1887
Volume 9, Issue 2
  • ISSN 2213-8722
  • E-ISSN: 2213-8730
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

Abstract

To account for the cross-linguistic trends in the coding of causal-noncausal verb pairs, such as (tr.)/ (intr.), Haspelmath et al. (2014) proposed, and provided corpus-based support for, an explanation in terms of usage frequency (Prediction 1, hereafter P1). However, this explanation cannot be applied to English causal-noncausal verb pairs. Since English mostly uses the same verb form for the causal and noncausal verb use, the explanation does not follow the (hereafter FFCP) that Prediction 1 (hereafter P1) is based upon. In this article I argue, by using causative-affixed verbs, that for a linguistic pair there is a strong correlation in terms of frequency between form and earlier occurrence. Therefore, in place of the FFCP and P1, I propose the (hereafter EOFCP) and the Revised Prediction 1 (hereafter RP1) based on it. This study tests the validity of the EOFCP and RP1 by applying them to 20 English verb pairs of sound emission. The investigation of frequency was made not only in present-day English but also at the time when the intransitive or transitive use came to be paired with its counterpart. The analysis shows that by applying the RP1 to the frequency data at the two time periods, we can obtain considerably high scores of matching rate, with a significant Spearman rank order correlation between the two groups.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/cogls.21004.ino
2022-12-06
2025-02-09
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Bybee, J. L.
    (2006) From usage to grammar: The mind’s response to repetition. Language, 82(4), 711–733. 10.1353/lan.2006.0186
    https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2006.0186 [Google Scholar]
  2. Croft, W.
    (1990) Possible verbs and the structure of events. InS. L. Tsohatzidis (Ed.), Meaning and prototypes: Studies in linguistic categorization (pp.48–73). London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. (2003) Typology and universals, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Dowty, D. R.
    (1979) Word meaning and Montague grammar: The semantics of verbs and times in generative semantics and Montague’s PTQ. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company. 10.1007/978‑94‑009‑9473‑7
    https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9473-7 [Google Scholar]
  5. Gelderen, E. V.
    (2011) Valency changes in the history of English. Journal of Historical Linguistics, 1(1), 106–143. 10.1075/jhl.1.1.05van
    https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.1.1.05van [Google Scholar]
  6. Haspelmath, M.
    (1993) More on the typology of inchoative/causative verb alternations. InB. Comrie & M. Polinsky (Eds.), Causatives and transitivity (pp.87–120). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 10.1075/slcs.23.05has
    https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.23.05has [Google Scholar]
  7. (2008a) Frequency vs. iconicity in explaining grammatical asymmetries. Cognitive Linguistics, 19(1), 1–33. 10.1515/COG.2008.001
    https://doi.org/10.1515/COG.2008.001 [Google Scholar]
  8. (2008b) Creating economical morphosyntactic patterns in language change. InJ. Good (Ed.), Linguistic universals and language change (pp.185–214). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199298495.003.0008
    https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199298495.003.0008 [Google Scholar]
  9. Haspelmath, M., Claude, A., Spagnol, M., Narrog, H., & Bamyaci, E.
    (2014) Coding causal-noncausal verb alternations: A form-frequency correspondence explanation. Journal of Linguistics, 50(3), 587–625. 10.1017/S0022226714000255
    https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226714000255 [Google Scholar]
  10. Jackendoff, R.
    (1983) Semantics and cognition. Cambridge, MA and London, England: MIT Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Levin, B.
    (1993) English verb classes and alternations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Levin, B., & Rappaport Hovav, M.
    (1995) Unaccusativity: At the syntax-lexical semantics interface. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Levin, B., Song, G., & Atkins, B. T. S.
    (1997) Making sense of corpus data: A case study of verbs of sound. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 2(1), 23–64. 10.1075/ijcl.2.1.04lev
    https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.2.1.04lev [Google Scholar]
  14. Pustejovsky, J.
    (1991) The syntax of event structure. InB. Levin & S. Pinker (Eds.), Lexical and conceptual semantics (pp.47–81). Cambridge, MA and Oxford, UK: Blackwell. 10.1016/0010‑0277(91)90032‑Y
    https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(91)90032-Y [Google Scholar]
  15. Zipf, G. K.
    (1935) The psycho-biology of language: An introduction to dynamic philology. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. The Oxford English Dictionary
    The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed./prepared byJ. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1989.
  17. The Oxford English Dictionary Online
    The Oxford English Dictionary Online, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1989–Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English, 6th ed./edited bySally Wehmeier and A. S. Hornby. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Oxford Dictionary of English
    Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998.
  19. Oxford dictionary of English Etymology
    Oxford dictionary of English Etymology edited by C. T. Onions; with the assistance of G. W. S. Friedrichsen and R. W. Burchfield. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1966.
  20. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language unabridged/ editor in chief Philip Babcock Gove and the Merriam-Webster editorial staff
    Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language unabridged/ editor in chief Philip Babcock Gove and the Merriam-Webster editorial staff. Springfield, MA.: G. and C. Merriam Co 1966.
/content/journals/10.1075/cogls.21004.ino
Loading
/content/journals/10.1075/cogls.21004.ino
Loading

Data & Media loading...

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