1887
  1. Home
  2. e-Journals
  3. Belgian Journal of Linguistics
  4. Volume 31, Issue 1
  5. Article
Current trends in analyzing syntactic variation
  • ISSN 0774-5141
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9676
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

This study deals with the complexity of left-dislocated [LDed] noun phrases in the Modern English period (1500–1914). The purpose is twofold: to estimate the effects of a number of theoretically relevant predictors on complexity, operationalized as word-length, and to explore whether shorter LDed NPs, which are characteristic of contemporary spoken English, symbolize the claimed ‘orality’ of earlier speech-related texts. Multiple linear regression is employed in order to assess the correlation between complexity and factors relating to both the context (e.g. genre) and the inner configuration (e.g. augmentation of the LDed constituent) of the tokens extracted from the Penn-Helsinki suite of corpora. The results confirm that shorter LDed items more closely match the characterization previously offered for contemporary spoken Left Dislocation. The results also provide preliminary insight into the accommodation strategies that might facilitate the resumption of heavier LDed NPs. As regards genre, speech-purposed and mixed texts feature a higher relative rate of shorter LDed elements. Thus, if shorter LDed NPs are more closely connected with the spoken variant, it is in speech-purposed and mixed genres where they might be claimed to constitute a trait of orality that is deliberately employed by writers in order to reproduce conversation. Surprisingly, speech-like genres do not include LDed items as often, and these are just as complex as those attested in writing-related texts.

© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/bjl.00012.tiz
2018-04-23
2021-04-20

  • From This Site

    /content/journals/10.1075/bjl.00012.tiz
    dcterms_title,dcterms_subject,pub_keyword
    -contentType:Journal -contentType:Contributor -contentType:Concept -contentType:Institution
    10
    5
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Acuña-Fariña, Juan Carlos
    1996 The Puzzle of Apposition. On So-called Appositive Structures in English. Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (Servicio de Publicacións e Intercambio Científico).
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Agresti, Alan
    2002 Categorical Data Analysis, 2nd edn.Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons. doi: 10.1002/0471249688
     https://doi.org/10.1002/0471249688 [Google Scholar]
  3. Anagnostopoulou, Elena , Henk van Riemsdijk , and Frans Zwarts
    (eds) 1997 Materials on Left Dislocation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/la.14
     https://doi.org/10.1075/la.14 [Google Scholar]
  4. Andrews, Avery D.
    2007 “Relative Clauses.” InLanguage Typology and Syntactic Description, vol. 2: Complex Constructions, 2nd edn., ed. by Timothy Shopen , 206–236. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511619434.004
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511619434.004 [Google Scholar]
  5. Arnold, Jennifer E. , Thomas Wasow , Anthony Losongco , and Ryan Ginstrom
    2000 “Heaviness: the Effects of Structural Complexity and Discourse Status on Constituent Ordering.” Language76 (1): 28–55. doi: 10.1353/lan.2000.0045
     https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2000.0045 [Google Scholar]
  6. Baayen, R. Harald
    2008 Analyzing Linguistic Data. A Practical Introduction to Statistics Using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511801686
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511801686 [Google Scholar]
  7. 2013 “Multivariate Statistics.” InResearch Methods in Linguistics, ed. by Robert J. Podesva , and Devyani Sharma , 337–372. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Biber, Douglas , Stig Johansson , Geoffrey Leech , Susan Conrad , and Edward Finegan
    1999 Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Longman.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Birner, Betty , and Gregory Ward
    2002 “Information Packaging.” InThe Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, ed. by Rodney Huddleston , and Geoffrey Pullum , 1363–1447. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Culpeper, Jonathan , and Merja Kytö
    2010 Early Modern English Dialogues. Spoken Interaction as Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Diessel, Holger
    2005 “Competing Motivations for the Ordering of Main and Adverbial Clauses.” Linguistics43: 449–470. doi: 10.1515/ling.2005.43.3.449
     https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.2005.43.3.449 [Google Scholar]
  12. Dik, Simon
    1997 The Theory of Functional Grammar. Part II: Complex and Derived Constructions, ed. by Kees Hengeveld . Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110218374
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110218374 [Google Scholar]
  13. Dons, Ute
    2004 Descriptive Adequacy of Early Modern English Grammars (TiEL 47). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. doi: 10.1515/9783110906042
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110906042 [Google Scholar]
  14. Fonteyn, Lauren , and Nikki van de Pol
    2016 “Divide and Conquer: the Formation and Functional Dynamics of the Modern English ing-clause Network.” English Language and Linguistics20 (2): 185–219.10.1017/S1360674315000258
     https://doi.org/10.1017/S1360674315000258 [Google Scholar]
  15. Ford, Cecilia , Barbara Fox , and Sandra Thompson
    2003 “Social Interaction and Grammar.” InThe New Psychology of Language. Cognitive and Functional Approaches to Language Structure, vol.2., ed. by Michael Tomasello , 119–143. London: Lawrence.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Fox, John , and Sanford Weisberg
    2011 An R Companion to Applied Regression, 2nd edn.Thousand Oaks CA: Sage.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Geluykens, Ronald
    1992 From Discourse Process to Grammatical Construction: on Left Dislocation in English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/sidag.1
     https://doi.org/10.1075/sidag.1 [Google Scholar]
  18. 1993 “Syntactic, Semantic and Interactional Prototypes: the Case of Left-dislocation.” InConceptualizations and Mental Processing in Language, ed. by Richard A. Geiger , and Brygida Rudzka-Ostyn , 709–730. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. doi: 10.1515/9783110857108.709
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110857108.709 [Google Scholar]
  19. Gibson, Edward
    1998 “Linguistic Complexity: Locality of Syntactic Dependencies.” Cognition68 (1): 1–76. doi: 10.1016/S0010‑0277(98)00034‑1
     https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(98)00034-1 [Google Scholar]
  20. Givón, Talmy
    1979 On Understanding Grammar. New York: Academic Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Gregory, Michelle , and Laura Michaelis
    2001 Topicalization and Left-dislocation: a Functional Opposition Revisited. Journal of Pragmatics33: 1665–1706. doi: 10.1016/S0378‑2166(00)00063‑1
     https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(00)00063-1 [Google Scholar]
  22. Gries, Stefan Th
    2013 Statistics for Linguistics with R. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. doi: 10.1515/9783110307474
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110307474 [Google Scholar]
  23. Han, Chung-hye , Noureddine Elouazizi , Christina Galeano , Emrah Görgülü , Nancy Hedberg , Jennifer Hinnell , Meghan Jeffrey , Kyeong-min Kim , and Susannah Kirby
    2012 “Processing Strategies and Resumptive Pronouns in English.” InProceedings of the 30th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, ed. Nathan Arnett and Ryan Bennett , 153–161. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Harrell, Frank E.
    2015 Regression Modeling Strategies. 2nd edn.Cham: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978‑3‑319‑19425‑7
     https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19425-7 [Google Scholar]
  25. Hawkins, John A.
    1992 “Syntactic Weight and Information Status in Word Order Variation.” Linguistische Berichte4: 196–219.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. 2004 Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199252695.001.0001
     https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199252695.001.0001 [Google Scholar]
  27. Hidalgo, Raquel
    2000 “Establishing Topic in Conversation: A Contrastive Study of Left Dislocation in English and Spanish.” InTalk and Text. Studies on Spoken and Written Discourse, ed. by Angela Downing Rothwell , Jesús Moya Guijarro , and José I. Albentosa Hernández , 137–158. Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Hilpert, Martin
    2013 Constructional Change in English: Developments in Allomorphy, Word Formation, and Syntax (Studies in English Language). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9781139004206
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139004206 [Google Scholar]
  29. Hilpert, Martin , and Stefan Gries
    2009 “Assessing Frequency Changes in Multi-stage Diachronic Corpora: Applications for Historical Corpus Linguistics and the Study of Language Acquisition. Literary and Linguistic Computing24 (4): 385–401. doi: 10.1093/llc/fqn012
     https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqn012 [Google Scholar]
  30. Keffala, Beffany , and Grant Goodall
    2011 “Do Resumptive Pronouns Ever Rescue Illicit Gaps in English?” A Poster Presented atCUNY 2011 Conference on Human Sentence Processing, March 24–26, 2011, Stanford University.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. Kortmann, Bernd
    1991 Free Adjuncts and Absolutes in English: Problems of Control and Interpretation. London and New York: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  32. 1995 “Adverbial Participial Clauses in English.” InConverbs in Cross-linguistic Perspective, ed. by Martin Haspelmath , and Ekkehard König , 189–237. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Kroch, Anthony
    1981 “On the Role of Resumptive Pronouns in Amnestying Island Constraint Violations.” InPapers from the 17th Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society, ed. by Hendrick, Robert A. , Carrie S. Masek , and Mary Frances Miller , 125–135. Chicago: University of Chicago, Chicago Linguistic Society.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Lambrecht, Knud
    1994 Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topic, Focus, and the Mental Representations of Discourse Referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511620607
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511620607 [Google Scholar]
  35. Leonarduzzi, Laetitia , and Nadine Herry
    2005 “Les Dislocations: texts et contexts.” InActes, Congrès de la Société des Anglicistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur, Toulouse: France, hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00484204, (30March 2008.)
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Levshina, Natalia
    2015 How to Do Linguistics with R. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/z.195
     https://doi.org/10.1075/z.195 [Google Scholar]
  37. Los, Bettelou , and Erwin Komen
    2012 “Clefts as Resolution Strategies after the Loss of a Multifunctional First Position.” InThe Oxford Handbook of the History of English, ed. by Terttu Nevalainen , and Elizabeth Traugott , 884–898. New York: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  38. Manetta, Emily
    2007 “Unexpected Left Dislocation: an English Corpus Study.” Journal of Pragmatics39: 1029–1035. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2007.01.003
     https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2007.01.003 [Google Scholar]
  39. Netz, Hadar , and Ron Kuzar
    2007 “Three Marked Theme Constructions in Spoken English.” Journal of Pragmatics39: 305–335. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2006.04.007
     https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2006.04.007 [Google Scholar]
  40. Netz, Hadar , Ron Kuzar , and Zohar Eviatar
    2011 “A Recipient-based Study of the Discourse Functions of Marked Topic Constructions.” Language Sciences33 (1): 154–166. doi: 10.1016/j.langsci.2010.06.005
     https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2010.06.005 [Google Scholar]
  41. Ono, Tsuyoshi , and Sandra Thompson
    1994 “Unattached NPs in English Conversation.” BLS20: 402–419. doi: 10.3765/bls.v20i1.1477
     https://doi.org/10.3765/bls.v20i1.1477 [Google Scholar]
  42. PPCEME: The Penn – Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English
    PPCEME: The Penn – Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English 1500–1710 Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania. CD-ROM, 1st edn, www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/.
  43. PPCMBE: The Penn – Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Modern British English
    PPCMBE: The Penn – Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Modern British English 1700–1914 Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania. CD-ROM, 1st edn, www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/.
  44. PCEEC: The Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence, 1410–1695. Compiled by theCEEC Project Team. University of York and University of Helsinki. Distributed through the Oxford Text Archive.
     [Google Scholar]
  45. Pérez-Guerra, Javier
    1999 Historical English Syntax: a Statistical Corpus Based Study on the Organisation of Early Modern English Sentences. Muenchen: Lincom Europa.
     [Google Scholar]
  46. Pérez-Guerra, Javier , and David Tizón-Couto
    2009 “On Left Dislocation in the Recent History of English: Theory and Data Hand in Hand.” InDislocated Elements in Discourse: Syntactic, Semantic, and Pragmatic Perspectives, ed. by Benjamin Shaer , Philippa Cook , Werner Frey , Claudia Maienborn , 31–48. London: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  47. Prince, Ellen
    1990 “Syntax and Discourse: A Look at Resumptive Pronouns.” InProceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: Parasession on the Legacy of Grice, ed. by Kira Hall , Jean-Pierre Koenig , Michael Meacham , Sondra Reinman , and Laurel A. Sutton , 482–497. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley Linguistics Society.
     [Google Scholar]
  48. 1995 “On KIND-sentences, Resumptive Pronouns, and Relative Clauses.” InTowards a Social Science of Language – a Festschrift for William Labov, ed. by G. Guy , J. Baugh , and D. Schiffrin , 223–235. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
     [Google Scholar]
  49. 1997 “On the Functions of Left-dislocation in English Discourse.” InDirections in Functional Linguistics, ed. by Akio Kamio , 117–144. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/slcs.36.08pri
     https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.36.08pri [Google Scholar]
  50. 1998 “On the Limits of Syntax, with Referecnce to Left-dislocation and Topicalization.” InThe Limits of Syntax, ed. by Peter Culicover , and Louise McNally , 281–302. San Diego: Academic Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  51. Quirk, Randolph , Sidney Greenbaum , Geoffrey Leech , and Jan Svartvik
    1985 A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.
     [Google Scholar]
  52. Río-Rey, Carmen
    2002 “Subject Control and Coreference in Early Modern English Free Adjuncts and Absolutes.” English Language and Linguistics6 (2): 309–323. doi: 10.1017/S1360674302000254
     https://doi.org/10.1017/S1360674302000254 [Google Scholar]
  53. Rohdenburg, Günter
    1995 “On the Replacement of Finite Complement Clauses by Infinitives in English.” English Studies76 (4): 367–388. doi: 10.1080/00138389508598980
     https://doi.org/10.1080/00138389508598980 [Google Scholar]
  54. 1996 “Cognitive Complexity and Increased Grammatical Explicitness in English.” Cognitive Linguistics7: 147–182. doi: 10.1515/cogl.1996.7.2.149
     https://doi.org/10.1515/cogl.1996.7.2.149 [Google Scholar]
  55. Ross, John R.
    1967 Constraints on Variables in Syntax. MIT, Mass.: Doctoral Dissertation. [Published as Infinite Syntax! 1986 Norton, NJ: Ablex.]
     [Google Scholar]
  56. Snider, Neal
    2005 “A Corpus Study of Left Dislocation and Topicalization.” Stanford University: Linguistics Department, TS, www.stanford.edu/~snider/pubs/qp1.pdf, (30April 2008.)
  57. Snider, Neal , and Annie Zaenen
    2006 “Animacy and Syntactic Structure: Fronted NPs in English.” InIntelligent Linguistic Architectures: Variations on Themes by Ronald M. Kaplan, ed. by Ronald M. Kaplan , Miriam Butt , Mary Dalrymple , and Tracy Holloway King , 323–338. Stanford: CSLI Publications. www.hlp.rochester.edu/~nsnider/pubs/snider%2Bzaenen,animacy,2006.pdf, (30April 2008.)
     [Google Scholar]
  58. Tizón-Couto, David
    2012 Left Dislocation in English. A Functional-discoursal Approach (Linguistic Insights 143). Bern: Peter Lang.
     [Google Scholar]
  59. 2015 “A Corpus-based Account of Left-detached Items in the Recent History of English: Left Dislocation vs. Left detached-sequences. English Text Construction8 (1): 21–64. doi: 10.1075/etc.8.1.02tiz
     https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.8.1.02tiz [Google Scholar]
  60. 2016 “Left-dislocated Strings in Modern English Epistolary Prose: A Comparison with Contemporary Spoken Left Dislocation.” InOutside the Clause, ed. by Gunther Kaltenböck , Evelien Keizer , and Arne Lohmann , 203–239. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/slcs.178.08tiz
     https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.178.08tiz [Google Scholar]
  61. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs
    2007 “Old English Left-dislocations: Their Structure and Information Status.” Folia Linguistica41 (3–4): 405–441.
     [Google Scholar]
  62. Traugott, Elizabeth Closs , and Graeme Trousdale
    2013 Constructionalization and Constructional Changes (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics 6). Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199679898.001.0001
     https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199679898.001.0001 [Google Scholar]
  63. Van Riemsdijk, Henk
    1997 “Left Dislocation.” InMaterials on Left Dislocation, ed. by Elena Anagnostopoulou , Henk van Riemsdijk , and Frans Zwarts , 1–10. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
     [Google Scholar]
  64. Wasow, Thomas
    1997 “Remarks on Grammatical Weight.” Language Variation and Change9 (1): 81–105. doi: 10.1017/S0954394500001800
     https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394500001800 [Google Scholar]
  65. Yaruss, J. Scott
    1999 “Utterance Length, Syntactic Complexity, and Childhood Stuttering.” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research42 (2): 329–344. doi: 10.1044/jslhr.4202.329
     https://doi.org/10.1044/jslhr.4202.329 [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.1075/bjl.00012.tiz
Loading
Exploring the Left Dislocation construction by means of multiple linear regression
Belgian Journal of Linguistics 31, 299 (2017); https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.00012.tiz
/content/journals/10.1075/bjl.00012.tiz
/content/journals/10.1075/bjl.00012.tiz
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Research Article

Most Cited

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error