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For a long time, linguists more or less denied the existence of individual differences in grammatical knowledge; in recent years there has been an explosion of research on individual differences. This special issue addresses how these differences can be integrated into a cognitive-constructionist framework. The issue (i) responds to recent advances in methods and resources that allow for targeted and robust quantitative and experimental research on this underrepresented topic; (ii) ties in with growing interest in language as a complex adaptive system where micro- and macro-levels are inherently related (Beckner et al. 2009); (iii) redresses the problem that most usage-based research has failed to address this issue. Language only exists through its users. Users form a community, and try to talk the way others talk. As a conventionalized medium of communication, individuals’ representations of language are expected to overlap substantially. The tendency for users to conform, however, does not mean that their cognitive representations are identical. The universal grammar framework, which assumes that key aspects of grammar are innate, has adopted the perspective of an idealized language user (Chomsky 1965:3). This is not tenable for usage-based approaches, since (i) no-one’s input is identical (Dąbrowska 2012), and (ii) different people display different cognitive styles of processing information (Jonassen & Grabowski 2012). Yet the newly recognized diversity in competence has rarely been addressed by usage-based frameworks outside acquisition research. Despite claims of psychological plausibility (Tomasello 2009, Allen et al. 2012, Pulvermüller et al. 2013), cognitive construction grammar is no exception. This applies both to its methods, which tend to focus on the aggregate level, and its topics, which focus on shared similarities rather than differences. Most cognitive research on language has not fully embraced individual variation. This special issue aims to address this gap, by bringing together various subdisciplines that focus on different aspects of individual level differences. An overarching goal is to make headway in delineating a typology of individual behaviors by asking which behaviors are recurrent, which cognitive styles can be identified, under which conditions, with which motivations, and by investigating how the constrained range of behaviors collectively (re)shapes and is (re)shaped by the macro-level of the community. The idea of cognitive styles and constrained variation also fits in particularly well with the constructionist network model, where deviation from the common ground is expected to occur systematically, along lines of recurrent network associations.

The Mind-Bending Grammars project innovatively combines grammaticalization research with research on the individual mind. We present EMMA (Early Modern Multiloquent Authors), a new large-scale longitudinal corpus comprising the work of 50 prolific authors, and illustrate, on the basis of this corpus, how aging affects the flexibility with which grammatical innovations are adopted and how micro- and macro-levels of change (individual vs. community) interact.

Il existe un large consensus sur le fait que la grammaticalisation est un processus graduel et largement unidirectionnel : les éléments lexicaux acquièrent des fonctions grammaticales et les éléments grammaticaux peuvent ensuite se grammaticaliser d’avantage (Hopper et Traugott 2003). Ce consensus est fondé sur des observations consistantes entre plusieurs langues. Alors que la plupart des études existantes présentent des données qualitatives, cette thèse propose une approche quantitative qui tente de mesurer les degrés de grammaticalisation à l'aide de variables basées sur des corpus, complémentant ainsi le travail qualitatif existant. La mesure proposée est calculée sur la base de plusieurs paramètres connus pour jouer un rôle dans la grammaticalisation (Lehmann 2002, Hopper 1991), tels que la fréquence (token), la longueur phonologique, la diversité des collocats, la diversité des colligats et la dispersion. Ces variables sont utilisées dans un modèle de régression logistique binaire qui peut attribuer un score à un élément linguistique donné qui reflète son degré de grammaticalisation. La grammaticalisation peut être conçue en synchronie et en diachronie. La vision synchronique de la grammaticalisation concerne le fait que certains éléments sont plus grammaticalisés que d'autres, ce que l'on appelle communément la gradience. La vue diachronique concerne le développement d'éléments grammaticaux au fil du temps, les éléments devenant de plus en plus grammaticaux par petits pas incrémentiels, ce qu'on appelle aussi la gradualité. Cette thèse propose des études qui traitent de chacun de ces points de vue. Pour quantifier la gradience de la grammaticalisation, des données du British National Corpus sont utilisées. 264 éléments lexicaux et 264 éléments grammaticaux sont sélectionnés pour entraîner un modèle de régression logistique binaire. Ce modèle peut classer ces éléments et déterminer ceux qui sont plus lexicaux ou plus grammaticaux. Les résultats indiquent que le modèle fait des prédictions réussies dans l'ensemble. De plus, des généralisations concernant la grammaticalisation peuvent être soutenues, comme la pertinence des variables clés (p.ex. la fréquence token et la diversité à gauche d'un élément donné) ou le classement des catégories morphosyntaxiques dans leur ensemble (p.ex. les adverbes se situent en moyenne entre les catégories lexicales et grammaticales). La gradualité de la grammaticalisation est étudiée à l'aide d'une sélection de vingt éléments qui ont des équivalents grammaticaux et lexicaux en anglais (p.ex. keep). Le Corpus of Historical American English (1810s-2000s) est utilisé pour récupérer les données pertinentes. L'objectif est de vérifier l'évolution dans le temps des différentes variables et des scores de grammaticalisation. La principale valeur théorique de cette approche est qu'elle peut offrir une façon empiriquement opérationnelle de mesurer l'unidirectionnalité en grammaticalisation, par opposition à une observation plus qualitative basée sur des études de cas individuels. There is a broad consensus that grammaticalization is a process that is gradual and largely unidirectional: lexical elements acquire grammatical functions, and grammatical elements can undergo further grammaticalization (Hopper and Traugott 2003). This consensus is based on substantial cross-linguistic evidence. While most existing studies present qualitative evidence, this dissertation discusses a quantitative approach that tries to measure degrees of grammaticalization using corpus-based variables, thereby complementing existing qualitative work. The proposed measurement is calculated on the basis of several parameters that are known to play a role in grammaticalization (Lehmann 2002, Hopper 1991), such as token frequency, phonological length, collocational diversity, colligate diversity, and dispersion. These variables are used in a binary logistic regression model which can assign a score to a given linguistic item that reflects its degree of grammaticalization. Grammaticalization can be conceived in synchrony and in diachrony. The synchronic view of grammaticalization is concerned with the fact that some items are more grammaticalized than others, which is commonly referred to as gradience. The diachronic view is concerned with the development of grammatical elements over time, whereby elements become increasingly more grammatical through small incremental steps, which is also known as gradualness. This dissertation proposes studies that deal with each of these views. In order to quantify the gradience of grammaticalization, data from the British National Corpus is used. 264 lexical and 264 grammatical elements are selected in order to train a binary logistic regression model. This model can rank these items and determine which ones are more lexical or more grammatical. The results indicate that the model makes successful predictions overall. In addition, generalizations regarding grammaticalization can be supported, such as the relevance of key variables (e.g. token frequency, diversity to the left of a given item) or the ranking of morphosyntactic categories as a whole (e.g. adverbs are on average in between the lexical and grammatical categories). The gradualness of grammaticalization is investigated using a selection of twenty elements that have grammatical and lexical counterparts in English (e.g. keep). The Corpus of Historical American English (1810s-2000s) is used to retrieve the relevant data. The aim is to check how the different variables and the grammaticalization scores develop over time. The main theoretical value of this approach is that it can offer an empirically operationalized way of measuring unidirectionality in grammaticalization, as opposed to a more qualitative observation based on individual case studies. Er bestaat een brede consensus dat grammaticalisatie als proces geleidelijk en grotendeels in één richting verloopt: lexicale elementen verwerven grammaticale functies, en grammaticale elementen kunnen verdere grammaticalisatie ondergaan (Hopper en Traugott 2003). Deze consensus is gebaseerd op substantieel cross-linguïstisch bewijs. Waar echter de meeste bestaande studies kwalitatief bewijs leveren, werkt dit proefschrift een kwantitatieve benadering uit die de graad van grammaticalisatie tracht te meten aan de hand van corpusgebaseerde variabelen, complementair aan bestaand kwalitatief werk. De voorgestelde maat wordt berekend op basis van verscheidene parameters waarvan bekend is dat ze een rol spelen in grammaticalisatie (Lehmann 2002, Hopper 1991), zoals tokenfrequentie, fonologische lengte, collocationele diversiteit, colligationele diversiteit, en spreidingsgraad. Deze variabelen worden gebruikt in een binair logistisch regressiemodel dat een score kan toekennen aan een specifiek taalitem, die de grammaticalisatiegraad ervan weerspiegelt. Grammaticalisatie kan sychroon of diachroon worden opgevat. Het synchrone perspectief betreft het gegeven dat sommige items meer gegrammaticaliseerd zijn dan andere, een gegeven dat algemeen bekend staat als de grammaticalisatiegradiënt. Het diachrone perspectief heeft betrekking op de ontwikkeling van grammaticale elementen in de loop der tijd, waarbij elementen in steeds grammaticaler worden door kleine incrementele stapjes, een fenomeen dat bekend staat als de geleidelijkheid van grammaticalisatie. Dit proefschrift presenteert studies die elk van deze perspectieven omvatten. Om de grammaticalisatiegradiënt te kunnen kwantificeren, wordt gebruik gemaakt van data uit het British National Corpus. 264 lexicale en 264 grammaticale elementen werden geselecteerd om een binair logistisch model te trainen. Dit model kan deze items rangschikken en bepalen welke eerder lexicaal zijn en welke eerder grammaticaal. De resultaten geven aan dat het model over het geheel genomen succesvolle voorspellingen maakt. Bovendien bieden ze steun aan generalisaties met betrekking tot grammaticalisatie, zoals de relevantie van sleutelvariabelen (bv. tokenfrequentie, diversiteit links van een item) of de rangorde van morfosyntactische categorieën in haar geheel (bv. bijwoorden situeren zich gemiddeld genomen tussen de lexicale en grammaticale categorieën). De geleidelijkheid van grammaticalisatie wordt onderzocht aan de hand van een selectie van twintig elementen met grammaticale en lexicale tegenhangers in het Engels (bv. keep). Het Corpus of Historical American English (1810s-2000s) werd gebruikt om de relevante data op te halen. Het doel is om na te gaan hoe de verschillende variabelen en grammaticalisatiescores zich ontwikkelen over de tijd. De belangrijkste theoretische waarde van deze benadering is dat ze een empirisch geoperationaliseerde manier kan bieden om unidirectionaliteit in grammaticalisatie te meten, tegenover een meer kwalitatieve observatie gebaseerd op individuele case studies.

This article focuses on the grammaticalisation of by as the marker of the prepositional agent in the passive in Middle and Early Modern English. Initially by was merely a marginal competitor of prepositions such as from, through, of or with. However, from late Middle English onwards it evolved into the default. This contribution analyses language specific factors that influenced the choice of preposition. Originally the passive construction was used to background the agent. During Middle English, however, the passive acquired a more general discourse function, a result of a newly developed requirement to start the clause with a topic, which is also the subject. Whenever the patient was the topic, a passive could be used to meet this new subject-topic requirement. This development leads, among other things, to a rise in the range of subject referents, including ever more inanimate subjects. Well-known related developments are the emergence of prepositional passives and recipient passives. Yet the role of the preposition of the agent in this story has been little researched. The analysis shows that by correlates significantly more often with inanimate subjects than other prepositions. This stronger association is likely to have given a head start to by, which eventually led to its grammaticalisation. Theoretically the success of by shows how frequency differences in the initial distributions of competitors may influence the course of grammaticalisation of a single construction.

While the ‘progressive’ construction [BE Ving] (He was playing tennis when Jane came in) has been studied extensively both diachronically and synchronically, studies of its functional development tend not to extend further back than Early Modern English. This paper draws attention to the functional changes [BE Ving] goes through already in Middle English, whose analysis sheds new light on the principles of early grammaticalization. To understand the observed changes, all uses of [BE Ving] are considered, not only those that have a clear verbal and aspectual function. During Middle English, important changes occurred in the frequencies of the various co-texts of [BE Ving]. They involve the increase in backgrounding adverbial clauses, which leads to the semanticization of ongoingness, a feature that was initially only associated with [BE Ving] by pragmatic implicature. The outcome is grammaticalization by co-text: co-textual changes paved the way for the acquisition of progressive semantics in [BE Ving] itself. ispartof: English Language and Linguistics vol:20 issue:1 pages:31-54 status: published

International audience; In this talk we provide a detailed account of the formal, functional and semantic changes that be going to underwent in Late Modern English. We know the history of be going to, a classic of grammaticalization studies (see Traugott 2012 for a recent overview), in quite some detail. Specifically for the late modern period, the period of be going to’s maturation, Disney (2009) hypothesises that be going to extended from encoding intention to encoding prediction through increased guessing of other people’s intentions, resulting in its evidential semantics. While invaluable, Disney’s study is based on a limited corpus, and mostly qualitative in nature. We test and refine Disney’s hypothesis, and integrate it into the theory of subjectification (in the sense of Traugott 1989), on the basis of a large-scale corpus study. Despite be going to’s popularity, such studies remain rare. A recent large-scale study has focused on the initial stages of this process (Petré & Van de Velde 2014), but similar studies are still lacking for the late modern period. Hilpert (2008) provides some insight in the extension to new types of infinitive, but does not really go into details regarding the underlying mechanisms of change.Data are based on an extensive sample from CLMETEV (De Smet, Diller & Tyrkkö 2011) complemented by exhaustive data from PPCMBE (Kroch, Santorini & Diertani 2010). In total, 1257 attestations were analysed on quantifiable, mostly formal features at various levels of the construction, such as contraction of be (substantive level), extension to new subject types (e.g. raised, empty subjects) and types of infinitives (e.g., states rather than actions) (schematic level), and the sentence type and presence of epistemic and evidential marking (level of the host clause). The corpus data reveal that the shift from intention to prediction started to take place in the first half of the eighteenth century, and originated in contexts with third person subjects, often in past tense narratives. Naturally, reporting the intention of others generally involves a certain amount of guesswork. This amount increased by the middle of the eighteenth century, when be going to started to occur with non-imminent infinitival complements. This naturally resulted in an additional, epistemic layer of prediction that gradually gained strength during the second half of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, allowed the underlying meaning of intention to wither, and the construction to become more and more frequent in the present tense.The shift from intention to prediction is arguably an increase in subjectivity, as the emphasis gradually moved away from the grammatical subject to the speaker: what mattered was no longer the intentions of the subject, but the knowledge of the speaker about them. Traugott (1989) shows that other English epistemic auxiliaries such as will and shall go through a similar stage of subjectification. Interestingly, while there are significant differences between will, shall, and be going to, it appears that each goes through an intermediary stage that involved past tense uses with reference to a future in the past, which was already known to the speaker. From a theoretical point of view, our analysis provides further evidence for recent claims (e.g. De Smet 2012) that grammaticalization follows minimally disruptive pathways, taking the smallest steps possible in the development, and at the same time shows that recurring patterns may be found at this smallest level as well.

We present a longitudinal corpus-based analysis of 15 authors writing in the 17th and 18th century in an ongoing grammaticalization process (c.q. the auxiliarization of be going to). Our aim is to arrive at a fine-grained analysis of the micro-changes involved in this kind of language change. In this way, we hope to help bridge the gap between the agent-based modeling and the more traditional grammaticalization studies. ispartof: pages:48-51 ispartof: How grammaticalization processes create grammar: from historical corpus data to agent-based models pages:48-51 ispartof: EvoLang location:Vienna status: published

In this paper I present two case studies of how biographical and intellectual history can benefit from corpus-based linguistics, and how databases of a considerably different nature can fruitfully complement each other. (i) Combining information from the PASE.ac.uk prosopography and syntactically annotated corpora, I show that the choice of auxiliary with ofslægen ‘killed’ in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is related to how the killing occurred, with (wearð ofslægen) or without resistance (wæs), shedding new light on the deaths of people like king Oswald (716) and the earls Burghelm and Muca (822). (ii) The syntactic choice between it happened that X Y-ed or X happened to Y in late Middle English texts reveals whether the scribe/author believes X to be in control of what happens, providing novel evidence on medieval views of accountability levels with regard to adultery, sinning, and casualties. Particular attention is paid to the idea that men blamed women’s seductiveness for their own lack of sexual self-control as manifested in the language use of the scribe of the late medieval Alphabet of Tales. ispartof: Leuven Working Papers in Linguistics vol:2 pages:135-159 status: published

ispartof: English Text Construction vol:5 issue:2 pages:300-306 status: published

This is my thesis as submitted for my PhD degree. Meanwhile a greatly revised and expanded version of my PhD has appeared as the following monograph: (2014). Constructions and environments: Copular, Passive and related Constructions in Old and Middle English (Oxford Studies in the History of English 4). Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/constructions-and-environments-9780199373390 Please refer to the published monograph when citing. nrpages: 251 + xii status: published