General introduction: A comparative perspective on probabilistic variation in grammar

Abstract

This special collection brings together research exploring and evaluating probabilistic variation patterns from a comparative perspective, thus highlighting current work situated at the crossroads of research on usage-based theoretical linguistics, variationist linguistics, and sociolinguistics. The contributions in the collection advance our understanding of the plasticity of syntactic knowledge on the part of language users with diverse regional and/or cultural backgrounds, and demonstrate how a probabilistic approach to grammatical variation can offer insight into the scope and limits of language variation. In this general introduction to the special collection, we provide some essential background for perspective, and subsequently summarize the contributions in the collection.

The alternation between exterior locative cases and postpositions in Estonian web texts

“…As with previous studies on syntactic alternations from a probabilistic grammar perspective (e.g. Grafmiller et al 2018), we do not see any reversals in effect directions. For example, the constraints of MOBILITY and LENGTH have the same qualitative effect across varieties -present-day written Estonian (Klavan 2012(Klavan , 2020, nonstandard spoken Estonian (Klavan, Pilvik & Uiboaed 2015) and web texts in Estonian (the present study).…”

“…The aim of the study is to advance our understanding of the morphosyntactic knowledge on the part of Estonian language users. The study proceeds from the assumption that variation between different ways of saying the same thing is "sensitive to multiple and sometimes competing constraints which influence linguistic choice-making in subtle, probabilistic ways" (Grafmiller et al 2018). Mixed-effects logistic regression is used on a richly annotated corpus sample of Estonian morphosyntactic alternations to capture the speakers' multivariate and probabilistic knowledge of these alternations quantitatively.…”

“…Underlying the probabilistic approach to language are two basic tenets: 1) grammatical knowledge has a probabilistic component, 2) this probabilistic knowledge is derived from language experience (Grafmiller et al 2018). The aim of this line of research is to measure the extent and nature of grammatical knowledge as it is reflected in langu age variation.…”

“…Gries 2003, Bresnan & Hay 2008, Klavan & Divjak 2016, Szmrecsanyi et al 2016. This usage-based approach differs from rule-based approaches that consider linguistic variation as "theoretically irrelevant to the investigation of the principles that determine syntactic structure" (Grafmiller et al 2018).…”

“…Three specific predictions can be put forward in this context (cf. Grafmiller et al 2018): (1) the influence of certain factors on the morphosyntactic variation between exterior locative cases and the corresponding postpositions across different varieties of the Estonian language should be relatively stable in terms of the direction of those factors; (2) the strength of different factors on speakers' choices will vary by the types and frequencies of constructions; (3) the variation in the use of exterior locative cases and the postpositions may be driven by stylistic preferences, situational forces or by cognitive pressures related to language processing.…”