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Detransitivisation as a support strategy for causative bring1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2016

BRITTA MONDORF  and
ULRIKE SCHNEIDER
BRITTA MONDORF
Affiliation:
Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz Jakob-Welder-Weg 18, D 55099 Mainz, Germanymondorf@uni-mainz.de, ulrike.schneider@uni-mainz.de
ULRIKE SCHNEIDER
Affiliation:
Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz Jakob-Welder-Weg 18, D 55099 Mainz, Germanymondorf@uni-mainz.de, ulrike.schneider@uni-mainz.de
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Abstract

This article presents diachronic corpus analyses of causative bring (bringcaus) which provide new insights into a fairly novel research paradigm in language change: the role of ‘Moderate Transitivity Contexts’ (MTCs) as a refuge for waning verbs and as a breeding ground for waxing verbs (see Mondorf 2010, 2011, 2016; Rohdenburg 2014b; Schneider & Mondorf 2015). It argues that the modulation of transitivity serves as a support strategy for a formerly well-established verb that is leaving the language.

The potential of semantic transitivity for the development of explanatory principles in language change has been hinted at by Hopper & Thompson (1980: 279). Empirically investigating the diachronic stages of detransitivisation for a recessive English verb we gain first systematic, empirically validated insights into the link between transitivity and language change.

This article adduces support for the claim that bringcaus + to-infinitive has (almost completely) lost its ability to take fully fledged direct objects. There are, however, at least three, partly overlapping contexts, in which this verb can stand its ground: with reflexives, modals and negation. What these contexts have in common is that they reduce the clause's transitivity, defined by Hopper & Thompson (1980: 251) as ‘the effectiveness with which the verbal action takes place’. Assuming that the higher the transitivity, the stronger the effect of the verbal action is on the object, these detransitivised contexts can be interpreted as alleviating the effect of the verbal action.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 20 , Special Issue 3: Support strategies in language variation and change , November 2016 , pp. 439 - 462
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

1

We are indebted to Matthias Eitelmann, Günter Rohdenburg, Florian Dolberg and two anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments and corrections of an earlier draft of this article.

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Andersson, Evert. 1985. On verb complementation in written English. Malmö: GWK Gleerup.Google Scholar
Blake, Barry. 1976. On ergativity and the notion of subject. Lingua 39, 281−300.Google Scholar
Blake, Barry. 1987. The grammatical development of Australian languages. Lingua 71, 179−201.Google Scholar
Bortz, Jürgen & Schuster, Christof. 2010. Statistik für Human- und Sozialwissenschaftler. Heidelberg: Springer.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1978. Ergativity. In Phillip Lehmann, Wilfred (ed.), Syntactic typology, 329−94. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1981. Language universals and linguistic typology. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1985. Causative verb formation and other verb-deriving morphology. In Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, vol. 3: Grammatical categories and the lexicon, 301−48. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dixon, Robert M. W. 1979. Ergativity. Language 55 (1), 59−139.Google Scholar
Dryer, Matthew. 2007. Clause types . In Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, 2nd edn, vol. 1: Clause structure, 224−75. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eitelmann, Matthias & Mondorf, Britta. 2015. The role of cognate objects in language variation and change. Paper Presented at the 37th Annual Meeting of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS), 4−6 March 2015, Leipzig, Germany.Google Scholar
Field, Andy, Miles, Jeremy and Field, Zoë. 2012. Discovering statistics using R. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Gabelentz, Georg von der. 1891. Die Sprachwissenschaft: Ihre Aufgaben, Methoden, und bisherigen Ergebnisse. Leipzig: Weigel.Google Scholar
García, Erica. 1975. The role of theory in linguistic analysis. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1985. Ergative morphology and transitivity gradients in Newari. In Plank, Frans (ed.), Relational typology, 89−107. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 1995. Constructions: A Construction Grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan Th. 2004. HCFA 3.2: A program for hierarchical configural frequency analysis for R for Windows.Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan Th. 2009. Statistics for linguistics with R: A practical introduction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Haiman, John. 1983. Iconic and economic motivation. Language 59 (4), 781−819.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin, König, Ekkehard, Österreicher, Wulff & Raible, Wolfgang. 2001. Language typology and language universals: An international handbook, vol. 2 (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft 20). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Hollmann, Willem B. 2003. Synchrony and diachrony of English periphrastic causatives: A cognitive perspective. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. & Thompson, Sandra A.. 1980. Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language 56, 251−99.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. & Traugott, Elizabeth C.. 1993. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hundt, Marianne. 2007. English mediopassive constructions: A cognitive, corpus-based study of their origin, spread and current status (Language and Computers). Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1961. A modern English grammar. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Kirchner, Gustav. 1951. A special case of the object of result. English Studies 32, 153–9.Google Scholar
König, Ekkehard & Siemund, Peter. 2000. The development of complex reflexives and intensifiers in English. Diachronica 17 (1), 39–84.Google Scholar
Krauth, Joachim & Lienert, Gustav A.. 1973. Die Konfigurationsfrequenzanalyse (KFA) und ihre Anwendung in Psychologie und Medizin: Ein multivariates nichtparametrisches Verfahren zur Aufdeckung von Typen und Syndromen. Freiburg: Karl Alber.Google Scholar
Mair, Christian. 1990a. A contrastive analysis of object-control in English and German. Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 25, 85−101.Google Scholar
Mair, Christian. 1990b. Infinitival complement clauses in English: A study of syntax in discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mondorf, Britta. 2009. More support for more-support: The role of processing constraints on the choice between synthetic and analytic comparative forms (Studies in Language Variation 4). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Mondorf, Britta 2010. Genre-effects in the replacement of reflexives by particles. In Dorgeloh, Heidrun & Wanner, Anja (eds.), Approaches to syntactic variation and genre, 219−45 (Topics in English Linguistics 70). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Mondorf, Britta. 2011. Variation and change in English resultatives. Language Variation and Change 22 (3), 397−421.Google Scholar
Mondorf, Britta. 2016. ‘Snake legs it to freedom’: Dummy it as pseudo-object. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 12 (1), 73−102.Google Scholar
Moravcsik, Edith. 1978. On the case marking of objects. In Greenberg, Joseph (ed.), Universals of human language , vol. 4: Syntax, 249−89. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Peitsara, Kirsti. 1997. The development of reflexive strategies in English. In Rissanen, Matti et al. (eds.), Grammaticalization at work: Studies of long-term developments in English (Topics in English Linguistics 24), 277−370. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Primus, Beatrice. 1999. Cases and thematic roles: Ergative, accusative and active. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 2009. Reflexive structures. In Rohdenburg, Günter & Schlüter, Julia (eds.), One language, two grammars? Grammatical differences between British and American English, 166−81 (Studies in English Language). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 2014a. On the changing status of that-clauses. In Hundt, Marianne (ed.), Late Modern English syntax, 155−81. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 2014b. Reflections on reflexives in Modern English. Anglia 132 (3), 536−74.Google Scholar
Saaed, John I. 2016. Semantics, 4th edn. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Schneider, Ulrike & Mondorf, Britta. 2015. Moderate transitivity contexts as breeding grounds for novel verbs: An analysis of waxing and waning verbs. Paper Presented at the 36th Annual Conference of the International Computer Archive for Modern and Medieval English (ICAME), 27–31 May 2015, Trier, Germany.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1976. Hierarchy of features and ergativity. In Robert, M. W. Dixon (ed.), Grammatical categories in Australian languages, 112−71. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Google Scholar
Song, Jae Jung. 2001. Linguistic typology: Morphology and syntax. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Strang, Barbara M. H. 1970. A history of English. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Von Eye, Alexander. 2000. Configural frequency analysis: A program for 32 Bit Windows operating systems. Available from www.dgps.de/fachgruppen/methoden/mpr-online/issue14/art1/article.html. Retrieved 10 May 2016.Google Scholar
Von Eye, Alexander & Mair, Patrick. 2007. A functional approach to configural frequency analysis. Research Report Series / Department of Statistics and Mathematics 48. Department of Statistics and Mathematics, Vienna University of Economics and Business, 1−14.Google Scholar
Von Eye, Alexander, Mair, Patrick & Mun, Eun-Young. 2010. Advances in configural frequency analysis. New Nork: Guilford.Google Scholar
Von Eye, Alexander & Mun, Eun-Young. 2008. Configural frequency analysis of longitudinal data. In Menard, Scott (ed.). Handbook of longitudinal research: Design, measurements, and analysis, 31332. Burlington, MA: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Wallace, Stephen. 1982. Figure and ground: The interlinguistic relationships of linguistic categories. In Hopper, Paul J. (ed.), Tense-aspect: Between semantics & pragmatics, 201–32. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Zacks, Jeffrey M. & Tversky, Barbara. 2001. Event structure in perception and conception. Psychological Bulletin 127, 3–21.Google Scholar