Cognitive indigenization effects in the English dative alternation

Abstract

We advance theory formation in cognitive sociolinguistics by exploring the extent to which language users’ probabilistic grammar varies regionally. For this purpose, we investigate the effects of constraints that influence the choice between the two syntactic variants in the well-known dative alternation (

General introduction: A comparative perspective on probabilistic variation in grammar

“…However, there do seem to be interesting quantitative differences with regard to the effect size of the constraints on variation. These quantitative differences we tend to find only in those contexts where neither alternate is more or less difficult to process (Szmrecsanyi et al 2016: 132), and where shifting usage frequencies in language-internal variation may have led to regional differences between users' probabilistic grammars (Röthlisberger, Grafmiller & Szmrecsanyi 2017). Curiously, one of the constraints that is malleable fairly consistently across varieties and alternations turns out to be constituent length.…”

“…Indian English). Similarly, Röthlisberger et al (2017) and Grafmiller & Szmrecsanyi (in press) find that some of the largest deviations in individual factor effects on the dative alternation and particle placement alternations respectively occur in the non-native varieties. Third, in an alternation-oriented (or: variable-oriented) perspective different alternations differ as to how amenable they are to probabilistic indigenization.…”

“…Röthlisberger et al (2017) tighten the concept of probabilistic indigenization to "cognitive indigenization", to stress the outcome of probabilistic indigenization, i.e. the emergence of distinct lects.…”

Variation-Based Distance and Similarity Modeling: A Case Study in World Englishes

“…8 A Bonferroni correction could in principle be used to make the alpha level more conservative, but we refrain from doing so here since our main interest lies with comparative analysis (using significance as an auxiliary criterion), and not with statistical significance per se. Genitive alternation (see Heller et al, 2017) Dative alternation (see Röthlisberger et al, 2017) Particle placement alternation (see Grafmiller and Szmrecsanyi, 2018) Possessor Variety A and B agree on the significance of three constraints (a, d, e), and disagree with regard to two constraints. The distance between the two varieties is thus two out of five squared Euclidean distance points.…”

“…(1) The genitive alternation (Heller et al, 2017) a. the country's economic crisis (the s-genitive) b. the economic growth of the country (the of -genitive) (2) The dative alternation (Röthlisberger et al, 2017) a. I'd given Heidi my T-Shirt (the ditransitive dative variant) b. I'd given the key to Helen (the prepositional dative variant) (3) The particle placement alternation (Grafmiller and Szmrecsanyi, 2018) a. just cut the tops off (verb-object-particle order) b. cut off the flowers (verb-particle-object order) 1 The concept of a probabilistic grammar thus largely overlaps with what variationist sociolinguists refer to as a "variable grammar, " defined by Tagliamonte (2006, p. 240), citing Poplack and Tagliamonte (2001, p. 91), as being represented by "the hierarchy of constraints constituting each factor [that regulates variation]".…”