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In every-day language use, two or more structurally unrelated constructions may occasionally give rise to strings that look very similar on the surface. As a result of this superficial resemblance, a subset of instances of one of these constructions may deviate in the probabilistic preference for either of several possible formal variants. This effect is called 'constructional contamination', and was introduced in Pijpops & Van de Velde (2016). Constructional contamination bears testimony to the hypothesis that language users do not always execute a full parse of the utterances they interpret, but instead often rely on 'shallow parsing' and the storage of large, unanalyzed chunks of language in memory, as proposed in Ferreira, Bailey, & Ferraro (2002), Ferreira & Patson (2007), and Dąbrowska (2014). Pijpops & Van de Velde (2016) investigated a single case study in depth, namely the Dutch partitive genitive. This case study is reviewed, and three new case studies are added, namely the competition between long and bare infinitives, word order variation in verbal clusters, and preterite formation. We find evidence of constructional contamination in all case studies, albeit in varying degrees. This indicates that constructional contamination is not a particularity of the Dutch partitive genitive but appears to be more wide-spread, affecting both morphology and syntax. Furthermore, we distinguish between two forms of constructional contamination, viz. first degree and second degree contamination, with first degree contamination producing greater effects than second degree contamination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structuralism and formal grammar have, in the course of the 20th century, rightfully taken issue with more vague and unfalsifiable just-so stories of some of their predecessors. For all its merits, though, the structuralist-formal strand of linguistics has its drawbacks as well. The classical Saussurean distinction between synchrony and diachrony can be harmful: a purely synchronic description is often inferior to the insight gained from diachrony, not only because grammar is laden with heirlooms and débris of prior structures and because languages draw on a wide variety of pathways to generate new grammar, but also because variation can often only be understood fully in the light of its history. Many cases of synchronic variation are the result of competition between an innovative mutant encroaching on an obsolescent construction. In such cases, the synchronic skew in the proportion of one variant to the other is not arbitrary, but is a reflection of how far the change has progressed. To the extent that one wants to incorporate variation in grammatical description-and there are sound theoretical reasons to do so-the historical perspective is indispensable. In this article four case studies from different corners of Dutch grammar are discussed (on cardinal numerals, on the Big Mess Construction, on bare infinitive complements of auxiliaries, and on the hortative). The case studies together form a plea for the historisation of the science of linguistics, just like biology has been historised, and indeed, as is shown in this article, there are numerous parallels between linguistics and biology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Transylvanian writings from the last half of the 18th century, the use of the long infinitive represented the ideal norm, promoted in literary writings, after the Latin norm, by the Transylvanian School members. The long infinitive, present in Northern variants of Daco-Romanian language in the structure of future tense and conditional mood, represented the standard of the spoken language, the common norm, often characterized by the preservation of archaic forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]