Abstract
De Smet et al. (2018) propose that when functionally similar constructions come to overlap, analogical attraction may occur. So may differentiation, but this process involves attraction to other subnetworks and is both “accidental” and “exceptional”. I argue that differentiation plays a considerably more significant role than De Smet et al. allow. My case study is the development of the dative and benefactive alternations. The rise of the dative alternation (e.g., “gave the Saxons land” ∼ “gave land to the Saxons”) has been shown to occur in later Middle English between 1400 and 1500 (Zehentner 2018). Building on Zehentner and Traugott (2020), the rise of the benefactive alternation (e.g., “build her a house” ∼ “build a house for her”) in Early Modern English c1650 is analyzed from a historical constructionalist perspective and compared with the rise of the dative alternation. The histories of the alternations exemplify the rise of functionally similar constructions that overlap, and show that differentiation from each other plays as large a role as attraction. Both attraction and differentiation occur at several levels of abstraction: verb-specific constructions, schemas and larger systemic changes.
Acknowledgments
I am deeply indebted to Eva Zehentner for invaluable discussion of the issues and for her generous sharing of benefactive data. Thanks also to participants in the Berkeley Linguistics Colloquium at the University of California, Berkeley, April 2019, for their helpful remarks and to three anonymous reviewers for insightful comments and suggestions.
- Corpora and data bases
- ARCHER
A representative corpus of historical English registers, version X. 1990-1993/2002/2007/2010/2013/2016. http://www.manchester.ac.uk/archer
- BNC
British national corpus, 1980-1990, version 3 (BNC XML edn.). 2007. 100 million words collected 1980s-early 1990s. Distributed by Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, on behalf of the BNC Consortium. http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/
- CLMET
The corpus of late Modern English texts, compiled by Hendrik de Smet. https://perswww.kuleuven.be/∼u0044428/clmet.htm (accessed June -October 2019).
- COCA
Corpus of contemporary American English. 1990–2017. Compiled by Mark Davies. Brigham Young University. https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/ (accessed May 4th 2020).
- COHA
Corpus of historical American English. 1810–2009. Compiled by Mark Davies. Brigham Young University. https://www.english-corpora.org/coha/ (accessed May 4th 2020).
- DOEC
Dictionary of Old English corpus. 2009. Compiled by Antonette diPaolo Healey, Joan Holland, Ian McDougall & David McDougall, with Xin Xiang. University of Toronto. http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/CoRD/corpora/DOEC/index.html (accessed June 2019).
- EEBO
Early English Books online. 1475 to 1700. Corpus created as part of the Text Creation Partnership. https://www.english-corpora.org/eebo/ (accessed May 4th 2020).
Old English aerobics glossary. http://www.oldenglishaerobics.net (accessed May 4th 2020).
- PPCEME
The Penn-Helsinki parsed corpus of Early Modern English, first edn., release 3. Compiled by Anthony Kroch, Beatrice Santorini & Lauren Delfs. 2004. http://www.ling.upenn.edu/ppche/ppche-release-2016/PPCEME-RELEASE-3.
- PPCME2
The Penn-Helsinki parsed corpus of Middle English, second edn., release 4. Compiled by Anthony Kroch & Ann Taylor. 2000. www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCME2-RELEASE-3/index.html.
References
Anttila, Raimo. 2003. Analogy: The warp and woof of cognition. In Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda (eds.), The handbook of historical linguistics, 425–440. Oxford: Blackwell.10.1002/9780470756393.ch10Search in Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1977. Meaning and form. London: Longman.Search in Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan, Ana Cueni, Tatiana Nikitina & R. Harald Baayen. 2007. Predicting the dative alternation. In Gerlof Bouma, Irene Krämer & Joost Zwarts (eds.), Cognitive foundations of interpretation, 69–94. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Science.Search in Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan & Marilyn Ford. 2010. Predicting syntax: Processing dative constructions in American and Australian varieties of English. Language 86(1). 168–213. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.0.0189.Search in Google Scholar
Cappelle, Bert. 2006. Particle placement and the case for ‘allostructions’. In Doris Schönefeld (ed.), Constructions all over: Case studies and theoretical implications, special issue of Constructions, SV-1 -7/2006. (accessed May 4th 2020).Search in Google Scholar
Christie, Elizabeth. 2011. Investigating the differences between the English way-constructions and the fake reflexive resultative construction. Proceedings of the 2011 Annual Conference of the Canadian Linguistics Association.Search in Google Scholar
Colleman, Timothy & Bernard De Clerck. 2009. ‘Caused motion’? The semantics of the English to-dative and the Dutch aan-dative. Cognitive Linguistics 20(1). 5–42. https://doi.org/10.1515/COGL.2009.002.Search in Google Scholar
Colleman, Timothy & Bernard De Clerck. 2011. Constructional semantics on the move: On semantic specialization in the English double object construction. In Thomas Hoffmann & Graeme Trousdale (eds.), Variation, change, and constructions, special issue of Cognitive Linguistics 22(1): 183–209.10.1515/cogl.2011.008Search in Google Scholar
De Cuypere, Ludovic. 2015. The Old English to-dative construction. English Language and Linguistics 19(1). 1−26. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1360674314000276.Search in Google Scholar
Denison, David. 2006. Category change and gradience in the determiner system. In Kemenade Ans van & Bettelou Los (eds.), The Handbook of the history of English, 279–304. Oxford: Blackwell.10.1002/9780470757048.ch12Search in Google Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik. 2007. For … to-infinitives as verbal complements in Late Modern English: Between motivation and change. English Studies 88. 67–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/00138380601042766.Search in Google Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik. 2008. Functional motivations in the development of nominal and verbal gerunds in Middle and Early Modern English. English Language and Linguistics 12(1). 55–102. https://doi.org/10.1017/S136067430700250X.Search in Google Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik. 2012. The course of actualization. Language 88(4). 601–633. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2012.0056.Search in Google Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik. 2013. Spreading patterns: Diffusional change in the English system of complementation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199812752.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik, Frauke D’hoedt, Lauren Fonteyn & Kristel van Goethem. 2018. The changing functions of competing forms: Attraction and differentiation. Cognitive Linguistics 29(2). 197–234. https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2016-0025.Search in Google Scholar
Fischer, Olga. 2007. Morphosyntactic change: Functional and formal perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 1995. Constructions: A Construction Grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 2002. Surface generalizations: an alternative to alternations. Cognitive Linguistics 13(4). 327–356. https://doi.org/10.1515/cogl.2002.022.Search in Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 2006. Constructions at work: The nature of generalization in language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199268511.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan & Anatol Stefanowitsch. 2004. Extending collostructional analysis: A corpus-based perspective on alternations. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 9. 97–129. https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.9.1.06gri.Search in Google Scholar
Hampe, Beate. 2014. More on the as-predicate: Granularity issues in the description of construction networks. In Susanne Flach & Martin Hilpert, eds., Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association, 207–234. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/gcla-2014-0013Search in Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2015. Ditransitive constructions. Annual review of linguistics 1. 19–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/00138380601042766.Search in Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Thomas. 2007. Complements versus adjuncts: A Construction Grammar account of English prepositional phrases. Occasional papers in language and linguistics (University of Nairobi) 3. 92–119.Search in Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. & Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2003 [1993]. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd, rev. edn.10.1017/CBO9781139165525Search in Google Scholar
Joseph, Brian D. & Richard D. Janda. 2003. On language, change, and language change—or, of history, linguistics, and historical linguistics. In Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda (eds.), The handbook of historical linguistics, 3–180. Oxford: Blackwell.10.1111/b.9781405127479.2004.00002.xSearch in Google Scholar
Kay, Paul. 2005. Argument structure constructions and the argument-adjunct distinction. In Mirjam Fried & Hans Boas (eds.), Grammatical constructions: Back to the roots, 71–100. Amsterdam: Benjamins.10.1075/cal.4.05kaySearch in Google Scholar
Kemmer, Suzanne & Michael Barlow. 1999. Introduction: A usage-based conception of language. In Michael Barlow & Suzanne Kemmer (eds.), Usage-Based models of language, vii-xxviii. Stanford, CA: CSLI publications.Search in Google Scholar
Kittilä, Seppo. 2005. Recipient-prominence vs. beneficiary-prominence. Linguistic Typology 9(2). 269–297. https://doi.org/10.1515/lity.2005.9.2.269.Search in Google Scholar
Lehmann, Christian. 2004. Theory and method in grammaticalization. In Gabriele Diewald (ed.), Grammatikalisierung, special issue of Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik, vol. 32. 152–187.10.1515/zfgl.2004.32.2.152Search in Google Scholar
Levin, Beth. 1993. English verb classes and alternations: A preliminary investigation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
MacWhinney, Brian. 2014. Conclusion: Competition across time. In Brian MacWhinney, Andrej Malchukov & Edith Moravcsik (eds.), Competing motivations in grammar and usage, 364–386. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198709848.003.0022Search in Google Scholar
Malchukov, Andrej, Martin Haspelmath & Bernard, Comrie (eds.). 2010. Studies in ditransitive constructions: A comparative handbook. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110220377Search in Google Scholar
McFadden, Thomas. 2002. The rise of the to-dative in Middle English. In David W. Lightfoot (ed.), Syntactic effects of morphological change, 107−123. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199250691.003.0006Search in Google Scholar
Mondorf, Britta. 2010. Variation and change in English resultative constructions. Language Variation and Change 22(3). 397–421. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394510000165.Search in Google Scholar
Nisbet, Tim. 2005. Benefactives in English: Evidence against argumenthood. Reading working papers in linguistics 8. 51–67.Search in Google Scholar
Perek, Florent. 2012. Alternation-based generalizations are stored in the mental grammar: Evidence from a sorting task experiment. Cognitive Linguistics 23(3). 601–635. https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2012-0018.Search in Google Scholar
Perek, Florent. 2015. Argument structure in usage-based Construction Grammar. Amsterdam: Benjamins.10.1075/cal.17Search in Google Scholar
Petré, Peter. 2014. Constructions and environments: Copular, passive, and related constructions in Old and Middle English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199373390.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Randall, Beth. 2009. CorpusSearch 2: A tool for linguistic research. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania. http://corpussearch.sourceforge.net/.Search in Google Scholar
Rappaport Hovav, Malka & Beth Levin. 2008. The English dative alternation: A case for verb sensitivity. Journal of Linguistics 44. 129–167. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226707004975.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226707004975Search in Google Scholar
Reddy, Michael J. 1993 [1979]. The conduit metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language. In Andrew Ortony (ed.), Metaphor and thought, 2nd edn. 164–201. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139173865.012Search in Google Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 1996. Cognitive complexity and increased grammatical explicitness in English. Cognitive Linguistics 7(2). 149–182. https://doi.org/10.1515/cogl.1996.7.2.149.Search in Google Scholar
Rosenbach, Annette. 2007. Emerging variation: Determiner genitives and noun modifiers in English. English Language and Linguistics 11(1). 143–199. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1360674306002140.Search in Google Scholar
Sommerer, Lotte. 2015. The influence of constructions in grammaticalization: Revisiting category emergence and the development of the definite article in English. In Jóhanna Barðdal, Elena Smirnova, Lotte Sommerer & Spike Gildea (eds.), Diachronic Construction Grammar, 107–133. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/cal.18.04somSearch in Google Scholar
Sommerer, Lotte & Elena Smirnova (eds.). 2020. Nodes and links in the network: Open questions in Diachronic Construction Grammar. Amsterdam: Benjamins.10.1075/cal.27Search in Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt. 2012. Analyticity and syntheticity in the history of English. In Terttu Nevalainen & Elizabeth Closs Traugott (eds.), The Oxford handbook of the history of English, 654–665. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199922765.013.0056Search in Google Scholar
Theijssen, Daphne, Hans van Halteren, Karin Fikkers, Frederike Groothoff, Lian van Hoof, Eva van de Sande, Jorieke Tiems, Véronique Verhagen & Patrick van der Zande. 2009. A regression model for the English benefactive alternation: An efficient, practical, actually usable approach. In Barbara Plank, Erik Tjong Kim Sang & Tim van de Cruys (eds.), Computational linguistics in the Netherlands, 115−130. Utrecht.Search in Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Graeme Trousdale. 2013. Constructionalization and constructional changes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199679898.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Van de Velde, Freek. 2014. Degeneracy: The maintenance of constructional networks. In Ronny Boogaart, Timothy Colleman & Gijsbert Rutten (eds.), Extending the scope of Construction Grammar, 141–180. Berlin: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110366273.141Search in Google Scholar
Van Valin, Robert D. & Randy J. LaPolla. 1997. Syntax: Structure, meaning, and function. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139166799Search in Google Scholar
Vázquez-Gonzáles, Juan G. & Jóhanna Barðdal. 2019. Reconstructing the ditransitive construction for Proto-Germanic: Gothic, Old English and Old Norse-Icelandic. Folia Linguistica Historica 40(2). 555–620. https://doi.org/10.1515/flih-2019-0021.Search in Google Scholar
Warner, Anthony R. 1993. English auxiliaries: Structure and history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511752995Search in Google Scholar
Wolk, Christoph, Joan Bresnan, Anette Rosenbach & Benedikt Szmrecsanyi. 2013. Dative and genitive variability in Late Modern English: Exploring cross-constructional variation and change. Diachronica 30. 382–419. https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.30.3.04wol.Search in Google Scholar
Zehentner, Eva. 2016. On cooperation and competition in Middle English ditransitves. Doctoral dissertation, University of Vienna.Search in Google Scholar
Zehentner, Eva. 2018. Ditransitives in Middle English: On semantic specialization and the rise of the dative alternation. English Language and Linguistics 22(1). 149–175. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108671040.013.Search in Google Scholar
Zehentner, Eva. 2019. Competition in language change: The rise of the English dative alternation. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110633856Search in Google Scholar
Zehentner, Eva & Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2020. Constructional networks and the development of benefactive ditransitives in English. In Lotte Sommerer & Elena Smirnova (eds.), Nodes and links in the network: Open questions in Diachronic Construction Grammar, 168–211. Amsterdam: Benjamins.10.1075/cal.27.05zehSearch in Google Scholar
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston