One Language, Two Grammars? - part 4 pptx

ascertained. I therefore concentrate on two sets of corpora which provide comparable datasets, one diachronic and one exemplifying different registers of present-day usage. Figure 5.7 contrasts the situation before initially and non-initially stressed adjectives in BrE and AmE from the mid nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. The stretch of time considered in this figure coincides with the slight reversal in the establishment of the pre-determiner variant of quite, which is visible in both national varieties. The time course of the change is highly intricate. In the mid nineteenth century, AmE starts out with an almost invariable placement of quite in pre-determiner position (96 per cent averaged across both types of adjectives shown in Figure 5.7), closely resembling BrE (94 per cent). Later in the same century, the share drops to 81 per cent in BrE and 78 per cent in AmE. Thus far, the trend in both varieties is fairly parallel and none of the contrasts reaches statistically reliable levels. In the early twentieth century, BrE ends up with a somewhat lower share of pre- determiner quite than AmE (76 per cent as opposed to 84 per cent for the total). 17 So far, not much can be made of the general cross-varietal differences, which appear to be relatively minor. 169/176 = 96% 475/539 = 88% 108/131 = 82% 51/53 = 96% 276/339 = 81% 92/99 = 93% 24/30 = 80% 55/112 = 49% 12/26 = 46% 16/17 = 94% 70/107 = 65% 25/40 = 63% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% *1803–*1829 (MNC) *1830–*1869 (LNC) *1870–*1894 (ETC) percentage of quite a(n) before initially stressed Adjs (BrE) before noninitially stressed Adjs (BrE) before initially stressed Adjs (AmE) before noninitially stressed Adjs (AmE) Figure 5.7 The distribution of a quite and quite a(n) before attributive adjectives in a series of British and American prose corpora (MNC, LNC, ETC) 17 This contrast fails to reach statistical significance ( 2 ¼ 2.77,df¼ 1,p¼ 0.096 (n.s.)), but if combinations with initially stressed attributive adjectives are considered in isolation, the difference becomes significant:  2 ¼ 5.47 ,df¼ 1,p¼ 0.019 (*). Phonology and grammar 123 Much more stable contrasts emerge between the two groups of attributive adjectives premodified by quite. In both varieties, initially stressed adjectives hardly give up the rhythmically convenient pre-determiner position of quite once it has become quasi ubiquitous in the mid nineteenth century. This positional variant never falls below the 80 per cent mark and does not seem to be in danger of being given up again. In contrast, to the extent that the traditional post-determiner use becomes available again in the late nine- teenth and early twentieth centuries, non-initially stressed adjectives return to the canonical order ‘determiner þ adverb þ attribute þ noun’. They are clearly in the lead of the development and differ significantly from the more conservative majority of initially stressed adjectives as soon as the data become statistically sufficient. 18 Thus, a word order contrast can be dis- cerned that is largely accounted for by the rhythmic difference between initial and non-initial stress in attributive adjectives. In view of these robust results, the semantic motivations that have been adduced in the secondary literature appear to be backgrounded and partly offset by a powerful phono- logical determinant that has hitherto been neglected. This is all the more true if the claim that the maximizer meaning has become rare in Present-Day English is correct (cf. OED 2 1994:s.v.quite, Allerton 2001: 188). In that case, the variation between the competing word orders can with a consid- erable degree of certainty be largely attributed to the effect of rhythmic preferences. While this result is hardly in need of further corroboration, the differ- ential development of the variation in BrE and AmE can be elucidated by a look at some Present-Day English data. Besides samples of newspaper language from both sides of the Atlantic, Figure 5.8 includes spoken data from the BNC and the (as yet relatively restricted) second release of the ANC. A first important conclusion that suggests itself is that the rhythmically motivated difference remains in place in BrE as well as AmE and in spoken and written usage (with the possible exception of the spoken AmE corpus, in which non-initially stressed adjectives are simply too infrequent). 19 A corre- lation between the relative availability of the two positional variants and the extent of the rhythmically conditioned variability manifests itself: the better established the canonical post-determiner position of quite as an alternative to the pre-determiner position in a particular variety and register, the greater the rhythmic flexibility of the construction. Within the limits afforded by a 18 In the British LNC,  2 ¼ 93.30,df¼ 1,p¼ 4.50 Á10 –22 (***); in the American LNC,  2 ¼ 11.96,df¼ 1,p¼ 0.00054 (***); in the British ETC,  2 ¼ 15.86,df¼ 1,p¼ 6. 82 Á10 –5 (***); in the American ETC,  2 ¼ 19.80,df¼ 1,p¼ 8.59Á10 –6 (***). 19 The data for spoken BrE narrowly fail the statistical test since the difference of 4 per cent is too marginal:  2 ¼ 3.47,df¼ 1,p¼ 0.062 (n.s.). However, the contrasts in the newspaper corpora are both very highly significant: BrE:  2 ¼ 291.25,df¼ 1,p¼ 2.66 Á10 –65 (***); AmE:  2 ¼ 36.48,df¼ 1,p¼ 1.55Á10 –9 (***). 124 One Language, Two Grammars? particular synchronic state of a grammar, the Principle of Rhythmic Alternation thus reasserts its role as a linguistic universal in both varieties and registers under study. In comparison, there is no evidence for a difference in semantic orienta- tion of the kind suggested by Algeo (2006: 156): if AmE really tended more towards the maximizer meaning of quite, this should become manifest in a higher proportion of post-determiner placements. Obviously, the contrary is the case. As in the early twentieth-century data in Figure 5.7, a quite is generally more frequent in BrE than in AmE. While the sparse spoken data do not warrant any statistical comparison, the difference is very highly significant in the newspaper data. 20 Pending a closer semantic analysis of the corpus data, the alleged semantic difference thus does not seem to account for the observed intervarietal difference in word order. Another interesting finding that emerges from Figure 5.8 is the fact that the non-canonical pre-determiner use of quite is appreciably better entrenched in the spoken registers of both national varieties. 21 This suggests that this feature is characteristic of informal, conversational language use. Incidentally, this result parallels the difference between prototypical written 651/727 = 90% 41/44 = 93% 1704/2113 = 81% 854/898 = 95% 133/184 = 72% 5/5 = 100% 221/509 = 43% 112/123 = 91% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% spoken newspapers spoken newspapers percentage of quite a(n) British English American English before initially stressed adjectives before noninitially stressed adjectives Figure 5.8 The distribution of a quite and quite a(n) before attributive adjectives according to mode in present-day BrE and AmE (BNC spoken sections; g94–97,m93–95; ANC 2nd release spoken sections; D92–95,L92–95) 20  2 ¼ 60.42,df¼ 1,p¼ 7.66Á10 –15 (***). 21 BrE:  2 ¼ 201.54,df¼ 1,p¼ 9.65 Á10 –46 (***); AmE:  2 ¼ 2.43,df¼ 1,p¼ 0.12 (n.s.). Phonology and grammar 125 registers and speech-related registers described for the eighteenth century in Schlu¨ter (2005: 119–20). Intriguingly, both before and after the nineteenth century (in which pre-determiner quite peaked), written styles have exhibited a remarkable attachment to the canonical post-determiner use of quite. This state of affairs provides a possible clue to the question, looming in the background of the present discussion, of what factors led to the apparent U-turn observed in Figure 5.6. It looks as if nineteenth-century prose had adopted the syntax typical of spoken usage, only to revert to a more conservative usage around the turn of the twentieth century. This interpreta- tion ties in with Biber and Finegan’s (1989: 498–512) f indings c oncerning th e evolution of literary styles in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century fiction: the authors demonstrate that, while texts up to the eighteenth century tended to be literate in style, the nineteenth century saw a transition towards more oral styles in literary prose. To substantiate this hunch, an extension of the study of quite to text types that have remained extremely formal in character would be in order, but this is clearly beyond the scope of the present chapter. Eventually, the peak and subsequent reversal may turn out to be a side-effect of the colloquialization of nineteenth-century fictional prose. This brings me to an evaluation of my British–American data with regard to the three generalizations set out in the introduction. In the first place, the ‘colonial lag’ hypothesis seems to have been confirmed: The apparent re-establishment of the post-determiner order occurs more rapidly in BrE than in AmE. However, this reversal takes off only in the nineteenth century and should therefore better be described as a ‘postcolonial lag’, which has no bearing on the hypothesis under scrutiny. In addition, some doubts have been raised as to the authenticity of this U-turn, which might merely be due to stylistic shifts in one of the genres under consideration. In the absence of conclusive evidence, the generalization cannot be buttressed. Quite to the contrary, assuming that the nineteenth-century peak in (British) fictional prose is an artefact, AmE even seems more advanced in the transition of quite from post- to pre-determiner position. With regard to the alleged greater regularity of AmE, it is debatable whether this measure is applicable to the variable placement of quite. Assuming that it is, the canonical word order ‘determiner þ adverb þ attribute þ noun’ could tentatively be considered to be more regular than the highly marked variant ‘adverb þ determiner þ attribute þ noun’. And since BrE boasts the higher proportion of canonical structures, it should accordingly be considered the more regular variety of the two. In this respect, the findings fail to fulfil our expectations. On the other hand, the American data, both written and spoken, are less subject to word-order variability dependent on extragrammatical factors such as rhythm (and semantics). The syntax of AmE has thus been cutting a grammatical option, as a result of which the order of attributive structures involving quite has become fixed to a greater extent. This syntactic consistency may represent a 126 One Language, Two Grammars? kind of regularity on a different level, which is not present to the same degree in BrE. Finally, the most interesting issue (already alluded to in the above dis- cussion) is the generalization according to which AmE is more prone to colloquialization than BrE. Since the anteposition of quite seems to have been circulated by spoken (or speech-related) registers in the eighteenth century, the variety with a higher percentage of pre-determiner quite can be consid- ered more colloquial (cf. also Allerton 2001: 188). In line with this, in the synchronic data of Figure 5.8, for both varieties, the spoken corpora are of course more colloquial than the journalistic corpora. Interestingly, there is a highly significant contrast between the broadsheet the Guardian and the tabloid the Mail, with totals of 70 and 81 per cent of quite a(n), respec- tively. 22 Crucially, if the respective data are compared across the two national varieties, the generalization about the relative colloquialization of AmE is clearly confirmed: it proves to exhibit stronger colloquial traits than BrE in spoken usage as well as in newspaper language. More precisely, measured in terms of the placement of quite, American journalistic styles are situated between the British tabloid the Mail and spoken BrE, and spoken AmE is even more informal. The positional alternation of quite and the indefinite article thus seem to represent a novel piece of evidence in favour of the colloquialization hypothesis. 3 Conclusion The conclusions that emanate from the empirical findings described in the preceding sections fall into two sets: one concerning the effects of a func- tional phonological universal on grammatical variation, and another one concerning the general characterization of British and American grammar in contrast. Each set will be discussed in turn. As far as the phonological universal is concerned, evidence in its favour has been unequivocal: in both varieties, the preference for alternating stressed and unstressed syllables has been demonstrated to exert a constant influence on grammatical variation and change. Synchronically, the varia- tion between lit and lighted, knit and knitted and the pre- and post- determiner positions of quite are clearly subject to the avoidance of stress clashes and lapses. The scope of variation is limited by the availability of the grammatical variants as well as by other, conflicting factors (e.g. semantic distinctions). On the diachronic level, it has been shown that, since Early Modern English times, the overall share of lighted has decreased, the share of knitted has increased and the pre-determiner placement of quite has gained ground, at the expense of their respective competitors. These historical 22 The results of the chi-squared test are:  2 ¼ 33.39,df¼ 1,p¼ 7.56Á10 –9 (***s). Phonology and grammar 127 developments have originated in factors that remain to be investigated. What the above analyses have revealed, however, is that the Principle of Rhythmic Alternation has affected the relative speed of these replacement processes: innovative forms have been established faster in contexts where they promote rhythmic alternation, while they have been established more slowly in contexts where they lead to objectionable rhythmic constellations. Conversely, obso- lescent forms have been given up more reluctantly in contexts where they help preserve an alternating rhythm, and have been given up more readily where they violate this universal principle. Against this background, it is impossible to argue that either BrE or AmE is more sensitive to rhythmic alternation. BrE happens to have a larger share of lit and knitted and a lower share of pre-determiner quite. In these respects, the two national varieties occupy different positions on the respective trajectories of change. However, the rhythmically motivated contrasts in the distribution of these variants remain stable, at least as long as both variants are available. Nothing else would have been expected in view of the fact that rhythmic alternation is commonly considered to be a linguistic universal. Incidentally, this conclusion has implications for many formal theories of grammar which disregard functionally motivated factors as determinants of grammatical choices. In particular, phonological influences like those described in this chapter are normally ignored since phonological structure is assumed to be posterior to and entirely dependent on grammat- ical structure (cf. in particular Schlu¨ter 2003). Turning to the conclusions that the preceding studies permit with regard to the three descriptive generalizations, the findings yield a much more heterogeneous picture. To recapitulate, the larger share of lighted in AmE compared to BrE can be described as a ‘colonial lag’ effect and as a con- servation of greater morphological regularity. In contrast, the larger share of knit in AmE, while constituting another case of ‘lag’, leads to greater irreg- ularity in connection with this verb. The concept of colloquialization does not seem to be applicable to the participial variants. The positional variation involving the degree modifier quite at first glance appears to be an instance of ‘colonial lag’ if the short-term development since the nineteenth century is considered. If the angle is widened to include Early and Late Modern English, however, the widespread use of pre-determiner quite in AmE rather appears to constitute a case of ‘(post-)colonial lead’. Similarly, the inversion of determiner and degree adverb is inadequately described by the term ‘regularization’. While the inversion itself represents a deviation from canonical, regular word order, the almost complete elimina- tion of the uninverted structure leads to a new kind of regularity. At any rate, the case of quite represents a showcase example of the alleged colloquializa- tion of AmE in both spoken and written usage. In sum, all three descriptive generalizations have more evidence in their favour than against them, but their predictive adequacy has been challenged. 128 One Language, Two Grammars? Therefore, the conclusion from this chapter has to be that it is indispensable to analyse each alleged case of ‘colonial lag’, regularization or colloquializa- tion in considerable detail. In many of the studies described in this chapter, this aim has been achieved. There are, however, at least two instances where further research is necessary to arrive at a well-founded evaluation of the British–American contrasts. What is more, it may turn out that adding diachronic depth to the description of such intervarietal differences will call for a reassessment of frequently quoted standard examples of ‘colonial lag’, regularization and colloquialization. The character of a grammar is insufficiently described in terms of such stereotypes. Rather, the choices the grammar of a variety makes are in principle arbitrary and unpredictable. What is predictable, however, is that, wherever there is variability, it is bound to be subject to functional universals such as the phonological preference foregrounded in this chapter. Table 5.1 Summary of the evidence with regard to the three generalizations about British–American differences ‘Colonial lag’ Regularization Colloquialization Participial variants of light þþ Participial variants of knit þ – Positional variants involving quite þ/– –/þþ Phonology and grammar 129 6 Prepositions and postpositions 1 EVA BERLAGE 1 Introduction The present chapter covers a hitherto neglected area of word-order variation involving the syntactic rivalry between post- and prepositions in English. 2 By comparing the distribution in BrE and AmE, it contributes to the under- lying purpose of the book, which is to discern discrepancies and similarities in the grammars of both varieties. Since word-order differences between BrE and AmE are rarely mentioned in the literature, a brief survey will suffice. A case in point is the positioning of adverbs that are associated with complex predicates (auxiliary þ main verb). Empirical research done by Jacobson (1975: 155–225) on ten years of selected American newspapers in the late 1960s reveals that AmE allows for more than 20 per cent of preposed adverbial usage, as in (1). BrE, by contrast, uses the adverb in mid-position, as illustrated in (2)in96 per cent of all cases (see Britt Sandberg’s newspaper data from 1969 in Jacobson 1981: 89–93). (1) The search already has cost Shell $9 million in the offshore area. (Jacobson 1975: 166) (2) The boycott has already cost the state as much as $20 million (Guardian 92) Further research on word-order variation includes split negative infini- tives as in (3), which again occur far more often in AmE than in BrE, where the standard contiguous placement, as in (4), is still the clearly preferred variant (see Chapter 19 by Rohdenburg and Schlu¨ter; for the use of the split infinitive in AmE, see also Fitzmaurice 2000, Kato 2001). (3) She tends to not listen to what you’re saying. (Kato 2001: 312) 1 This chapter is dedicated to the memory of my dear grandmother A ¨ nne Berlage, who always believed in me. 2 The present study is based on work done within the Paderborn Research Project Determinants of Grammatical Variation in English, directed by Gu¨nter Rohdenburg and supported by the German Research Foundation (Grant Ro 2271/1–3). 130 (4) he told party members not to listen to national radio. (Guardian 92) More studies on word-order variation can be found in Chapters 5 and 7 by Schlu¨ter and Denison, respectively. 2 Post- and prepositional placement in present-day BrE and AmE In addition to ordinary prepositions which precede their complement, English boasts a small number of formally related items like including/included which either precede or follow the complement they refer to. Due to the variable placement of these expressions, it is questionable whether they can still be called genuine prepositions or whether we should describe them as ‘excep- tional PP constructions’ (Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 632) or ‘adpositions’. Other prototypical members of this group include the complementary word pairs excepting/excepted, aside from/aside and apart from/apart. While the ing- forms including and excepting and the prepositional variants aside from/apart from invariably occur before their complements, the original past participles included and excepted and the non-prepositional aside and apart are used postpositively, as illustrated in examples (5)–(6). (5) Including/Excepting/Aside from/Apart from these difficulties, life is wonderful. (6) These matters included/excepted/aside/apart, life is wonderful. To start with, a first analysis presented in Figure 6.1 investigates if and h ow BrE and AmE differ with respect to the p lacement of the adpositions under consideration. In each case, the column s represent the percentage o f the post- positional variants not i nclu ded, 3 excepted, apart and aside in both varieties, w ith the prepositional counterparts accounting for the complementary ratios making up 100 per cent. The absolute figures on top o f each column give t he total occurrences of the postpositional variant a nd the sum of t he postposi tional and prepositional uses, respectively. While the BrE data are taken from the Guardian (g), AmE is r epresented by the Los An geles Times (L). The size of the database varies with the respective construction and is indicated below the diagram. The evidence in Figure 6.1 reveals that each of the constructions has a higher share of the postpositional variant in BrE than in AmE. What differs is, however, the strength of the contrast, which is significant in the cases of not included and apart (p<0.05), very highly significant with respect to excepted (p<0.001) and not significant at all with aside. 4 Though absolute frequencies do not seem to influence the relative frequencies of occurrence in each variety, we may simply note that (postpositional) excepted and apart 3 The analysis is restricted to the negated forms not including and not included so as to limit the bulk of examples. 4 All the figures denoting statistical significance rely on the chi-square test. Prepositions and postpositions 131 are used clearly more frequently in BrE (at 0.89 per million words (pmw) vs. 0.12 pmw, and at 5.75 pmw vs. 0 pmw, respectively). As for the other items, not included is evenly distributed among the varieties (0.24 pmw and 0.26 pmw) and aside clearly preferred in AmE (3.40 pmw vs. 5.19 pmw). The remainder of this chapter will focus on notwithstanding, which is found to differ from the preceding elements in two important ways. As will be shown in the course of this chapter, the postpositional variant is much more frequent in AmE than in BrE, which results in a pronounced contrast between the varieties. Secondly, notwithstanding has one and the same morphological form for both post- and prepositional placement, as is illus- trated in (7) and (8). (7) Tax liability notwithstanding, the Queen’s money is likely to remain a closely guarded secret. (The Times 92) (8) Notwithstanding fearsome ridicule, his name was cleared. (Guardian 95) It resembles the adpositions including/included and excepting/excepted in that it has a verbal origin (see Kortmann and Ko¨nig 1992: 672–3). Morphologically, it consists of two parts, i.e. the present participle of the verb withstand and the negative particle nought/not, and is modelled after the French expression non obstant, which itself goes back to post-classical Latin non obstante (OED s.v. notwithstanding, Rissanen 2002: 194 ). In its function as a preposition it was first used by Wyclif in 1380. 18/75 = 24% 139/190 = 73.2% 125/271 = 46.1% 43/423 = 10.2% 35/259 = 13.5% 32/65 = 49.2% 366/854 = 42.9% 0/56 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% % of the postpositional variants not included g95–96; L95–96 excepted g95–98; L95–98 aside g95; L95 apart 1/10 of g95–96 and L95–96 BrE AmE Figure 6.1 Postpositional not included, excepted, aside and apart in a set of present-day British and American newspapers 5 5 Full references of the electronic corpora involved are found in the bibliography. Notice that the abbreviations indicating American and British newspapers use capital and lower-case letters, respectively. 132 One Language, Two Grammars? [...]... an independent clause or represents one itself as in the case of a free wh-clause One Language, Two Grammars? 32/33 = 97.0% 11/26 0% = 16 7% 5/30 35/27 20% 0 = 13 0% 40 % 29/30 = 96.7% 56/12 = 42 3% 2 = 45 9% 3% 7 = 46 82/17 % of notwithstanding + NP 80% 60% 64/ 64 = 100% 96/13 7 = 70 1% 100% 14/ 17 = 82 .4% 146 simple NPs coord NPs NPs involv PPs BrE NPs involv non- NPs involv finite fin clauses clauses... Variation in English None of the differences between BrE and AmE is significant according to the chi-square test 136 One Language, Two Grammars? % of NP + notwithstanding 100% 80% 60% 40 % 18/68 = 26.5% 20% 3/98 = 3.1% 0/81 1600–99 1700–99 0% 1380–1599 100% 80% MNC (*1803–*1829) LNC (*1830–*1869) BrE 6 11 2 4 43 5/ = 49 4/ = 8 5 = 11 /2 03 31 /3 18 14 2= = 5 4 0 0% 8/ 8= 22 20% 5 6 40 % 4 60% 1/ % of NP... 158 One Language, Two Grammars? Table 7.3 Reference of direct object in the BNC according to domain sport non-sport direct object ¼ new direct object ¼ old 1 (1 .4% ) 69 (98.6%) 843 (87.3%) 123 (12.7%) Total 70 966 total 844 192 1036 scholarly uses make up a good share of the total sample in the BNC, and in everyday speech the verb substitute does not seem particularly frequent 4. 2 Sport One non-academic... to sixteen words (p . placement. 14 While BrE already uses 36.0 per cent of all one- to -two- word NPs with the prepositional variant, AmE 13 According to the chi-square test, the difference between NPs of one to two and. the 330 /46 9 = 70 .4% 152 /43 7 = 34. 8% 0% 20% 40 % 60% 80% 100% % of NP + notwithstanding BrE AmE Figure 6.2 Postpositional notwithstanding in a set of present-day British and American newspapers 1 34 One. complex NPs. For a more specific description of different NP-structures, see section 4. 4 and Berlage (2007). 140 One Language, Two Grammars? Before interpreting the results displayed in Figure