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Part of
Reconnecting Form and Meaning: In honour of Kristin Davidse
Edited by Caroline Gentens, Lobke Ghesquière, William B. McGregor and An Van linden
[Studies in Language Companion Series 230] 2023
► pp. 123–144

Chapter 5
Towards a radically usage-based account of constructional attrition

Integrating subtractive language developments in the Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization model

| The University of Hong Kong

This chapter reflects on how the gradual disappearance of a construction from a language can be accounted for in a radically usage-based diachronic construction grammar through an exploration of how the phenomenon can be accommodated in Schmid’s (2020) Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization model. This theory of the dynamics of the linguistic system is radical in its usage-based account in that it separates collective conventionalization from individual entrenchment and models how they interact in usage. Schmid focuses on the accumulative dynamics of the system, however, and gives scant attention to subtractive/attritional developments. Considering diachronic corpus data on the decline of the Deontic nci construction, the chapter brings to bear the EC-model’s conceptual apparatus to gauge the role of individual speakers in language-level constructional attrition.

Keywords: diachronic construction grammar, usage-based model, entrenchment-and-conventionalization model, individual differences, constructional attrition
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.A radically usage-based model of language (change)
  • 3.The role of the individual in constructional attrition
    • 3.1Preamble: constructional attrition as phenomenon and area of investigation
    • 3.2The decline of the Deontic nci construction in the Late Modern English period
    • 3.3Constructional attrition in a radically usage-based based model of language (change)
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 February 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.230.05noe
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