Prosody, Topicalization andV2 in the History of English

and French

Anthony Kroch and Beatrice SantoriniUniversity of Pennsylvania

September 2010

Fourth Workshop on Prosody, Syntax andInformation Structure (WPSI4)

University of Delaware

1

The decline of topicalization in English and its prosodic motivation

2

The history of topicalization in English (Speyer 2008)

• Why does topicalization decline in Middle English but not disappear? If the change a parametric one, it should go to completion. Otherwise, topicalization, a clear case of stylistic variation might be expected to be stable in frequency over time.

• This question has an answer in the specific interactionbetween parametric settings and stylistic variation in the history of English.

3

• Anthony Kroch and Ann Taylor. Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, second edition. University of Pennsylvania, CD-ROM, second edition, 2000.

• Ann Taylor, Anthony Warner, Susan Pintzuk, and Frank Beths. York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose. Oxford Text Archive, first edition, 2003.

• Anthony Kroch, Beatrice Santorini, and Lauren Delfs. Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English. University of Pennsylvania, CD-ROM, first edition, 2004.

• Ann Taylor, Arja Nurmi, Anthony Warner, Susan Pintzuk, and Terttu Nevalainen. Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Oxford Text Archive, first edition, 2006.

English Data Sources

4

(2)!And he seide to hem, An enemy hath do˜ this thing.! ! Wycliffe Bible ca. 1380

(1)! "# cwæ$ h%, "æt dyde unhold mann.! ! West Saxon Gospels ca. 1000

An illustrative case in the New Testament Matthew 13.28

5

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

OE (Early) OE (Late) 1151-1250 1251-1350 1351-1420 1421-1500 1501-1569 1570-1639 1639-1710

% T

opic

aliz

ed

Date

Decline of direct object topicalization in English

West Saxon Gospels

Wycliffe Bible

6

96 A CORPU S STUDY OF THE VORFELD

Table 4.2: Summary of Vorfeld occupation of arguments.

Vorfeld Prop est (%)

Argument yes no lo pt hi

subject 43 523 18 597 69.7 70.1 70.4direct object 3 418 20 432 13.9 14.3 14.8indirect object 38 815 3.2 4.5 6.1

Note: subject = SU, direct object = OBJ1 + OBJ1 VC, indirect object = OBJ2 + OBJ2 VC.

Table 4.3: Classification after part-of-speech and syntactic category.

Category CGN labels

nominal NP, N, VNW, MWU (when proper names)prepositional PP, VZverbal TI, OTI, AHI, INF, WW, PPARTclausal CP, WHSUB, WHQ, WHREL, REL, SVAN, SMAIN, SSUB, SV1

Note: See Appendix A for explanation of the CGN POS/Cat-labels. Conjunctions/lists of onecategory are also assigned that category. Other POS-types (notably adjectives and adverbs) wereassigned to a rest category.

other things questionnaire data. We will see in later sections that there is more to thedifference between direct and indirect objects than meets the eye, however. If we take theeffect of definiteness on Vorfeld occupation into account, the difference between directobjects and indirect objects is not as big as Table 4.2 suggests.

Subjects and objects can be a of a wide variety of categories. We can divide the dataof Table 4.2 into four main categories: nominal, prepositional, verbal and clausal. Thetranslation between CGN-tags and the four categories is given in Table 4.3. The categoriesnominal and prepositional should be self-explanatory. The difference between verbaland clausal is that clausal constituents are finite, and contain all arguments of the verb,whereas verbal constituents are non-finite or do not contain all arguments of the verb.Tables 4.4–4.6 show how each of the grammatical functions breaks down into thesecategories. Below, I will illustrate the data with some examples for each grammaticalfunction. The nominal data will considered in more detail in the section on definiteness(Section 4.3).

Subjects Vorfeld occupation of subjects per category is detailed in Table 4.4. Theproportion of subjects in the Vorfeld is high in each category, although clausal subjectsappear to have a slightly reduced chance of appearing in the Vorfeld.

96 A CORPU S STUDY OF THE VORFELD

Table 4.2: Summary of Vorfeld occupation of arguments.

Vorfeld Prop est (%)

Argument yes no lo pt hi

subject 43 523 18 597 69.7 70.1 70.4direct object 3 418 20 432 13.9 14.3 14.8indirect object 38 815 3.2 4.5 6.1

Note: subject = SU, direct object = OBJ1 + OBJ1 VC, indirect object = OBJ2 + OBJ2 VC.

Table 4.3: Classification after part-of-speech and syntactic category.

Category CGN labels

nominal NP, N, VNW, MWU (when proper names)prepositional PP, VZ

verbal TI, OTI, AHI, INF, WW, PPART

clausal CP, WHSUB, WHQ, WHREL, REL, SVAN, SMAIN, SSUB, SV1

Note: See Appendix A for explanation of the CGN POS/Cat-labels. Conjunctions/lists of onecategory are also assigned that category. Other POS-types (notably adjectives and adverbs) wereassigned to a rest category.

other things questionnaire data. We will see in later sections that there is more to thedifference between direct and indirect objects than meets the eye, however. If we take theeffect of definiteness on Vorfeld occupation into account, the difference between directobjects and indirect objects is not as big as Table 4.2 suggests.

Subjects and objects can be a of a wide variety of categories. We can divide the dataof Table 4.2 into four main categories: nominal, prepositional, verbal and clausal. Thetranslation between CGN-tags and the four categories is given in Table 4.3. The categoriesnominal and prepositional should be self-explanatory. The difference between verbaland clausal is that clausal constituents are finite, and contain all arguments of the verb,whereas verbal constituents are non-finite or do not contain all arguments of the verb.Tables 4.4–4.6 show how each of the grammatical functions breaks down into thesecategories. Below, I will illustrate the data with some examples for each grammaticalfunction. The nominal data will considered in more detail in the section on definiteness(Section 4.3).

Subjects Vorfeld occupation of subjects per category is detailed in Table 4.4. Theproportion of subjects in the Vorfeld is high in each category, although clausal subjectsappear to have a slightly reduced chance of appearing in the Vorfeld.

Frequency of direct object topicalization in modern spoken Dutch (Bouma 2008)

7

Evolution of PP preposing in English

0

10

20

30

40

50

OE (Early) OE (Late) 1151-1250 1251-1350 1351-1420 1421-1500 1501-1569 1570-1639 1639-1710

% P

repose

d

Date

8

0

15

30

45

60

75

90

OE (Early) OE (Late) 1151-1250 1251-1350 1351-1420 1421-1500 1501-1569 1570-1639 1639-1710

% P

repose

d

Date

Evolution of adverb fronting in English

locative adverbs

temporal adverbs

9

Correlation between frequencies of object topicalizationand of V2 in Middle English texts (Wallenberg 2007)

10

Clash avoidance

• The type of topicalization that declines:

(1) The newspaper John read; the novel Mary did.

• The type of topicalization that doesn’t:

(2) The newspaper I read; the novel I didn’t.

(Compare: The newspaper read John.)!

!"

"

!"

!" !"

11

Subject type in sentences with topicalized objects

Subject type in sentences with in situ objects

Distribution of subject types in a corpus of topicalized and non-topicalized sentences

in Modern English natural speech(Prince/Ward corpus)

personal pronoun demonstrative pronoun full noun phrase

140 20 142

46.4% 6.6% 47%

personal pronoun demonstrative pronoun full noun phrase

181 2 17

90.5% 1% 8.5%

12

Translating German topicalized arguments intoEnglish in three modern German novels

[by Böll, Dürrenmatt and Grass]

Topicalized to topicalized:

G: Mahlkes Haupt bedeckte dieser Hut besonders peinlich.

E: On Mahlke’s head this hat made a particularly painful impression.

Topicalized to non-topicalized:

G: Zu den sechs kamen noch drei weitere.

E: Three others joined these six in the afternoon.

13

2nd accent on the German

subjectaccent elsewhere

topicalization in the English translation

00

3131

no topicalization in the English

2525

100100

Accent placement and topicalization frequencies in translating German topicalized arguments into English

14

Experiments on clash avoidance in German and English (Speyer 2008)

15

(1) Rick likes them ! Rick ! likes them

(2) Rick they like ! Rick ! they like

Repairing clashes

Selkirk (1984) introduces a silent grid position into sentences with adjacent accents. This option turns out to be freely available in SV(O) sentences like (1) but not in OSV sentences like (2):

!" !"

!" !"

16

(2)!a. SV:!Pitt bastelt gerne (aber Bert nicht gerne)! P tinkers gladly but B not

! b. SO/OS:!Pitt mag Blau (und Bert Gelb) ! P likes blue and B yellow

(1)!a. SV:!Pitt bastelt gerne (aber Bert brüllt gerne)! P tinkers gladly but B shouts gladly

! b. SO/OS: ...!dass Pitt Blau mag (und Bert Gelb) ! that P blue likes and B yellow

Clash and non-clash environments in German

17

(2)!a. SV:!Pitt tinkers easily (but Bert not so easily)

! b. SO:!Pitt likes blue (and Bert yellow)

(1)!a. SV:!Pitt tinkers easily (but Bert shouts easily)

! b. OS: Blue Pitt likes (and yellow Bert)

Clash and non-clash environments in English

18

Effect of clash avoidance on the insertion of pauses into read sentences in German (n=80)

0

25

50

75

100

125

150

175

200

225

A1A2 A1a2 a1A2 a1a2

pause lengthpause length vs a1a2

A = accented! 1 = first constituent (S,O or V)a = unaccented! 2 = second constituent

19

Effect of clash avoidance on the insertion of pauses into read OSV sentences in English (n=60)

-5

20

45

70

95

120

145

170

195

220

245

OS Os oS os

pause lengthpause length vs os

O,S = accented! o,s = unaccented

20

Effect of clash avoidance on the insertion of pauses into read SVO sentences in English (n=60)

0

25

50

75

100

125

150

175

200

225

SV Sv sV sv

pause lengthpause length vs sv

S,V = accented! s,v = unaccented

21

0

123

245

OS os SV sv0

63

127

190

Differential effect of clash on pause length in English OSV and SV sentences

NB: German shows no effect in such cases.

49% of OS

70% of SV

22

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

No potential clash Potential clash

Effect of clash avoidance on sentence formulation in German (n=180)

Unmarked order

Material inserted

Sentence reformulated

23

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

No potential clash Potential clash

Unmarked order

Effect of clash avoidance on sentence formulation in English (n=96)

Sentence reformulated

24

focus on subject

focus on tensed verb

focus elsewhere

N (total= 207) 113 29 65

% inversion 89 14 71

% of cases 55 14 31

Distribution of contrastive topicalization by focus (second accent) placement in Middle English

focus position

distribution of cases

25

me1 me2 me3 me4 eme1 eme2 eme3

# sent. with DO 2855 1300 4615 2271 3229 3584 2544

# topicalized 219 69 145 66 67 82 28

% topicalized 7.7 5.3 3.1 2.9 2.1 2.3 1.1

# V2 162 34 89 46 35 27 4

% V2 74 49.3 61.4 70.2 52.2 32.9 14.3

sentence type

timeperiod

Frequency of matrix clause topicalization and V2 in sentences with full DP subjects in Middle and Early

Modern English

26

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

1151-1250 1251-1350 1351-1420 1421-1500 1501-1569 1570-1639 1639-1710

% V

2

Date

Rate of V2 loss in English with topicalizedobjects and PPs

topicalized objects

topicalized PPs

27

me1 me2 me3 me4 eme1 eme2 eme3

# sent. with DO 2855 1300 4615 2271 3229 3584 2544

# topicalized 219 69 145 66 67 82 28

topicalization rate

7.7 5.3 3.1 2.9 2.1 2.3 1.1

would have been topicalized

219 100 354 174 248 275 195

actual rate of V2 74 49.3 61.4 70.2 52.2 32.9 14.3

corrected rate V2 74.0 34.0 25.1 26.4 14.1 9.8 2.1

sentence type

time period

Corrected frequency of matrix clause topicalization and V2 in Middle and Early Modern English

28

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

1151-1250 1251-1350 1351-1420 1421-1500 1501-1569 1570-1639 1639-1710

% V

2

Date

Rate of V2 loss in English corrected for clash avoidance

topicalized objectscorrected

topicalized PPs

29

The loss of topicalization and of V2 in the history of French

30

• France Martineau, et. al. Corpus MCVF, (Projet Modéliser le changement: les voies du français.) University of Ottawa, CD-ROM, 2009.

• Anthony Kroch and Beatrice Santorini. Penn Supplement to the Corpus MCVF. University of Pennsylvania, CD-ROM, 2010.

• Total Corpus consists of:

French Data Sources

1. Twelve Old French texts (1000 - 1300).2. Six Middle French texts (1301 - 1500).3. Three Early Modern French texts from (1501 - 1600).

31

Decline of direct object topicalization in French, excluding early Old French

0

4

8

12

16

20

24

28

32

36

1101-1200 1201-1300 1301-1400 1401-1500 1501-1550 1551-1600

% T

opic

aliz

ed

all subjects

all overt subjects

32

Object topicalization with V2 in Oldand Middle French

(1)!l'estreu li tint sun uncle Guinemer! the stirrup him held his uncle Guinemer! Roland 27.329

(2)!messe e matines ad li reis escultet! mass and matins has the king heard! Roland 11.139

(3)!si grand paour avoit que a pou qu'il ne mouroit! so great fear he-had that at little that he ne died! CNNA 51.488

33

Object topicalization with V2 and pronoun subjects in Old and Middle French

(1)!Espaigne vus durat il en fiet! Spain you will-give he in fief! Roland, 36.446

(2)!chars avoient ils assés! meat had they enough! Froissart, 135.569

(3)!une chose! ont-ilz! ! ! asez! ! honneste! one thing! have-they! enough honest! Commynes, 120.1634

34

Object topicalization with V3 and pronoun subjects in Middle French

(1)!aultre remyde je n&y voy! other remedy I not there see! XV Joies, 111v.1209

(2)!deux chose je diray de luy! two things I will-say of him! Commynes, 38.478

(3)!nul enfant il n&ot onques eu de sa fenme! no child he not-had ever had of his wife! Froissart, 462.6477

35

Adverb preposing with V2 in Oldand Middle French

(1)!Er matin sedeit li emperere suz l&umbre! yesterday morning sat the emperor under the shade! Roland 29.363

(2)!or est ele bien venue! now is she welcome! Yvain 43.1440

(3)!ben l&entendit il arcevesques Turpin! well it understands the archebishop Turpin! Roland 96.1237

36

Adverb preposing with V3 in Oldand Middle French

(1)!unkes nuls hom ne vit tel ajustee.! never no man not saw such joust! Roland 238.3299

(2)!premierement il devient taverniers! first he becomes innkeeper! Somme 47.306

(3)!doucement li oisel chantoient ! sweetly the birds sang! Yvain 15.451

37

Frequency of V2 in main clauses withtopicalized XPs in Old French (no Somme)

pronoun subject full DP subject

XVS 40 [.98] 146 [.97]

XSV 1 4

pronoun subject full DP subject

XVS 40 [.67] 286 [.78]

XSV 20 81

Topicalized objects

Topicalized PPs

38

pronoun subject full DP subject

XVS 21[.45] 64 [.93]

XSV 26 5

Topicalized Objects

pronoun subject full DP subject

XVS 58[.12] 422 [.61]

XSV 438 274

Topicalized PPs

Frequency of V2 in main clauses withtopicalized XPs in Middle French

39

pronoun subject full DP subject

XVS 21[.45] 64 [.93]

XSV 26 5

Topicalized Objects

pronoun subject full DP subject

XVS 58[.12] 422 [.61]

XSV 438 274

Topicalized PPs

Frequency of V2 in main clauses withtopicalized XPs in Middle French

[.12]

[.45]

39

0

0.06

0.12

0.18

0.24

0.3

0.36

0.42

0.48

0.54

0.6

<1100 1151-1200 1251-1300 1351-1400 1451-1500 1551-1600

Decline of XP fronting in French

Old French Middle French Modern French

direct objects

adverbs and PPs

40

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1

1101-1150 1151-1200 1201-1250 1251-1300 1301-1350 1351-1400 1401-1450 1451-1500 1501-1550 1551-1600

Evolution of V2 word order in French

Old French Middle French Modern French

topicalized objects

topicalized adverbsand PPs

Freq

uen

cy V

2

41

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1

<1100 1151-1200 1251-1300 1351-1400 1451-1500 1551-1600

Evolution of V2 word order in French in sentences with full DP subjects

Old French Middle French Modern French

topicalized objects

Freq

uen

cy V

2

topicalized adverbsand PPs

42

0

0.09

0.18

0.27

0.36

0.45

0.54

0.63

0.72

0.81

0.9

<1100 1151-1200 1251-1300 1351-1400 1451-1500 1551-1600

Corrected evolution of V2 word order in Frenchin sentences with full DP subjects

Old French Middle French Modern French

topicalized objects

Freq

uen

cy V

2topicalized adverbs

and PPs

43

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1

<1100 1151-1200 1251-1300 1351-1400 1451-1500 1551-1600

Evolution of V2 word order in French in sentences with overt pronominal subjects

Old French Middle French Modern French

topicalized objects

Freq

uen

cy V

2

topicalized adverbsand PPs

44

Finis

45