Kate Beeching & Ulrich Detges: Functions at the left and right periphery: Crosslinguistic investigations of language use and language change

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Tizón-Couto
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Left And Right

Language change across a lifetime: A historical micro-perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (s2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Bergs
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
The Social ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Linguistic Behavior ◽  
Micro Analysis

Abstract This paper focuses on the micro-analysis of historical data, which allows us to investigate language use across the lifetime of individual speakers. Certain concepts, such as social network analysis or communities of practice, put individual speakers and their social embeddedness and dynamicity at the center of attention. This means that intra-speaker variation can be described and analyzed in quite some detail in certain historical data sets. The paper presents some exemplary empirical analyses of the diachronic linguistic behavior of individual speakers/writers in fifteenth to seventeenth century England. It discusses the social factors that influence this behavior, with an emphasis on the methodological and theoretical challenges and opportunities when investigating intra-speaker variation and change.

scholarly journals A Dynamic Network Approach to the Study of Syntax

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holger Diessel
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Model Building ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Dynamic Network ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Network Approach ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
Network Analyses

Usage-based linguists and psychologists have produced a large body of empirical results suggesting that linguistic structure is derived from language use. However, while researchers agree that these results characterize grammar as an emergent phenomenon, there is no consensus among usage-based scholars as to how the various results can be explained and integrated into an explicit theory or model. Building on network theory, the current paper outlines a structured network approach to the study of grammar in which the core concepts of syntax are analyzed by a set of relations that specify associations between different aspects of a speaker’s linguistic knowledge. These associations are shaped by domain-general processes that can give rise to new structures and meanings in language acquisition and language change. Combining research from linguistics and psychology, the paper proposes specific network analyses for the following phenomena: argument structure, word classes, constituent structure, constructions and construction families, and grammatical categories such as voice, case and number. The article builds on data and analyses presented in Diessel (2019; The Grammar Network. How Linguistic Structure is Shaped by Language Use) but approaches the topic from a different perspective.

Language Use among Emirati College Students: Examining the Attrition Rate and Variation across Genders

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-86
Author(s):  
Muna Balfaqeeh
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Arabian Gulf ◽  
Attrition Rate ◽  
Gulf Region ◽  
New Words ◽  
Gulf Countries ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Male Subjects

Abstract During the last decade, the Arabian Gulf region has headed towards an increasing use of a ‘Pan Gulf vernacular’, “…a homogenized form of ‘Gulf’ speech not identifiable with any particular Gulf community” (Holes, 2011: 130), where new words are introduced or borrowed from neighboring Gulf countries while many others disappear from the local lexicon. This paper is an extension of a previous study (Balfaqeeh, 2015) in which the Emirati vernacular was investigated in order to identify which words had become obsolete from Emiratis’ mental lexicon and been replaced by what were considered to be more accessible words borrowed from neighboring Gulf countries. The method used is twofold: a vocabulary test generated from two popular Emirati TV serials: ‘Sh-ḥafan’ (1970), and ‘Firi:dʒ’ (2006). In addition, a Likert scale survey measured students’ perception of their use of the Emirati vernacular and the possible reasons that may have led to the disappearance of some of these words. The aim of this study is to measure the attrition of Emirati vocabulary among young people and measure their attitudes (mostly opinions) towards language use and language change. The research also concentrates on multiculturalism, the media and social media, and the economy and each of these areas’ possible roles in driving language change in the UAE. Finally, the researcher considered whether masculinity and exposure to culture and heritage play roles in the subjects’ competence in Emirati. The analysis of the data confirmed that despite the male subjects’ exposure to culture and heritage, it did not have any impact on their competence or use of the Emirati vernacular. It also confirmed that the subjects are aware of the impact of the above-mentioned factors and their implications for identity.

Language Use & Language Change in Brunei Darussalam

1998 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 200
Author(s):  
Uri Tadmor ◽  
Peter W. Martin ◽  
Conrad Ozog ◽  
Gloria Poedjosoedarmo
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Brunei Darussalam

On the goals, principles, and procedures for prescriptive grammar: Singular they

1980 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald G. Mackay
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Relative Frequency ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
General Interest ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Theoretical Linguistics ◽  
Normal Language ◽  
Prescriptive Grammar

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the goals of prescriptive grammar and the causes and consequences of the rift between prescriptive and theoretical linguistics. It also proposes a principle for guiding prescriptive recommendations in the future as well as a theoretical framework and procedure for predicting the consequences of prescriptive recommendations. The procedure illustrates a hypothetical prescription: the substitution of singular they for prescriptive he. Projected benefits the prescription include neutral connotation, naturalness, simplicity, and lexical availability. Projected costs include covert and overt referential ambiguity; partial ambiguity; conceptual inaccuracy; loss of precision, imageability, impact, and memorability; bizarreness involving certain referents and case forms; distancing and dehumanizing connotations; unavailability of the ‘he or she’ denotation; potentially disruptive and long-lasting side effects on other areas of the language. Procedures are also illustrated for determining the relative frequency of such costs and benefits and for estimating the relative disruptiveness of the costs normal language use. Implications of the data for several issues general interest to linguistics and psychology are explored. (Ambiguity, language change, prescriptive grammar, theoretical linguistics, language planning, pronouns, neologisms.)

Variation in language use is different from variation in genes

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-92
Author(s):  
Andrea Sansò
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Human Behaviors

Abstract This commentary discusses some aspects of Haider’s model of grammar change that are problematic from the perspective of usage-based approaches to language change. These aspects include (i) the postulated equivalence between intentionality and teleology, (ii) the metaphorical nature of Darwinism when applied to other domains, and (iii) the nature of explanations of language change. With respect to (i), it is argued that equating intentionality with teleology disregards the fact that innovation in grammar is not unprincipled like in genes. With respect to (ii), the question is whether a comparison between as different concepts as human behaviors/brains and genes/populations can be considered as more than a metaphor (however powerful). Finally, with respect to (iii), a number of diachronic-typological studies are discussed that concur to suggest that variation in speakers’ verbal productions is largely adaptive, and therefore selection operates on a skewed pool of variants in which non-adaptive/dysfunctional variants are a minority (if any).

The Impact of church affiliation on language use in Kwara'ae (Solomon Islands)

1991 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 533-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Ann Watson-Gegeo ◽  
David Welchman Gegeo
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Language Attitudes ◽  
Solomon Islands ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Church Affiliation ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACTChristian churches are central to modern social and political organization in the Pacific islands, yet little research has been conducted on their role in intrasocietal diversity in language attitudes and use. We examine church affiliation and its impact on language use, identity, and change among Kwara'ae speakers in the Solomon Islands, where intense competition for converts and the association of particular churches with modernization and development is having a significant impact on language choice and change. We show that members of different sects signal their separate identities not only through linguistic code but also through discourse patterns and nonverbal aspects of communication. The characteristics we identify are illustrated in transcripts from four speakers, and the social outcomes of these characteristics is discussed. (Ethnography of speaking, discourse analysis, nonverbal communication, language change, language attitudes, Melanesia, Solomon Islands)

Population Movements and Contacts in Language Evolution

2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salikoko Mufwene
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Ecological Factor ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Language Death ◽  
Population Movements ◽  
Ecological Conditions ◽  
Ecology Of Language

AbstractI argue for uniformitarianism (Mufwene 2001) in accounts of language evolution. Below, after dismissing a few myths about the development of creoles, I show how what we have learned to date about this case of language speciation prompts genetic linguists to reopen the books about language diversification in general and as a concomitant of language death in many cases. I adduce various examples from distant and recent histories to illustrate how population movements and contacts have been a critical ecological factor even in the cases of so-called "internally-motivated" change. The distinction between "internally" and "externally-motivated" language change boils down to a mere sociological contrast once contact is situated at the inter-idiolectal level, where interactions and negotiations between linguistic systems take place, regardless of whether or not xenolectal features participate in the feature pool. Ultimately, the same mechanisms of competition and selection that apply to linguistic features also apply to languages and dialects. Driven by the ecology of language use, the mechanisms roll the dice not only on how a particular language evolves under specific ecological conditions but also on the vitality of languages.

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