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Article In: Journal of Historical Linguistics: Online-First Articles

Explaining the paradox of grammatical innovation with relative frequency

The case of intention in be going to

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Abstract
I set out to develop a better understanding of why speakers use lexical expressions innovatively for the expression of grammatical meanings instead of using a conventional grammatical expression and why they continue to do so to such an extent that the construction indeed grammaticalizes. I argue that this phenomenon is somewhat paradoxical. Grammatical expressions are more frequent and conventionalised than lexical expressions, so it is not clear why speakers would choose a lexical expression in their stead for the expression of a grammatical meaning. I argue that none of the existing usage-based solutions for this paradox — expressivity, extravagance, cognitive activation — can fully explain the phenomenon. In this paper, I propose a new explanation for innovation based on relative frequency that complements the cognitive activation approach. I argue that a lexical expression can have a selective advantage in contexts in which analogical models (i.e., existing uses of the lexical expression that are similar to the novel grammatical meaning) have a higher relative frequency than the competing grammatical expressions. Using the semantic innovation of the meaning intention in be going to as a case study, I show that almost all early instances of be going to with intention occur in contexts in which its analogical model (motion-with-intention be going to) has a significantly higher relative frequency than competing constructions such as will, ’ll, and shall. The paper highlights the importance of considering relative frequency and considering competing constructions for understanding why lexical expressions get used innovatively with grammatical meaning.
Article outline
  • 1.The paradox of innovation in grammaticalisation
  • 2.Some solutions and their shortcomings
  • 3.A solution based on relative frequency
  • 4.Case study: The innovation of intention in be going to
    • 4.1Background
    • 4.2Corpus
    • 4.3Data collection and annotation
    • 4.4Annotation principles
    • 4.5Analysis
    • 4.6Results
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
References (51)
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