Branching out:a diachronic prototype approach to the development of the English absolute

Nikki van de Pol Prof. dr. Hubert CuyckensKU Leuven KU LeuvenFWO - Flanders

Structure of the talk• Theoretical background

• The absolute construction• Prototype theory

• Data – Methodology• Data• Methodology

• Results• The development of the AC prototype• The prototype-network of the PDE AC

• Conclusion

• References

Theoretical background

The Absolute Construction (AC)

(1) The public legal obstacle having been removed, however, caution required that the final lifting of the ban depend upon the Law Society changing its rules. (BNC, Solicitors' partnerships: the law in practice. 1992)

(2) But with Niki and Andre working at the ministry of finance, what else could I do? (Leuven Drama Corpus, The Duel, 1968)

• non-finite construction

• predicate + (pro)nominal subject

• two main types: augmented (2) or unaugmented (1)

• wide range of semantic relations

Prototype theory (Rosch 1975 , Cuyckens 1991, Geeraerts 1997)

• Categories are not uniform entities with identical members, but they are made up of a number of overlappig subcategories that all share different sets of features with each other and thus constitute a ‘family resemblance’.

• Members of a category are called ‘prototypical’ when they display a high degree of representativeness of a given category. They are at the center of a category.

• The occurrence of non-prototypical member(s), i.e. members in the margin, which are not very representative, often leads to the existence of fuzzy boundaries.

Prototype theory (2)

TREE

This approach is notonly useful to represent semantic categories, but also to represent syntactic categories, especially when viewed diachronically (Geeraerts 1997)

Cf. Traugott & Trousdale 2013: 25: ‘partially sanctioned extensions of an existing conventionalized construction may over time become fully sanctioned instances of a more general, schematic, construction, which has changed as a result of the speaker/hearer’s experience with language’

Data – Methodology

Data• Corpus-based research

• OE + ME (… - 1500) : ca. 750 ACs• YCOE corpus

• EModE + LModE (1500-1914): ca. 5,500 ACs• most registers: PENN parsed corpora of English • poetry: personal selection of poems• near spoken language (LModE only): direct speech tagged fragments from the

Old Bailey Corpus

• PDE (1968-1994): ca. 4,000 ACs• most registers: BNC• Drama: Leuven drama corpus

• Search methods• For YCOE and Penn: used the corpus’s parsing system; searched for AC-tags

and filtered out wrong codings manually• For the others: read the entire subcorpus and filtered out ACs manually

Methodology

• Establish for each period• The most prototypical kind of AC with regard to structural (case,

augmentation, predicate type) as well as semantic properties• New and disappearing subtypes• Most important changes

• Establish the resulting relations between the AC’s prototype structure and those of related constructions

Semantics

Adverbial relationsCCC(3) And trust me, if Snape's cloak hadn't caught fire and broken my eye contact, I would have succeeded. Even with Snape muttering his little countercurse. (Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s stone, 2001)

(4) With a possible diagnosis like Marburg hanging over your head, every weird pain, tummy gurgle, or itch becomes an omen. http://www.cracked.com/article_21353_6-survival-tips-from-professional-adventurer.html, access 28-07-2014)

Temporal(5) With the tongue dead and gone, the parasite settles in and replaces the lost tongue with its own body. (http://www.cracked.com/article_17199_the-7-most-horrifying-parasites-planet.html#ixzz2tCZVF4FB, access 13-02-2014)

(6) With Robert still fast asleep Victoria confronts Michael about helping his mother. (//www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7RMUUEpFsw&feature=fvwrel, access 20-08-2012)

SemanticsElaboration relations

Postmodifier/relative clause-like: modification of a phrase(7) Several small incidents, one revolving around a pop concert, incited more students into action. (BNC, 1991)

Quasi-coordinate: adds information on sentence level, equivalent to and-coordinated sentence(e.g. exemplification, addition, etc.)(8) It had eight eyes placed as is expressed in the Plate, the two middlemost in the top being the largest. (PPCMBE, 1736) = and the two middlemost in the top are the largest.

(9) "Ultimately, it got a little disheartening, with Guillermo obviously feeling it more than anybody else.” (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/the-hobbit-peter-jackson-warner-bros-1-billion-79301?page=show 18-10-2012)= and Guillermo obviously felt it more than anybody else

The diachronic evolution of the AC prototype

OE0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Present par-ticiplePrepPPast participleInfAdjP

Old English

EOE

The number of AC subtypes is rather

limited• The case is always

dative(/instrumental)• The predicate types are restricted

to present and past participles• The semantic use is adverbial,

mostly temporal• The AC is unaugmented

(10) 7 gewordenum restedæge he ongann on gesamnunge læran (YCOE)And when the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue

In LOE past and present participles are still by far the most common predicate types

There are some hints at the development of new predicate types, but very marginal still:• Two adjectival predicate ACs, in both cases with ‘dead’ cf. analogy with the (resultant) state meaning of the past participle (French: il est mort no distinction between adj. and past participle)• two infinitive predicate ACs, both from the same sentence (! No infinitive in the Latin original)• one prepositional phrase predicate

(11)…& sona ymb anes gæres fæc deadum hire were heo wearð wydewe. (YCOE)And soon in about one year's time, her husband dead, she became a widow.

(12) Hie heora here on tu todældon; oþer æt ham beon heora lond to healdanne, oðer ut faran to winnanne. (YCOE)

They split their army in two , one part to be keeping hold of their homeland, the other part to be going out in order to win.

(13) Soðlice þa æfen com him twelfum mid him. (YCOE)When evening came, Jesus arrived, the Twelve with him.

In LOE ‘secondary’ ACs develop in thenominative and accusative cases, this is anatural evolution, also observed in other Indo-European languages (Bauer 2000)

OE ME0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

unidentifyable

instrumental

accusative case

nominative case

dative case

There are already a few cases in which an elaboration reading might be possible but none of these allow for a quasi-coordinate readingexcept for two nom. ACs (dative seems to block quasi-coordinate use)

OE ME0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

elaboration

adverbial

(14) Se ðe rixað on ecnysse mid þam ælmihtigan fæder. & þam halgan gaste.hi ðry on anre godcundnysse wunigende butan anginne & ende. (YCOE)

He then ruled in eternity with the almighty father and the holy ghost, the three of them dwelling in divine nature, without beginning or end. (= AND the three…)

AdjP, Inf, PrepP

Nom+acc ACs

Present &Past participle

dativeadverbial

unaugmented

Elaboration

Augmentation is very rare in Old EnglishOnly four instances were found: two with‘with’ and two with ‘after’

augmentation

Middle English

AdjP, Inf, P

repPNP, AdvP

Present participle

nominativeadverbial

unaugmentedOE ME

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Present participle

PrepP

Past participle

NP

Inf

AdvP

AdjP

• In ME present participles become the mostfrequent predicate type• Past participles become somewhat less frequent• AdjPs, Infs and PrepPs become more common• AdvPs and NPs are new predicate types

Past participle

OE ME0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

elaboration

adverbial

• Adverbial meanings remain the norm• Elaboration uses do increase in frequency

(15) And þe duke of Lancastir londid at Rauenesporne,…, no man makyng resistens. (YCOE)(16) Thei haue o cherch, þe women aboue, þe men be þe ground. (YCOE)

elaborationdative

nominativeaccusative

• The dative case is lost from the English language in the ME period• The nominative becomes the default case for the AC• When no case can be discerned the AC is traditionally considered nominative• The accusative/oblique case remains possible for the AC but its use is rather infrequent

OE ME0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

unidentifyable

instrumental

accusative case

nominative case

dative case

• augmentation, especially with-augmentation became more common•Due to scarcity of data, and perhaps reliance on the parsing in the corpus, other augmentation types were still few (e.g. after, at,though); but according to Visser (1973) there were numerous possibilites (+- 20) and augmentation was fairly common in this period.

Other augmentors

With-augmentation

(17) Aftir þis doo, Kyng Richard sat at mete at Westminster,… (YCOE)(18)… an horrybull fyre schall aryse at þe sonne goyng downe… (YCOE)

• Most ACs augmented by a preposition are reanalysed as/replaced by gerunds from EModE onwards

(19) We ran on cautiously, and the fog lifting a little, we found we were in sight of St Catherine's lighthouse, Isle of Wight. (PPCMBE)

Modern English

ME EModE LModE0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Present participle

PrepP

Perfective participle

Past participle

NP

Inf

AdvP

AdjPPresent participle

nominativetemporal

unaugmented

Other augmentors

AdjP, Inf, N

P, AdvP

Perfectiveparticiple

Pastparticiple

• In ModE the ACs become more evenly spread across the different predicate types• Especially for PrepP predicates there is a clear increase• Present participle predicates remain the most frequent• Perfective participles form a new predicate type

PrepP

(20) I cannot be so unthankfull as to leave you unsaluted in thes few lines, you havinge given mee the first occasione by your kinde letter. (PPCEME)

ME EModE LModE0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

elaboration

adverbial

elaboration

CCC-uses

• With regard to semantics, elaboration uses continue to increase (quasi-coordinate elaboration uses as well as non quasi-coordinate ones)• Temporal uses retain their frequency• Core adverbial uses decline in relative frequency

accusative

EModE LModE0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

unidentifyable

accusative case

nominative case

• As personal pronoun subjects become more rare, it is seldom possible to determine the case of the AC• Clearly oblique uses are rare but remain in use

ME EModE LModE0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

otherwise augmented

with-augmented

unaugmented

With-augmentation

• Augmentation other than with becomes very rare (4%-1%)• With-augmentation continues to rise in relative frequency• unaugmented ACs remain the default case

Present-day English

LModE PDE0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Present participle

PrepP

Perfective participle

Past participle

NP

Inf

AdvP

AdjP

• Not much change in predicate types • Present participles remain the most frequent• PrepPs and past participles share second place• Infinitival predicates become much rarer

Present participle

nominativeTime-elaboration

optional with-augmentor

Past participlePrepP

Inf

AdjP, AdvP

NP, Perf. Partc.

elaborationWith-

augmentation

Other augmentors

accusative

CCC-use

LModE PDE0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

elaboration

adverbial

• elaboration uses keep gaining in frequency (quasi-coordinate as well as postmodifier like types)• this happens at the expense of CCC-uses• temporal uses remain very frequent as well

PDE0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

unidentifyable

accusative case

nominative case

• In PDE, personal pronoun subjects have become very rare, but in the few cases were they do occur, we can see that an oblique subject remains possible in the margins.

LModE PDE0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

otherwise augmented

with-augmented

unaugmented

• With-augmentation becomes even more frequent and outnumbers unaugmented uses in informal and spoken use (van de Pol & Cuyckens 2014)• Other types of augmentation remain possible but are very marginal

(21) But anti-smoking laws have been in the news quite frequently, with newly implemented indoor smoking bans taking effect all across the UK and the U.S. (http://www.cracked.com/article_18600_6-laws-that-were-great-paper-and-insane-everywhere-else.html#ixzz368TQIWCA, access 30-06-2014)

The prototype-network of the PDE AC: overlap with other categories & place in larger prototype-categories

AC

VGFA

PP

VG-AC overlap• You will not mind my using this word (PPCMBE, 1859)

• These three bourgeois elements will eliminate themselves without our having to lift a finger. (KU Leuven drama corpus, 1970s)

• Life was fraught enough for the Stevenses as it was, with the constant care of Jennifer, without her adding to their problems (BNC, 1990)

• …a war in which the objectives can be er successfully attained er without them changing … (BNC, 1985-1994)

• Disks, no,Yeah, I know, but with them not knowing, friend's because there's so much disk swopping. (BNC, 1985-1994)

• You are pointing the finger at him, them being involved in the murders. (BNC, 1990)

• But then I think of my big -- fat -- mother, going out there every morning and yelling at the Gardner and the postman, with this -- this -- poodle clutched in her arms. And she and this poodle yelling at everyone! (KU Leuven drama corpus, 1968)

TY

PIC

AL

AC

FO

RM

TY

PIC

AL

VG

FO

RM

AC

VGFA

PP

AC-FA overlap

• I was as impatient to make these lovers a visit, having already made a friendship with Caesar… (PPCEME, 1688)

• but they being heavy unweildy Creatures, and we assaulting them before and behind, and all round, generally conquer'd them in the end, (PPCMBE, 1744)

• They being partly behind him, they winked the eye, pointed the finger to each other, …(PPCMBE, 1805)

• We walked on, and kept in conversation until we reached within a few yards of Crampton Court, at the lower end of Dame-street, I being outside, and he on my right hand. (PPCMBE, 1826)

• … it being too late to engage that Night, they made all the necessary Preparations to give the Grecians Battle the next Day. (PPCMBE, 1707)T

YP

ICA

L A

C F

OR

M

TY

PIC

AL

FA F

OR

M

AC

VGFA

PP

PP-AC overlap

• … and the standard bearer had a pole with shields. (adapted from BNC, 1994)

• … and the standard bearer had a pole with shields on it. (BNC, 1994)

• You could have warmed it up with a hot water bottle or a heat pad don't leave it there with the baby in it, but you can certainly warm the bed first. (BNC, 1992)

• With business confidence in Manila at rock bottom, President Aquino is in a specially weak position. (BNC, 1985-1994)

• “Oh yes,” said Tealtaoich, his eyes on the shadowy forest and the struggling Tree Spirits. (BNC, 1993)

• She gazed into the darkness, eyes dry and burning. (BNC, 1991)TY

PIC

AL

AC

FO

RM

TY

PIC

AL

PP

FO

RM

The larger ing-clause category (König & van der Auwera 1990)

• The AC category also fits into a larger family-resemblance structure of -ing clauses in general

• This structure is centered around the free adjunct as most typical member

• All the other ing-clauses differ from the free adjunct in one particular respect e.g. ACs are basically free adjuncts with an expressed subject; progressives (i.e. ‘predicative use’) do not differ much from free adjuncts except that they are involved in primary instead of secondary predication

predicative adverbial SS use (i.e. free adjunct) absolutes

object nexus

Attributive/apposition

Conclusion

Conclusion• It may be useful to view certain syntactic categories from a prototype-

theoretical point of view

• The syntactic category of the AC becomes more akin to a typical prototype category over time as several layers from more prototypical to more marginal members develop and fuzzy boundaries with other categories come about

• This results in a closer bond with other construction types in the language, which arguably aided the AC’s survival in English (↔ other Germanic languages) (van de Pol, Petré & Cuyckens 2014)

• The fact that some older reference grammars still retain the OE prototype and do not recognize the changed PDE AC category may explain why it is still sometimes argued that a PDE AC does not exist (e.g. Ruppel 2013)

Conclusion (2)

• The most important changes were:• The rise of elaboration uses next to the originally typical

adverbial uses• The increasing use of with-augmentation to the point that it has developed into an optional AC-marker, rather than a typical augmentor in PDE

• The increasing diversity of possible predicate types

OE ME EModE LModE PDE0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

elaborationadverbial

OE ME EModE LModE PDE0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

otherwise augmentedwith-augmentedunaugmented

OE ME EModE LModE PDE0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Present participlePrepPPerfective participlePast participleNPInfAdvPAdjP

References• Bauer, Brigitte. 2000. Archaic syntax in Indo-European. The spread of transitivity in Latin and

French. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

• Berent, G. P. 1975. 'English absolutes in functional perspective'. In R.E. Grossman et al. eds. Papers from the parasession on functionalism: A paravolume to CLS 20, 10-33.

• BNC: The British National Corpus, later part 20th century, 100 m words. Department of Linguistics, University of Oxford. (http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/corpus/index.xml? ID=intro).

• Cuyckens, Hubert. 1991. The semantics of spatial prepositions in Dutch: a cognitive-linguistic exercise. PhD-thesis. Antwerp.

• Geeraerts, Dirk. 1997. Diachronic Prototype semantics: A contribution to Historical Lexicology. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

• Helsinki Corpus of English Texts: Diachronic and Dialectal, 750-1700, 1.5 m words. Department of English, University of Helsinki. Third edition, (http://icame.uib.no/ hc/).

• Huber, Magnus; Nissel, Magnus; Maiwald, Patrick; Widlitzki, Bianca. 2012. The Old Bailey Corpus. Spoken English in the 18th and 19th centuries. www.uni-giessen.de/oldbaileycorpus, (access 04-06-2013).

• Kohnen, Thomas. 2004. Text, textsorte, sprachgeschichte: Englische Partizipial- und Gerundialkonstruktionen 1100 bis 1700. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.

• König, Ekkehard and van der Auwera, Johan. 1990. 'Adverbial participles, gerunds and absolute constructions in the languages of Europe. In Johannes Beclert, Giuluano Bernini and Claude Budart (eds.). 1990. Toward a Typology of European Languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 337-355.

References (2)• Kortmann, B. 1991. Free adjuncts and absolutes in English: problems of control and interpretation.

London & New York: Routledge.

• Kortmann, B. 1995. 'Adverbial participial clauses in English'. In M. Haspelmath & E. König eds. 1995. Converbs in a cross-linguistic perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 189-237.

• Stump, G. T. 1985. The semantic variability of absolute constructions. Dordrecht: Reidel.

• PPCEME: The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English, 1500-1710, 1.7 m words. Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania. CD-ROM, first edition, (http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/).

• PPCMBE: The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Modern British English, 1700-1914, 1 m words. Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania. CD-ROM, first edition, (http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/).

• Quirk, R., et al. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.

• Rosch, Eleanor. 1975. 'Cognitive representations of semantic categories. ‘ Journal of Experimental Psychology 104. 192-233.

• Ross, Charles Hunter. 1893. ‘The Absolute Participle in Middle and Modern English’. PMLA 8.3. 245-302.

• van de Pol, Nikki and Cuyckens, Hubert. 2013a. ‘In absolute detail: the development of English absolute constructions from adverbial to additional-context marker’. ICAME. Santiago de Compostella, 22-26 May 2013.

References (3)• van de Pol, Nikki and Cuyckens, Hubert. 2013b. ‘Gradualness in change in English augmented

absolutes.’ In: Giacalone Ramat A., Mauri C., Molinelli P. (Eds.), Synchrony and Diachrony: A dynamic interface. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

• van de Pol, Nikki and Cuyckens, Hubert. 2014. 'The diffusion of English absolutes: A diachronic register study.' In Davidse K., Gentens C., Ghesquière L. and Vandelanotte L. (eds). Corpus interrogation and grammatical patterns. Studies in Corpus Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

• van de Pol, N., Petré, P., Cuyckens, H. (2014). Why is there a Present-day English absolute?. CoLiDi. Gent, Belgium, 27-28 February 2014.

• Visser, Frederikus Theodorus. 1973. An historical syntax of the English language. Leiden: Brill.