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the relevance of syntactic structures for syntactic variation; or, ���
the interaction of effects���on the particle verb alternation
• Daniel Ezra Johnson – Lancaster University – d.e.johnson @ lancaster.ac.uk
• Thanks to: – Bill Haddican – Kyle Gorman, Laurel MacKenzie, Joel Wallenberg
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a variationist’s view of the world
S P
V
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vers une architecture
G L
C
A P C
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plumbing the depths
• economy principles – some variable alternations are like categorical ones so don’t duplicate the machinery (Guy & Boberg 1997) – some variable alternations aren’t like categorical ones these must be outside the grammar (MacKenzie 2012) – can we further justify these w/ appeal to learnability?
• theoretically and/or empirically-motivated architectural constraints – ‘phonetics can’t read’ – ‘grammars can’t count’ so if something is counting, it can’t be the grammar – if effects interact, they must apply at the same stage
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the variable
• one of a few English ‘alternations’ • long history of study • but what are ‘alternants’ theoretically? • using VOP vs. VPO – agnostic labels • no referential meaning difference • little or no social meaning difference • compare to ditransitive (‘dative alternation’) • what is beyond the ‘envelope of variation’? – idioms (fixed and favoring) – VOPP constructions
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the syntax
• does syntax just give options, or does variation arise there? • if the latter, potential for duplication of machinery • if the former, in the syntax you have X[+F] or you don’t • but does the lexicon work the same way?
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the data
• two acceptability judgment experiments • subjects judged sentences ‘bad’ (0) to ‘good’ (1) • experiment 1: 297 subjects, US/Can./UK/Ire. • object weight: ‘the (lumpy 10-pound) pumpkin’ • object oldness: via cataphoric pronoun
Because she had no money… vs. Because it tasted funny… … Susan spit the conference dinner out.
• 32 stimuli, all compositional (Lohse et al. 2004) • 32 fillers/normalizers – treated as fillers here • able to look at VPO and VOP separately
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the data
• experiment 2: 125 subjects from USA • object length is now fixed • four topic/focus conditions via question prompt – Q1. What did the friends do? (VP focus) – Q2. What did the friends pass around? (object focus) – Q3. What happened? (wide focus) – Q4. What happened to the beer? (object topic) – A1-4. The friends passed the beer around.
• worked much better than the cataphoric pronoun • won’t discuss today, very similar analytical issues
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the effects
• ‘social’: time, register/style, variety: US vs. UK • ‘individual’: interacts with all the below • prosodic: object weight – affected by processing constraints – never represented in syntax
• information-structural: old/new, topic/focus – affected by processing constraints – sometimes represented in syntax
• lexical: verb, particle, V-Prt pair: not today
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the predictions
• ~100 years of research – corpora that must treat VOP/VPO as a choice – experiments that treat VOP/VPO as a choice
• a heavy object should… – make VOP order worse – have no effect on VPO order (make slightly worse?)
• a discourse-old (or topic) object should… – make VOP order better – make VPO order worse (probably both?)
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object weight
5
67
89
10
VOP - light VOP - heavy VPO - light VPO - heavy
8.21 7.97 8.05 8.21
-0.24 +0.17
p = .002 p = .02
response ~ order * weight + (order * weight | subject) + (order * weight | stimulus)
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object weight
-2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5
-0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
effect of heavy object - VOP
effe
ct o
f hea
vy o
bjec
t - V
PO
b = -0.096r = -.497p ~= 0
response ~ order * weight + (order * weight | subject) + (order * weight | stimulus)
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-2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5
-0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
effect of heavy object - VOP
effe
ct o
f hea
vy o
bjec
t - V
PO
b = -0.096r = -.497p ~= 0
object weight
response ~ order * weight + (order * weight | subject) + (order * weight | stimulus)
UK / IRL (152) Canada (32) USA (113)
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object newness
response ~ order * focus + (order * focus | subject) + (order * focus | stimulus)
56
78
910
VOP - old VOP - new VPO - old VPO - new
7.91 8.27 7.89 8.37
+0.36 +0.49
p = .12
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56
78
910
VOP - old VOP - new VPO - old VPO - new
8.07 8.39 7.87 8.26+0.32 +0.39+.077.62 8.07 7.87 8.50+0.45 +0.63+.18
object newness
response ~ country * order * focus + (order * focus | subject) + (order * focus | stimulus)
UK / IRL (152) USA (113)
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-0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5
effect of new object on VPO order
effe
ct o
f new
obj
ect o
n VO
P or
der
object newness
response ~ country * order * focus + (order * focus | subject) + (order * focus | stimulus)
UK / IRL (152) USA (113)
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-0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5
effect of new object on VPO order
effe
ct o
f new
obj
ect o
n VO
P or
der
object newness
response ~ country * order * focus + (order * focus | subject) + (order * focus | stimulus)
UK / IRL (152) USA (113)
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effect of new object on VPO order
effe
ct o
f new
obj
ect o
n V
OP
ord
er
-0.25 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75
-0.25
0.00
0.25
0.50
0.75
object weight * object newness ?
UK / IRL (61) USA (39)
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object weight * object newness ?
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
050
100
150
200
mean: 8.60order: VOPobject: old, light
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
050
100
150
200
mean: 8.35order: VOPobject: old, heavy
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
050
100
150
200
mean: 8.57order: VOPobject: new, light
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
050
100
150
200
mean: 8.34order: VOPobject: new, heavy
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object weight * object newness !
0 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
050
100
150
200
mean: 8.42order: VPOobject: old, light
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
050
100
150
200
mean: 8.59order: VPOobject: old, heavy
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
050
100
150
200
mean: 8.54order: VPOobject: new, light
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
050
100
150
200
mean: 8.64order: VPOobject: new, heavy
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conclusions
• prosodic and information-structural effects on
word order variation can be elicited experimentally • measuring acceptability on 11-point Likert scale,
then treating it as linear – while not ideal! – gave better results than attempts at normalization
• subjects vary along every dimension you measure • subject random effects are very valuable data • two word order ‘alternants’ can appear linked or
‘yoked’ together, cf. quantum entanglement • object weight and information status can interact
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more discussion and questions
• constituent length can be extragrammatical,
but it can also affect ‘grammar competition’ • can ‘the same’ effect be in 2 places (economy)? • despite (arguably) being represented in syntax,
information structure also affects competition • does any variation arise in the syntax proper? • can we constrain ‘grammar competition’ to make
it distinguishable from ‘lower-level’ variation? • whether 2 or 3 levels, syntax = phonology?
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references (1)
• Adger, David and Jennifer Smith. 2010. Variation in agreement:
A lexical feature-based approach. Lingua 120: 1109–1134.
• Bates, Douglas, Martin Maechler, Ben Bolker and Steven Walker. 2013. lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using Eigen and S4. R package version 1.0-5. http://cran.R-project.org/package=lme4
• Bresnan, Joan and Marilyn Ford. 2010. Predicting syntax: Processing dative constructions in American and Australian varieties of English. Language 86(1): 168-213.
• Cappelle, Bert. 2009. Contextual cues for particle placement: multiplicity, motivation, modeling. In Bergs and Diewald (eds.), Context in Construction Grammar. John Benjamins. 145-192.
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references (2)
• Guy, Gregory R. and Charles Boberg. 1997. Inherent variability
and the obligatory contour principle. Language Variation and Change 9: 149-164.
• Kroch, Anthony S. 1989. Reflexes of grammar in patterns of language change. Language Variation and Change 1: 199-244.
• Lavandera, Beatriz. 1978. Where Does the Sociolinguistic Variable Stop? Language in Society 7(2): 171-182.
• Lohse, Barbara, John A. Hawkins and Thomas Wasow. 2004. Domain minimization in English verb-particle constructions. Language 80(2): 238-261.