<i>This here town</i>: evidence for the development of the English determiner system from a vernacular demonstrative construction in York English

Rupp, Laura; Tagliamonte, Sali A.

doi:10.1017/s1360674317000326

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Van Gelderen (2011) identifies a total of seven well-documented types of diachronic cycles pertaining to (morpho)syntactic constructions across a wide variety of languages, and yet other cycles have been adduced in at least some languages (e.g. Rupp & Tagliamonte 2017, Vindenes 2018, Waltereit this issue).…”

Section: (Morpho)syntactic Cyclesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, recent work on instantiations of specific (morpho)syntactic cycles in specific languages (e.g. Detges & Waltereit 2002Schwenter 2006;Hansen & Visconti 2009;Grossman & Polis 2014;Rosemeyer & Grossman 2017;Rupp & Tagliamonte 2017;Hansen 2018b;Vindenes 2018;Detges 2018, this issue; Waltereit this issue) suggests that pragmatics may in fact be the driver, such that the innovative items or constructions are initially specialized for certain types of pragmatically loaded context, and only gradually extended to all contexts.…”

Section: (Morpho)syntactic Cyclesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Introduction

Hansen

2020

JHP

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In Section 1 of my introduction to this Special Issue, I define the concept of semantic–pragmatic cycles, a relatively recently discovered phenomenon, drawing a distinction between two sub-types: onomasiological and semasiological cycles. Semantic–pragmatic cycles are contrasted with the more widely known (morpho-)syntactic cycles such as the Negative Cycle (or Jespersen Cycle), and I discuss possible connections between these two types of cycles. Finally, I raise some questions for further research. In Section 2, I outline the empirical and/or theoretical contribution of each of the six papers that follow – considering, in particular, how they contribute to elucidating the role of pragmatics in cyclic change.

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Section: (Morpho)syntactic Cyclesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: (Morpho)syntactic Cyclesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction

Hansen

2020

JHP

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“…omul acesta this man man-the this 'this man' 'this man' (Giusti 1994: 241) Demonstratives may also be accompanied by another deictic element, the reinforcer, as in that there man in some varieties of English such as York English (Rupp and Tagliamonte 2019). On the surface, MFDs are distinct in that the two elements are identical demonstratives.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-functional deictics in South Central Tibeto-Burman

Baclawski Jr.

2023

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This paper describes a phenomenon prevalent in South Central Tibeto-Burman languages, which we call multi-functional deictics (MFDs). Descriptively, MFDs are demonstratives that appear in multiple positions in the noun phrase, typically at the left edge and the right edge. They often co-occur and match in form, resulting in an apparent circumfix. MFDs are distinct from double definiteness or the reinforcer construction in Romance and Germanic languages, where a demonstrative co-occurs with a determiner or emphatic. In the case of MFDs, the two forms are both demonstratives, often identical. Although MFDs are prevalent in South Central Tibeto-Burman, even the most basic questions about MFDs remain to be answered, such as whether their core meaning derives from distance in space, evidentiality, or something else; and what syntactic structures result in the two distinct positions. We provide a range of hypotheses for these questions and outline what kinds of data are needed to test those hypotheses. Additionally, we find significant variation within South Central Tibeto-Burman in the specific properties of MFDs. More broadly, MFDs provide an important test case for noun phrase syntax that has complex interactions with other grammatical phenomena like case marking.

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“…(ajackson, 66) (6) You -know what these here police are. (rfielding, 87) Previous studies of determiners in York English (YrkE) have mostly considered reduced determiners and complex demonstratives (e.g., Jones 2002;Rupp & Page-Verhoeff 2005;Rupp & Tagliamonte 2019). Regarding the zero article, its use in Standard English (StdE) is known to be more or less restricted to: (7) proper names, (8) non-count nouns (mass and abstract nouns), and (9) generic or kind-denoting plural nouns.…”

Section: Introduction: the Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

“They used to follow Ø river”: The Zero Article in York English

Rupp

Tagliamonte

2019

Journal of English Linguistics

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Speakers of York English (UK) use a zero article with definite singular nouns (e.g., “They used to follow Ø river”), which is impossible in Standard English. We probe the possibility that this form is a remnant from Old English, when there were no articles as they are currently found in Modern English, rather than a more contemporary development. We trace the diachronic trajectory of the zero article in historical-descriptive grammars and test social and linguistic constraints on its use in York English in a logistic regression analysis. The results show that information structure is a significant predictor of the zero article across all generations of the community and that the zero article is used in the same way as it was used as far back as Old English. However, it exhibits heightened usage among the older and younger generations, exhibiting a U-shaped curve. We suggest that this pattern demonstrates longitudinal maintenance of a conservative feature, which is suppressed in middle-age as the result of social pressures. In this way, this case study adds insight into the fate of dialect features in contemporary speech communities. It also highlights the importance of combining insights from different strands in linguistics for understanding the evolution of syntactic variants like the zero article.

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This here town: evidence for the development of the English determiner system from a vernacular demonstrative construction in York English

Cited by 6 publications

References 28 publications

Introduction

Introduction

Multi-functional deictics in South Central Tibeto-Burman

“They used to follow Ø river”: The Zero Article in York English

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