Grammaticalization and Parametric Variation (original) (raw)
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Verb-final conjunct clauses in Old English prose
Historical Germanic morphosyntax, 2021
The aim of this study is to analyse intertextual differences in the use of V-final order in Old English conjunct clauses and to determine to what extent the source of these differences may be Latin influence. The analysis reveals that the frequency of V-final order in OE conjuncts is rather limited in most texts, and Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica surfaces as the text in which the frequency of V-final conjunct clauses is exceptionally high. The study shows that the regular use of V-final order in Bede may be interpreted as a translation effect, with Latin inflating the frequency of the pattern in conjunct clauses, which means that the frequency of V-final conjunct clauses in early OE translations may not reflect native tendencies.
The ordering distribution of main and adverbial clauses a typological study.
Language 77: 345-365, 2001
This article examines the ordering distribution of main and adverbial clauses in crosslinguistic perspective. Using a representative sample of forty languages, the author shows that the ordering of main and adverbial clauses correlates with the position of the subordinator in the subordinate clause. In languages in which adverbial clauses have a final subordinator, adverbial clauses tend to precede the main clause, whereas in languages in which adverbial clauses are marked by an initial subordinator, adverbial clauses commonly occur in both sentence-initial and sentence-final position. In the latter language type, the position of an adverbial clause varies with its meaning or function: conditional clauses precede the main clause more often than temporal clauses, which in turn are more often preposed than causal, result, and purpose clauses. The distributional patterns are explained in terms of competing motivations; it is suggested that they arise from the interaction between structural and discourse-pragmatic factors.* Since Greenberg's seminal work on word-order correlations it has been well known that the order of certain linguistic elements tends to correlate with the order of verb and object. For instance, in languages in which the object precedes the verb (henceforth OV languages), adpositions usually follow NP and genitives occur before the head noun, whereas in languages in which the object follows the verb (henceforth VO languages), adpositions tend to precede NP and genitives occur after the head noun. This article examines the positional patterns of adverbial clauses, which have been largely ignored in the literature on word-order correlations. 1 This is the first large-scale, crosslinguistic investigation in this domain and thus fills an important gap in the literature. Based on a representative sample of forty languages, I show that adverbial clauses are overall more common before the element that they modify, i.e. the main clause or main clause predicate. 2 More precisely, I show that there are two major crosslinguistic ordering patterns: (1) either a language uses adverbial clauses both before and after the main clause/predicate (and both orders are common), or (2) the adverbial clause usually precedes the main clause/predicate. What does not seem to occur is the rigid use of adverbial clauses after the main clause/predicate: if a language uses adverbial clauses in final position, it also makes common use of adverbial clauses before the main clause/ predicate. In such a case (i.e. when both orders are common), the position of the adverbial clause varies with its meaning or function: conditional clauses usually precede the main clause/predicate; temporal clauses may precede or follow it; causal clauses * I would like to thank Mark Aronoff, Orin Gensler, David Kemmerer, Maria Polinsky, Mike Tomasello, and three anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper. I am of course responsible for all remaining errors.
Initial subordinate clauses in Old French: Syntactic variation and the clausal left periphery
Lingua, 2012
This paper examines word order variation and change in Old French, in which subordinate clauses that immediately precede a main declarative can occur in at least two distinct syntactic positions with respect to the main clause. Data from a corpus of Old French texts from the 10th until the early 14th centuries show that most initial subordinates are situated outside the main clause proper, although some examples occur in the first position of the main clause. Adopting a richly articulated clausal left periphery (Benincà, 2006), the SceneSetting projection of FrameP is proposed as the default syntactic position for extra-clausal initial subordinates. Although Old French is considered a verb-second language, initial subordinates often yield sequences in which the finite verb of the main clause appears in third or higher position. Following Labelle (2007) and others, I argue that a complex left periphery accounts for descriptively non-V2 word orders, while upholding a V2 analysis for Old French. Finally, following Vance et al. (2010), who examined the role of initial subordinates in the loss of V2 in Old French, I show that for most of the Old French period, the grammar of main declaratives that follow initial subordinates is characteristically V2. Only over the course of the 13th century does the subject-verb order become dominant.
Language Sciences, 2015
In this article we look at a case of secondary grammaticalization in English which entails the development of originally adverbial subordinators into complement-clause connectives. The study systematizes our earlier findings regarding the adverbial links but, if, though, lest, as if, as though, and like, which over time have come to realize a subsidiary function as equivalents (or near-equivalents) of the major declarative complementizers that and zero in certain specific contexts. We show that minor declarative complementizers are typically associated with the expression of subjectivity and irreality. As such, they are usually attested in complementation structures in which subjectivity is also at hand (e.g. they are complements to specific predicate-types occurring in non-assertive environments). The development discussed here illustrates grammaticalization both at the level of clause links and at the level of clause-combining.
Freywald, Ulrike. 2016. Clause integration and verb position in German. In: Ingo Reich & Augustin Speyer (eds.). Co- and Subordination in German and other Languages. Hamburg: Buske (Linguistische Berichte, Sonderheft 21). 181-220, 2016
In this paper, I discuss the well-known phenomenon of German adverbial subordinators introducing clauses with main clause word order (such as obwohl 'although', wobei 'whereby', weil 'because', während 'whereas'). I argue that these connectors do not behave in a deviant or non-canonical way in these cases but that adverbial subordinators have paratactic homonyms which belong to a separate class within the inventory of clause linkers in German. Building on data from spontaneous speech production, evidence comes mainly from the distribution of structural main clause phenomena and illocutionary types, and from the role of embedded verb second. These findings have also implications concerning the structural richness of the left periphery of main vs subordinate clauses. I come to the conclusion that main and subordinate clauses differ with respect to their internal syntax, and that subtypes of subordinate clauses showing varying degrees of syntactic integration can be sufficiently distinguished by just their external syntax.
It is almost a commonplace that word order in the midfield of German clauses is flexible. Although statements to this effect do not claim that "anything goes", they suggest that word order variability in German clauses is considerably greater than, for example, in Dutch and English. Few systematic empirical studies of the actual amount of variation that go beyond the intuition of the individual linguist have been published as yet. In the present paper, we adduce empirical data drawn from a corpus study on the linear order of Subject (SB), Indirect Object (IO) and Direct Object (DO) in German subordinate clauses.