How the Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization Model might enrich Diachronic Construction Grammar
The case of (the) thing is (that)
Explanations of language change in terms of Diachronic Construction Grammar generalize over gradual adaptations of
the linguistic behaviour of individual speakers and communities. Presenting a diachronic case study of the pattern
(the) (Adj) thing (clauserel) is (is)
(that), I argue that the time course of formal, semantic and pragmatic changes, of changes in frequency and
of changes regarding dispersion over speakers and choices of lexical items offer a glimpse of the gradual individual and communal
adaptations underlying processes such as constructionalization and constructional change. I interpret data extracted from various
corpora from the perspectives of Diachronic Construction Grammar and the Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization Model (Schmid 2020) and discuss how the latter perspective might enrich the former.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Characterizing and illustrating the patterns in present-day English
- 3.The diachrony of the four usage types
- 4.Stage I: From Germanic and Romance to usage types 1 and 2
- 4.1Data
- 4.2The constructionist perspective
- 4.3The perspective of the EC-Model
- 5.Stage II: Complementizer omission
- 5.1Data
- 5.2The constructionist perspective
- 5.3The perspective of the EC-Model
- 6.Stage III: Determiner omission
- 6.1Data
- 6.2The constructionist perspective
- 6.3The perspective of the EC-Model
- 7.Stage IV: Double is
- 7.1Data
- 7.2The constructionist perspective
- 7.3The perspective of the EC-Model
- 8.Discussion and conclusion
-
References
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