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Article published In:
Cognitive Linguistic Studies
Vol. 9:1 (2022) ► pp.1–30

Individual differences in the decline of the Deontic nci construction

A radically usage-based exploratory investigation

ORCID logo | The University of Hong Kong

This paper addresses the question of the (speaker-level) ‘cognitive how’ of (language-level) constructional attrition, defined as a systemic decrease in the occurrence of a construction in the history of a language. Presenting and analysing data from an historical idiolectal corpus on the frequency development in individual speakers’ use of a partially schematic construction instantiated by such types as be obliged to and be permitted to, it offers a first attempt to measure whether a general decline in the frequency of this construction can also be observed to be an internal development during a speaker’s lifespan. The results confirm this to be the case in a sizeable group of speakers and the paper provides an initial insight into how this may contribute to a genuinely cognitive account of the speaker-external development.

Keywords: diachronic construction grammar, usage-based model, individual differences, constructional attrition, periphrastic modals, deontic modality, Late Modern English, Corpus of English Novels
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background and problem
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Frequency averages and ranges
    • 4.2Frequency development
      • 4.2.1Authors using the Deontic nci construction less in later life
      • 4.2.2Authors using the Deontic nci construction more in later life
      • 4.2.3Authors using the Deontic nci construction as much in late as in early career
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 May 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cogls.00088.noe
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