Chapter published in:
Nodes and Networks in Diachronic Construction GrammarEdited by Lotte Sommerer and Elena Smirnova
[Constructional Approaches to Language 27] 2020
► pp. 243–274
Converging variations and the emergence of horizontal links
To-contraction in American English
The guiding question of this paper is how
(horizontal) connections are established when new items enter the
network of constructions. It presents a quantitative, corpus-based
study of the development of to-contraction (e.g.
want to > wanna) in American English since
the 19th century. From a plethora of earlier forms, gonna,
wanna and gotta emerge, first as
representations of phonetic reduction, but in time claiming their
place as newly emerged, separate nodes in the constructional
network. As their frequency increases, their usage patterns
(relative to the full form) become increasingly similar. I propose
that this marks the emergence of a horizontal link, which can be
described as an emerging “metaconstruction”. The study discusses
the status of these forms as either phonetic variants, potential
allostructions, or independent form–meaning pairings, and provides
first-hand evidence for emergent connections via mechanisms of
analogy in language. Moreover, it makes an argument that (changing)
usage patterns reflect (changing) constructional links and degrees
of entrenchment.
Keywords: modal expressions, horizontal links, analogy, metaconstruction, contraction
Article outline
- 1.Introduction: Horizontal links and the emergence of schemata
- 2. To-infinitives and contractions
- 3.Corpus study 1: The history of non-conventional to-contraction
- 4.Corpus study 2: Determinants of variation of contracted and full forms in the
20th century
- 4.1Determinants of variation
- 4.1.1Variables measuring the degree of entrenchment
- Sentence type
- Ellipsis
- Sentence length
- 4.1.2Variables measuring the degree of
conventionalization
- Register: Latin-based collocate
- Genre: Movie vs Drama
- 4.1.3Variables relating to both entrenchment and
conventionalization
- Attraction
- Linguistic context: Subject
- 4.1.1Variables measuring the degree of entrenchment
- 4.2Modeling the data
- 4.3Results
- 4.1Determinants of variation
- 5.Discussion
- 5.1Contractions in the constructional network and the emergence of horizontal links
- 6.Conclusion
-
Notes -
References
Published online: 13 May 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.27.07lor
https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.27.07lor
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Cited by
Cited by 3 other publications
Daugs, Robert
Lorenz, David & David Tizón-Couto
Tizón-Couto, David & David Lorenz
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