995. The story of Australian English. Sydney: Dictionary Research Centre. Montgomery, Michael. 1995. The linguistic value of Ulster emigrant letters. Ulster Folklife 41: 26– 41. O’Farrell, Patrick. 1984. Letters from Irish Australia. Sydney: New South Wales University Press. Ramson, William S. 1966. Australian English: An historical study of the vocabulary, 1788–89. Canberra: Australian National University Press. Taylor, Brian. 1997. Sydney English around 1900: A linguistic critique of Louis Stone’s ‘Jonah’. Language in time and space, ed. by Heinrich Ramisch and Kenneth Wynne, 258–70. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Taylor, Brian. 1998. Australian English and its interaction with other Englishes. The major varieties of English: Papers from MAVEN 97, ed. by Hans Lindquist, Staffan Klintborg, Magnus Levin and Maria Estling, 48–59. Växjö: Vaxjö University [Acta Wexionensia, Humaniora 1]. Taylor, Brian. 2001. Australian English in interaction with other Englishes. English in Australia, ed. by David Blair and Peter Collins, 317–40. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Taylor, Brian. 2003. Englishes in Sydney around 1850. Australian Journal of Linguistics 23(2): 161–83. Troy, J. 1992. ‘Der mary this is fine cuntry is there is in the wourld’: Irish-English and Irish in late 18th and 19th century Australia. The language game. Papers in memory of Donald C. Laycock, ed. by Tom Dutton, Malcolm Ross and Darrell Tryon, 459–77. Canberra: Australian National University Press [Pacific Linguistics, C-110]. Trudgill, Peter. 1986. Dialects in contact. Oxford: Blackwell. Ward, Russel and John Robertson. 1972. ‘Such was Life’: Select documents in Australian social history 1788–850. Milton, QLD: Jacaranda Press.

Appendix Additional information about the authors and the texts quoted in the chapter is presented in the table on p. 301. Most of the headlines and information in the cells is self-explainable. A few notes are nevertheless provided: • SIN: Source Identification Number. This number serves to identify the sources in COOEE. Since only parts of COOEE were used for this chapter, the numbering may seem odd. • Places: NI = Northern Ireland, SI = Southern Ireland, GB–E = Great Britain England, A = Australia, A-NSW = Australia NSW; • General: n.a. = not applicable, un = unknown, f = female, m = male, fam = family; • Register: PrW = Private Written, PcW = Public Written, SB = Speech-based; • Text Types: PC = Personal Correspondence, DI = Diary, NB = Newspaper/Broadside, NV = Narrative, MI = Minutes.

SIN 2–355 3–095 3–114 3–129 3–162 3–163 3–213 3–221 3–222 3–228 3–233 4–004 4–026 4–027 4–073 4–131 4–153 4–159 4–167 4–182 4–276 ire-004 ire-007 ire-018 ire-023 ire-035 ire-043 ire-046 ire-076 3–174 4–181 4–421 2–165 2–166 3–090

Corpus IrE-Aus IrE-Aus IrE-Aus IrE-Aus IrE-Aus IrE-Aus IrE-Aus IrE-Aus IrE-Aus IrE-Aus IrE-Aus IrE-Aus IrE-Aus IrE-Aus IrE-Aus IrE-Aus IrE-Aus IrE-Aus IrE-Aus IrE-Aus IrE-Aus IrE-Ireland IrE-Ireland IrE-Ireland IrE-Ireland IrE-Ireland IrE-Ireland IrE-Ireland IrE-Ireland Native-Aus Native-Aus Native-Aus COOEE COOEE COOEE

Name Adams, George Normile, Michael jr. Normile, Michael jr. McCance, John Wyly, Eliza McCance, John Normile, Michael jr. Normile, Michael jr. McCance, John Normile, Michael jr. Comber, Patrick Wyly, Isabella Burke, Bridget Mahony, Philip Maxwell, Hugh Mahony, Philip Blair, David Maxwell, James Maxwell, William Burke, Bridget Twigg, James Hamilton Thompson, Rick Dalton, William Devlin, Mary Fife, William Fife, William Dunne, Michael sr. McDonnell, Bridget Liptrot, Bridget Lang, John George Lawson, Louisa Turner, George Cudmore, M. Best, G. Corbyn, Charles Adam

Author

Birth ? 1832 1832 182X ? 182X 1832 1832 182X 1832 1844 1833 1859 1845 1858 1845 1820 ? 1846 1859 1874 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1816 1848 1851 ? ? ?

Gender m m m m f m m m m m m f f m m m m m m f m m m f m m m f f m f m f m m

Origin Age Status NI un II SI 22 III SI 23 III NI 31 III SI un IV NI 33 III NI 29 III SI 30 III NI 37 III SI 31 III SI 20 IV SI 44 IV SI 23 IV SI 37 III NI 26 III SI 42 III Ireland 67 II NI un III NI 42 III SI 30 IV NI 18 III NI ? III SI ? II NI ? III NI ? III NI ? III SI ? III SI ? III SI ? IV A-NSW 43 II A-NSW 41 III A-VIC 46 II ? un IV GB–E un II ? un II

Arrival ? 1854 1854 1853 1851 1853 1854 1854 1853 1854 1862 1851 1880 1870 1883 1870 1850 1886 1887 1880 1891 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. native native native ? ? ?

Abode un 0 1 3 7 5 7 8 9 9 2 26 2 12 1 17 37 2 1 9 1 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. un un un

Text Year writing 1849 1854 1855 1856 1858 1858 1861 1862 1862 1863 1864 1877 1882 1882 1884 1887 1887 1888 1888 1889 1892 1843 1851 1857 1860 1865 1870 1872 1906 1859 1889 1897 1837 1837 1854

Place writing A-NSW A-NSW A-NSW A-VIC A-SA A-VIC A-NSW A-NSW A-VIC A-NSW A-VIC A-VIC A-QLD A-VIC A-VIC A-VIC A-VIC A-VIC A-VIC A-QLD A-WA NI SI NI NI NI SI SI GB–E A-NSW A-NSW A-SA A-SA A-VDL A-NSW

Register PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PrW PcW PcW SB PrW PrW PcW

TextT PC PC PC PC PC PC PC PC PC PC PC PC PC PC PC PC DI PC PC PC PC PC PC PC PC PC PC PC PC NV NB MI PC PC NB

No. of words 465 412 2709 1207 879 1397 929 901 1313 688 1439 1730 1377 755 258 1975 2938 265 562 1639 570 575 711 804 1273 1115 624 692 450 5057 8009 8788 567 1394 9163

Gender m m m f f m m m m m fam f fam f m m n.a. fam fam fam m fam m fam fam fam m m f n.a. n.a. n.a. fam m n.a.

Status II IV IV IV III II IV IV II IV III III IV III III III n.a. III III IV III III II III III III III III IV n.a. n.a. n.a. III III n.a.

Addressee Place A-NSW SI SI SI SI SI SI SI SI SI SI SI SI SI A-VIC SI n.a. NI NI SI NI A A A A A A A A n.a. n.a. n.a. A-QLD GB–E n.a.

part iv

Dialectology, typology and diachrony

chapter 13

Negative indefinites A typological and diachronic perspective on a Brabantic construction* Johan van der Auwera

Ludovic De Cuypere

University of Antwerp

University of Ghent

Annemie Neuckermans University of Ghent

The chapter discusses a dialectal Flemish ‘nobody’ construction that employs the neutral ‘somebody’ word together with sentential negation. It is argued to derive historically from a construction that uses the ‘nobody’ word, again together with sentential negation, the construction that is very general in Flanders yet itself also different from standard Dutch. Both the construction and its genesis are studied from a cross-linguistic point of view. The construction is judged to be very normal, but the process that gave rise to it may well be rare.

1. Introduction In standard Dutch sentential negation is expressed with the adverb niet.

(1) Ik heb hem niet gezien. I have him not seen ‘I have not seen him.’

When the object is an indefinite pronoun, the latter takes a negative form, and we obtain niemand ‘nobody’ instead of the positive iemand ‘somebody’, and the sentential negator is obligatorily absent.

(2) Ik heb niemand gezien. I have nobody seen ‘I haven’t seen anybody.’

This chapter focuses on a pattern found in some Brabantic dialects in which there is a sentential negator together with a positive indefinite pronoun.

306 Johan van der Auwera, Ludovic De Cuypere, Annemie Neuckermans

(3) Ik heb iemand niet gezien. I have somebody not seen ‘I haven’t seen anybody.’

The construction in (3) will be studied from three perspectives, (i) that of the dialectology of the Flemish dialects (Section 2), (ii) a historical one (Section 3) and (iii), a typological one (Section 4).

2. Dialectology The data reported in this chapter come out of a recent dialect syntax project, studying not only the Dutch dialects of Belgium, but also those of the Netherlands, the Frisian dialects, and also, though to a lesser extent, the Dutch dialects of the north of France.1 With respect to negation, the dialects of Belgium show much more variation than those of the Netherlands and than the Frisian ones. For this reason this chapter just treats the dialects of Belgium. Those of France are excluded, because they are less well studied and because they essentially continue the West Flemish dialect area. The term ‘Flemish’ could be used for all of the Dutch dialects of Belgium, but in this chapter we will abstain from this usage, and use it only in the compounds ‘West Flemish’ and ‘East Flemish’, which refer to two of the big subgroups of Belgian Dutch dialects,

Brabantic West Flemish

East Flemish Limburgish

Map 1. The dialect groups of Belgian Dutch.

: SAND sampling points

Negative indefinites2 307

niemand (…) niet iemand (…) niet other Map 2. ‘nobody’ in Belgian Dutch dialects

the other two being the Brabantic and the Limburgish dialects (Map 1). Restricting ourselves to the expression of ‘nobody’, it turns out that the majority of Belgian Dutch speakers, especially Brabantic and Limburgish, but also East Flemish, prefer a niemand (…) niet strategy (as shown in Map 2).2

(4) Ik heb niemand niet gezien.3 I have nobody not seen ‘I haven’t seen anybody.’

On Map 2 the stars stand for niemand (…) niet. The squares in the middle of the Brabantic area stand for the iemand (…) niet strategy shown in (3). Some of the circles, including the few Limburgish and Brabantic ones, represent speakers that prefer the standard Dutch niemand strategy (2). The main competitor, however, represented by most of West and less so East Flemish circles is an en niemand strategy.

(5) Ik en heb niemand gezien. I not have nobody seen ‘I haven’t seen anybody.’

The element en is the old sentential negator, which was superseded by niet in all of Germanic, except precisely in the Dutch Belgian dialects, through a process of strengthening and weakening, known as the “Jespersen cycle” (Dahl 1979) and shown in (6).


3

en niemand (…) niet other Map 3. ‘nobody’ in Belgian Dutch dialects

(6) en → en … niet → niet

Note that what en … niemand and niemand (…) niet have in common is that the negation is expressed twice, one time with a sentential negator en or niet, and a second time with a negative indefinite. In this respect they differ from the single negation strategy niemand, the strategy of standard Dutch, and iemand (…) niet, the Brabantic strategy that we will focus on. There is, however, a triple negation strategy, viz. en …niemand (…) niet, too. It is typical for East Flemish, arguably an area where en … niemand meets niemand (…) niet, and one of these is always an alternative to the triple strategy. The latter is illustrated in (7) and mapped on Map 3.

(7) Ik en heb niemand niet gezien. I not have nobody not seen ‘I haven’t seen anybody.’

Map 4 takes us back to Brabantic. It shows that the area in which the combination of a sentential negator and a positive indefinite is accepted is a little bigger than the area in which it is offered spontaneously. We also note that the combination only exists for ‘someone not’ and ‘somewhere not’, but not for ‘something not’ or ‘sometime not’.

Negative indefinites 309

spontaneous accepted Map 4. Positive indefinite and sentential negation expressing a negative indefinite in Belgian Dutch dialects

3. The diachrony of iemand niet ‘someone not’ It is clear from Maps 2 and 4 that the iemand (…) niet construction is surrounded on all sides by the niemand (…) niet construction. One can imagine three types of relations between the two constructions. Either iemand (…) niet and niemand (…) niet are actually unrelated. The iemand (…) niet construction is due to a factor α, and the niemand (…) niet construction is due to a factor β. Alternatively, either niemand (…) niet is a development of iemand (…) niet, or, the other way round, iemand (…) niet is a development of niemand (…) niet. In scenario (8b) the niemand (…) niet speakers are the progressive ones, and in scenario (8c), the progressive speakers are the ones that use iemand (…) niet. In scenario (8a) neither is more progressive.

(8) a. b. c.

α → iemand (…) niet → niemand (…) niet β iemand (…) niet → niemand (…) niet niemand (…) niet → iemand (…) niet

Scenario (8a) is not very plausible. Iemand (…) niet and niemand (…) niet are formally and semantically very similar; all that distinguishes them formally is a pronoun-initial nasal. Their near-identity makes it rather likely that they share a

4


istory allowing for the fact that one is a development of the other. That the conh struction is not available for all indefinites is another argument. What allows the positive indefinite proform is the close formal as well as semantic relation to the negative proform. We find it for ‘someone’ with positive iemand and negative niemand, as well as for ‘somewhere’ with positive ieverans and negative nieverans. For ‘something’ however, we do not find such a pair. The positive form is iets and the negative one is niks: the two differ more than by just a nasal. For ‘sometime’, the picture is not straightforward either. The negative word is nooit ‘never’ but there are in fact two positive forms. One is soms ‘sometime’ and this obviously does not form an adequate pair with nooit. The other one is ooit, which is polysemous between negatively polar ‘ever’ and neutral ‘once’ (Hoeksema 1998, 1999). Which of the two uses would be relevant here? On the one hand, one could argue that the one that is needed to form a pair that is most anologous with the iemand – niemand and ieverans – nieverans pairs is the neutral ooit ‘once’ since iemand and ieverans are also neutral. As Hoeksema has shown, the ‘once’ use is the more recent one (1998, 1999). Even though it was marginal in Standard Dutch until the second part of the 20th century, at least in the Brabantic dialects it was around already in the 19th century, though it is not known whether it was present in the small Brabantic area that might have allowed iemand (…) niet to mean ‘niemand’. On the other hand, if a dialect is to develop an ooit (…) niet ‘never’ construction, the very fact that the positive element ooit already has a negatively polar use would seem to be an asset, but, of course, the construction would not then be analogous with iemand (…) niet and ieverans (…) niet. In short, in the temporal domain of the indefinites there is no unique formally and semantically analogous positive counterpart to iemand and ieverans to combine with the sentential negator to mean ‘never’. This concludes the discussion of scenario in (8a), and we can hypothesize niemand (…) niet are iemand (…) niet to be directly related constructions. One is the ancestor of the other. When it comes to choosing between scenario (8b) and (8c), one should choose (8c) for two reasons. First of all, the earliest attestations of iemand (…) niet date from the 20th century (Pauwels 1958), whereas those of niemand (…) niet date from the 15th century (Neuckermans in preparation). Secondly, there is a plausible scenario for how niemand (…) niet could be the input for a change to iemand (…) niet, but there is none for how iemand (…) niet could be the input for a change to niemand (…) niet. The plausible scenario is represented in (9).

(9) en … niemand → niemand → niemand (…) niet

The first and second stages shown in (9) are parallel to the second and third stages of the regular ‘Jespersen cycle’ (6). The third stage of (9) shows the reintroduction of the sentential negator, subject to a universal preference for employing a sentential

Negative indefinites

negator in the expression of negative indefinites. The existence of this preference has been argued for by Haspelmath (1997: 200–5; see also Weiss 2002: 88). A persuasive illustration, also used by Haspelmath (1997: 205), comes from French. (10) ne … personne → personne → pas personne The first stage of (10) shows standard French, the second stage progressive colloquial French, and the third one the even more progressive Québec French. Note that the very fact that Brabantic iemand niet dispenses with the negative indefinite and keeps the sentential negator is also in accord with the universal preference hypothesis. (11) adds the final stage to the Brabantic scenario. (11) en … niemand → niemand → niemand (…) niet → iemand (…) niet Thus (11) shows both the genesis of niemand (…) niet and the further development of niemand (…) niet to iemand (…) niet. There is no such scenario with iemand (…) niet as an input to niemand (…) niet. True, the positive form iemand has to have a place in a complete scenario as well, for it is a component of niemand, together with the sentential negator en. In (12) it is added as an initial stage of the chain hypothesized in (8b). (12) en … iemand

… → iemand (…) niet →

niemand (…) niet

However, there is no development from the iemand ne of iemand to the iemand of iemand niet. What happened, we propose, was that en iemand univerbized into niemand, which was then subject to the universal preference for a sentential negator and gave rise to en niemand, which is stage one of (11) (see also van der Auwera and Neuckermans 2004a, b). (13) en … iemand → niemand

→ iemand (…) niet → niemand (…) niet

en … niemand → niemand → niemand (…) niet → iemand (…) niet The general conclusion on the diachrony of iemand (…) niet is therefore that it is a further development of the niemand (…) niet construction.

4. The typology of iemand (…) niet ‘someone not’ The micro-variation of Dutch negative indefinites confronts us with at least five strategies.

311


(14) a. b. c. d. e.

niemand en … niemand niemand (…) niet en … niemand (…) niet iemand (…) niet

This is fairly representative considering the macro-variation of the expression of negative indefinites in the world at large. The macro-variation is explicitly dealt with in three recent works, viz. Kahrel (1996), Haspelmath (1997), both of which also build on Bernini and Ramat (1996), and Weiss (2002). The language coverage of the three studies differs significantly: Kahrel (1996) works on a balanced worldwide sample of 40 languages (Map 5). Haspelmath (1997) works on two samples: he offers an in-depth study of a Eurocentric sample of 40 languages (Map 6), one of which is Latin, against the background of balanced world-wide sample of another 100 languages. Weiss (2002) draws on a Eurocentric sample of 15 languages (Map 7). The focus of the three studies is also different. Kahrel (1996) focuses on negation in general, hence also on negative indefinites, and he only marginally studies positive indefinites or the phenomenon of negative polarity. Haspelmath (1997) is a study of indefinite pronouns, both positive and negative, with an analysis of subtypes of each, and expressing strong views about negative polarity. Weiss (2002) is similar to Haspelmath (1997), but there is less of a focus on the subtypes of the posi5 tive and negative pronouns. Four of the five strategies illustrated in (14) are provided with typological analyses. The construction that is missing is en … niemand (…)

Map 5. Languages covered by Kahrel (1996)

6


7

Map 6. Languages covered by Haspelmath (1997) (Latin not included)

Bavarian

Map 7. Languages covered by Weiss (2002)

niet, for which van der Auwera and Neuckermans provide an initial typologically oriented analysis (2004b). In this chapter we restrict ourselves to the iemand (…) niet type, and the most relevant studies are Kahrel (1996) and Haspelmath (1997). There are two questions to be addressed. First, what is the typology of the iemand (…) niet strategy? Are there any cross-linguistic parallels? Second, what is the typology of the postulated change from a niemand (…) niet to an iemand (…) niet construction? Are there any cross-linguistic parallels here? We will start with the second question, because it is easier. We do not know of any other language that documents a change from a niemand (…) niet to an iemand (…) niet construction.


More precisely, we do not know of any language other than Dutch that manifests a change from a construction consisting of a sentential negator with a morphologically negative indefinite to a construction consisting of the same sentential negator with a neutral positive indefinite pronoun. If this had been the case in English or German, we would have had the changes shown in (15). → somebody … not (15) a. nobody … not b. niemand (…) nicht → jemand (…) nicht In Dutch, all that is necessary to get from niemand (…) niet to iemand (…) niet is the elision of one consonant. It remains to be seen how close positive and negative indefinites are, crosslinguistically. In English or German, they are close too, but not close enough. → *obody … not (16) a. nobody … not b. niemand (…) nicht → *iemand (…) nicht And even if they are close in one language, for most languages of the world little is known about the diachrony of the elements in question. In other words, the fact that the postulated change is not as yet reported for any other language is not that surprising. This brings us to the second question, that of the rarity of the iemand (…) niet strategy, and here the answer is totally different. According to Kahrel (1996), it might actually be the most frequent strategy in the world at large. Of the forty languages of his sample, 27 languages (or 68%) use it, though sometimes not as the only strategy. There are four other strategies. Examples in their pseudo-English and frequencies (Kahrel 1996: 36–7) are given in (17), and the spread of the iemand (…) niet strategy is shown in Map 8. (17) a. b. c. d. e.

John not bought something. sentential negator + ordinary indefinite John not bought anything sentential negator + ‘special’ indefinite John bought nothing. only negative indefinite John not bought nothing. sentential negator + negative indefinite There is nothing that John bought. negative existential

67.7 % 22.5 % 12.5 % 12.5 % 17.5 %

These observations can be compared with those made by Haspelmath (1997). Map 9 shows the frequency and the spread of the iemand (…) niet strategy for Haspelmath’s 40 language sample.

8

Negative indefinites

9

Map 8. Languages with the iemand (…) niet strategy in Kahrel’s (1996) sample

Map 9. Languages with the iemand (…) niet strategy in Haspelmath’s (1997) sample

One can make two observations.4 First, on the Haspelmath map (Map 9) the iemand (…) niet strategy is certainly not the most frequent strategy. On the contrary, we only find it in five out of Haspelmath’s 40 languages, in Hindi, Persian, Swahili, Swedish, and Turkish. Second, Haspelmath’s 40 language sample is heavily Eurocentric.5 It appears, therefore, that if Kahrel’s hypothesis about the world-wide spread is allowed to stand, perhaps iemand (…) niet is simply not a frequent strategy in Europe or in Standard Average European. Indeed, the only European languages that allow iemand (…) niet in the Haspelmath sample are Swedish and Turkish, and of these neither is very Standard Average European (if we start from the

315


hypotheses in van der Auwera with Baoill 1998 and Haspelmath 2001) and Turkish less so than Swedish. This hypothesis fits with Kahrel’s claims, as he studies only four European languages, namely Basque, Standard Dutch, Hungarian, and Italian, and none of them uses an iemand (…) niet strategy. Another point is that Haspelmath criticizes Kahrel’s classification shown in (17) (1997: 192–200). Leaving aside type (17e), which is irrelevant for our purposes, he argues that the way to classify the negative strategies should involve the semantic criteria in (18), which lists nine uses of indefinite pronouns. They are illustrated in (19). (18) a. specific known

(19) a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i.

b. specific unknown

c. irrealis non-specific

d. question

e. indirect negation

g. conditional

h. comparative

f. direct negation

i. free choice

Somebody called you while you were away: guess who? I heard somebody, but I couldn’t tell you who. Please ask somebody else. Did somebody/anybody tell you about it? I don’t think that anybody knows the answer. I haven’t seen anybody./I have seen nobody. If you see somebody/anybody, tell me immediately. He is better than anybody else in the group. Anybody can solve this problem.

The idea is that there are as many types of negative pronoun strategies as there are markers covering the direct negation use (18f) and any selection of contiguous uses. Thus English has the (18f) type nobody as well as the (18d–e–f–g–h–i) type anybody. Somebody is an indefinite pronoun as well, but its use does not extend to (18f), since it is not negative. Bulgarian nikoj, however, is yet a third type of negative pronoun—it is of the (18e–f) type (Haspelmath 1997: 262–3); Italian nessuno is a fourth, (18d–e–f) type (Haspelmath 1997: 267–9); Yakut kim da a fifth type (18e– f–h–i) (Haspelmath 1997: 289–91), and so on. Haspelmath’s point is well taken. The semantic map, its predictions and its inherent classification are persuasively argued. However, we would argue that it does not invalidate the essential idea behind Kahrel’s argument about the high frequency of the iemand (…) niet strategy. Kahrel’s claim in (17a) can be cast in terms of


(20)

a. specific known

somebody

b. specific unknown


nobody f. direct negation

d. question


g. conditional

h. comparative

i. free choice

anybody

(21)

a. specific known

nikoj

nessuno

b. specific unknown


f. direct negation

d. question


g. conditional

h. comparative

i. free choice

kim da

Haspelmath’s observation as saying that that 68% of the languages of the Kahrel sample use the same pronoun to express direct negation and specific, whether known or unknown. This claim is represented in (22). Kahrel has not investigated any of the uses in between specific and direct negation (1996). Yet this does not make Kahrel’s claim uninterpretable within the Haspelmath map. On the contrary, if Haspelmath’s map is right, then the contiguity requirement predicts that the pronouns shown on (22) are also used for irrealis non-specific and indirect negation, and then either at least for (i) questions or for (ii) conditionals and comparatives. (22) a/b specific


d. question


g. conditional

h. comparative

f. direct negation

i. free choice


(23) a/b specific


d. question


g. conditional

h. comparative

f. direct negation

i. free choice

In sum, Kahrel’s hypothesis that the strategy of expressing direct negation with the help of the ordinary positive, specific pronoun is highly frequent is interpretable within Haspelmath’s framework and still stands.

5. Conclusion In this chapter we analyzed a construction geographically limited to a Brabantic dialect of Dutch. Unlike in Standard Dutch and the other dialects of Belgian Dutch, ‘nobody’ may be expressed with the sentential negator niet ‘not’ and with a positive pronoun iemand ‘somebody. We have argued that this iemand (…) niet ‘somebody not’ strategy resulted from a niemand (…) niet ‘nobody not’ strategy. The change is typologically unattested elsewhere, but the new strategy may well be very frequent in the world’s languages. Notes * The work of Ludovic De Cuypere is funded by the Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Vlaanderen (Fund for Scientific Research Flanders) and that of Annemie Neuckermans was funded by the Vlaams–Nederlands Comité voor Nederlandse taal en cultuur (Flemish–Dutch Commission for Dutch language and culture). 1. The project ran from 2000 to 2003, it was called SAND or Syntactische Atlas van de Nederlandse Dialecten, and it was funded by the Vlaams–Nederlands Comité voor Nederlandse taal en cultuur (Flemish–Dutch Commission for Dutch language and culture). On the Flemish side data have been gathered by Annemie Neuckermans, as well as by Gunther De Vogelaer (Ghent) and Vicky Van Den Heede (Antwerp). Help came from the whole binational SAND team, but especially from Magda Devos (Ghent), Guido Vanden Wyngaerd (Brussels) and Sjef Barbiers (Amsterdam). This chapter extends the analysis offered in van der Auwera and Neuckermans (in press), and it will be put in wider context in the doctoral work by Ludovic De Cuypere on the iconicity of multiple negation, and in the doctoral work on negation in the Belgian Dutch dialects by Annemie Neuckermans. Luc Draeye (Louvain) helped us with the Brabantic data. We also thank Anna Siewierska for her comments. 2. The bracketed dots mean that niemand and not do not form a cluster, though they may and often do follow each other. In this chapter, we will abstain from studying the word order properties of the various constructions.


3. There will be no attempt at rendering the dialect data in a morpho-phonologically correct format. All the words will be spelled with standard Dutch orthography. There are only two words that we need and that Standard Dutch does not have, viz. ieverans and nieverans, words for ‘somewhere’ and ‘nowhere’—ergens and nergens in the standard language. 4. In the case of Mandarin and perhaps also Quechua, Kahrel (1996) and Haspelmath (1997) analyze the data in a different way. In the comparison below, we gloss over such differences. 5. The same points can be made about Weiss (2002). His 15 language sample is even more Eurocentric and there is not a single iemand niet language.

References Bernini, Giuliano and Paolo Ramat. 1996. Negative sentences in the languages of Europe. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Dahl, Östen. 1979. Typology of sentence negation. Linguistics 17: 79–106. Haspelmath, Martin. 1997. Indefinite pronouns. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Haspelmath, Martin. 2001. The European linguistic area: Standard Average European. Language typology and language universals: Sprachtypologie und sprachliche Universalien: La typologie des langues et les universaux linguistiques. An international handbook: Ein internationa les Handbuch: Manuel international, ed. by Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher and Wolfgang Raible, 1492–510. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter. Hoeksema, Jack. 1998. On the (non)loss of the polarity sensitive Dutch ooit. Historical linguistics 1995. Selected papers from the 13th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Manchester, August 1995, vol. 2: Germanic linguistics, ed. by. Richard M. Hogg and Linda van Bergen, 101–14. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hoeksema, Jack. 1999. Aantekeningen bij ooit, deel 2: De opkomst van niet-polair ooit. Tabu 29: 147–72. Kahrel, Peter. 1996. Aspects of negation. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Amsterdam. Neuckermans, Annemie. In preparation. Negatie in de Vlaamse dialecten. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Ghent. Pauwels, Jan L. 1958. Het dialect van Aarschot en omstreken. Brussels: Belgisch Interuniversitair Centrum voor Neerlandistiek. van der Auwera, Johan and Annemie Neuckermans. 2004a. Jespersen’s cycle and the interaction of predicate and quantifier negation in Flemish. Typology meets dialectology. Dialect grammar from a cross-linguistic perspective, ed. by Bernd Kortmann, 454–78. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. van der Auwera, Johan and Annemie Neuckermans. 2004b. Een Oost-Vlaamse driedubbele negatie. Taal en Tongval 15–16: 143–57 [Theme issue Dialectsyntaxis in bloei]. van der Auwera, Johan and Annemie Neuckermans. In press. On the typology of no one. Leuvense Bijdragen (Leuvens Contributions in Linguistics and Philology) 92. van der Auwera, Johan with Dónall P. Ó Baoill. (eds.). 1998. Adverbial constructions in the languages of Europe. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Weiss, Helmut. 2002. Indefinite pronouns. Morphology and syntax in cross-linguistic perspective. Pronouns – grammar and representation, ed. by Horst J. Simon and Heike Wiese, 85– 107. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

chapter 14

The relatives who and what in northern East Anglia Patricia Poussa Umeå University

The twin rises of who and what as subject relatives were dialectal developments in East Anglia. I show from tape-recorded dialect corpora that what and the zero relative have arisen overall in Norfolk, but who mostly in the Norwich region. Norfolk showed two main relativisation typologies, a West Germanic type north-west of Norwich, and a Scandinavian to the south-east, near Yarmouth. The spread of Scandinavian preposition-stranding seems to have particlised the East Anglian pronominal relatives in cycles, producing Middle English þe and who, and dialectal where and what. Modern what probably resulted from P-stranding operating on relative adverbials such as whereon, giving where . . . (prep), later regularised to what . . . (prep). The /ð/ relative forms remaining in subject position were gradually eroded by phonological processes.

1. Introduction The relatives who and what are seldom discussed together because one is regarded as standard and the other non-standard. But Joseph Wright included them both in the following entry on the relatives in the English Dialect Grammar (EDG, Wright 1905): The relative pronoun is gen. expressed by as, at, that, or what for all genders and numbers, when the antecedent is expressed. In other cases who is used for the masc. and fem. Nom. and obj., and what for the neuter. (§423; my emphases)

This very precise statement, couched in the terminology of traditional, Latin-based grammar, shows that Wright believed that who was an undeclined particle in all “the dialects” in the 19th century, whereas the paradigm who-whom-whose belonged exclusively to the “literary language”. It also assumes that both varieties are static. Only the abbreviation gen. reveals that there was actually more variety in the peripheral traditional dialects than could be captured in this statement. I have found both the what-systems mentioned above among traditional speakers in north Norfolk, the most northerly part of East Anglia, and can say that the what type tends to occur in the northwestern corner, and the who-what type in the

322 Patricia Poussa

north-east, near Norwich (Poussa 2001, 1994), and I can confirm that whom did not occur in my recordings. But in both cases I found an admixture of which, the relative which Wright does not mention, and a very small quantity of that. One of the reasons for the rise of what in Norfolk is the loss of that in subject position, which I take to be a phonological question, similar to the that>at development in Yorkshire. This has created a need for new subject relatives to replace the older demonstrative relatives, and what is the most recent example. The historical adoption of which and who in subject position can be explained in the same way, as repairs caused by the gradual loss of an Anglian pronoun þe, part of a þe/þet natural gender relative system, which has been attested in very early Middle English in texts of west Norfolk and the adjacent areas of south Lincolnshire and the Soke of Peterborough (see Kivimaa 1966; Dekeyser 1986). Our focus in this chapter will be on the timing of the adoption of who and what in subject position in northern East Anglia, and the reasons for the lapse of three centuries between the adoption of the two subject forms in the region, from the 15th to the late 18th century. Basically, this will be a tale of two Germanic syntactic typologies meeting and merging in a changing landscape, over a very long period, and in changing sociolinguistic conditions. I set the scene by offering two maps and two tables whose contents I shall attempt to reconcile in this chapter. Map 1, from Williamson (1993: 109) is a place name map of northern East Anglia. It shows the main river systems of Norfolk, which run east to the North Sea and west to the Fens and the Wash, together with Scandinavian place names ending in -by. These and others indicate the main areas of Danish settlement during 1 the late Viking Period. In East Anglia as a whole, most names are of early West Germanic By Other Scandinavian elements Names probably showing Scandinavian influence

Map 1. Major Scandinavian place names in northern East Anglia (excluding personal names,

Map 1. Major Scandinavian place names in northern East Anglia (excluding personal names, and þorp). and þorp). Adapted from Williamson (1993: 109. Fig. 5.1) Adapted from Williamson (1993: 109. Fig. 5.1)

KEY

Map 1

Ɣ

By

Ɣ

Other Scandinavian elements

2

The relatives who and what in northern East Anglia 323

Map 2. Preposition-stranding in a wh- interrogative clause. SED frame IX.9.3, “to whom shall I give it?” (Adapted from LAE Map S6) Map 2. Preposition-stranding in a wh- interrogative clause. SED frame IX.9.3, “to whom shall I give it?” (Adapted from LAE Map S6)

origin, while Danish settlement names tend to concentrate on the east coast. Danish, an East Norse dialect, does not have a history of wh-relative use, though West Norse dialects do, according to Romaine (1984). Map 2, from the Linguistic Atlas of England (LAE, Orton, Sanderson and Widdowson 1978), shows the distribution of preposition stranding (P-stranding) in the Survey of English Dialects vol. 3, The East Midland counties and East Anglia (SED, Orton and Tilling 1969–71). This seems to reflect the influence of the Scandinavian settlements of the Viking Period on the syntax of the embedded interrogative clause, as P-stranding ends roughly at the boundary of the Danelaw in the year 886. What we have here is Type I P-stranding, involving “Movement of a nominal complement to Spec, CP” according to the classification by Delsing (2003: 76). Delsing states that P-stranding of Type I (which affects both wh-questions and wh-

324 Patricia Poussa

r elatives) is rare in the languages of the world, and in Europe is found only in the Scandinavian languages and English (Delsing 2003: 76). He finds that P-stranding of this type was not present in the older forms of the English and Scandinavian languages, but emerged in the modern period in all of them. Furthermore, he claims that “P-stranding is not compatible with morphological case”, or, more weakly, “. . .with syntactically active case” (Delsing 2003: 75, 83). This allows him to include both modern standard English and Icelandic in his classification. So Map 2 seems to demonstrate the path of a major syntactic restructuring due to morphological losses in the English dialects, as a result of Scandinavian settlement in Anglian England during the Viking Period. Figure 1 (from Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 2003: 76) shows the timing of changes in three strategies of relativisation in the Corpus of Early English Correspondence, including the supplement on regional variation. To simplify, the variables are the to whom type, with preposed preposition, which we may call P‑1; the P-stranded type, and an intermediate type, a compound type, which I shall call P‑2. This is represented by the relative adverbials, whereto, whereon, wherewith, etc. P‑2 can also be seen on Map 2, Area 4 (Sussex and the Isle of Wight) in the separated form who to. This non-standard construction seems to be a pre-stage to Type I Pstranding. Figure 2 (From Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 2003: 177) shows that P‑2 continued to be an important variant in East Anglia and the North in the later 17th century, when the Court and London were standardising on P‑1, using to which, etc. in preference to whereto, etc. I shall show in Section 2 of this chapter that P‑2, after subjection to P-stranding, produced a restructured dialectal relative of the where . . . (prep) type in some places, including north Norfolk, and that this was replaced by the non-standard what relative, probably by analogy with the historical pairing of who(m) and what in the interrogative pronouns. 100 90 80 70 60 % 50 40 30 20 10 0

WH + prep prep + WH stranded

1440– 1480– 1520– 1560– 1600– 1640– 1479 1519 1559 1599 1639 1681

Figure 1. Prepositional phrase vs. relative adverb (about, after, by, on, to, unto, upon, with). Percentages. CEEC 1998 and Supplement (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 2003: 76, Fig. 4.15)


100 90 80 70 60 % 50 40 30 20 10 0

London Court East Anglia and North

1480– 1520– 1560– 1600– 1640– 1519 1559 1599 1639 1681

Figure 2. Relative adverb vs. preposition plus (the) which. Regional distribution of the preposition-plus-wh- constructions. CEEC 1998 and Supplement; percentages (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 2003: 177. Fig. 8.7)

The P‑2 type whereto seems to have been specialised to nonpersonal antecedents. The elimination of this type by the emerging London standard meant that the semantic specification of which changed to [-human] in StE, but could remain neutral in East Anglia. In East Anglia, dialectal that was used as a neuter personal pronoun where StE uses it, e.g. in weather expressions. The use of that for StE it appears to be a Scandinavian relic in East Anglia and the North (see Poussa 1997). Trudgill (2001: 2) calls it a “central pronoun”. This “central” use of that as a member of the personal pronoun set may have helped maintain the semantic system of the Old Anglian demonstrative relatives, long after the loss of þe. It follows that who and whose [+human] [+status] could have contrasted with both that and whereof for conservative dialect speakers. The rise of who and what to subject position in the East Anglian dialect has to be seen against the background of the traditional semantic field of all the 3rd person pronouns. It should be noted that who can pass through a P‑2 stage in the spoken language. On Map 2 we see examples of who to used in Sussex, apparently a pre-stage to the stranded who . . . to. The P‑2 stage has been around for a very long time in English, with different exemplars. For example, Old English of Wessex had two word orders with prepositional relatives, to þæm and þæm to. Unfortunately, we have no pre-Conquest records of the East Anglian dialect, probably owing to the disruptions in church records caused by the Viking invasions, and the use of the West Saxon standard language in subsequent written documents. But we do know that the first appearances of the relative hwan/m in Early Middle English, were found in the Peterborough Chronicle Continuations as prepositional objects (henceforth O/P), with P‑1 word order. In the annals dated 1070–121, Dekeyser found at O/P four examples of hwan/m, one example of declined þan, and four examples of a particlised þe relative, used with P-stranding (Dekeyser 1986). Dekeyser’s example is: Se cyng Willelm þe we embe sprekaþ . . . ‘That king William that/who we about speak . . .’ My

326 Patricia Poussa

preferred translation would be ‘who’ because this emphasises that þe was a pronoun both in Old Saxon and the Anglian dialect of Old English, corresponding to the West Saxon demonstrative-relative pronoun se. The invariable þe relative in this example contrasts with þet, in a two-way natural-gender semantic system based on the animacy of the antecedent, not on three-way grammatical gender as in Old English and Old Anglian. This odd pronoun/particle may in fact be the ancestor of the East Anglian “central pronoun”, i.e. a third person singular personal pronoun, used here in the relative set. This makes it difficult to classify. Paradoxically, it has retained an active natural-gender system, since it contrasts with þet, but it has lost its case-coding, so it fulfills Delsing’s weaker claim that “P-stranding is not compatible with syntactically active case” (Delsing 2003: 83). The syntactic position O/P, with the word order (and the gender) of the relative markers associated with it, will loom large in this chapter. The disposition of the chapter will be as follows. Section 2 will look at the local history of the personal subject relatives in East Anglia, comparing 16th century letters from the Corpus of Early English Correspondence with two sets of late 20th century tape-recorded data from Norfolk, the Poussa corpus from Hickling, north-east Norfolk, and the Francis Corpus,* representing the rest of Norfolk as sampled by the SED. This will establish a chronological framework for who and what as personal subject relatives in the dialect area as a whole. Section 3 will look at the dialectal subdivisions in the Francis Corpus, and more particularly at the role of zero relatives in subject and oblique positions, and the rare occurrences of the relative adverbial where at O/P, with stranded preposition.

2. Local history of the personal subject relatives In this section I shall present three tables which illustrate the chronology of the rise of who and what as subject relatives in East Anglia, two of the most striking of the many changes in the set of relative forms used in East Anglia between the last half of the 16th century and the last half of the 20th century. The first concerns the early spread of who in East Anglia, as a subject form specialised to human reference, before its spread in London.

2.1 Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC) The percentages in Table 1, below, have been extracted from figures given in Neva lainen and Raumolin-Brunberg’s article “The rise of the relative who in Early Modern English”. Table 1 below is a condensed and abridged version of their Table 7 (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 2002: 120). It is the second of two tables


showing the steady expansion of the subject relative who in East Anglian letters in the 15th and 16th centuries, from letter-ending formulae referring to the deity to an everyday personal relative. Their study, which was based on the CEEC, established that the rise of subject who was led by the East Anglian writers in their corpus, not by writers from London or the Court at Westminster, as one would expect with an item which became part of the London standard. For the sake of comparison with my later spoken data, I have simplified their detailed table so as to concentrate only on the regional variation between East Anglia and London. (I have excluded the Court, to keep the class variable level.) Both the remaining sets of correspondents are of the middle classes of Renaissance England, the Londoners including City merchant families and Southwark residents (including actors), the East Anglians including trading and farming families (such as the Pastons). It was the Paston family letters, from the Norwich area of north-east Norfolk, in which the subject relative who was first recorded, in the early 15th century. I have added to the table an extra column for what, which the authors searched for, but did not find. The result is a static picture of the personal subject relative forms written in East Anglia just before the rise of standard English. Table 1. 1560–99. East Anglian and London writers. Percentages of all subject relatives with human antecedent in CEEC. Adapted from Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (2002: 118) %

who

which

that

what

N

East Anglia London

48 31

22 06

30 63

0 0

309 100

N.B. One example of whom was also found in the subject slot, from the Paston Letters, from north-east Norfolk, the Norwich area. Comment The major point is, that the East Anglian writers in the corpus were already using who as their personal subject relative at the 50% level during the Elizabethan period, while the Londoners still preferred that. What had not yet appeared. The fact that one of the Pastons is careless about his use of whom in subject position might be a sign that a syntactic particlisation of whom has begun, but it might just be a slip of the pen. The authors comment on their overall results, in comparison with those for 1460– 99, as follows: The spread of relative who seems to be led by East Anglia, which is a phenomenon we have not seen before in our research on various morphosyntactic changes in Renaissance English … But at the same time East Anglia appears to be the most conservative area in the use of which. While elsewhere the choice of which in reference to human beings declines in the sixteenth century, East Anglia keeps it as a very relevant alternative. This is not an easy matter to explain. (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 2002: 119)

328 Patricia Poussa

The percentage of subject that with human referent in East Anglia had declined markedly since 1460–99 in the CEEC records, from 32% to 3% in nonrestrictive clauses, and from 96% to 55% in restrictive clauses, but had remained fairly constant among the Londoners. The authors comment: The Londoners seem quite consistent in preferring the TH-strategy, and only minimal changes can be observed over time. (…) As the Londoners score higher frequencies of that than the Court, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the TH-strategy could have been the choice preferred by lower social ranks, at least in and around London. (p.120)

I welcome this mention of the lower ranks, whose language is usually excluded from the historical record because of their illiteracy. The TH-strategy means that that was a particle with fixed word-order, like modern dialectal as or what. But who(m) might already have become one for some speakers in the Norwich-Yarmouth area by this time, because of the strong Scandinavian settlement in southeast Norfolk. Shakespeare used object who(m) very variably compared with Marlowe, according to a study by Schneider (1992), and the difference of idiolect may have stemmed from the fact that Shakespeare was a Midlander by birth and upbringing, and Marlowe a Southerner. Shakespeare would have been exposed to an as particle dialect. In a commentary on this article (Poussa 2000), I suggested that the use of whose is no guarantee that one is using a syntactic pronoun, because it could be reanalysed by speakers as who + {S}. Therefore it is the loss of the old dative ending on who(m) which is crucial. It also strikes me that 16th century East Anglians might have favoured which because it had no morphological marking further down the case hierarchy, and that this is showing up in their retention of which in the set of subject relatives. For the possessive case of nonpersonal which they could use whereof. In this way a TH syntactic strategy could be smuggled into the dialect, from below the level of consciousness, while maintaining the lexical forms associated with an earlier WH strategy inherited from Early Middle English. We saw in Figure 2 that the compound P‑2 construction was still preserved in East Anglian and Northern letters in the late 17th century, while Figure 1 showed that P-stranding rose in the whole corpus over the same period. Here I would refer to Delsing’s weaker claim, that “P-stranding is not compatible with syntactically active case” (p.83, my emphasis). The deactivation must have been led by the spoken dialects. Type I P-stranding is a feature which has evolved in the modern Scandinavian languages and English, but is not found in their earliest written records (Delsing 2003: 76). However it was found by the SED in East Anglia according to Map 2, and was roughly coterminous with the southern edge of the late 9th century Danelaw. This implies a moving syntactic continuum whose motor was the Scandinavian settlements of the Viking Period. Thus it could be that the East Anglian dialect as a


whole was by the late 17th century well on its way to Present Day English P-stranding. It would follow that, in speech, most were no longer operating a full WH strategy with a declined whom and P‑1 preposition, but they may have been producing who to on the pattern of whereto (P‑2). The P‑2 stage is one in which who(m) to is likely to lose morphology, on the same model as whereto and the similar types in other West Germanic languages, because the preposition expresses the same meaning as the dative, bound morpheme /m/. In Map 2 the Sussex variant who to appears in the interrogative clause. According to Wright (EDG §422, 423), the declined form whom was attested later in the interrogative pronoun than in the relative (this is how I interpret the difference between his remarks that whom was “hardly ever..” versus “never” found in the dialects). Thus the beginning of the P‑2 stage in the East Anglian dialect may have produced a bare who relative on the whereto model, which could be adopted in subject position. In this model, the single case of subject relative whom reported in the Paston Letters (see note to Table 1, above) may be seen as a trace of the promotion of who(m) to subject position. I suggest that who(m) has repeated the particlisation of the Old Anglian deictic relative þe(m) at the O/P position, as described by Dekeyser (1986). The reanalysis of whose as who + {S}would naturally follow the loss of whom, in time.

2.2 Hickling corpus Table 2 shows the percentages of the same personal subject relatives four hundred years later, from the village of Hickling, east of Norwich. Dialectally it has belonged to the Norwich area rather than to the port of Yarmouth to the southeast, because of intervening marshland, which separated it from the Isle of Flegg, the major area of Danish -by names in Map 1, above. This time the corpus is taperecorded, the informants being six traditional speakers, aged between 60 and 90 when I interviewed them, around 1990. They represented the upper and lower working class, all life-long residents with local roots (see Poussa 1994). The table is designed for comparison with Table 1, above. It represents approximately fifteen hours of informant speech, with a total of 446 relative clauses. As the relative clauses were sorted by hand and ear, zero subjects could be counted, but are not percentaged in the table. I can confirm that there were no examples of relative whom in this corpus, though there were a few examples of whose. Table 2. Circa 1990, Hickling, north-east Norfolk. 6 traditional speakers aged 60–90. Percentages of all expressed subject relatives with human antecedents (adapted from Poussa 1994) %

who

which

that

what

Hickling N

67 75

5 6

9 10

19 21

zero =100 =112

43

330 Patricia Poussa

Comment The increase in who and the decrease in that seem to follow the historical trends commented on by Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (2002) for the late 15thlate 16th century, but the East Anglians here have sharply reduced which for personal reference. In this table it appears that who has gained ground on which and what has gained on that for human reference. The frequency of zero is high, more than a third of all personal subject relatives. Zero subject relatives are not found in the German dialects according to Fleischer (2004: 226), but occur in some dialects of English, Danish and Swedish, often in existential constructions. Platzack (2002: 76, footnote 2) gives some examples. My theory is that the loss of that has been caused by phonetic wear on the initial th- consonant, especially in the restrictive relative clause, so that there has been a pull-factor encouraging the adoption of new forms in subject position (see Poussa 2002a: 11). In face to face communication an existential meaning is easily understood from the context, so that some worn th- forms have not been replaced. We can conclude that this looks like a probable descendant of the dialect in Table 1, except for the rise of what. In this corpus there were 43 occurrences of what as a nonpersonal subject, so the continuum seems to be moving towards a who-what dialect such as Wright mentioned in EDG §423 (but gave no location for). In my group of six speakers I had only one who had a pure who-what idiolect, with no which or that at all, but this is the way the dialect variation was tending, on average, for these traditional speakers. Who was used by all six speakers in the sample, but otherwise their relative profiles varied considerably. Most of the six had mixed relative sets, but the 90-year-old was exceptional in using which as his general expressed relative, with who preferred for persons, while it was a female speaker aged 70 who had the pure who-what system. There was one uncounted example of who used with a non-human antecedent: butterflies. This may have been a slip, in a list of summer visitors, but it might also be a relic of an older animate/inanimate distinction. The population of the village had traditionally been divided into inland families and “marsh people”, who had done seasonal fishing, drainage work and reed–cutting. The sample contained three representatives of each, but was weighted towards the marsh people by the length of the interviews, so that 66% of the relatives in the table came from these interviews. This may have made the sample more conservative. We know that subject who has a long history of use in this particular area: the first recorded appearance was in 1426 in the Paston Letters, from north-east Norfolk, and we now know that it gradually replaced which at the top of a whom-whose declined pronoun paradigm which appeared first in Early Middle English. The village of Paston from which the family took its name lies on the coast north of Hickling, and belongs to the same subdialect of Norfolk. When I made these recordings


I was not to know that Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (2002) would demonstrate a steady development of relative who in East Anglia from the 15th to the 16th century, but thought that what might be the earlier relative, with who moving in from the standard language. Now the case is altered, at least for one subdialect of East Anglia, that of the Norwich area.

2.3 The Francis Corpus* Table 3 shows comparable figures from the Francis corpus, the SED recordings made in Norfolk by the late Nelson Francis, fieldworker for the SED, in 1957–59. They covered the thirteen SED localities in Norfolk, whose positions can be seen on Map 3, in Section 3, below. The SED aimed at the most traditional speakers of the inland areas, the agricultural workers. Men were chosen because women of this age had often worked as indoor servants in their youth and were generally more standard than the men (see Poussa 2002b). The SED localities avoided Norwich, and had only one point further east in north-east Norfolk, Nf.6, Ludham, a village close to Hickling. There are four localities south-east of Norwich, the rest mostly to the (north-)west. So this complements the Hickling sample geographically. The total tape time was 6 hours 15 minutes. Table 3. Circa 1960. SED Norfolk. Percentages of all expressed subject relatives with human antecedents. Francis corpus. %

who

which

that

what

Francis corpus N

12 5

2 1

14 6

72 31

zero =100 = 43

32

Comment The dominance of what among the expressed relatives is patent. But the figure for zero at personal subject is actually higher (r. 32: 31). This means that 42.6% of personal subjects are unexpressed, in a corpus which includes both restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses. It looks as though the traditional personal subject form for the rural labouring classes outside the Norwich area has been zero in restrictive clauses, with what entering from the nonrestrictive clauses. The corpus actually fell into two natural clusters, a Southern section, comprising four localities south east of Norwich, against a General Northern section comprising nine localities, mostly north and west of Norwich. These can be seen from Map 3. The clusters will be described later, in Section 3, but I anticipate a little here in mentioning some results for the subject forms: the Northern section turned out to have a very much higher percentage of subject zero with personal antecedents than with nonpersonal ones.

332 Patricia Poussa

The figures for personal subjects who and that in the Francis corpus are somewhat suspect. The sample is so tiny that individual standardising speakers could influence the percentages for the minor variants unduly, and in fact it turned out that two speakers from north Norfolk had produced 4 tokens of personal subject who and 3 of that. One of them, speaker 8, had been in Canada as a young man and served with the Canadian forces in the first world war, while the second, 5b, was not the main informant for Nf. 5. She was possibly the informant’s wife, but there were no biographical details. Each contributed both who and that, in the standard pattern. This could be the Norwich standard, in fact. Exclusion of these two speakers would increase the dominance of what as major expressed personal subject relative even further, leaving only one token each of who and which as personal subjects, and three of that, in the whole corpus. It looks as though who in subject position had scarcely entered the most conservative rural dialects, while old personal which had almost gone. Though the Francis corpus was recorded thirty years before my own recordings, I found a similar lack of subject who among elderly agricultural workers in Docking (SED Nf.1) in 1990. What was the major expressed relative, but some which also appeared (see Poussa 2001).

2.4 Forby, Wright and SED on What What as a particle relative used of persons was first noted in the East Anglian dialect in the late 18th century, by the glossarist Robert Forby, and was reported in the grammatical section of his Vocabulary of East Anglia (Forby 1830). This was its first mention in the dialect literature, and examples in the Oxford English Dictionary are all later. London novelists took it up only in the 1850s, and it became a sociolinguistic marker. Forby was a native resident of north-west Norfolk, a clergyman educated at Kings Lynn and Cambridge University. He was aware that the relative what was not restricted to East Anglia, as he observed that it was “certainly provincial, if it be not peculiar to us” (1830: 138–9). By the end of the 19th century, Wright had established that “[w]hat can be used when it refers to persons as well as to inanimate objects in some of the north-midland counties and in nearly all the counties south of the north midlands” (EDG §423). What had been used occasionally as a relative in Early Middle English, according to Mustanoja (1960: 194), but usually of indefinite antecedents rather than of persons. According to the SED WHOSE frame (SED IX.9.6) there is an area of what his in western Essex, adjacent to a central midland area of as his. This clearly refers to persons. Wright says: … as a rule the possessive relative cannot be expressed by a single word in the dialects; instead a periphrasis or parenthetical sentence is substituted. Especially frequent is the use of as or what coupled with a possessive pronoun, as that’s the man as his uncle was hanged. In Sc. at is similarly used, as the man at his coat’s torn. (EDG §423)


The SED WHOSE frame “That’s the chap WHOSE uncle was drowned” did not confirm Wright’s “as a rule”, for whose was reported in the south- and east- coast areas. In Norfolk, however, half of the whose responses were given only after prompting, so particlisation must have been in progress. There were also two subject frames, the WHO and THAT frames. Both referred to human antecedents. Who and that grouped about Norwich in these frames, apparently in a local standard distribution. Now that we know from CEEC that who is older in East Anglian personal letters than in London ones, we can take it as part of an old local standard, with what a later dialectal innovation. In the SED in general, zero favours the WHO frame, what the THAT frame. The two subject frames were: WHO (IX.9.5) I know a man WHO will help you. THAT (III.3.7) He is the man THAT looks after the cows. According to a statistical study by Ihalainen, it is most common for dialects to have different relatives in the two personal subject frames, with the exception of the as dialects. In the SED, the as areas regularly produce double-as in the two subject frames (see Ihalainen 1985). They also tend to produce as his or bare as in the WHOSE frame (SED IX.9.6). As is a prototypical particle relative, whose distribution in the WHOSE frame can be associated with the Scandinavian Five Boroughs area in the central midlands, and a part of Yorkshire. Though what is normally sensitive to the variation in the two personal subject frames (it prefers the THAT frame), we also find some exceptional examples of double-what along the eastern border of the as area, at the edge of the Fens. North-west Norfolk and the adjacent locality in south Lincolnshire both have double-what, and there are two such localities in north-west Essex, and also one in north-east Suffolk, where as appears in earlier sources. This would also explain why Forby, living in north-western East Anglia, was the first to report the what phenomenon, if what he heard was “doublewhat”, i.e. what used with the same micro-syntax as as. In this area the source might be the mixed, fudged and scrambled lects of the northern Fens, south of the Wash. This is the area where the southern STRUT-FOOT split is most obscure, owing to the piecemeal settlement of reclaimed land from the Norfolk and Lincolnshire sides, from the medieval to the modern periods (see Britain 2001: 223–3). There was certainly Dutch involvement in the drainage work in the 17th century, and Flemish/ Dutch settlement in Norfolk is recorded from the Norman period onwards (see Poussa 1999a, 2002a: 6). So Dutch influence may have been a contributing factor in the rise of what, though not the actual cause, as I shall argue below.

2.5 Theoretical discussion Historical discussions of relative typology have been dominated by generative syntax since the early 1980s. In this section I refer to Maxwell (1982), which influenced

334 Patricia Poussa

Dekeyser’s (1986) work on the Peterborough Chronicle Continuations. His approach will be contrasted with the lexical approach of Van der Wal (2002), on the history of the Dutch relatives.

2.5.1 On subject and object relatives It has been possible to compare the percentages of personal subject relatives historically because they are extremely common in the various sources, and because subjects are morphosyntactically neutral. We can thus simply count them, with no need to appeal to any formal theory of grammar. Further down the case hierarchy, a change from a declined pronoun strategy of relativisation to a particle strategy of relativisation, which has apparently happened at some time or times not yet specified in the Norfolk dialect, will change the word order and eventually alter the ratio of zero to that of the expressed relatives as a GAP strategy develops. The term is from Maxwell (1982), who has influenced my thinking in this section. But we can still go on counting and comparing the subject relative forms, including zero, regardless of what goes on lower down the case hierarchy. According to Maxwell, old relative particles (or particlised pronoun relatives) can stick in subject position indefinitely, as far as historical syntax is concerned. There is no obvious syntactic reason why zero relatives should multiply at the personal subject position, so I suppose that the reasons are probably phonological. It looks as though a zero in subject position can be tolerated in speech better than in writing, because the standard languages do not have them, though some dialects do, and Norfolk most certainly does. According to Fleischer, the German dialects do not have zero subjects at all, however, and he quotes examples only from English (2004: 208, 226 footnote 4). This is historically interesting, as it pinpoints the special needs of English for the adoption of new relatives in subject position, in the emerging written standard, but it does not seem to have been of vital interest to generative syntactic typologists. Zero relatives appearing lower down the hierarchy have been regarded as typologically significant, however. They tend to be associated with P-stranding and fixed word order. Romaine (1984) stated that they are typical of the modern Scandinavian languages, particularly Danish, whereas standard Dutch represents the opposite strategy, having only declined pronoun relatives, which cannot be omitted in object positions; and that standard English is mixed. It is contact with the Scandinavian languages in the Old English period which is supposed to have led to the rise of the at and as particles in the north and central midlands areas of maximum Scandinavian influence, so from a London perspective we think of the syntactic changes connected with Scandinavian settlement as spreading from the North. P-stranding is one of these. Within East Anglia, however, the Viking Period settlement was concentrated in the east of the province, according to the place name maps, with a strong concentration in south-east Norfolk,


near the fishing ports of Yarmouth and Lowestoft, the most easterly point in England. This should have had a local particlising effect at a very early period in eastern East Anglia, but this would have been slow to reach some parts of west Norfolk, because the central Norfolk watershed was heavily wooded in the medieval period, and in west Norfolk the Fens were a natural barrier to close contacts with Scandinavian dialects of the central midlands. It looks as though late contacts, which were the result of deforestation and drainage works, must somehow have produced what, at a time when the Norfolk dialect was ready to take it up in subject position in a big way, at the end of the 18th century. Since we have already argued that P-stranding was implicated in the particlisation of þe and who, it is logical to consider it as a possible source for the late rise of non-standard what to subject in East Anglia and the surrounding counties.

2.5.2 Lexical shift in Dutch According to Van der Wal (2002), Dutch has for a thousand years been undergoing a shift from D to W pronouns in written texts, but apparently with no change in syntactic typology. Her study is based on a large historical corpus of written records. European Dutch has developed compound relative adverbs of the P‑2 type as well as declined relative pronouns. For some reason there has been a tendency to replace the older D-types of relative with W-types, led by the relative adverbs. There is a plain waar and a compound P‑2 type, which Van der Wal calls a “relative pronominal adverb”, to distinguish the two. According to Van der Wal’s historical table of substitutions (p. 30), the replacement of daar by waar and daar- by waar- led the development, starting in Late Middle Dutch (1300–1500). The 18th century seems to have been decisive in this development. This stage was followed by the replacement of dat by wat (in speech, though not in writing). In Dutch it has been the personal relative pronoun die which has lagged behind. Van der Wal says: [I]t may be concluded at this stage that the three similar developments in the history of Dutch have a different chronology: the DAAR>WAAR change was completed by 1900, the DAT>WAT change is nearing its completion at the present moment; and the DIE>WIE change is still going on. In all three cases we have to do with a slow, gradual development, a process of syntactic diffusion which took centuries and which still raises the question of what may have caused the process. (Van der Wal 2002: 32)

If we compare the development in English, it appears that the shift in the relative adverbs took place in the Early Middle English period (Mustanoja 1960: 424), as did the loss of the Anglian þe relative. There have also been some very early appearances of a relative what in England, in the 11th century. Mustanoja says: “In strictly relative use what has been attested since the 11th century, but it is not very common in ME and occurs mainly after antecedents of a less definite character, like all or nothing” (Mustanoja 1960: 194). He quotes several examples, including two

336 Patricia Poussa

from the Ormulum, from south Lincolnshire, which is very close to Peterborough and north-west Norfolk. So this is the first of two separate rises of what in eastern England. Who rose to subject position in the 15th century in East Anglia, after the first rise of what in the eastern dialects. The morphosyntax of Dutch and East Anglian English are likely to have been much closer in the 11th century than they were in the 19th, both having declined pronoun relatives. Dutch speakers were probably highly influential in eastern England in the 11th century, owing to the presence of Flemings in the Norman period, as mercenaries and in the wool trade (see Poussa 1999a, 2002a: 6). But by the late modern period the East Anglian dialects had probably particlised their wh-relatives, and the second rise of what included personal what. This suggests that we ought to look for two separate causations for the two rises of what in England.

3. SED Norfolk. subdialects in the Francis Corpus When I first sorted the relative clauses found in the Francis SED tape recordings, I divided them into CORE-RELS and FINE-RELS. The latter included relatives which seemed to be limited to one syntactic slot only, were difficult to transcribe in conventional orthography, or were otherwise puzzling. Both of these categories showed clustering, into two main subdialects. One example of the possessive was found with human referent, which I transcribed as what’is; this must be reckoned a core relative if one follows Wright and the SED editors, though the second element is a resumptive pronoun. Of particular relevance to this chapter were two cases of where at O/P, with P-stranding, which went into the FINE-RELS bin. I also kept a REJECTS bin for even more problematic relatives.

3.1 First sorting In this section I present an initial sorting according to syntactic position of the core relative forms found, followed by my subdivision into two main subdialects.

3.1.1 Syntactic distribution Table 4 below presents my overall findings on the syntactic distribution of the CORE relatives only, including subjects and oblique cases, including the single possessive. This makes the total of core-rels 176. 114 of the forms in the table (c. 68%) appeared as subject of the relative clause, 61 as objects of various kinds. On the right of the table I have indicated the syntactic slots in which the forms appeared in the relative clause. There is no bound morphology, so the slots are syntactic only. No distinction has been made between direct and indirect objects, nor between restric-


Table 4. All CORE-RELS in the Francis Corpus, with syntactic role CORE-REL who what what’is which that at zero N

9 80 1 2 6 1 77

S

O

G

O/P

+ + − + + + +

+ + − − − − +

− − + − − − N/A

+ + − − − − +

176

tive versus non restrictive reference, as I wanted to get all the forms in this small but unique corpus. Subjects The greatest variety of expressed forms appears at subject position. The proportions of what and zero is extremely high, and this is because both can appear in subject and oblique positions, i.e at O and O/P. We have already remarked in the comment to Table 3 that zero appeared in the personal subject relative slot in c. 43% of occurrences (including both restrictive and nonrestrictive reference). Who is specialised to personal reference, which is unsurprising, but so too is that in this corpus, a surprising result. The fact that the minor forms which and that/at appeared only in subject position suggested that they had particlised earlier than who/what and were vanishing last from the subject position. This fits with historical records. Possessive relative I have marked the G position “not applicable” to zero relatives. This is a simplification. Various periphrastic constructions appeared in the REJECTS bin, but these I shall address elswhere.1 Whose did appear in Norfolk in the SED frame question (IX.9.6), and in my Hickling corpus, but in the absence of whom (and the presence of P-stranding) the few cases of whose which appeared can best be interpreted as a particle construction, who + {S}. Obliques It is clear from the matrix in Table 4 that the lower positions on the case hierarchy can be handled by forms of who and what, as they could be in the Wash area in Early Middle English texts, such as the Ormulum. The difference is that in EME they appeared as parts of a single declined pronoun paradigm, with shared genitive whose (various spellings), which could refer to both animate and inanimate antecedents (Kivimaa 1966: 85, 90) and who had not yet risen to the subject slot. The dialectal loss of the old dative/accusative relative whom in the Francis corpus is backed up by

338 Patricia Poussa

Table 5. Francis Corpus, General Northern versus Southern Section Localities

General Northern % 1–9

Southern % 10–13

who what which that at zero

7.69 47.00 1.70 2.65 0.85 40.17

– 43.10 – 5.17 – 51.72

Raw totals:

117

58

all the other Norfolk tape-recorded corpora available to me, so we may conclude that particlisation of the relatives has in fact taken place in Norfolk, in accordance with Wright’s general statement in EDG §423.

3.1.2 Geographical sections Table 5 shows how the forms divided naturally into two sections. The what’is form, not included in this table, was found in the Southern section. This was in fact southeastern, as appears in Map 3. Comment What and zero are frequent in both sections, but the General Northern section has the widest range of expressed subject forms. The percentage for the gap strategy is higher in the Southern section. The difference between the two sections is quite striking as regards the expressed relative who, which refers only to personal ante5 further cedents, and it will become even more apparent when the zero relatives are analysed according to syntactic position, and antecedent type. For this reason it

Map 3. General Northern and Southern sections in the Francis Corpus; SED localities in Norfolk. Adapted from SED Vol 3 (frontispiece 1) Map 3. General Northern and Southern sections in the Francis Corpus; SED localities in Norfolk. Adapted from SED Vol 3 (frontispiece 1).


would be quite misleading to present percentages for the whole F corpus without a more delicate analysis. The above sections correspond to coherent geographical localities. Map 3 above shows the geographical position of the two clusters. There were in addition five types of FINE-RELS some of which showed geographical variation. For example, where was found only in the General Northern section. The Southern total is admittedly only half that of the General Northern section, but I shall argue below that this finding cannot be due to chance. Map 3 shows the SED Norfolk localities, divided into two groups, a large “General Northern” group and a smaller “Southern” one, on the basis of the CORE-RELS forms found in the recordings. The provincial capital, Norwich, lies in the space between the two groups, with only one locality, Nf.6, to the east of it. This makes a big hole in the coverage of north-east Norfolk. It is important to note that the “Southern” group is actually south-eastern. The reason for the incomplete coverage of south Norfolk was the lack of suitable old agricultural villages in south-west Norfolk, owing to the poor sandy soil of the Brecklands – the SED was looking mainly for agricultural workers, particularly horse-ploughmen, who could supply the farming vocabulary. They avoided coastal communities, for the same reasons. Map 3 should be compared with Map 1, which shows the largest concentration of Scandinavian -by names in the south east, and with Maps 4 and 5, below. South-east Norfolk was densely populated at the end of the Viking Period, with forest clearance and agriculture well advanced. Map 4, from Williamson (1993: 112), shows the population density of Norfolk in 1066, and Map 5 (Williamson 1993: 15) shows the distribution of woodland where swine were pastured. The largest area of forest lies along the central watershed, separating east and west Norfolk, and forms a large 6

Map 4. Norfolk: population density in 1066. Adapted from Williamson (1993: 112. Map 4. Norfolk: population density in 1066. Adapted from Williamson (1993: 112. MapKEY 4. Norfolk: population in 1066.per Adapted from Williamson (1993: 112. Recordeddensity individuals square kilometre

KEY Recorded individuals per square kilometre Recorded individuals per KEY Recorded individuals per 4square kilometre Less than square kilometre Less than 4 Less than 4 4–5.9

Less than 4 4–5.9 6–7.9 8–9.9 10 and over

4–5.9 4–5.9 6–7.9 6–7.9 6–7.9 8–9.9 8–9.9 8–9.9 10 and over 10 and over 10 and over

Map 4. Norfolk: population density in 1066. Adapted from Williamson (1993: 112. Fig. 5.2)

Map 4. Norfolk: population density in 1066. Adapted from Williamson (1993: 112. Fig. 5.2)

KEY

Recorded individuals per square kilometre Less than 4 4–5.9

340 Patricia Poussa

7

Villages with woodland for swine 50–150 swine 1 51–300 swine 301–450 swine More than 450 swine

Map 5. Norfolk: the distribution of woodland in 1066. Adapted from Williamson (1993: 115.

Map 5. Norfolk: the distribution of woodland in 1066. Adapted from Williamson (1993: 115. Fig. 5.3) Fig. 5.3)

KEY

Villages with woodland for swine:

Ɣ

50–150 swine

ring around Norwich. Within this ring lie the old market towns which lie in a radial 151–300 swine This pattern can easily be seen in a modern road map. We Ɣ pattern around the city. 301–450 swine the Norwich area may have had its own dialectal development in the Ɣ may guess that early Middle Ages, because during the Norman period it was the second most popMore than 450 swine Ɣ ulous city in England, with a large agricultural hinterland, as implied by the space within the ring of forest pasture in Map 5. In the early Middle Ages Norwich was a river port, on an upper tributary of the river Yar. Later the coastal town of Yarmouth took over as the port of Norwich. Because of its population density and eastern orientation, it is not surprising that the south-eastern area should have had a different dialectal development to the north of Norfolk, nor that it should have had an influence on the language spoken in the Norwich region. On the evidence of Maps 4 and 5, contact influence in the Norwich region probably began long before the Norman conquest.

3.2 Syntactic typology of the two (rural) subdialects The two subdialects lie on different sides of the Norwich area, and the SED localities were small, rural villages. The most striking overt difference between the two groups was that who and which were only found in the General Northern section, so that the remnants of the declined WH forms (and the two fine-rel examples of where at O/P) were all concentrated there. Below I shall work my way down the case hierarchy for relativisation in each subdialect, starting with the different distribution of the zero relatives in subject position.


3.2.1 Zero relatives in subject position In subject position, there is a variety of expressed relatives in the Francis corpus (even more if the FINE-RELS are included). The variation is understandable if we use Maxwell’s theory: new particle relatives tend to enter through the subject position, at the top of the case hierarchy, and old ones, including particlised pronouns, tend to linger there also. Zero relatives may be an example of the latter. I have cut through this variety by calculating the percentages of the unfilled slots versus the filled ones. This means that we can compare the personal slots (PSU) with the nonpersonal subject slots (NPSU), and compare both of them across the two subsections of the corpus. The results were as follows. General Northern Section At PSU, c41% of relative slots were unfilled (26/44). At NPSU c14% of relative slots were unfilled (4/28). The difference, 27%, suggests that there is a covert animacy system in subject position. This is consistent with an old pronoun system of relativisation, as animacy, or natural gender, is a property of pronouns. The final -t in what, that, at is etymologically a neuter marker. Southern Section At PSU, c45% of relative slots were unfilled (6/11). At NPSU c45% of relative slots were unfilled (14/31). The lack of difference suggests NO animacy system, which is consistent with an old particle typology, whose marker has been lost in lightly accentuated relative slots. This is an unsurprising result in a Scandinavian-settled area, as this could mean a lost as. In the filled slots, only what appeared at NPSU, but both that (3 tokens) and what (14 tokens) appeared at PSU. The NPSU sample is relatively large in this section. This is the result of a preponderance of short, 15-minute interviews, which tended to discuss local things rather than people. General discussion Restrictivity versus nonrestrictivity of reference would explain the alternations between filled and unfilled slots in general, in this corpus. If a gap develops in a restrictive clause, a new relative is likely to be drawn from the nonrestrictive set. This is how what spreads, and who. The uneven result for the General Northern section is not likely to be the result of chance. It suggests that a personal who will be drawn in to the system in subject position, if who is available. There is an old dialectal gender system operating here. The use of that as a third person neuter personal pronoun meaning ‘it’ is best preserved in northern East Anglia, especially in the north east, but it was also clearly present in the tape recording for Docking (Nf.1) in the

342 Patricia Poussa

Francis corpus (see Poussa 2001). This might partly account for the preservation of an animacy system on the relatives. But it is difficult to understand how a covert animacy system could survive in the Northern section, unless there has been some kind of place-keeper in the personal subject slot, which has vanished by degrees, leaving a gap in structure. The most obvious candidate in the General Northern section would be personal which, which is present in Tables 1–3 in decreasing quantities.

3.2.2 The possessive construction The single possessive example appeared in the south-east, from speaker 10, in the Southern section, and the sentence contained an ambiguous that pronoun, as well as the core-rel what’is, used with personal reference.

(1) Freddie, he was a little mischief-ful boy – that’s what’is sister come here, … and she say, “My father can get a home for Alfred … and they don’t want Freddie!” (Nf.10)

The only relative I actually accepted as a core-rel was what’is, which I interpret as a particle plus resumptive pronoun, both referring to the antecedent boy. There seems to be no gender system involved here. There was a semantic problem with that’s. Since the East Anglian dialect that operates as a central pronoun, (see Trudgill 2001: 2; Poussa 2002a: 10–12), it is impossible to separate the demonstrative, relative and personal paradigm in the subject position. As for the absence of an animacy distinction, the English Dialect Dictionary (EDD, Wright 1898–905) mentions older dialectal examples with human or animate referents from west Yorkshire and Suffolk (i.e. southern East Anglia). A west Yorkshire example gave a personal possessive use:

(2) “Whoa’s is that bonnet?” “It’s that’s”, says the person asked, with a side inclination of her head towards her daughter.

The multiple ambiguity of that’s in example (1) would warrant the speaker’s giving a translation to what’is, to support the ambiguous that’s, and to indicate that she means a possessive relative. But however we parse that’s, the whole sentence appears to support the theory of the Scandinavian roots of this subdialect.

3.2.3 Non-subject relatives Table 6 shows the 61 oblique core-rel cases only. Southern section: gap strategy The South(-east)ern section is the simpler case. It has the higher percentage of zero in oblique positions, nearly 69%. There was one example of zero at O/P, with Type I


Table 6. Francis corpus. All oblique core-rels %

General Northern (%)

Southern (%)

who what which that at zero

08.88 35.55 – – – 55.55

– 31.25 – – – 68.75

N

45

16

P-stranding. This looks like a gap strategy, with a single marker, what, helped out in subject position by a neutralised “central” that used as a personal subject. In this area there could be an underlying as relative marker which has been replaced first by that and then by what, with no change of the underlying syntactic strategy. The old-fashioned Yarmouth dialect depicted by Dickens in the speech of Ham Peggotty in David Copperfield was of this type, as helped out by that (see Poussa 1999b: 38–42). General Northern section: old pronoun strategy? The section is larger, and contains more variation. In the General Northern section the percentage of zero in the oblique cases is 12% lower than in the south-east. This is largely accounted for by the existence of a north-western cluster including speakers 4 and 5, who both have who and what as direct objects, or at O/P with P-stranding. The (particlised) pronoun strategy seems best preserved by the Nf.4 speaker, who uses 5/6 filled objects in restrictive clauses (see examples (3), (4), (5), below). Nf.5 has a mixed dialect, and favours zero in restrictive clauses: see examples (9), (10), (11). The FINE-REL where…(prep) was also found in these two speakers, with another example at Nf. 6: see examples (6), (7) and (13). Nf.4

(3) Course if there was anybody who we see there in that field.

(4) all the cake ground for the bullocks what I got on the marsh.

(5) If there was a bird what I’d shot, he’d pick it up for me.

(6) Same as this was a bank where I put the stick on. (FINE-REL)

Nf.5

(7) There was a door out of the shelter into the stack yard, where I used to cart the hay through it. (REJECTS)

344 Patricia Poussa

(8) There was another chap there who I told you about.

(9) He had a boy _ they brought up, him and Emily.

(10) The loveliest fellow _ you ever saw in your life. (black vole) (11) There’s everything _ you’re likely to meet with. (12) He’s the same class of thing as the other what we call the water rats were, the vole. Nf.6 (13) But on the land, where it stand on. (FINE-REL) Here I would draw attention to Fleischer’s remarks on particlised relative pronouns in the German dialects. With respect to the inflected pronouns we can observe that in some instances, they do not show any signs of inflection synchronically any more and we have therefore to ask whether they should be analyzed as particles. We must pay particular attention to determine carefully whether a certain element that goes back etymologically to a pronoun still shows pronominal behaviour. (Fleischer 2004: 218)

Thus non-deletion in restrictive relative clauses shows residual pronominal behaviour. The contrast between filled and unfilled object slots is a border phenomenon in northern Germany, between the Danish and German dialects. According to Fleischer (2004: 234) the only German dialect which has zero relatives at object positions is the North Saxon dialect of Husby in Schleswig, which is on the northernmost border of the German-speaking area, very close to the Danish speaking area. Many other German dialects have invariable particle relatives, including wat, was and wo, but they do not seem to delete them in non-subject positions. Fleischer says, very cautiously, Regardless of whether the zero relatives in this dialect are due to contact with Danish, in an areal perspective this dialect turns out to be in the south-west of a larger area that has zero relatives. The fact that this dialect has zero relatives, which makes it quite exotic within the German varieties, is thus nothing very remarkable in a broader areal perspective. (Fleischer 2004: 234–5)

Fleischer’s paper does not discuss P-stranding in detail, though he gives one example of P-stranding with final preposition from North Saxon of Husby, with the relative slot filled by vad (p. 224, example 11), and one with preverbal preposition from North Saxon of Schleswig, this time with wo, with personal antecedent (p.225– 6, example 13). The North Saxon developments of both wo and vad, with zero object relatives in Husby, seem to be closest to the Norfolk ones. P-stranding without


the omission of the relative seems to be the general West Germanic pattern; it extends to Dutch and to Afrikaans, as I shall show below. Nf.5 has a more mixed dialect. His zero object forms may be connected with a local substratum of as forms. One example, him as is unpitching, was found by the SED in Nf.5 in the Incidental Material (printed in the Basic Material under III.3.7). There is a resemblance here to the situation in south-east Norfolk. Vanished as would explain the non-subject zero forms, including those at O/P. Here etymology breaks down: if a what has replaced a lost as, it will presumably pattern syntactically like as, and will not show pronominal behaviour. In the SED frame questions, the Nf.5 locality afforded a double response “who, what”, to the subject WHO frame, while Nf. 4 gave only who. Both localities gave that in the THAT frame, but Nf.5 only after prompting. Thus the Nf.4 speaker represents the more pronominal dialect (see Poussa 2001: 257–8 for further examples from this speaker).

3.2.4 Whereon to what . . . on The where . . . on examples (6) and (13) look as if they have been made by stranding the last element of a whereon relative adverbial. In the reject (7) we have a similar construction with a resumptive pronoun, in a nonrestrictive clause. They appear to be relics of the late East Anglian P‑2 stage, which have undergone Type I P-stranding without deletion of the relative part of the compound. This is a development not envisaged by Delsing, who deals with standard languages. He discusses the P‑2 types under his Type II, as follows. In Standard German and most High German dialects, R-pronouns are compounded with (and inseparable from) the preposition. To the extent that R-pronouns are used productively in Modern Scandinavian, they are also of this type. (Delsing 2003: 76–7)

I presume that these three examples are relics, which were licensed by the locative meaning present in the context, and the very relaxed style of the interviews. The speakers at Nf. 4 and Nf.5 were a bullock keeper and a gamekeeper, respectively, and were very fluent speakers. I have discussed two of these where examples in a recent article (Poussa 2004), where I took them to be the precursor of what in these constructions.3 The very close connection of the interrogatives and relatives can explain the emergence of what from the P‑2 construction, when it is subjected to P-stranding. Thus we can compare the following translation equivalents: (10) Wherewith shall it be salted? (1611, Authorised Version) (11) What shall we salt it with? (12) The salt wherewith we salted it was useless.

346 Patricia Poussa

(13) a. *The salt where we salted it with was useless. b. The salt what we salted it with was useless. c. The salt we salted it with was useless. If deletion rules cannot be applied to the where then there will be a translation problem with the relative wherewith, as in (13a), which can be corrected by resorting to the interrogative/indefinite pronoun what, as in (13b). This problem would not have arisen at all if the variety had been able to delete object particles, in the modern Danish manner. Then it would have produced (13c). Three speakers in the northern section did this, three did the opposite, but all had Type I P-stranding. Afrikaans A rather similar restructuring seems to have taken place in Afrikaans, according to the description by Holm, who states, “Afrikaans makes almost exclusive use of a single relative pronoun wat (which can never be omitted) for all antecedents” (2004: 122). He gives the following example: (14) Ek wil die boek hê {wat jy in jou hand het} ‘I want the book which you have in your hand’ An exception is the O/P position, where there are two possibilities, the first with the P‑2 relative adverbial pronoun of Dutch, with pied-piping, the second with the normal Afrikaans wat, with stranding: (15) a. die probleem waarvan jy praat ‘the problem whereof you speak’ b. die probleem wat jy van praat Holm’s suggestion on the origin of Afrikaans wat is as follows: The origin of the form of the Afrikaans relative is Dutch wat, which can occur as a relative pronoun after an indefinite (e.g. alles wat je zegt ‘everything you say’). This form (and the parallel Negerhollands CD relativizer wa) may have been selected over competing forms for grammaticalization as the relativizer due to the influence of non-standard or archaic Dutch usage, or simply because it is more salient. (Holm 2004: 122)

The same form all what, also existed in Middle English, and may help to explain the early rise of what at that period. I suspect P-stranding was also involved. But the type of P-stranding found in (15b) is not Type I, but the same type as was found in the Peterborough Chronicle Continuations, with the invariable relative þe. I repeat it below, for comparison. (16) Se cyng Willelm þe we embe sprekaþ . . . ‘That king William that/who we about speak . . .’ So the Afrikaans type (15b) corresponds in word order to the 11th-century Pstranding in East Anglia, but differs from (16) in having no gender marking.


Conclusion The preservation of an animacy system in spite of the particlisation of the relative markers was the most surprising finding in the Norfolk tape recordings. The nearest equivalent was the Schleswig dialects of North Saxon, particularly the dialect of Husby, on the edge of the Danish dialects. A similar adstrate situation seems to have existed in Norfolk. The analysis of the Francis corpus gave a remarkably archaic picture of the relative typologies of the two subdialects covered by the SED localities. Regardless of the relative markers used, the Southern section (the Yarmouth area) showed a very Danish typology of relativisation. Omission of the relative in object positions was very frequent, the possessive was formed by the use of a relative marker plus resumptive pronoun, there was no animacy distinction at subject position, and zero relatives were equally common with personal or nonpersonal antecedents in subject position. A lost as was suggested as the solution. By contrast, the whole of the General Northern section showed a higher proportion of filled object slots, and traces of an animacy distinction in subject position. The personal relative who appeared in the Northern section only in small quantities, but for two traditional speakers in west Norfolk it appeared at the lower positions in the case hierarchy, including O/P, with P-stranding, in an animacy system with what. This type of dialect could have been the source for the 15th century rise of who. The recycling of who must have proceeded faster in larger towns, such as Norwich. In addition, dialect contact between the two typologies must have happened very early in the Norwich region, as Norwich lies between the two rural subdialects, and must have experienced rapid change through dialect mixing during the Viking Period (for which we have no dialect records except for onomastic ones). Norwich was a lively trading centre and provincial capital, and it became the second largest city in England under the Normans, after their deliberate destruction of the city of York. It is likely that coastal trading routes carried the who innovation south to London in the 15th century, bypassing many inland dialects in the process. The rise of who filled a need in the emerging standard, though what did not. The similarities in the rise of what in Dutch and English seem to be connected with P-stranding, as we see from the Afrikaans example. The gradual loss of the P‑2 relative adverbials in the dialects of East Anglia and the North of England, via P-stranding and restructuring, seems the most probable cause of the widespread eruptions of non-standard what, both personal and nonpersonal, which began around the end of the 18th century and continued during the 19th century. I conclude that the ultimate cause was the meeting of two opposed typologies of relativisation, which was felt very early in northern East Anglia, because of dialect mixing.

348 Patricia Poussa

Notes * The Francis corpus was recorded for the SED in 1957–59 by its Norfolk fieldworker, the late Professor Nelson Francis. I wish to express my gratitude for his generosity in allowing me to use copies of his Norfolk tape recordings for my research. 1. A so far unpublished paper, “Wh-relatives in Proto-Scandinavian and Early English”, was presented at the Ninth Nordic Conference for English Studies, Department of English, University of Aarhus, Denmark, May 27–9, 2004. 2. The percentages shown in this table are taken from my (unpublished) doctoral thesis, and have been carefully checked. In the two papers published in 2002 (a and b), the percentage of who was mistakenly printed as 0.76, instead of 7.69%. I have taken this opportunity to correct my error. 3. In my article of 2004 I paid special attention to the dialect of the northern Norfolk Broads area (SED Nf.6), and included some late literary dialect evidence for the transfer from Wherefore . . . ? to What . . . for? in that area.

References Britain, David. 2001. Welcome to East Anglia!: Two major dialect boundaries in the Fens. East Anglian English, ed. by Jacek Fisiak and Peter Trudgill, 217–42. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Dekeyser, Xavier. 1986. Relative markers in the Peterborough Chronicle: 1070–154; or linguistic change exemplified. Folia Linguistica Historica 7: 93–105. Delsing, Lars-Olof. 2003. Preposition stranding and case. Grammar in focus. Festschrift for Christer Platzack 18 November 2003, vol. 2, ed. by Lars-Olof Delsing, Cecilia Falk, Gunlög Josefsson and Halldór Sigurðsson, 75–84. Lund: Department of Scandinavian Languages, University of Lund. Fleischer, Jürg. 2004. A typology of relative clauses in German dialects. Dialectology meets typology. Dialect grammar from a cross-linguistic perspective, ed. by Bernd Kortmann, 211–43. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Forby, Robert. 1830. The vocabulary of East Anglia. London: Nichols. Reprinted 1970, Newton Abbot: David & Charles. Holm, John. 2004. Languages in contact. The partial restructuring of vernaculars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ihalainen, Ossi. 1985. Synchronic variation and linguistic change: evidence from British English dialects. Papers from the 4th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, ed. by Roger Eaton, Olga Fischer, Willem Koopman and Frederike van der Leek, 61–72. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kivimaa, Kirsti. 1966. Þe and þat as clause connectives in early Middle English with especial consideration of the emergence of the pleonastic þat. Commentationes Humanorum Litterarum 39: 1–271. Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica. Maxwell, Dan. 1982. Implications of NP accessibility for diachronic syntax. Folia Linguistica Historica 3(2): 135–52. Mustanoja, Tauno F. 1960. A Middle English syntax. Part I. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique [Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki 23]. Nevalainen, Terttu and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 2002. The rise of the relative who in Early Modern English. Relativisation on the North Sea littoral, ed. by Patricia Poussa, 109–21. Munich: Lincom Europa.


Nevalainen, Terttu and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 2003. Historical sociolinguistics: Language change in Tudor and Stuart England. London and New York: Longman. Orton, Harold, and Philip M. Tilling (eds.). 1969–71. Survey of English dialects: B. The basic material, vol. 3: The East Midland counties and East Anglia (SED). 3 parts. Leeds: Arnold. Orton, Harold, Stewart Sanderson and John D. Widdowson (eds.). 1978. The linguistic atlas of England (LAE). London: Croom Helm. Platzack, Christer. 2002. Relativization in the Germanic languages, with particular emphasis on Scandinavian. Relativisation on the North Sea littoral, ed. by Patricia Poussa, 77–96. Munich: Lincom Europa. Poussa, Patricia. 1994. Norfolk relatives (Broadland). Verhandlungen des Internationalen Dialekt ologenkongresses, Bamberg 29.7.–4.8.1990, vol. 3, ed. by Wolfgang Viereck, 418–26. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner [Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik, Beiheft 76]. Poussa, Patricia. 1997. Derivation of it from þat in eastern dialects of British English. Language history and language modelling, ed. by Raymond Hickey and Stanisław Puppel, 691–9. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Poussa, Patricia. 1999a. The Flemings in Norman Norfolk: Their possible influence on relative pronoun development. Thinking English grammar. To honour Xavier Dekeyser, professor emeritus, ed. by Guy A. J. Tops, Betty Devriendt and Steven Geukens, 89–98. Leuven: Peeters. Poussa, Patricia. 1999b. Dickens as sociolinguist: dialect in David Copperfield. Writing in non-standard English, ed. by Irma Taavitsainen, Gunnel Melchers and Päivi Pahta, 27–44. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Poussa, Patricia. 2000. Reanalysing whose. The actuation and spread of the invariable who relative in Early Modern English. Folia Linguistica Historica 21(1–2): 159–88. Poussa, Patricia. 2001. Syntactic change in north-west Norfolk. East Anglian English, ed. by Jacek Fisiak and Peter Trudgill, 243–59. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Poussa, Patricia. 2002a. North Sea relatives: Introduction. Relativisation on the North Sea littoral, ed. by Patricia Poussa, 1–23. Munich: Lincom Europa. Poussa, Patricia. 2002b. Gendered speech in a dialect corpus from north Norfolk. Variation past and present. VARIENG studies on English for Terttu Nevalainen, ed. by Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi and Matti Rissanen, 231–47. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique [Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki LXI]. Poussa, Patricia. 2004. The motivation of where and what as relative markers in north Norfolk. An international master of syntax and semantics. Papers presented to Aimo Seppänen on the occasion of his 75th birthday, ed. by Gunnar Bergh, Jennifer Herriman and Mats Mobärg, 181–8. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis [Gothenburg Studies in English 88]. Poussa, Patricia (ed.). 2002. Relativisation on the North Sea littoral. Munich: Lincom Europa. Romaine, Suzanne. 1984. Towards a typology of relative clause formation strategies in Germanic. Historical syntax, ed. by Jacek Fisiak, 437–70. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Schneider, Edgar W. 1992. Who(m)? Constraints on the loss of case-marking of wh-pronouns in the English of Shakespeare and other poets of the Early Modern English period. History of Englishes: New methods and interpretations in historical linguistics, ed. by Matti Rissanen, Ossi Ihalainen, Terttu Nevalainen and Irma Taavitsainen, 437–52. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter [Topics in English linguistics 10]. Trudgill, Peter. 2001. Modern East Anglia as a dialect area. East Anglian English, ed. by Jacek Fisiak and Peter Trudgill, 1–12. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.

350 Patricia Poussa van der Wal, Marijke. 2002. Relativisation in the history of Dutch: Major shift or lexical change? Relativisation on the North Sea littoral, ed. by Patricia Poussa, 27–35. Munich: Lincom Europa. Williamson, Tom. 1993. The origins of Norfolk. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Wright, Joseph (ed.). 1898–905. The English dialect dictionary (EDD). 6 vols. London: Oxford University Press. Wright, Joseph. 1905. The English dialect dictionary, vol. 5: The English dialect grammar (EDG). Oxford: Henry Frowde.

chapter 15

Vernacular universals? The case of plural was in Early Modern English* Terttu Nevalainen University of Helsinki

English vernaculars share a number of non-standard features such as negative concord and the use of was with plural subjects. What interests the historical sociolinguist is the time-depth of these “vernacular universals”. The chapter discusses the variation between the singular and plural past-tense forms of be with plural subjects in three dialect regions — North, East Anglia and London — between the early 15th and late 17th centuries. The data come from the Corpus of Early English Correspondence, and statistical analyses are performed to find out whether the observed variation is more likely to correlate with language-internal factors (type of subject) than with the external variable of region. Was generalization is traced back to Northern English, but it also occurs in the other regions studied. A brief comparison is made with Finnish, a non-Indo-European language, which shows a similar vernacular non-concord pattern. The chapter concludes that the feature reflects a more general typological trend found in number marking in the languages of the world.

1. Introduction It is not commonplace to find typological generalizations based on register variation. Broad traditional classifications of languages were made in terms of structural types such as isolating, agglutinative and inflectional languages. In these classifications register or even dialectal differences are not an issue, but a language is expected to display its basic structural type under all circumstances. At a more concrete level, typological generalizations are made with the aim of establishing structural patterns shared across languages. In this search for typological generalizations, language-internal variability, if considered at all, is usually limited to regional variation (cf. Croft 2003: 28–30). But there is of course more to intralinguistic variation than regional varieties. Contrasting regional and register variation in English, Biber et al. (1999: 21) go so far as to say that “grammatical differences across registers are more extensive than those across dialects”. Their evidence comes from quantitative examination of four registers (conversation, fiction, news and academic prose) in American and British

352 Terttu Nevalainen

English. Modern sociolinguistic research tradition puts particular weight on conversation, and uses the term vernacular with reference to “the language used by ordinary people in their everyday affairs” and “the style in which the minimum of attention is given to the monitoring of speech” (Labov 1972: 69, 208). This spoken form of language is acquired in early childhood and it is contrasted with more formal varieties, including the written registers learnt at school. My chapter was inspired by the notion of vernacular universals launched by the sociolinguist J. K. Chambers (1995: 242; 2004). He argues that these patterns result from natural linguistic processes that belong to the human language faculty. They are not the property of a single language such as English, but have counterparts across languages as they derive their origins from the same rules and representations in the bioprogramme (Chambers 2004: 129). These “vernacular roots” are found to include the use of singular forms of the verb ‘be’ with plural subjects. In English, was is used instead of were with a plural subject in cases like They was the last ones. This pattern is widespread in regional dialects and casual mainstream English all over the world. Chambers argues against dialect diffusion as a means of the transmission of “default singulars”, because they occur in child language, pidgins and creoles, as well as in interlanguage varieties of English. If we look at non-concord with past-tense forms of be in more detail, two principal patterns emerge, and have been reported for English regional varieties, for instance, by Anderwald (2001) and Britain (2002). The first is levelling to was in all contexts, across person, number and polarity, and the second is levelling to weren’t in negative clauses and often to was in affirmative ones (Britain 2002: 19). The first pattern is considerably more common across vernacular Englishes than the second. Chambers (2004: 132) suggests that levelling to was is simpler and more basic, and that the second pattern might in fact have developed from it. Historical data offers a hitherto underexplored source of ‘external evidence’ for testing Chambers’s vernacular universal. After all, in order to make it into the list of possible cross-linguistic generalizations, it must qualify as one in earlier English. Previous diachronic research on the use of was and were with plural subjects is embedded in surveys of the forms of be in earlier English such as Forsström (1948), or focus on the history of the collocation you was (Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2002; Laitinen forthcoming). After considering some typological generalizations on number concord in English, I will discuss was/were variation in Present-day British English, and go on to outline the patterns that we could expect to find in its earlier stages. I will look at corpus evidence of Late Middle and Early Modern English regional use in order to determine the extent to which the levelled patterns of pasttense be occurred historically. My material comes from the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC), compiled by the Historical Sociolinguistics team at the University of Helsinki.1

Vernacular universals? 353

The empirical part of my study focuses on factors, linguistic and language-external, which promoted the use of the past-tense variants of be with plural subjects in different regions in England from the mid-15th century to the latter half of the 17th century. Multivariate (VARBRUL) analyses were carried to assess the degree of change in the weighting of these factors across time. In the discussion section I will compare my findings with Present-day varieties of English, and also briefly contrast English with Finnish, a language typologically very different from English, in order to further test the viability of Chambers’s universalist hypothesis (cf. 2004: 142).

2. Previous research 2.1 Typology and markedness The typological accounts of the “default singular” was in English vary in generality, Chambers’s being among the most far-reaching. Only some of the views put forward will be discussed here. Traditional typological comparisons are based on inflectional marking. In his classic work, Greenberg (1966) makes generalizations about number marking that apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verbs. They form a pattern that places singular as the most unmarked category, followed by, in this order, plural, dual and trial/paucal. Plural is overtly coded in English, whereas singular usually is not (for a summary listing of Greenberg’s markedness patterns, see Croft 2003: 156–7). Battistella (1990: 112) draws his conclusions from meaning, use and distribution, and arrives at the broad generalization that “it is singular that is unmarked for verbs”. He illustrates the strength of his argument by cases of neutralization in the present-tense use of be such as those in (1).

(1) Where’s my shoes? There’s a few people coming over tonight. Who is going with us? Who is getting married?

Hudson (1999: 202–4) approaches these issues from another angle when he compares agreement patterns in standard and non-standard varieties of English. He finds a good deal of variation among regional dialects in the British Isles compared with the standard. Some non-standard varieties lack the standard English rule that specifies that the past form of be has a subject-number; these non-standard varieties do not have a number distinction between was and were. They form the basilect that Chambers posits when he discusses the distributional differences of default singulars across varieties of English. In some British dialects personal pronouns


are given, in Hudson’s terms (1999: 204), obligatory plural-number, while singular marking is normal with all other kinds of plural subjects. These varieties extend Chambers’s vernacular universal pattern to present-tense forms of be. This distinction between pronoun and noun subjects was also relevant historically (see 2.3). Hudson’s survey concludes with some traditional British English dialects that have no subject-verb agreement in be in the present tense but generalize am, be, bin, or are throughout (Trudgill 1999: 106). They are not covered by Chambers’s vernacular roots.

2.2 Was/were variation in Present-day English dialects The use of was with plural subjects is widely documented in present-day vernacular varieties of English around the world (for summaries, see Meechan and Foley 1994; Tagliamonte 1998; Anderwald 2001; Britain 2002; Chambers 2004; Hay and Schreier 2004). The pattern even occurs with some regularity in casual mainstream varieties. In their corpus-based grammar of Present-day British and American English, Biber et al. (1999: 191) observe that was is used in 5 percent of the cases with they and in 10% of the cases with you. Anderwald (2001) analysed the distribution of was and were with both plural existential there and personal pronoun subjects in twenty dialect areas in the spoken component of the British National Corpus (BNC).2 She found that generalized was appeared in affirmative clauses in every region, on average in 12 percent of the cases. Its proportion varied from 3 percent of all possible cases in Humberside to about 40 percent in East Anglia. In negative clauses the reverse was the case: wasn’t was generalized in 5 percent of the cases, whereas negative weren’t occurred on average in 28 percent of all the cases, the range varying between zero in Humberside and 53 percent in East Anglia. In her study of was/were variation in the city of York, Tagliamonte shows that 17 percent of all standard affirmative were contexts were realized as was. By contrast, only 3 percent of standard affirmative contexts of was were realized as were (Tagliamonte 1998: 161). The use of was in were contexts was particularly frequent with existential there subjects and, to a lesser extent, with the subject pronouns you and we. In negative clauses, levelling to weren’t was also in evidence (in 15 percent of standard was contexts). On the basis of previous research and her own results, Tagliamonte (1998: 158) sets up a constraint hierarchy for non-standard was. NP existential there-subjects come at the top of the scale favouring was, followed by the subject pronoun you and plural NPs, with the subject pronouns we and they at the end of the scale. As her data shows that it is the younger speakers who promote was with existentials, Tagliamonte (1998: 185) hypothesizes that the use of was in existential constructions


has gradually increased over time. This is one of the hypotheses that will be tested in this chapter. Tagliamonte’s subject constraint hierarchy is almost identical with the scale proposed by Chambers (2004: 133), which places plural existentials with there as the most typical subject favouring was, followed by you in the second and we in the third place. Plural NP subjects come next and they last. Chambers admits that there is some variability in the order of the middle categories in different speech communities. But he suggests the two poles, there and they, clearly mark the basilect and acrolect across the dialect continuum, with there being sometimes allowed even in standard varieties (acrolects) and the deepest basilect permitting all types, including they. Compared with this interpretation of the two poles of the scale, Tagliamonte’s hypothesis of a change in progress with existential there subjects becomes even more interesting. There is some recent research on New Zealand English to suggest that a reorganization of the system can indeed take place in a speech community over time. Hay and Schreier (2004) found that singular concord declined steadily in existentials in New Zealand during the late 19th century, but subsequently reversed its trajectory and became a well-established part of Present-day New Zealand English.

2.3 Earlier regional variation Earlier studies suggest that subject-verb non-concord with plural subjects is not a recent phenomenon, but already occurs in Middle English, and possibly even in Old English. The first pattern discussed above, levelling to was, is illustrated with 16th-century material in (2) marked in bold. The second pattern, weren’t generalized in negatives, however, is not readily found in earlier periods except with plural subjects and singular you, as in (3). More will be said about it in Section 4.2, below.

(2) for all the shepes of Callais wase lade for the Kynis stofe be thar sayng, that I cannot hav non car it yet. (1544 GGRAUNT 107)

(3) I conceyvyd þat at þe wryghtyng off þat letter ye weere nott serteyn off the delyng betwyn Towneshende and me. (1474 J2PASTON I,477)

Forsström (1948: 207) reports that the use of was in plural contexts is typical of the northern dialects in Middle English. It appears with existentials, in the pattern there was followed by a plural subject, but hardly at all with plural personal pronouns. Similarly, the third-person present indicative es (is) often occurs with plural subjects in northern Middle English. Forsström (1948: 228) says that “this is particularly the case when the verb is not immediately preceded or followed by a per-


sonal pronoun”. In northern texts he also finds the opposite tendency but in a much weaker form, i.e., the levelling of were to the singular, but he does not connect it with negative contexts. There are several factors at work here to do with features characteristic of northern English dialects. That NP subjects favour is and was has been connected with what is known as the Northern Subject Rule, an inflectional distinction made in many northern dialects between full NP and pronoun subjects and shown in verb inflections (Chambers 2004: 133). According to this rule, plural pronoun subjects placed next to the verb are zero-marked on the verb (they play), while plural NP subjects and other subjects not adjacent to the verb receive morphological marking (musicians plays). Bailey et al. (1989: 292–3) came across this constraint in the distribution of the present-tense forms of be in the 15th-century Cely letters. They found that the use of is with plural subjects is almost uniquely associated with NP subjects, while the other present-tense forms of be (are, be, ben) occur with both NP and pronoun subjects. Although these findings do not involve past-tense forms of be, they are supported by Forsström’s northern Middle English data, where neither was nor is readily occurred with plural pronoun subjects. A factor related to second-person pronouns is the widespread use in earlier English of the singular pronoun thou, which took the past-tense form were in most Middle English dialects but the singular was in northern Middle English. Thou was also occurs in the North East and North West Midland data in Forsström (1948: 173, 178, 214). Probably on analogy with thou was, the first sporadic instances of ye and you was in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) quotations database go back to northern writers, the first one to Robert Henryson, the Scottish poet, writing in 1450, and the second to John Skelton, a Yorkshire-born poet writing in the 1520s. See (4) and (5).

(4) You was our drowrie and our dayes darling. (OED; c1450, Henryson Mor. Fab. 19)

(5) In dud frese ye was schryned With better frese lynyd. (OED; a1529, Skelton Poems agst. Garnesche 46)

One of the issues this chapter sets out to clarify is the occurrence of was with plural pronouns, you in particular, in Early Modern English. Since you and we are extremely frequent with was today, the historically attested restrictions on subject types with was suggest that a change must have taken place over time. Hence, while levelling to was with plural subjects as such is not a recent phenomenon, and may therefore qualify as a salient vernacular universal in English, it looks as though the constraints on its use have been reweighted over time.


3. Material and method For this study I investigated the choice between was and were with plural subjects in the regional component of the Corpus of Early English Correspondence, which covers the period from 1410 to 1681 (for details of the CEEC, see Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 1996 and 2003). Table 1 presents the range of data that the corpus provides for studying Late Middle and Early Modern English on a social and regional basis. Four geographical areas receive particular attention in the CEEC: London, the Court, East Anglia, and the North. People who lived in the City of London and Southwark count as Londoners. The Court refers to people, mostly resident in Westminster, who were courtiers or members of the royal household, but diplomats and high-ranking government officials are also included here. Writers resident in Norfolk and Suffolk count as East Anglians, and those living in counties north of the Chester–Humber line as Northerners. The figures given in Table 1 do not include natives of a given area who had settled permanently somewhere else (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 2003: 45–9). To clarify the procedure that I have adopted in my data analysis, a few more points need to be made. First, only instances of was and were used in the indicative plural were considered. We may assume that including the subjunctive would have skewed the results in favour of were. To avoid an individual bias in the data, a fixed quota of fifty instances was imposed on writers with a larger number of instances of the was/were variable in their autograph letters. Invariable contexts were excluded from the quantitative analysis. They include subject types which never admit the plural in the data. NPs consisting of coreferential nouns such as in example (6) were left out because they do not admit a plural verb form. Similarly, noun phrases expressing quantity, typically sums of money, do not occur with a plural verb in the data, and were therefore excluded from the statistical analysis. In (7), a hundred pounds is referred to by the pronoun it, and in (8) Table 1. The Corpus of Early English Correspondence (1998 version) Writers by social rank Royalty Nobility Gentry Clergy Professionals Merchants Other non-gentry

Writers by domicile 2.4% 14.7% 39.3% 13.6% 11.2% 8.4% 9.4%

Court London East Anglia North Other

Note: time span: 1410–1681 (c.2,700,000 words; 778 writers; c.6,000 letters)

7.8% 13.9% 17.1% 12.5% 48.6%


eight pence (viij d.) takes a singular verb. There are certain nouns with equivocal number, such as news which could appear either in the singular or in the plural; they were also left out. See examples (9a) and (9b) (cf. Quirk et al. 1985: 310, 757–8).

(6) ther wasse in tyme paste a verians and a jarre betwyne Richard Bowell and my maystur youre fadur for a dute that he schulde owe to my said maystur . . . (1480 JCELY 77)

(7) I shalbee bould to put your Ladyship in mind of a hundreth pownds which was due to mee Whitsontide last and as yet unpaid; wherfore I humblie beseech yow to dyrect Mr Baldwine that hee pay itt presently, (1624 TWENTWORTH 219)

(8) receyued a letter from yow, in the wyche letter was viij d., wyth þe whyche I schuld bye a peyer of slyppers; (1479? W3PASTON III, I,650)

(9) a. and in the same I wrotte you soche newes as then were currant; and as those were unscertaine to be trewe, so ther be nov newis as moche uncertain . . . (1545 JJOHNSON 442) b. my Father longed to heare from us, and to heare what newes was best to be sent, in which I will so well as can satysfye hym herin. (1581 PGAWDY 5)

As the plural use of collectives such as squadron, fleet and other military units is semantically rather than socially determined, these cases were excluded from the analysis. Co-ordinated NP subjects usually but not always occur with plural were in the data, and were hence included. Some interesting local asymmetries also occurred, as between was and are in (10) and (11). In both cases the instances of singular was were included in the study. (10) Some of our chief commanders, as Col. Sands and Duglas, was wounded, and are since both dead. (1642 NWHARTON 19) (11) That in the evening from a steeple wch hath advantage for itt, was desirned 300 vessels. They are merchantmen in generall . . . (1652 THARRISON 217)

4. Results 4.1 Regional distribution The regional CEEC data yielded altogether 1,821 instances of the was/were variable with plural subjects between 1440 and 1681. The general distribution of was is

Vernacular universals? 359 50 40 30 % 20 10 0

1440– 1519

1520– 1579

1580– 1639

1640– 1681

Figure 1. Was v. were with plural subjects 1440–1681; the frequency of was (CEEC 1998)

shown in Figure 1. An overall declining trend from about 11 percent to 5 percent can be detected as we move on from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. It is interesting to note that the average frequency in the first two subperiods, 1440–1519 and 1520–1579, is roughly the same as that reported by Anderwald (2001) for the British National Corpus. As in Present-day British English, the picture changes when we take regional variation into account. Figure 2 shows the distributions of the was/were variable for the four areas focused on in the CEEC. The use of was in the plural peaks in the North in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when it exceeds 40 per cent of the cases there. The pattern occurs in over ten per cent of the cases in London in the two periods but, with the exception of the first subperiod, remains below ten per cent throughout the period at the Royal Court and in East Anglia. I shall come back to these figures in the multivariate analysis of the data in 4.3. 100 90 80 70 60 % 50 40 30 20 10 0

London Court East Anglia North

1440– 1519

1520– 1579

1580– 1639

1640– 1681

Figure 2. Was v. were with plural subjects in four areas 1440–1681; the frequency of was (CEEC 1998)

4.2 Vernacular patterns While the first pattern, levelling to was in all contexts, is well attested in the historical material, the second, levelling to were in negatives, can only be tested for the plural in the corpus data collected for this study. The use of weren’t with you was


illustrated in (2), above. I calculated the frequencies of all negated sentences with was and were in the data, and tested the statistical significance of their distributions by means of the chi-square test. In no one period was a statistically significant distributional difference detected. This suggests that weren’t generalization must be of a more recent date even in the northern dialects where it occurs today (Britain 2002). But since negation was not very frequent with either verb form, future research could throw more light on the matter. Nevertheless, the pattern of were used with a singular subject reported by Forsström (1948: 228) does occur in the affirmative. Consider (12). (12) Mr. Hatten youre neighbour, who taried to speke with some of the same clarkes (for owne of them were then at home); and so after other comynication, and that he had told me he was with you . . . (1545 JJOHNSON 400) All subject types that have been found to occur with plural was in Present-day English are attested in the historical corpus data, but with some major differences in the proportions in which they appear. When they are listed in order of frequency, the list is headed by existential there with notional NP subjects, as in example (13). (13) It is no marvell our men runn fast awaye. I am ashamed to write it, there was vc ran away in two dayes, and a great manie to the enemye . . . (1586 RDUDLEY 338) In many modern varieties of English the second most frequent subject type is you, in particular when the pronoun is used in the singular. The literature varies as to the next most frequent type, which is either the pronoun we or a full NP subject. The least frequent type in most accounts is the subject pronoun they. In the CEEC data we turns out to be the only plural pronoun to occur with any frequency with was. There are a couple of instances with you, as in (14), and even fewer of they — none in the London or northern data. In this respect Forsström’s findings (1948) for Middle English are corroborated by the correspondence material. (14) You tould me you was become a water drinker. (1661 JCOSIN II,312) These findings do not support the Oxford English Dictionary statement that was prevailed with singular you in the 17th and 18th centuries (OED, s.v. you, pronoun, 5a). They rather agree with Tieken-Boon van Ostade’s suggestion (2002) that you was only generalized in the 18th century (also Laitinen, forthcoming). The earliest couple of instances of you was in the vast Chadwyck-Healey LION English drama database go back to the 1630s. One of them is cited in (15). The same is true of the Michigan Early Modern English Materials (MEMEM), a database that covers the period from 1500 to 1700, in which you was only begins to appear from the 1650s onwards, and even then as a minority variant. The two cases in (16) are among the earliest.3


(15) . . . Gingerbread, sh’ad serv’d my turne. ’Twas a miraculous feaver you was in. (LION, William Davenant, The platonick lovers (1636), v:i) (16) I remember when I intimated this unto you, your Ladiship made answer, that when you was ill, you did not trouble your self with the study of any thing, and when you was well, it was no prejudice to you. (MEMEM, Henry More to Anne Conway, 1653) Unlike you was, plural NP subjects occur frequently with the default singular was in the CEEC data. The category ranges from simple plural NPs, as in (17), to co-ordinated NPs of varying syntactic complexity as in (18), (19) and (20). Example (17) comes from a letter written by a London merchant, and the other three from two northern noblemen’s correspondence. (17) I dyd mystake the prices of wyne, when I showed you at my last being at Dene that the prices was but iij li the tonne. (1546 JJOHNSON 604) (18) both I and my lady wass in all your new warkis at Doresme . . . (1500 TDARCY 21) (19) We hade huntyd ther with Mr Chancler [{and{] Mr Tresurer, bot in goyde faithe we and owr seruauntis and dogis wass soo were, we myght not. (1500 TDARCY 21) (20) Coldingham with two other townes nye adjoyninge thereunto and all the corne thereunto belonginge to the value of 2,000li sterlinge was burnt and nothinge left standinge but onely the abbey where they toke 80 prisoners and 60 good horse beside 300 head of cattle. (1532 HPERCY6 97) The case in (21) illustrates the common use of were with a co-ordinated NP subject. Finally, (22) is an example from Thomas Cromwell with was followed by a co-ordinated NP subject, which in the next clause is picked up by they were. (21) Riught whellbelouid brother, I recomend me wnto yow wyth aull myne hart, informeyng yow at the makyng of thys howr father and mother wher whell comforttyd and sendys yow ther blessyngys. (1481 RCELYJR 119) (22) And in the commission was also my lord of Norffolk and the bisshop of Duresme, but they were absent. (1538 TCROMWELL II,133) Combinations such as (22) are not atypical of the 15th- and 16th-century usage, and take us back to the quantitative analysis of the corpus data.


4.3 Multivariate analysis Wanting to estimate the relative impact of the various subject types and dialect areas on the choice between was and were with plural subjects in the diachronic corpus, I carried out multivariate analyses for each of the four periods using the GOLDVARB program designed by Rand and Sankoff (1990). As my main interest lies in the choice of was rather than the more frequent variant ware, the internal and external constraints will be presented in terms of their probability of appearing with was in the data. The VARBRUL results for the earliest period, 1440–1519, are shown in Table 2. Following Tagliamonte’s practice (1998), the factors are presented in the order of significance calculated by the regression analysis. The factor weights vary between 1 and zero; the higher the weight, the more the factor favours the use of was, and the lower the weight, the more it favours the use of were. Table 2 confirms the information given in Figure 2 that the statistically most significant regional contribution to the choice of was is made by the North, and that East Anglia distinctly disfavours this use. Turning to the grammatical subject, we find that the greatest effect on the choice of was is exerted by existential there with plural NP subjects (THERE). Plural NP subjects (NP) in non-existential constructions also slightly favour the use of was but pronoun subjects (PRO) clearly inhibit it. Moving on to the next time period, 1520–1579, the same factors in the factor groups favour the use of was. The form is positively associated with the North and with there existentials. Table 3 indicates that the only major change that has taken place compared to the previous period is that plural NP subjects are no longer found to favour was. Table 2. Multivariate analysis of factors selected as significant to the probability of was with plural subjects in 1440–1519 Period

Factor

Factor weight

%

N

1440–1519

Region (range = 557) North London Court East Anglia

.841 .436 .382 .284

39 13 13 7

38 119 31 295

Subject type (range = 593) THERE NP PRO

.777 .560 .184

29 20 4

38 155 290

Input: Total N:

.206 483


Table 3. Multivariate analysis of factors selected as significant to the probability of was with plural subjects in 1520–1579 Period

Factor

Factor weight

%

N

1520–1579

Region (range = 676) North London East Anglia Court

.904 .503 .262 .228

56 13 6 5

34 112 112 195


.779 .467 .244

32 14 7

28 167 258

Input: Total N:

.199 453

The trend continues in the next subperiod, 1580–1639, where the factor weight of plural NP subjects is even lower (.400). Table 4 also reveals that regional levelling is taking place at the time: the North still favours was but only just, while hardly any differences can be found in the other regions. In the last subperiod, 1640–1681, region is not selected as a significant factor group, while subject type continues to have a significant impact on the choice of was, with there promoting its use, and both pronoun and NP subjects disfavouring it. What these multivariate analyses have shown us is the gradual levelling of the use of was in regional terms. They have similarly revealed the stability of existential NP subjects as a factor favouring the choice of was as well as the gradual loss of NP subjects in this function. Table 4. Multivariate analysis of factors selected as significant to the probability of was with plural subjects in 1580–1639 Period

Factor

Factor weight

%

N

1580–1639

Region (range = 95) North London Court East Anglia

.553 .499 .490 .458

7 8 7 5

109 183 181 111


.776 .400 .302

26 6 4

50 205 329

Input: Total N:

.093 584


5. Discussion 5.1 Subject-type generalizations As noted in Section 2, the fact that NP subjects favoured was in the earlier data may be connected with the Northern Subject Rule, the distinction made in many northern dialects between full NP and pronoun subjects: plural pronoun subjects placed next to the verb are zero-marked, whereas plural NP subjects and subjects not adjacent to the verb are morphologically marked on the verb. A similar distinction seems to be made in the fifteenth-century was/were data. Further work would, however, be needed to establish whether this is indeed a reflection of the Northern Subject Rule, which typically operates in the present tense. A factor that may be related to the Type of Subject Constraint in the Northern Subject Rule has to do with the pronoun subjects attested with plural was. As we have seen, was does not readily occur with plural personal pronouns, but the pronominal entities that it may co-occur with are often relative markers of the kind shown in (23) and (24). Forsström (1948: 207) also found that relative pronoun subjects favoured was in Middle English. This generalization was again based on the northern texts studied by Forsström. (23) all other fermholdes of mine which was not lett before, I beseech your good lordshipp to lettthem out in like case after the rate as theire farmes comes to a yeare at the least . . . (1523 HPERCY5 93) (24) Lettinge you wite that albeit upon such towardnes of conformytye as appeared unto us to have beene in the kinge of Scotts by such sutes and intercessions as was made unto us by sundry waies and meanes to take att our hand a peace honorable for us and our realme, wee removed and withdrew such our garrisons as wee had upon our borders … (1533 HENRY8 47) Alternatively, we may here be dealing with of another kind of Principle of Proximity, which Quirk et al. (1985: 757) describe as “agreement of the verb with a closely preceding noun phrase in preference to agreement with the head of the noun phrase that functions as the subject”. This more general principle can also be illustrated with co-ordinated NPs, as in (25). Relative markers, which do not record number, could well serve as input to this proximity principle. As would existential there occupying the slot of the grammatical subject. (25) considering that their pretences and suit was only for the ordinance, powder, tackle, musketts and other ymplements belonging to the ship . . . (1621 JCHAMBERLAIN II,346) A more general issue worth studying in more detail would be the influence of linear


100 80 %

London 1520–1579 London 1580–1639 North 1520–1579 North 1580–1639

60 40 20 0 pro

NPpl

there

Figure 3. Frequency of were with three subject types in London and the North

word order on the choice of verb form. It seems to have a triggering effect on default singulars in that post-verbal subjects rarely show plural concord. This was in evidence in iconic cases such as (11) and (22), above, which have an inverted word order after an initial adverbial element. The language-external aspect connected with the diachronic changes in subject type is dialect levelling. Following Schreier (2002), Chambers (2004: 137) introduces urbanization as a major factor promoting standard forms. Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (2003) similarly document significant effects of urbanization on changes in progress in Tudor and Stuart English. The leading role of London, the capital city, can also be traced in concord. Figure 3 plots the three subject types with were in London and in the North in two successive periods, 1520–1579 and 1580– 1639. It shows that there is considerable variation between London and the North in the first subperiod, 1520–1579. This variation evens out in the next period with the North only retaining a higher frequency of plural there-existentials with was than London.

5.2 Comparison with Finnish Finnish is an agglutinative, richly inflected non-Indo-European language spoken by five million people in Finland and some half a million in Sweden. In Finnish the verb olla is used in different constructions to denote both possession (‘have’) and being (‘be’). It also serves as an auxiliary in compound tenses. A diglossic situation obtains today between formal written Finnish and spoken colloquial Finnish, which shows in the inflectional system. In colloquial Finnish, and especially in compound tenses, subject–verb agreement, which marks person and number in formal registers, rarely holds in the plural. As a copula, the verb olla is levelled to the singular third-person forms on ‘is’ (present) and oli ‘was’ (past) with the third-person plural pronoun ne/he (‘they’)


and plural NP subjects, both existential and non-existential. It is noteworthy that the default singular is the only option with existentials in both standard and colloquial Finnish, but that the register difference prevails elsewhere. Finnish existentials do not have an overt dummy subject, but a locative adverb is usually required to make a (context-free) sentence acceptable. See examples (26) to (28). (26) Kirjastossa on kirjoja. (‘there is books in the library’; literally: ‘in-the-library Ø is books’) (27) Colloquial: Kirjat on/oli lainassa. (‘(the) books is/was out on loan’); Standard: Kirjat ovat/olivat lainassa. (‘(the) books are/were out on loan’) (28) Colloquial: Ne on/oli lainassa. (‘they is/was out on loan’) Standard: Ne ovat/olivat lainassa. (‘they are/were out on loan’) With me (‘we’) the passive forms ollaan (present) and oltiin (past) are used in colloquial speech instead of the standard inflectional forms (me olemme; me olimme). With te (‘you’), a reduced inflectional form is normal in the present tense producing te ootte (‘you are’) in the vernacular, while the inflectional past-tense form te olitte (‘you were’) is shared by colloquial and standard language alike. With the auxiliary verb olla, the levelling to the third-person singular is more extensive. The third-person singular form on (‘is’) is used in the perfect, and the thirdperson singular oli (‘was’) in the past or pluperfect when the subject is the first-person plural pronoun me (‘we’), the third-person plural pronoun he or ne (‘they’), or a plural NP. The pronominal forms are illustrated in (29) and (30). A detailed description of this concord variation in colloquial, regional and standard varieties of Finnish is given in Hakulinen et al. (2004: 1222–36). (29) Colloquial: Me on/oli yritetty. (‘we has/had tried’) Standard: Me olemme/olimme yrittäneet. (‘we have/had tried’) (30) Colloquial: Ne on/oli menny. (‘they has/had gone’) Standard: Ne ovat/olivat menneet. (‘they have/had gone’)

6. Conclusion My results on Late Middle and Early Modern English can be summed up as follows. First, the use of was with plural subjects was a northern English dialect feature in the 15th and 16th centuries, but it was by no means restricted to the north. In the course of the 17th century the pattern levelled dialectally, and declined, but continued to be used as a minority variant even by the literate social ranks throughout the country.


Secondly, in the 15th and 16th centuries, the plural use of was was favoured by existential there and plain NP subjects, but the subject NP factor was no longer effective when was lost ground in the late 16th and 17th centuries. The subject NP factor may have been connected with the Northern Subject Rule, and its decline may therefore correlate with the dialectal levelling of the default singular. That existential there subjects to some extent persisted with singular was during this levelling process is, however, a sign of their robustness as a conditioning factor. Thirdly, there is no evidence of were generalization in negative contexts in the early English data, and few instances of was being triggered by you until the latter half of 17th century. Independent evidence (Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2002; Laitinen, forthcoming) supports these findings: the generalization of you largely took place in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. As far as diachronic evolution is concerned, my corpus data fail to support the idea that non-standard was was gradually promoted in existential constructions during the period studied. The data rather suggest a relative stability of this subject type over time. But gradual change indeed appears to have taken place with was in combination with singular you, which only gained momentum in the 18th century. These findings show that the constraints on the use of the vernacular pattern evolved with time. They also interacted with other linguistic subsystems undergoing change, such as personal pronouns. If language-internal variables are subject to considerable variation within one language, the assumed universality of non-concord be becomes an empirical issue cross-linguistically. However, Chambers’s general claim that it is the phenomenon itself that is of wider application across the world’s languages receives support from a richly inflected non-Indo-European language such as Finnish, which also has “default singulars”. This is of course in line with typological generalizations about number marking in the world’s languages. Notes * I would like to take this opportunity to thank the audiences of the 12th ICEHL in Glasgow in 2002, the 32nd NWAVE Conference in Philadelphia in 2003, as well as the DIATYPE Symposium in Helsinki in 2003 for their many fruitful comments on earlier versions of this chapter. Any remaining shortcomings are my own. I also gratefully acknowledge the financial support I had for this research from the Centre of Excellence funding awarded to the VARIENG research unit by the Academy of Finland and the University of Helsinki. 1. The members of the research team who compiled the 1998 version of the CEEC in Helsinki include Jukka Keränen, Minna Nevala (née Aunio), Arja Nurmi, Minna Palander-Collin, and my colleague from the Helsinki Corpus days and co-director of the CEEC project, Dr. Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. A sampler version of the corpus (CEECS) is available from the Oxford Text Archive (OTA; ) and the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME; ). See also Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (1996, 2003).


2. The British National Corpus is available for a fee from . 3. The Michigan Early Modern English Materials database is available online free of charge from , and the Chadwyck-Healey Literature Collections (Literature Online, LION) from . A licence is needed for accessing the LION collections.

References Anderwald, Liselotte. 2001. Was/were variation in non-standard British English today. English World-Wide 22(1): 1–21. Bailey, Guy, Natalie Maynor and Patricia Cukor-Avila. 1989. Variation in subject–verb concord in Early Modern English. Language Variation and Change 1: 285–300. Battistella, Edwin L. 1990. Markedness: The evaluative superstructure of language. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad and Edward Finegan. 1999. Longman grammar of spoken and written English. London: Longman. Britain, David. 2002. Diffusion, levelling, simplification and reallocation in past tense be in the English fens. Journal of Sociolinguistics 6(1): 16–43. Chambers, Jack K. 1995. Sociolinguistic theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Chambers, Jack K. 2004. Dynamic typology and vernacular universals. Dialectology meets typology: Dialect grammar from a cross-linguistic perspective, ed. by Bernd Kortmann, 128–45. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Croft, William. 2003. Typology and universals. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Forsström, Gösta. 1948. The verb ‘to be’ in Middle English: A survey of the forms. Lund: Gleerup. Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966. Language universals, with special reference to feature hierarchies. The Hague: Mouton. Hakulinen, Auli, Maria Vilkuna, Riitta Korhonen, Vesa Koivisto, Tarja Riitta Heinonen and Irja Alho. 2004. Iso suomen kielioppi. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Hay, Jennifer and Daniel Schreier. 2004. Reversing the trajectory of language change: Subjectverb agreement with be in New Zealand English. Language Variation and Change 16(3): 209–35. Hudson, Richard. 1999. Subject-verb agreement in English. English Language and Linguistics 3(2): 173–207. Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Laitinen, Mikko. Forthcoming. Development of a vernacular primitive: you was/were variation in eighteenth-century English correspondence. Meechan, Marjory and Michele Foley. 1994. On resolving disagreement: linguistic theory and variation — there’s bridges. Language Variation and Change 6(1): 63–85. Nevalainen, Terttu and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 1996. The Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Sociolinguistics and language history, ed. by Terttu Nevalainen and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, 39–54. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi. Nevalainen, Terttu and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 2003. Historical sociolinguistics: Language change in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Longman. Oxford English Dictionary, The (OED). 1989. 2nd ed. by John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner; Additions (1993–7) ed. by John A. Simpson, Edmund S. C. Weiner, and Michael


Proffitt; 3rd ed. (in progress Mar. 2000–) ed. by John A. Simpson. OED Online. . Oxford University Press. Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman. Rand, David and David Sankoff. 1990. GoldVarb version 2: A Variable Rule application for the Macintosh. Montréal: Centre de recherches mathématiques, Université de Montréal. Schreier, Daniel. 2002. Past be in Tristan da Cunha: The rise and fall of categoricality in language change. American Spech 77(1): 70–99. Tagliamonte, Sali. 1998. Was/were variation across the generations: view from the city of York. Language Variation and Change 10: 153–91. Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 2002. You was in eighteenth-century normative grammar. Of dyuersitie & chaunge of langage: Essays presented to Manfred Görlach on the occasion of his 65th birthday, ed. by Katja Lenz and Ruth Möhlig, 88–102. Heidelberg: C. Winter. Trudgill, Peter. 1999. The dialects of England. 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell.

Index of languages Acoma 39–40 Afrikaans 244, 249, 257–8, 345–7 Ambrym 29 Anejom 36 Au 28–9, 36 Baltic 93–4 Berber 33 Bunuba 32 Candoshi 35 Canela Kraho 36 Chadic 33 Chalcatongo Mixtec 31 Copala Trique 27 Coptic 35 Cora 26 Cubeo 41–2 Cushitic 33 Danish 15, 107, 249, 322–3, 329–30, 334, 344, 346–7 Dutch Late Middle Dutch 335 Dutch dialects Belgian Dutch 14, 306–7, 318 Brabantic 5, 7, 17, 305, 307–8, 310–11, 318 East Flemish 306–8 Limburgish 307 West Flemish 306 English Australian English 6, 7, 14, 16, 22, 167, 281–4, 288, 296–7 Early Modern English 6, 8, 12–13, 15, 54, 68, 76, 122, 178, 203–5, 216, 224, 230, 232–3, 287, 326, 352, 356–7, 360, 366 Irish English 6, 7, 14, 281–5 Late Middle English 177–8 Middle English 6, 7, 10, 12, 54, 68–9, 76, 78, 104– 7, 112, 117, 122, 132, 139, 149, 177–8, 208, 212– 13, 224, 234, 287, 322, 325, 328, 330, 332, 335, 337, 346, 355–6, 360, 364 Modern English 11, 56–7, 59–60, 62, 68, 72–3, 77, 83, 105, 172–3, 178 Old English 5–7, 11–13, 54, 56, 65, 67–9, 73–6, 78, 82, 101, 104–7,110, 149, 176–8, 180, 184, 208, 212, 231, 234, 235, 325–6, 334, 355 Present-day English 101–2, 105–7, 109, 111, 116, 122, 152, 208, 211–12, 214, 216, 224, 354, 360 English dialects Cambridgeshire 270, 278–9 Devon 140, 270, 278–9

Dorset 278–9 East Anglian 15, 325–9, 332–3, 336, 342, 345 Norfolk 6, 15–16, 278–9, 321–2, 324, 326–8, 330– 40, 344–5, 347, 348, 357 Northern 83, 139, 218, 328, 331, 338–43, 347, 356, 364, 367 Old Northumbrian 177–8 Somerset 6, 13, 17, 269–74, 276–9 Southern 12, 78, 140, 177, 252, 283, 331, 338–9, 341–3, 347 Suffolk 270–1, 278–9, 333, 342, 357 Finnish 6, 15, 56, 258, 270, 353, 365–7 Flemish 306–8, 318, 333 French 5, 6, 10, 76–7, 102, 104–5, 121, 131–2, 145, 258, 311 Frisian 75, 107, 244, 249, 258, 306 Gapun 36 Geez 36 German Middle High German 105–7, 117, 251–2 Modern German 102, 154, 251 New High German 105, 107, 251 Old High German 101, 105–7, 110, 160, 251 Present-day German 101, 104–5, 125 South German dialects 6, 13, 245, 255 Germanic 5–7, 10–11, 13, 15, 56, 58, 60, 63–5, 69, 71–2, 76–7, 100–2, 105, 108–18, 151, 159–60, 161, 165, 167, 174, 177, 230–1, 249, 255, 259, 307, 322, 329, 345 Gothic 69, 119, 160 Greek 5, 10, 60, 82, 84, 158, 167–8 Guarani 35 Hatam 40–1, 48 Hungarian 56, 316 Indo-European 6–7, 10, 59–64, 71–2, 81–4, 100, 108, 110, 112, 115, 118–19, 365, 367 Irish 93, 282, 284 Italian 124–5, 154–5, 178, 258, 316 Kera 35 Kiowa 44 Kiribatese 35–6 Koh 32 Koiari 28 Larike 29 Latin 5–6, 56, 60, 76–7, 105, 131, 152–3, 155, 174, 191, 312, 321

372 Types of variation

Lithuanian 5, 10, 84, 90–4, 95 Malak Malak 36 Malay 5, 85 Maranguku 36 Marubo 26 Mosetenan 48 Ngala 33, 35 Noni 27 Noon 35 Norwegian 249 Old Norse 5, 12, 105, 150, 160, 165, 177 Palikur 36 Polish 6, 12, 174–6, 258 Proto-Indo-European 81–3

Old Saxon 107, 151, 160, 326 Scandinavian 6, 15, 105, 258–9, 322–5, 328, 333–5, 339, 341–2, 348 Scots Modern Scots 172–3, 182 Older Scots 6, 7, 12, 172, 177, 179–83, 197 Semitic 33, 59–61 Sentani 23, 29 Slavic 83–4, 93–4, 159 Standard Average European 5, 315 Sumerian 36 Swedish 57, 174, 231, 249, 315–16, 330 Sye 22, 29, 32, 34 Teribe 35 Trumai 27 Turkish 5, 56, 128, 140, 315–16

Russian 5, 10, 252, 258

Uma 31–2 Ungarinjin 22

Salinan 36 Salt Yui 27 Saxon North Saxon 344, 347

Wambon 28 Waura 35 West Germanic 5–6, 13, 15, 322, 329, 345 Woleaian 26

Index of authors Abney, Steven 167 Abraham, Werner 6, 13, 16, 246, 249, 251, 257, 265 Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 26 Allen, Cynthia L. 5, 7, 9, 11, 17 Anderwald, Liselotte 352, 354, 359 Anttila, Raimo 172 Anward, Jan 118 Aronoff, Mark 172, 178 Backhouse, Anthony E. 118 Bailey, Guy 356 Baker, Peter S. 176 Bakker, Dik 3, 5–8, 31 Bakker, Egbert 84 Balhorn, Mark 218, 235 Barber, Charles 234 Bately, Janet 151, 168 Battistella, Edwin L. 353 Bauer, Laurie 78 Baugh, Albert C. 177–8, 199 Beck, David 118 Benson, Larry D. 212–13 Bernard, John R. L. 281–2 Bernini, Giuliano 312 Bhat, Darbhe Narayana Shankara 24, 47, 100, 118 Biber, Douglas 124, 136, 204, 231, 234, 270–1, 351, 354 Bodine, Ann 225 Bødtker, A. Trampe 129, 131 Bresnan, Joan 26, 47 Britain, David 283, 288, 333, 352, 354, 360 Bugaj, Joanna 4, 6–7, 9, 11–12, 16, 199 Bybee, Joan L. 198 Cable, Thomas 177–8, 199 Campbell, Alistair 156, 176 Campbell, Lyle 47, 204 Chambers, Jack K. 15, 352–6, 365, 367 Chomsky, Noam 77 Christophersen, Paul 151 Clark, Cecily 166 Clark, Manning 284 Clayton, Mary 151, 163, 168 Copperud, Roy H. 144 Corbett, Greville 12, 25, 30, 47, 178, 211, 233 Costello, John 82–4 Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth 124 Creissels, Denis 118 Crevels, Mily 122–3, 127–8, 14–41 Croft, William 3, 4, 16, 25, 84–5, 118, 174, 180, 196, 198, 204, 211–12, 232, 234, 265, 351, 353

Crystal, David 211 Curme, George O. 160 Curzan, Anne 208, 212, 216, 218, 235 Cysouw, Michael 47 Dahl, Östen 307 Dalton-Puffer, Christiane 77 Danchev, Andrei 172, 198 De Cuypere, Ludovic 5–7, 14, 16–17, 318 Dekeyser, Xavier 235, 322, 325, 329, 334 De Korne, Annet 167 Delbrück, Berthold 119 Delsing, Lars-Olof 323–4, 326, 328, 345 Demske, Ulrike 151, 154 Denison, David 287 Denning, Keith 4, 16, 204 Detges, Ulrich 252 Devitt, Amy 182, 185 Di Meola, Claudio 123, 125, 141, 146 Dixon, Robert M.W. 10, 26, 99, 100–2, 104, 110, 113–14, 116–17, 118, 157 Długosz-Kurczabowa, Krystyna 175, 199 Drinka, Bridget 259 Dubisz, Stanisław 175, 199 Evans, G. Blakemore 203 Filppula, Markku 285–7, 290–3, 295–8 Fischer, Olga 129, 151–2, 161 Fitzpatrick, David 283, 298 Fleischer, Jürg 330, 334, 344 Foley, Michele 354 Forby, Robert 332–3 Forsström, Gösta 352, 355–6, 360, 364 Fowler, Henry W. 144 Fox, Barbara 84 Fritz, Clemens 6, 7, 13–14, 16, 282 Gamkrelidze, Thomas V. 81 García Castillero, Carlos 95 Gerner, Jürgen 207–8 Giegerich, Heinz J 77 Giusti, Giuliana 150, 158, 165, 167–8 Givón, Talmy 25, 234 Görlach, Manfred 193, 199, 281, 287 Greenbaum, Sidney 173–4, 199 Greenberg, Joseph H. 4, 15, 172, 199, 211, 235, 353 Grzegorczykowa, Renata 198 Gudschinsky, Sarah C. 118 Guirardello, Raquel 27

374 Types of variation Haegeman, Liliane 167, 216, 235 Haider, Hubert 249 Hakulinen, Auli 366 Halle, Morris 77 Halliday, M. A. K. 206, 209, 212, 230 Harris, John W. 290, 293, 295 Harris, Martin 130 Hasan, Ruqaiya 206, 209, 230 Haspelmath, Martin 15, 17, 25, 167, 205, 252, 311– 18, 319 Hay, Jennifer 354–5 Heidermanns, Frank 102, 107–8 Heinrichs, Heinrich Matthias 159–60, 167 Heltveit, Trygve 151 Hengeveld, Kees 127 Henry, Patrick Leo 82, 287 Heusler, Andreas 165, 168 Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 150 Hoad, Terry F. 102, 105, 107 Hoeksema, Jack 310 Hoenigswald, Henry W. 82–4 Hogg, Richard 65, 69 Hole, Daniel 288 Hollenbach, Barbara E. 27 Holm, John 346 Holton, Gary 118 Hopper, Paul J. 84, 219 Horvath, Barbara 282 Huddleston, Rodney 137, 233 Hudson, Richard 353–4 Hyman, Larry M. 27 Hymes, Dell H. 118 Ihalainen, Ossi 8, 13, 269–78, 333 Irwin, Barry S. 27 Ivanov, Vyacheslav V. 81 Jakobson, Roman O. 10, 81 Janda, Richard D. 11 Jelinek, Eloise 47 Jespersen, Otto 179, 212, 233, 307, 310 Kahlas-Tarkka, Leena 216, 227, 231, 235 Kahrel, Peter 15, 312–18, 319 Kallen, Jeffrey L. 290–1, 293, 295 Kastovsky, Dieter 5, 7, 9, 17, 58, 60, 63, 65, 72, 76, 78 Kekäläinen, Kirsti 270, 278; see also Peitsara Kellner, Leon 151 Kemmer, Suzanne 4, 16, 84–5, 95, 204 Ker, Neil R. 156, 168 King, Anne 12, 167, 177 Kivimaa, Kirsti 322, 337 Klare, Johannes 131–2 Klein, Harriet E. Manelis 118 Klemola, Juhani 218 Kluge, Friedrich 102, 107 König, Ekkehard 122–5, 127, 130 Kortmann, Bernd 4, 13, 122–5, 136, 269 Krasukhin, Konstantin G. 5, 7, 9–10, 17, 81 Kroch, Anthony 7

Kryk-Kastovsky, Barbara 63 Kümmel, Martin 95 Kuryłowicz, Jerzy R. 61 Kytö, Merja 151, 152, 235 Labov, William 214, 231, 352 Laing, Margaret 163, 168 Laitinen, Mikko 6, 7, 9, 11–13, 16–17, 208, 212, 223–4, 234, 235, 352, 360, 367 Lange, Claudia 287–8 Laskowski, Roman 198 Lass, Roger 4, 61, 66, 68, 74, 77, 78, 199, 234 Leech, Geoffrey 234 Lehmann, Christian 25, 252 Leiss, Elisabeth 251, 257 Levy, Paulette 118 Lightfoot, David W. 82, 88 Lyons, John 58, 205 McClure, J. Derrick 182 Madugu, Isaac S. G. 118 Magennis, Hugh 151, 163, 168 Manzelli, Gianguido 159 Marchand, Hans 57, 60 Matthews, Peter 58, 60 Maxwell, Dan 333–4, 341 Maxwell, Michael B. 42 Mchombo, Sam A. 26, 47 Meechan, Marjory 354 Meurman-Solin, Anneli 7, 146, 183, 199 Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm 83 Millar, Robert McColl 167 Millward, Celia 199 Minkova, Donka 77 Mitchell, Alexander G. 167, 282 Mitchell, Bruce 129, 151, 155, 157, 167 Molencki, Rafał 131, 136, 141, 145 Montgomery, Michael 297 Moravcik, Edith 118 Moshi, Lioba 118 Mossé, Fernand 168 Mustanoja, Tauno F. 128–9, 131, 212, 332, 335 Neu, Erich 93 Neuckermans, Annemie 5–7, 14, 16–17, 310–11, 313, 318 Nevala, Minna 234, 367 Nevalainen, Terttu 6, 7, 8, 12, 14–16, 54, 176, 178–9, 181–2, 184–5, 192, 195, 198, 199, 204, 214, 222, 232, 234, 324–5, 326–7, 330–1, 357, 365, 367 Newman, Michael 213 Nichols, Johanna 34, 36 Nist, John 177, 199 Ó Baoill, Dónall P. 286 O’Farrell, Patrick 283 Ojanen, Anna-Liisa 278; see also Vasko Ojeda, Almerindo E. 235 Orton, Harold 8, 323 Osam, E. Kweku 118

Pauwels, Anne 214, 235 Pauwels, Jan L. 235, 310 Peitsara, Kirsti 6, 8, 13, 17, 270, 278 Perel’muter, Ilya A. 89 Plank, Frans 118, 154 Platzack, Christer 330 Poussa, Patricia 6, 8, 14–16, 57, 168, 203, 233, 270, 278–9, 322, 325–6, 328–33, 336, 342–3, 345 Prokosch, Eduard 160 Pullum, Geoffrey K. 137, 233 Purves, David 173–4 Pustet, Regina 114, 118 Quirk, Randolph 129, 136, 173–4, 199, 211, 214, 218, 232, 234, 358, 364 Ramat, Paolo 312 Ramson, William S. 281 Rand, David 362 Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena 7, 12, 176, 178–9, 181–2, 184–5, 192, 195, 198, 199, 204, 211, 214, 216, 222, 227, 231–2, 234, 235, 324, 326, 330–1, 357, 365, 367 Rijkhoff, Jan 118 Rinkel, Tineke 167 Rissanen, Matti 151–2, 212, 217, 219, 220, 224, 232, 235 Rizzi, Luigi 265 Robertson, John 284 Robinson, Mairi 185 Rosengren, Inger 249 Sakel, Jeanette 48 Sanderson, Stewart 323 Sankoff, David 362 Sapir, Edward 54, 172 Sasse, Hans-Jürgen 118 Scatton, Ernest A. 159 Schachter, Paul 118 Schlauch, Margaret 222–3 Schlegel, August W. 9, 55–6 Schlegel, Friedrich 9, 55–6 Schöneborn, Thomas 5, 7, 9–10, 17, 118 Schneider, Edgar W. 328 Schreier, Daniel 354–5, 365 Scorza, David 28 Seebold, Elmar 108 Seiler, Guido 265 Seppänen, Aimo 174

Index of authors 375

Siewierska, Anna 3, 5–8, 25, 31–3, 318 Skeat, Walter W. 102, 105, 107 Sorva, Elina 6, 8–11, 16–17, 18 Spamer, James B. 161 Stassen, Leon 118 Steinbach, Markus 85 Stockwell, Robert P. 77 Szabolsci, Anna 167 Tagliamonte, Sali 354–5, 362 Taylor, Ann 7, 166 Taylor, Brian 282 Thieroff, Rolf 257 Thompson, Sandra A. 118, 124 Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid 352, 360, 367 Tilling, Philip M. 323 Timmer, Benno Johan 151 Tobin, J. J. M. 203 Troy, J. 282 Trudgill, Peter 282, 325, 342, 354 van den Eynden, Nadine 278 van der Auwera, Johan 5–7, 14, 16–17, 311, 313, 316, 318 Vasko, Anna-Liisa 8, 270 Vendler, Zeno 95 Vidal, Alejandra 118 Vleeskruyer, Rudolf 151, 168 von Humboldt, Wilhelm 55 Voyles, Joseph B. 64 Wales, Katie 206, 208–10 Waltereit, Richard 252 Ward, Russel 284 Wełna, Jerzy 176–9, 199 Wetzer, Harrie 100, 114, 118 Widdowson, John D. 323 Wierzbicka, Anna 118 Williamson, Tom 322, 339 Wood, Johanna L. 152, 167 Wright, Elizabeth Mary 160 Wright, Joseph 160, 321–2, 329–30, 332–3, 336, 338, 342 Wróbel, Henryk 198 Yerkes, David 164 Yoon, Hee-Cheol 152, 167 Zwicky, Arnold 26

Index of subjects ablaut 59, 61, 63–4, 75–6, 89, 91–2 Accessibility Hierarchy 13–14, 17, 269 adjective 11, 99–101, 104–5, 107–8, 111–12, 114– 15, 117, 151–3, 155–61, 163–5, 173–4 adverb 11, 93–4, 112, 122, 128–9, 134, 137, 139, 141, 145, 181, 261, 270, 273, 305, 335, 366 affix 10, 26, 62, 84, 181, 199; see also inflection, inflectional derivational agglutination 74 agreement 8, 47, 57, 94, 118, 167, 175, 178, 199, 210, 235, 259, 353–4, 364–5 grammatical 12–13, 26, 233 Agreement Hierarchy 12, 233 aktionsart 62 albeit 6, 10–11, 121–45 allomorphy morphologically conditioned 70 phonologically conditioned 70, 75 analogical restructuring 76 analytic 12, 16, 56, 145, 172, 177, 180–1, 183, 191, 196–7, 252, 255, 257, 264 anaphora 204, 226, 233; see also cataphora, pronoun anglicisation 12, 182–3, 197 aspect 61–3, 84, 118 habitual 14, 41, 281, 294–8 perfective 14, 250–2, 281, 290–1 Aux Filter 255, 259, 262 backtracking 250 bidirectionality 9 borrowing 17, 71, 76–7, 100–1, 105, 112, 207 bound form 9, 22–7, 34–41, 43–8; see also free form British National Corpus (BNC) 138–9, 141, 146, 206, 354 Brown Corpus of American English (BROWN) 144 case 12, 34–5, 56–7, 59, 61, 65–8, 72, 74, 90, 158, 163, 172–5, 177, 249, 251, 254, 259, 277, 324, 326, 328, 331, 334, 337, 340–1, 347; see also genitive cataphora 204, 206, 214, 226, 233 cataphoric personal reference 206, 217, 225–6, 232 Century of Prose Corpus (COPC) 135 citation form 59 class assignment 72–4 class-defining 73–4 class marker 70–2 class membership 70–4

clitic 12, 26–7, 31, 57, 248, 254, 256 comparative reconstruction 9 compound 182, 215, 224, 324, 328, 335, 345, 365 stem-based 61 synthetic 57 concord 174–6, 197, 209, 352, 355, 365–7 conjunction 11, 121, 132, 134, 139, 141, 145, 253, 259 conjunction inflection 253, 259 connective , 278 concessive 6, 10, 16, 121–7, 132, 136–7, 145 corpus linguistics 7–8, 204, 206, 230, 232 Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC) 7, 15, 133, 204, 214, 219, 352, 357–61, 367 Corpus of Early English Correspondence Sampler (CEECS) 133, 367 Corpus of Oz Early English (COOEE) 7, 280, 282 Corpus of Scottish Correspondence (CSC) 133 default case 72, 75 default singular 14–17, 352–3, 361, 365–7 definite article 68, 150, 158, 185, 250, 259, 265 demonstrative 27, 37, 39, 42, 46–7, 150–5, 158, 164– 5, 175, 203, 212, 215–16, 225, 227–32, 234, 322, 325–6, 342; see also pronoun for third person 39 dental preterit 63 determinatum 57 determiner 5, 7, 11–12, 149–55, 157–61, 163–6, 173–4, 178, 212, 229; see also pronoun diagnostic feature 73 directional derivation 64 discourse 24, 26, 35, 43, 123, 128, 134, 141, 145, 154, 205, 208, 219, 244, 247, 249–50, 254–5, 257, 259, 261–2, 264–5, 291 double perfect 250, 258, 265 drift 9, 54, 78 exponent 56, 64, 66, 68, 70–2 extended projection 158, 161 feed-back mechanism 78 free form 9, 21–5, 27, 34–41, 43–8, 58–9 Freiburg–Brown Corpus of American English (FROWN) 144 Freiburg–LOB Corpus of British English (FLOB) 144 generic one 13, 216, 220, 233 genitive 68–9, 174–6, 180, 250–1, 265, 337 group genitive 12, 57

Index of subjects 377

genre 16, 171, 183, 186–8, 190–5 197, 199; see also text type Germanic stress shift 64 gestalt 9, 54, 58 grammatical function 35, 56, 68, 253–5, 270, 272–3 grammatical gender 12–13, 172, 176–80, 208, 218, 233, 326 grammaticalization 8, 10–11, 17, 25, 38, 44–6, 121, 124–5, 219 Great Vowel Shift 77

typology 9, 55–6, 58 morphology 5, 9, 55–6, 73–4, 108, 151, 157, 182, 329, 336 derivational 59–60, 76–7 inflectional 59–60, 100, 118 stem-based 59–60, 64, 70–1 word-based 59–60, 64, 66–7, 71, 76 morphophonemic alternation 64, 67 rule 67

head 10, 12, 34–6, 38–46, 58, 87, 138, 140, 150–2, 158, 174–5, 245, 247, 249–51, 254, 259, 261, 274, 342, 361, 364 head vs. dependent marking 34, 36, 38, 46 Helsinki Corpus of British English Dialects (HD) 8, 269–70, 278 Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (HC) 122, 131, 133–5, 269–70 Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots (HCOS) 7, 133, 183, 186–7, 190, 192, 197, historical linguistics 55, 214, 284, 298 homophony 27–30, 34

negation 6, 14, 17, 206, 261, 296, 305–6, 308, 312, 316–18, 360 negator 14–15, 305, 307–8, 310–11, 314, 318 neuter 11–12, 65, 151, 172, 174, 176–97, 221–2, 325, 341 neuter possession 172, 177, 179–80, 188, 197 Newdigate Newsletters (Newdigate Corpus) 135 norm 30, 72, 189–90, 221–2 Northern Subject Rule 356, 364, 367 noun 12–13, 27, 57, 61–62, 66–8, 84, 90, 107–8, 115, 129, 140, 152, 156, 158, 160, 164, 173–4, 176, 185, 208–10, 212, 220–1, 232–3, 271, 274, 276, 354, 357, 364 noun phrase 84, 210, 232, 274, 276, 364

iconicity 66, 212–13, 218, 226 inclusivity 21, 24, 26, 37, 39, 40, 43–4, 46 incorporation 56–7 indefiniteness 203, 205–6, 208, 210, 212, 215–16, 219–20, 223, 226, 230–2, 276 inflection 56, 60–2, 64–6, 68, 70–1, 73–4, 76, 84, 89, 92–3, 163, 174–8, 199, 253, 259, 262, 356 nominal 64, 71, 74 stem-based 65 inflectional class 9, 58, 63, 65, 69–72, 74 class marker 70 derivational 58–9, 69 grid 66 morphology 59–60, 100, 118 its 6, 7, 171–201 Lampeter Corpus of Early Modern English Tracts (Lampeter Corpus) 135 Lancaster–Oslo/Bergen Corpus of British English (LOB) 144 langue 55 language contact 10, 12, 63, 177 Latin influence 152 level interaction 63–4 lexeme 58–9, 99, 100, 102, 105, 107, 116, 150, 214, 217 Literature Online (LION) 122, 135–6, 146, 360, 368 local change 54, 72 markedness 12, 14, 17, 81, 122, 204, 207, 210–12, 216, 226, 230, 232, 298, 353 Middle English Dictionary (MED) 129, 134 middle voice 10, 84–5 morphological reanalysis 70

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) 102, 215, 356 paradigm 12, 17, 25–34, 37, 46–7, 56–7, 59–61, 64– 7, 69, 71–4, 173–5, 177, 179, 181–2, 197, 209, 222, 229, 230, 321, 330, 337, 342 paradigm pressure 65 paradigm profile 71 parsing 13, 243–7, 251–4, 257, 259, 261–2, 264 participle 70, 87, 91, 94, 107–8 past participle 63–4, 69, 73–5, 125 particle 11, 45, 56, 125–6, 130, 160, 259, 262, 321, 326, 328, 332–4, 337, 341–2, 344, 346 past tense 57, 63, 73, 130, 252, 257, 290 Penn–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English 2 (PPCME2) 7, 166 person 5, 7–9, 12, 21–46, 57, 61, 63, 69, 70, 74, 142, 150–1, 158, 163, 172, 174–8, 208, 210, 215, 217– 19, 221, 223–4, 228–30, 232–3, 325–6, 341, 352, 355–6, 365–6 personal subject 326–7, 329–34, 337, 342–3 phonologically conditioned allomorphy 70 plural morpheme 57 polarity 206, 312, 352 portmanteau morph 56 Präteritumschwund 246, 264–5 predeterminer 11 preposition 11, 13, 35, 56, 123, 125, 134, 137–9, 145, 182, 199, 269–70, 273–7, 323–4, 326, 329, 344 preposition stranding 323 present tense marker 57 preterit 63, 74–5, 244–6, 252, 257–8, 263–4 pronoun anaphoric 13, 206, 209, 216–18, 220, 223–4, 233

378 Types of variation pronoun (cont.) demonstrative 153, 175 generic 12, 204 indefinite 6, 14, 208–9, 212, 215, 224, 305, 312, 314, 316, 346 negative 312, 316 personal 11–13, 15, 129, 154, 171–8, 180, 205–6, 210, 212, 216–17, 221, 225, 230, 232–3, 271, 273, 277–8, 325–6, 341, 353–5, 364, 367 possessive 12, 151, 171–2, 174–6, 180, 197, 233 reflexive 84, 233, 281, 285–6, 288–9, 298 relative 12, 210, 231–2, 235, 321, 326, 335, 343–4, 346, 364 resumptive 15, 277, 336, 342, 345, 347 third-person 228 prosodic structure 76 prototype 140 reflexive 14, 84–6, 91, 94, 176, 285, 288, unbound 14, 284–7 relative adverbial 326, 345–6 relative clause 6, 13, 181, 204, 206, 211–13, 215, 219, 228, 230–2, 268, 270–4, 277, 279, 329–30, 336, 344 relative typology 333 root 9, 58–65, 71, 76, 82–4, 91, 108, 110, 112, 115, 118–19, 178, 181 root-based morphology 59–60 rule-inversion 69 semantic map 17, 316 sentential negation 6, 14, 305 Sievers’s Law 69 spoken-only code 245, 257, 259 standard (language) 3–4, 15–16, 145, 175, 243–6, 250, 253, 257, 261, 264, 270–1, 273, 278, 286, 296, 305, 307–8, 311, 319, 321, 324–5, 327, 331–5, 345, 347, 353–5, 365–7 standardization 16 stem 9, 45, 58–76, 78, 101, 103–4, 108–11, 113–14, 116, 119, 142 stem-formative 61–3, 65, 69–70, 72–3 stem variation 75 stress 25 expiratory 63 movable 76–7 stress alternation 76 stress timing 63–4 Survey of English Dialects (SED) 8, 270, 323, 326, 328, 331–3, 336–7, 339–40, 345, 347–8 Syntactische Atlas van de Nederlandse Dialecten (SAND) 7, 14, 318 synthetic 10, 12, 16, 56–7, 81, 92, 171–2, 174, 179– 83, 192–4, 196, 198–9, 255, 257

tense 56–7, 62–4, 73–4, 118, 121, 130, 142, 177, 252, 255, 257, 259, 290, 295, 352–4, 356, 364, 366 text type 172, 183, 186–7, 189, 191–4, 282, 284; see also genre Trisyllabic Laxing 77 typological restructuring 68, 77, 178 typological shift 58, 63 underlying representation 69, 73 unidirectionality 8, 11, 17 Uniformitarian Hypothesis 16 unmarked base form 63–4, 71 VARBRUL 353, 362 variable accent 63 Velar Softening 77 verb 15, 27, 46, 57, 82–5, 91, 93, 118, 128–30, 132, 137–8, 141, 145, 209–10, 215, 219, 247, 251–2, 259, 271, 291, 293, 296, 352, 354–8, 360, 364–6 causative 63, 84, 95 deadjectival 70 denominal 70 imperfective 251 impersonal 94 inchoative 62–3, 84 irregular 73–5 middle 86, 89 modal 83, 296 passive 92 perfective 251 primary 61–2 reflexive 85, 90–1 regular 75 static 89 stative 84 strong 61, 63, 72, 75, 257 weak 63–4, 69–70, 107–8, 257 vernacular root 12, 352, 354 universal 6, 15, 351–2, 354, 356 vowel deletion 66, 69, 74 insertion 69 word-form 56, 58–9 word-formation 58, 60–1, 71, 76 written code 13, 244 York–Toronto–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE) 7, 166 zero 15, 29, 46, 57, 66, 70, 73, 91, 209, 270–6, 279, 326, 329, 330–1, 333–4, 337–8, 340, 342–5, 347, 354, 356, 362, 364

In the series Studies in Language Companion Series the following titles have been published thus far or are scheduled for publication: 81 PEETERS, Bert (ed.): Semantic Primes and Universal Grammar. Emprical evidence from the Romance languages. xvi, 362 pp. + index. Expected October 2006 80 BIRNER, Betty J. and Gregory WARD (eds.): Drawing the Boundaries of Meaning. Neo-Gricean studies in pragmatics and semantics in honor of Laurence R. Horn. Expected September 2006 79 LAFFUT, An: Three-Participant Constructions in English. A functional-cognitive approach to caused relations. x, 268 pp. Expected June 2006 78 YAMAMOTO, Mutsumi: Agency and Impersonality. Their Linguistic and Cultural Manifestations. xii, 144 pp. + index. Expected August 2006 77 KULIKOV, Leonid, Andrej MALCHUKOV and Peter de SWART (eds.): Case, Valency and Transitivity. xix, 493 pp. + index. Expected September 2006 76 NEVALAINEN, Terttu, Juhani KLEMOLA and Mikko LAITINEN (eds.): Types of Variation. Diachronic, dialectal and typological interfaces. 2006. viii, 378 pp. 75 HOLE, Daniel, André MEINUNGER and Werner ABRAHAM (eds.): Datives and Other Cases. Between argument structure and event structure. 2006. viii, 385 pp. 74 PIETRANDREA, Paola: Epistemic Modality. Functional properties and the Italian system. 2005. xii, 232 pp. 73 XIAO, Richard and Tony McENERY: Aspect in Mandarin Chinese. A corpus-based study. 2004. x, 305 pp. 72 FRAJZYNGIER, Zygmunt, Adam HODGES and David S. ROOD (eds.): Linguistic Diversity and Language Theories. 2005. xii, 432 pp. 71 DAHL, Östen: The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity. 2004. x, 336 pp. 70 LEFEBVRE, Claire: Issues in the Study of Pidgin and Creole Languages. 2004. xvi, 358 pp. 69 TANAKA, Lidia: Gender, Language and Culture. A study of Japanese television interview discourse. 2004. xvii, 233 pp. 68 MODER, Carol Lynn and Aida MARTINOVIC-ZIC (eds.): Discourse Across Languages and Cultures. 2004. vi, 366 pp. 67 LURAGHI, Silvia: On the Meaning of Prepositions and Cases. The expression of semantic roles in Ancient Greek. 2003. xii, 366 pp. 66 NARIYAMA, Shigeko: Ellipsis and Reference Tracking in Japanese. 2003. xvi, 400 pp. 65 MATSUMOTO, Kazuko: Intonation Units in Japanese Conversation. Syntactic, informational and functional structures. 2003. xviii, 215 pp. 64 BUTLER, Christopher S.: Structure and Function – A Guide to Three Major Structural-Functional Theories. Part 2: From clause to discourse and beyond. 2003. xiv, 579 pp. 63 BUTLER, Christopher S.: Structure and Function – A Guide to Three Major Structural-Functional Theories. Part 1: Approaches to the simplex clause. 2003. xx, 573 pp. 62 FIELD, Fredric W.: Linguistic Borrowing in Bilingual Contexts. With a foreword by Bernard Comrie. 2002. xviii, 255 pp. 61 GODDARD, Cliff and Anna WIERZBICKA (eds.): Meaning and Universal Grammar. Theory and empirical findings. Volume 2. 2002. xvi, 337 pp. 60 GODDARD, Cliff and Anna WIERZBICKA (eds.): Meaning and Universal Grammar. Theory and empirical findings. Volume 1. 2002. xvi, 337 pp. 59 SHI, Yuzhi: The Establishment of Modern Chinese Grammar. The formation of the resultative construction and its effects. 2002. xiv, 262 pp. 58 MAYLOR, B. Roger: Lexical Template Morphology. Change of state and the verbal prefixes in German. 2002. x, 273 pp. 57 MEL’ČUK, Igor A.: Communicative Organization in Natural Language. The semantic-communicative structure of sentences. 2001. xii, 393 pp. 56 FAARLUND, Jan Terje (ed.): Grammatical Relations in Change. 2001. viii, 326 pp. 55 DAHL, Östen and Maria KOPTJEVSKAJA-TAMM (eds.): Circum-Baltic Languages. Volume 2: Grammar and Typology. 2001. xx, 423 pp. 54 DAHL, Östen and Maria KOPTJEVSKAJA-TAMM (eds.): Circum-Baltic Languages. Volume 1: Past and Present. 2001. xx, 382 pp. 53 FISCHER, Olga, Anette ROSENBACH and Dieter STEIN (eds.): Pathways of Change. Grammaticalization in English. 2000. x, 391 pp. 52 TORRES CACOULLOS, Rena: Grammaticization, Synchronic Variation, and Language Contact. A study of Spanish progressive -ndo constructions. 2000. xvi, 255 pp.

51 ZIEGELER, Debra: Hypothetical Modality. Grammaticalisation in an L2 dialect. 2000. xx, 290 pp. 50 ABRAHAM, Werner and Leonid KULIKOV (eds.): Tense-Aspect, Transitivity and Causativity. Essays in honour of Vladimir Nedjalkov. 1999. xxxiv, 359 pp. 49 BHAT, D.N.S.: The Prominence of Tense, Aspect and Mood. 1999. xii, 198 pp. 48 MANNEY, Linda Joyce: Middle Voice in Modern Greek. Meaning and function of an inflectional category. 2000. xiii, 262 pp. 47 BRINTON, Laurel J. and Minoji AKIMOTO (eds.): Collocational and Idiomatic Aspects of Composite Predicates in the History of English. 1999. xiv, 283 pp. 46 YAMAMOTO, Mutsumi: Animacy and Reference. A cognitive approach to corpus linguistics. 1999. xviii, 278 pp. 45 COLLINS, Peter C. and David LEE (eds.): The Clause in English. In honour of Rodney Huddleston. 1999. xv, 342 pp. 44 HANNAY, Mike and A. Machtelt BOLKESTEIN (eds.): Functional Grammar and Verbal Interaction. 1998. xii, 304 pp. 43 OLBERTZ, Hella, Kees HENGEVELD and Jesús SÁNCHEZ GARCÍA (eds.): The Structure of the Lexicon in Functional Grammar. 1998. xii, 312 pp. 42 DARNELL, Michael, Edith MORAVSCIK, Michael NOONAN, Frederick J. NEWMEYER and Kathleen M. WHEATLEY (eds.): Functionalism and Formalism in Linguistics. Volume II: Case studies. 1999. vi, 407 pp. 41 DARNELL, Michael, Edith MORAVSCIK, Michael NOONAN, Frederick J. NEWMEYER and Kathleen M. WHEATLEY (eds.): Functionalism and Formalism in Linguistics. Volume I: General papers. 1999. vi, 486 pp. 40 BIRNER, Betty J. and Gregory WARD: Information Status and Noncanonical Word Order in English. 1998. xiv, 314 pp. 39 WANNER, Leo (ed.): Recent Trends in Meaning–Text Theory. 1997. xx, 202 pp. 38 HACKING, Jane F.: Coding the Hypothetical. A comparative typology of Russian and Macedonian conditionals. 1998. vi, 156 pp. 37 HARVEY, Mark and Nicholas REID (eds.): Nominal Classification in Aboriginal Australia. 1997. x, 296 pp. 36 KAMIO, Akio (ed.): Directions in Functional Linguistics. 1997. xiii, 259 pp. 35 MATSUMOTO, Yoshiko: Noun-Modifying Constructions in Japanese. A frame semantic approach. 1997. viii, 204 pp. 34 HATAV, Galia: The Semantics of Aspect and Modality. Evidence from English and Biblical Hebrew. 1997. x, 224 pp. 33 VELÁZQUEZ-CASTILLO, Maura: The Grammar of Possession. Inalienability, incorporation and possessor ascension in Guaraní. 1996. xvi, 274 pp. 32 FRAJZYNGIER, Zygmunt: Grammaticalization of the Complex Sentence. A case study in Chadic. 1996. xviii, 501 pp. 31 WANNER, Leo (ed.): Lexical Functions in Lexicography and Natural Language Processing. 1996. xx, 355 pp. 30 HUFFMAN, Alan: The Categories of Grammar. French lui and le. 1997. xiv, 379 pp. 29 ENGBERG-PEDERSEN, Elisabeth, Michael FORTESCUE, Peter HARDER, Lars HELTOFT and Lisbeth Falster JAKOBSEN (eds.): Content, Expression and Structure. Studies in Danish functional grammar. 1996. xvi, 510 pp. 28 HERMAN, József (ed.): Linguistic Studies on Latin. Selected papers from the 6th International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics (Budapest, 23–27 March 1991). 1994. ix, 421 pp. 27 ABRAHAM, Werner, T. GIVÓN and Sandra A. THOMPSON (eds.): Discourse, Grammar and Typology. Papers in honor of John W.M. Verhaar. 1995. xx, 352 pp. 26 LIMA, Susan D., Roberta L. CORRIGAN and Gregory K. IVERSON: The Reality of Linguistic Rules. 1994. xxiii, 480 pp. 25 GODDARD, Cliff and Anna WIERZBICKA (eds.): Semantic and Lexical Universals. Theory and empirical findings. 1994. viii, 510 pp. 24 BHAT, D.N.S.: The Adjectival Category. Criteria for differentiation and identification. 1994. xii, 295 pp. 23 COMRIE, Bernard and Maria POLINSKY (eds.): Causatives and Transitivity. 1993. x, 399 pp. 22 McGREGOR, William B.: A Functional Grammar of Gooniyandi. 1990. xx, 618 pp. 21 COLEMAN, Robert (ed.): New Studies in Latin Linguistics. Proceedings of the 4th International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics, Cambridge, April 1987. 1990. x, 480 pp. 20 VERHAAR, John W.M. (ed.): Melanesian Pidgin and Tok Pisin. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Pidgins and Creoles in Melanesia. 1990. xiv, 409 pp. 19 BLUST, Robert A.: Austronesian Root Theory. An essay on the limits of morphology. 1988. xi, 190 pp. 18 WIERZBICKA, Anna: The Semantics of Grammar. 1988. vii, 581 pp.

17 CALBOLI, Gualtiero (ed.): Subordination and Other Topics in Latin. Proceedings of the Third Colloquium on Latin Linguistics, Bologna, 1–5 April 1985. 1989. xxix, 691 pp. 16 CONTE, Maria-Elisabeth, János Sánder PETÖFI and Emel SÖZER (eds.): Text and Discourse Connectedness. Proceedings of the Conference on Connexity and Coherence, Urbino, July 16–21, 1984. 1989. xxiv, 584 pp. 15 JUSTICE, David: The Semantics of Form in Arabic. In the mirror of European languages. 1987. iv, 417 pp. 14 BENSON, Morton, Evelyn BENSON and Robert F. ILSON: Lexicographic Description of English. 1986. xiii, 275 pp. 13 REESINK, Ger P.: Structures and their Functions in Usan. 1987. xviii, 369 pp. 12 PINKSTER, Harm (ed.): Latin Linguistics and Linguistic Theory. Proceedings of the 1st International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics, Amsterdam, April 1981. 1983. xviii, 307 pp. 11 PANHUIS, Dirk G.J.: The Communicative Perspective in the Sentence. A study of Latin word order. 1982. viii, 172 pp. 10 DRESSLER, Wolfgang U., Willi MAYERTHALER, Oswald PANAGL and Wolfgang Ullrich WURZEL: Leitmotifs in Natural Morphology. 1988. ix, 168 pp. 9 LANG, Ewald and John PHEBY: The Semantics of Coordination. (English transl. by John Pheby from the German orig. ed. 'Semantik der koordinativen Verknüpfung', Berlin, 1977). 1984. 300 pp. 8 BARTH, E.M. and J.L. MARTENS (eds.): Argumentation: Approaches to Theory Formation. Containing the Contributions to the Groningen Conference on the Theory of Argumentation, October 1978. 1982. xviii, 333 pp. 7 PARRET, Herman, Marina SBISÀ and Jef VERSCHUEREN (eds.): Possibilities and Limitations of Pragmatics. Proceedings of the Conference on Pragmatics, Urbino, July 8–14, 1979. 1981. x, 854 pp. 6 VAGO, Robert M. (ed.): Issues in Vowel Harmony. Proceedings of the CUNY Linguistics Conference on Vowel Harmony, May 14, 1977. 1980. xx, 340 pp. 5 HAIMAN, John: Hua: A Papuan Language of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea. 1980. iv, 550 pp. 4 LLOYD, Albert L.: Anatomy of the Verb. The Gothic Verb as a Model for a Unified Theory of Aspect, Actional Types, and Verbal Velocity. (Part I: Theory; Part II: Application). 1979. x, 351 pp. 3 MALKIEL, Yakov: From Particular to General Linguistics. Selected Essays 1965–1978. With an introduction by the author, an index rerum and an index nominum. 1983. xxii, 659 pp. 2 ANWAR, Mohamed Sami: BE and Equational Sentences in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. 1979. vi, 128 pp. 1 ABRAHAM, Werner (ed.): Valence, Semantic Case, and Grammatical Relations. Workshop studies prepared for the 12th International Congress of Linguists, Vienna, August 29th to September 3rd, 1977. xiv, 729 pp. Expected Out of print

Types of Variation: Diachronic, Dialectal And Typological Interfaces (Studies in Languages Companion)

Types of Variation: Diachronic, Dialectal And Typological Interfaces

Nominalization in Asian Languages: Diachronic and typological perspectives

Variationstypologie Variation Typology: A Typological Handbook of European Languages

Interdependence of Diachronic and Synchronic Analyses (Studies in Language Companion)

Types and Programming Languages

Types and Programming Languages

Types and Programming Languages

Types and Programming Languages

Types and Programming Languages

Types and Programming Languages

Types and Programming Languages

Modality-Aspect Interfaces: Implications and typological solutions (Typological Studies in Language)

Advanced Topics in Types and Programming Languages

Advanced Topics in Types and Programming Languages

Advanced topics in types and programming languages

Grammatical Categories: Variation in Romance Languages (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics)

Coding Participant Marking: Construction types in twelve African languages (Studies in Language Companion Series)

Discourse across Languages and Cultures (Studies in Language Companion)

Dimensions of Possession (Typological Studies in Language)

Benefactives and Malefactives: Typological Perspectives and Case Studies (Typological Studies in Language)

Deixis and Alignment: Inverse systems in indigenous languages of the Americas (Typological Studies in Language)

Preaspiration in the Nordic Languages: Synchronic and diachronic aspects

Prototypical Transitivity (Typological Studies in Language)

Ideophones (Typological Studies in Language, 44)

Studies in African Linguistic Typology (Typological Studies in Language)

Space in Languages: Linguistic Systems And Cognitive Categories (Typological Studies in Language)

Studies in Evidentiality: v. 54 (Typological Studies in Language)

Coordinating Constructions (Typological Studies in Language)

Ideophones (Typological Studies in Language, 44)

Deconstructing Creole (Typological Studies in Language)

Types of Variation: Diachronic, Dialectal And Typological Interfaces (Studies in Languages Companion)