Skip to content
Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published online by De Gruyter Mouton June 8, 2023

Let my speakers talk: metalinguistic activity can indicate semantic change

  • Israela Becker EMAIL logo

Abstract

In the absence of a diachronic corpus or a synchronic corpus tagged for speakers’ age, substantiating the presence of semantic change and the stage of change ― initial or advanced ― are challenging tasks. In the present study I introduce three methods for overcoming such difficulties by extracting various kinds of evidence from a synchronic corpus not tagged for speakers’ age. All three methods are based on speakers’ metalinguistic activity. Two of them are of a psycholinguistic nature and the third is of a sociolinguistic nature. Not only do these methods provide data hitherto overlooked by researchers for detecting semantic change, but they can also minimize the researchers’ need for interpretative interventions with regard to speakers’ communicative intentions, thus improving the quality of the analysis.


Corresponding author: Israela Becker, Linguistics Department, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 6997801, Israel, E-mail:

Award Identifier / Grant number: 1398/20 to Mira Ariel

Award Identifier / Grant number: 540/19 to Rachel Giora

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Mira Ariel, Stefani Wulff and two anonymous reviewers for their most constructive comments on earlier versions of this paper. All errors and oversights are, of course, my own.

  1. Research funding: This research was funded by Israel Science Foundation grant 540/19 awarded to Rachel Giora and Israel Science Foundation grant 1398/20 awarded to Mira Ariel.

References

Ariel, Mira. 1990. Accessing noun-phrase antecedents. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Assouline, Dalit. 2017. Contact and ideology in a multilingual community: Yiddish and Hebrew among the ultra-orthodox. Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9781501505300Search in Google Scholar

Attardo, Salvatore. 1994. Linguistic theories of humor. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar

Attardo, Salvatore. 2018. Universals in puns and humorous wordplay. In Esme Winter-Froemel & Verena Thaler (eds.), Cultures and traditions of wordplay and wordplay research, 89–110. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110586374-005Search in Google Scholar

Bailey, Guy, Tom Wikle, Jan Tillery & Lori Sand. 1991. The apparent time construct. Language Variation and Change 3(3). 241–264. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0954394500000569.Search in Google Scholar

Barlow, Michael. 2013. Individual differences and usage-based grammar. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 18(4). 443–478. https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.18.4.01bar.Search in Google Scholar

Baumel, Simeon D. 2006. Sacred speakers: Language and culture among the ultra-orthodox in Israel. New-York & Oxford: Berghahn Books.Search in Google Scholar

Baxter, Gareth & William Croft. 2016. Modeling language change across the lifespan: Individual trajectories in community change. Language Variation and Change 28(2). 129–173. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0954394516000077.Search in Google Scholar

Becker, Israela & Mira Ariel. under review. Scaffolding the sentential Ultimate construction into a word.Search in Google Scholar

Becker, Israela & Rachel Giora. 2018. The defaultness hypothesis: A quantitative corpus-based study of non/default sarcasm and literalness production. Journal of Pragmatics 138. 149–164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2018.09.013.Search in Google Scholar

Beltrama, Andrea & M. Ryan Bochnak. 2015. Intensification without degrees cross-linguistically. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 33(3). 843–879. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-015-9294-8.Search in Google Scholar

Blank, Andreas. 2001. Pathways of lexicalization. In Wolfgang Raible, Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König & Wulf Oesterreicher (eds.), Language universals and language typology, 1596–1608. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Search in Google Scholar

Blank, Grant & Bianca C. Reisdorf. 2012. The participatory web: A user perspective on Web 2.0. Information, Communication & Society 15(4). 537–554. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2012.665935.Search in Google Scholar

Brinton, Laurel J. & Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2005. Lexicalization and language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511615962Search in Google Scholar

Caffi, Claudia. 1994. Metapragmatics. In Ronald E. Asher & James M. Y. Simpson (eds.), The encyclopedia of language and linguistics, 2461–2466. Oxford: Pergamon Press.Search in Google Scholar

Cahaner, Lee & Gilad Malach. 2021. Statistical report on ultra-orthodox society in Israel. The Israel Democracy Institue. Available at: https://en.idi.org.il/haredi/2021/?chapter=38439.Search in Google Scholar

Carnap, Rudolf. 1970 [1939]. Foundations of logic and mathematics, 13th edn. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar

Chen, Henian, Patricia Cohen & Sophie Chen. 2010. How big is a big Odds Ratio? Interpreting the magnitudes of Odds Ratios in epidemiological studies. Communications in Statistics – Simulation and Computation 39(4). 860–864. https://doi.org/10.1080/03610911003650383.Search in Google Scholar

Chiarcos, Christian, Berry Claus & Michael Grabski (eds.). 2011. Salience: Multidisciplinary perspectives on its function in discourse. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110241020Search in Google Scholar

Cohen, Tirza. 2008. kavey lašon yixudi’im le-sofrot datiot ve-xarediot be-hašva’a le-sofrot xiloniot ba-siporet ha-isre’elit bat zmanenu. [Unique linguistic features of religiously observant women authors compared to secular women authors in contemporary Israeli literature]. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University dissertation [in Hebrew].Search in Google Scholar

Culioli, Antoine. 1990. Pour une linguistique de l’énonciation, Tome I. Opérations et représentations. Paris: Ophrys.Search in Google Scholar

Culioli, Antoine. 1995. Cognition and representation in linguistic theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.112Search in Google Scholar

Culperer, Jonathan & Michael Haugh. 2014. Pragmatics and the English language. London & New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Search in Google Scholar

Delabastita, Dirk. 2001. Aspects of interlingual ambiguity: Polyglot punning. In Paul Bogaards, Johan Rooryck & Paul J. Smith (eds.), Quitte ou double sens, 45–64. Amsterdam: Rodopi.10.1163/9789004485693_006Search in Google Scholar

Detges, Ulrich. 2010. Computed or entrenched? The French imparfait de politesse. In Hans-Jörg Schmid & Susanne Handl (eds.), Cognitive foundations of linguistic usage patterns, 195–224. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110216035.195Search in Google Scholar

Doyle, Arthur Conan. 1887. A study in Scarlet. London & New York: Ward Lock & Co.Search in Google Scholar

Duffy, Susan A., Robin K. Morris & Keith Rayner. 1988. Lexical ambiguity and fixation times in reading. Journal of Memory and Language 27(4). 429–446. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-596x(88)90066-6.Search in Google Scholar

Fader, Ayala. 2009. Mitzvah girls: Bringing up the next generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn. Princeton: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400830992Search in Google Scholar

Fischer, Roswitha. 1998. Lexical change in present-day English: A corpus-based study of the motivation, institutionalization, and productivity of creative neologisms. Tübingen: G. Narr.Search in Google Scholar

Fridman, Israela, Nava Shaul-Mena, Nir Fogel, Dmitri Romanov, Mark Feldman, Ruth Sehayek, Gustavo Schifris & Haim Portnoy. 2011. šitot medida va-amidat godla šel ha-uxlusia ha-xaredit be-Israel. [Measurement and estimates of the population of ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel]. Israel Central Bureau of Statistics [in Hebrew].Search in Google Scholar

Friedman, Menachem. 1991. ha-xevra ha-xaredit ― mekorot, megamot ve-tahalixim. [The Haredi (ultra-orthodox) society ― Sources, trends and processes]. Jerusalem: The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies [in Hebrew].Search in Google Scholar

Gibbs, Raymond W. 1994. The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language, and understanding. New York: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Giora, Rachel. 1997. Understanding figurative and literal language: The graded salience hypothesis. Cognitive Linguistics 8(3). 183–206. https://doi.org/10.1515/cogl.1997.8.3.183.Search in Google Scholar

Giora, Rachel. 2003. On our mind: Salience, context, and figurative language. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195136166.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Giora, Rachel, Ofer Fein, Ann Kronrod, Idit Elnatan, Noa Shuval & Adi Zur. 2004. Weapons of mass distraction: Optimal innovation and pleasure ratings. Metaphor and Symbol 19(2). 115–141. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327868ms1902_2.Search in Google Scholar

Givoni, Shir. 2020. Marking multiple meanings. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Givoni, Shir, Rachel Giora & Dafna Bergerbest. 2013. How speakers alert addressees to multiple meanings. Journal of Pragmatics 48(1). 29–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.11.011.Search in Google Scholar

Glinert, Lewis & Yosseph Shilhav. 1991. Holy land, holy language: A study of an ultraorthodox Jewish ideology. Language in Society 20(1). 59–86. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404500016079.Search in Google Scholar

Gombert, Jean Émile. 1992. Metalinguistic development. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar

Grice, Herbert Paul. 1975. Logic and conversation. In Peter Cole & Jerry L. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and semantics: Speech acts, 41–58. New York: Academic Press.10.1163/9789004368811_003Search in Google Scholar

Guy, Gregory R. 2013. The cognitive coherence of sociolects: How do speakers handle multiple sociolinguistic variables? Journal of Pragmatics 52. 63–71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.12.019.Search in Google Scholar

Henkin, Roni. 2020. Sociolinguistics of Modern Hebrew. In Ruth A. Berman (ed.), Usage-based studies in Modern Hebrew: Background, morpho-lexicon, and syntax, 51–96. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/slcs.210.05henSearch in Google Scholar

Hopper, Paul J. 1991. On some principles of grammaticalization. In Elizabeth Closs Traugott & Bernd Heine (eds.), Approaches to grammaticalization: Vol. I. Theoretical and methodological issues, 17–35. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Search in Google Scholar

Hübler, Axel & Wolfram Bublitz. 2007. Metapragmatics in use. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/pbns.165.02hubSearch in Google Scholar

Isaacs, Miriam. 1999a. Contentious partners: Yiddish and Hebrew in Haredi Israel. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 1999(138). 101–122. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl.1999.138.101.Search in Google Scholar

Isaacs, Miriam. 1999b. Haredi, haymish and frim: Yiddish vitality and language choice in a transnational, multilingual community. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 1999(138). 9–30. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl.1999.138.9.Search in Google Scholar

Jakobson, Roman. 1960. Linguistics and poetics. In Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), Style in language, 350–377. Cambridge: The MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar

Jaszczolt, Kasia M. & Keith Allan (eds.). 2011. Salience and defaults in utterance processing. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110270679Search in Google Scholar

Jaworski, Adam, Nikolas Coupland & Dariusz Galasiński. 2004. Metalanguage: Why now? In Adam Jaworski, Nikolas Coupland & Dariusz Galasiński (eds.), Metalanguage: Social and ideological perspectives, 3–8. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110907377.3Search in Google Scholar

Kabatek, Johannes. 2015. Wordplay and discourse traditions. In Angelika Zirker & Esme Winter-Froemel (eds.), Wordplay and metalinguistic/metadiscursive reflection: Authors, contexts, techniques, and meta-reflection. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110406719-010Search in Google Scholar

Karni, Tsofia. 2004. ha-memad ha-dati ke-me’avxen lešoni [The dimension of religiosity as a linguistic feature]. derex Efrata – bit’on bet ha-midraš le-morim ve-le-gananot Efrata [Derech Efrata – Teachers College Yearbook 11. 129–147 [in Hebrew].Search in Google Scholar

Katz, Albert N. & Todd R. Ferretti. 2003. Reading proverbs in context: The role of explicit markers. Discourse Processes 36(1). 19–46. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326950dp3601_2.Search in Google Scholar

Kerremans, Daphné. 2015. A web of new words: A corpus-based study of the conventionalization process of English neologisms. Bern: Peter Lang.10.1515/east-2016-0007Search in Google Scholar

Labov, William. 1963. The social motivation of a sound change. WORD 19(3). 273–309. https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.1963.11659799.Search in Google Scholar

Labov, William. 1994. Principles of linguistic change. Cambridge: Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar

Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics, Vol I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

McNabb, Yaron. 2012. Cross-categorial modification of properties in Hebrew and English. Semantics and Linguistic Theory 22. 365–382. https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v22i0.2632.Search in Google Scholar

Munro, Heather L. 2022. The Politics of language choice in Haredi communities in Israel. Journal of Jewish Languages 10(2). 169–199. https://doi.org/10.1163/22134638-bja10026.Search in Google Scholar

Nerlich, Brigitte & David D. Clarke. 2001. Ambiguities we live by: Towards a pragmatics of polysemy. Journal of Pragmatics 33(3). 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0378-2166(99)00132-0.Search in Google Scholar

Norén, Kerstin & Per Linell. 2007. Meaning potentials and the interaction between lexis and contexts: An empirical substantiation. Pragmatics 17(3). 387–416. https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.17.3.03nor.Search in Google Scholar

O’Reilly, Tim & John Battelle. 2009. Web squared: Web 2.0 five years on. Available at: http://dgroups.org/file2.axd/45127812-6239-4448-8bb6-508dc1b1e204/web2009_websquared-whitepaper.pdf.Search in Google Scholar

Oryan, Shlomit. 1997. lašon cnuʕa - nefeš cnuʕa: defusej tikšoret miluli’im be-kerev banot ve-našim xarediot [Modest language ― modest soul: Verbal communication among ultra-orthodox Jewish girls and women]. balšanut ʕivrit (Hebrew Linguistics: A Journal for Hebrew Descriptive, Computational and Applied Linguistics) 41-42. 7–19 [in Hebrew].Search in Google Scholar

Perry-Hazan, Lotem. 2013. ha-xinux ha-xaredi be-Israel: ben mišpat, tarbut u-folitika. [The ultra-orthodox education in Israel: Law, cultura and politics]. Srigim-LiOn: Nevo Publishing House [in Hebrew].Search in Google Scholar

Petré, Peter & Freek Van de Velde. 2018. The real-time dynamics of the individual and the community in grammaticalization. Language 94. 867–901. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2018.0056.Search in Google Scholar

Reichenbach, Hans. 1947. Elements of symbolic logic. New York: The Macmillan Company.Search in Google Scholar

Rogers, Everett M. 2003 [1962]. Diffusion of innovations, 5th edn. New York: The Free Press.Search in Google Scholar

Schiffrin, Deborah. 1980. Meta-talk: Organizational and evaluative brackets in discourse. Sociological Inquiry 50(3-4). 199–236. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-682x.1980.tb00021.x.Search in Google Scholar

Schmid, Hans-Jörg. 2007. Entrenchment, salience and basic levels. In Dirk Geeraerts & Hubert Cuyckens (eds.), The Oxford handbook of cognitive linguistics, 117–138. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Schmid, Hans-Jörg. 2008. New words in the mind: Concept-formation and entrenchment of neologisms. Anglia 126(1). 1–36. https://doi.org/10.1515/angl.2008.002.Search in Google Scholar

Schmid, Hans-Jörg. 2015. A blueprint of the Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization model. Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association 3(1). 3–26. https://doi.org/10.1515/gcla-2015-0002.Search in Google Scholar

Schmid, Hans-Jörg. 2016 [2011]. English morphology and word-formation: An introduction, 3rd edn. Berlin: Erich Schmidt.Search in Google Scholar

Schmid, Hans-Jörg. 2020. The dynamics of the linguistic system: Usage, conventionalization, and entrenchment. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780198814771.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Seidenberg, Mark S., Michael K. Tanenhaus, James M. Leiman & Marie Bienkowski. 1982. Automatic access of the meanings of ambiguous words in context: Some limitations of knowledge-based processing. Cognitive Psychology 14(4). 489–537. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(82)90017-2.Search in Google Scholar

Sela, Pnina. 2004. ha-reka ha-sociolingvisti bi-lšona šel ha-publicistika ba-ʕitonut ha-xaredit. [Sociolinguistic factors in ultra-orthodox newspapers]. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University dissertation. [in Hebrew].Search in Google Scholar

Svanlund, Jan. 2018. Metalinguistic comments and signals: What can they tell us about the conventionalization of neologies? Pragmatics & Cognition 25(1). 122–141. https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.18005.sva.Search in Google Scholar

Tannenbaum, Michal & Netta Abugov. 2010. The legacy of the linguistic fence: Linguistic patterns among ultra-orthodox Jewish girls. Heritage Language Journal 7(1). 74–90. https://doi.org/10.46538/hlj.7.1.4.Search in Google Scholar

Tarski, Alfred. 1944. The semantic conception of truth: And the foundations of semantics. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 4(3). 341–376. https://doi.org/10.2307/2102968.Search in Google Scholar

Thaler, Verena. 2016. Varieties of wordplay. In Sebastian Knospe, Alexander Onysko & Maik Goth (eds.), Crossing languages to play with words, 47–62. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110465600-003Search in Google Scholar

Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Richard B. Dasher. 2002. Regularity in semantic change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511486500Search in Google Scholar

Verschueren, Jef. 2004. Notes on the role of metapragmatic awareness in language use. In Adam Jaworski, Nikolas Coupland & Dariusz Galasiński (eds.), Metalanguage: Social and ideological perspectives, 53–74. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110907377.53Search in Google Scholar

Weinreich, Uriel. 1966. On the semantic structure of language. In Joseph H.‏ Greenberg (ed.), Universals of language, 142–216. Cambridge: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar

Weinreich, Uriel. 1979 [1953]. Languages in contact, 9th edn. Paris: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110802177Search in Google Scholar

Williams, John N. 1992. Processing polysemous words in context: Evidence for interrelated meanings. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 21(3). 193–218. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01068072.Search in Google Scholar

Winkler, Susanne. 2015. Exploring ambiguity and the ambiguity model from a transdisciplinary perspective. In Susanne Winkler (ed.), Ambiguity: Language and communication, 1–26. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110403589-002Search in Google Scholar

Winter-Froemel, Esme. 2016. Approaching wordplay. In Sebastian Knospe, Alexander Onysko & Maik Goth (eds.), Crossing languages to play with words: Multidisciplinary perspectives, 11–46. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110465600-002Search in Google Scholar

Winter-Froemel, Esme & Angelika Zirker. 2015. Ambiguity in speaker-hearer-interaction: A parameter-based model of analysis. In Susanne Winkler (ed.), Ambiguity: Language and communication, 283–340. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar

Yaguello, Marina. 1998. Language through the looking glass: Exploring language and linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Zenner, Eline, Gitte Kristiansen & Dirk Geeraerts. 2016. Individual differences and in situ identity marking: Colloquial Belgian Dutch in the reality TV show “Expeditie Robinson”. In Manuela Romano & Maria Dolores Porto (eds.), Exploring discourse strategies in social and cognitive interaction: Multimodal and cross-linguistic perspectives, 39–77. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/pbns.262.03zenSearch in Google Scholar

Zirker, Angelika & Esme Winter-Froemel (eds.). 2015. Wordplay and metalinguistic/metadiscursive reflection: Authors, contexts, techniques, and meta-reflection. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110406719Search in Google Scholar


Supplementary Material

This article contains supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2023-0022).


Received: 2021-09-04
Accepted: 2023-05-19
Published Online: 2023-06-08

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Downloaded on 29.9.2023 from https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/cllt-2023-0022/pdf
Scroll to top button