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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/6/2021, SPi
Language Change,
Variation, and Universals
A Constructional Approach
P E T E R W. C U L IC OV E R
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/6/2021, SPi
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Peter W. Culicover 2021
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2021
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021931013
ISBN 978–0–19–886539–1
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198865391.001.0001
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/6/2021, SPi
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Preface xi
List of Abbreviations xv
PA R T I. F O U N D A T I O N S
1. Overview 3
1.1 The problem 3
1.2 Constructions 9
1.2.1 Basics 9
1.2.2 Constructions are not derivations 12
1.3 Antecedents 14
2. Constructions 16
2.1 Introduction 16
2.2 What a grammar is for 16
2.3 A framework for constructions 19
2.3.1 Representing constructions 19
2.3.2 Licensing 27
2.3.3 Linear order 28
2.4 Appendix: Formalizing constructions 31
2.4.1 Representations on tiers 31
2.4.2 Connections between tiers 36
2.4.3 Licensing via instantiation 36
3. Universals 41
3.1 Classical Universal Grammar 41
3.1.1 Core grammar 42
3.1.2 Parameters 44
3.1.3 UG and emerging grammars 46
3.2 Another conception of universals 50
3.3 On the notion ‘possible human language’ 53
3.3.1 Possible constructions 53
3.3.2 An example: Negation 56
3.3.3 Another example: The imperative 61
3.4 Against uniformity 66
4. Learning, complexity, and competition 68
4.1 Acquiring constructions 68
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/6/2021, SPi
vi contents
P A R T I I . VA R I A T I O N
5. Argument structure 111
5.1 Introduction 111
5.2 Argument structure constructions (ASCs) 112
5.2.1 Devices 112
5.2.2 CS features 118
5.3 Differential marking 120
5.3.1 Differential subject marking 120
5.3.2 Differential object marking 130
5.4 Modeling differential marking 133
5.4.1 Acquisition of ASCs 134
5.4.2 Simulation 139
5.5 Summary 144
6. Grammatical functions 145
6.1 Introduction 145
6.2 The notion of ‘subject’ 146
6.3 Morphologically rich ASCs 147
6.3.1 Plains Cree argument structure 148
6.3.2 Incorporation 152
6.3.3 Complexity in ASCs 156
6.4 Split intransitive 158
6.5 The emergence of grammatical functions 160
6.6 Summary 165
7. Aᆣ constructions 166
7.1 Foundations 166
7.2 Doing Aᆣ work 169
7.2.1 Gaps and chains 169
7.2.2 Relatives 174
7.2.3 Topicalization 175
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/6/2021, SPi
contents vii
PA R T I I I. C H A N G E
8. Constructional change in Germanic 197
8.1 Introduction 197
8.2 Basic clausal constructions of Modern German 198
8.2.1 Initial position in the clause 200
8.2.2 Position of the finite verb in the main clause 202
8.2.3 Position of the verb in a subordinate clause 203
8.2.4 Position of the verb in questions 203
8.3 The development of English 204
8.3.1 The position of the verb 205
8.3.2 The ‘loss’ of V2 in English 208
8.3.3 The loss of case marking 213
8.4 The development of Modern German from Old High German 215
8.5 Verb clusters 219
8.6 Conclusion 223
9. Changes outside of the CCore 225
9.1 English reflexives 225
9.1.1 Reflexivity in constructions 225
9.1.2 Variation and change in reflexive constructions 227
9.2 Auxiliary do 230
9.2.1 The emergence of do 230
9.2.2 The spread of do 234
9.3 Preposition stranding 235
9.3.1 Why p-stranding? 235
9.3.2 P-passive 237
9.3.3 Coercion 239
9.4 Conclusion 241
10. Constructional economy and analogy 242
10.1 The elements of style 244
10.2 Analogy 249
10.2.1 Maximizing economy 250
10.2.2 Routines 252
10.2.3 Pure style 257
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/6/2021, SPi
viii contents
References 279
Language Index 309
Author Index 311
Subject Index 316
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/6/2021, SPi
Acknowledgments
This book has been a long time in the making, and has been profoundly
influenced by many people. As always, thanks to Ray Jackendoff and Susanne
Winkler for their friendship, collegiality, advice, and support. Jack Hawkins
read several early versions of the manuscript and generously shared his
insights—they can be seen throughout. I am very grateful to Jefferson Barlew
for the formal description of the constructional framework developed as
part of our collaboration on minimal constructions, which appears in the
Appendix to Chapter 2 and is based on Barlew & Culicover (2015). And I owe
a tremendous debt to Giuseppe Varaschin, who read the entire manuscript
in various incarnations and made countless detailed and constructive
suggestions, virtually all of which have been incorporated into the current
version.
Thanks also to Brian Joseph and Noah Diewald, from whom I learned so
much in the course of our discussions in our Cree Reading Group, to Greg
Carlson, Ashwini Deo, Adele Goldberg, Björn Köhnlein, Andrew McInnerney,
Rafaela Miliorini, Lorena Sainz-Maza Lecanda, Richard Samuels, Yourda-
nis Sedaris, Andrea Sims, Shane Steinert-Threlkeld, Elena Vaiksnoraite, and
Joshua Wampler for stimulating discussions on a range of topics, to Philip
Miller for helpful comments on the material in Chapter 3 and for his general
perspective on constructional approaches to grammar, to Afra Alishahi for
our collaboration on the simulation of change in argument structure con-
structions, to Andrzej Nowak for our collaboration on language change, and
to Marianne Mithun for helpful insight into active-stative languages. Thanks
to Zoe Edmiston, whose interest in Plains Cree stimulated my own, and to
Morten Christiansen and Nick Chater for giving me the opportunity to write
the foreword to their recent book and to think freshly about the foundations
of linguistic theory.
I am especially indebted to several anonymous reviewers, whose construc-
tive suggestions have pointed to a rethinking of this book in ways that have
led to significant improvements. Of course, any errors and deficiencies that
remain are my responsibility alone.
The Department of Linguistics and The Ohio State University awarded me
a Special Assignment in the Autumn of 2016, which made it possible for me to
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/6/2021, SPi
x acknowledgments
make significant progress on the first draft. My thanks to Shari Speer, for her
constant encouragement and support.
I owe a deep debt to the work of Ivan Sag and Partha Niyogi, and I wish
I could thank them now—sadly, they left us far too soon, with so much left
for us to do without their guidance and insights. I am grateful as well to
the late John Davey of Oxford University Press, whose unflagging support
and encouragement over many years helped me through the publication
of five substantial volumes, each of which contributes significantly to the
foundations of the present work. And it is with great regret and sadness that
I am unable to share this work with my dear friend and colleague, the late
Michael Rochemont.
Finally, deepest thanks and much love as always to Diane, Daniel, and Jen
for always being there.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/6/2021, SPi
Preface
This book began with a nagging worry. By and large, the grammatical literature
assumes that grammatical functions such as subject and object are universal
and independently represented in syntax, and play an integral role in the
description of the form/meaning correspondences that comprise what we call
‘language’. But these supposed universals, like many others, pose several mys-
teries. Where do they come from? Are they part of the biological endowment
for language that is encoded in our genes? Is there a device called Universal
Grammar in our brains that incorporates such notions as subject and object, or
the equivalent? Did biological evolution select for languages whose grammars
make use of these grammatical functions?
As I looked more into the literature on grammatical functions, it became
clear that they are not universal—not all languages appear to make use of
them, and where it appears that they are used, they are not the same cross-
linguistically. Of course, we find the terms ‘subject’ and ‘object’ used all the
time to distinguish the participants in a relation such as ‘The tiger bit Sandy’ in
a given language. And it is possible to stipulate that ‘the tiger’ in some language
has the syntactic representation of what we call ‘subject’ in a language like
English. But on closer investigation, often what is being distinguished are the
phrases that denote entities with thematic roles like agent and patient.
It is often said that “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single
step”, and each journey starts from a different place. This is one such journey.
No matter where we start from in syntactic theory, the interconnections take
us to places that we did not envision at the outset. In this case, as I thought
about grammatical functions and how arguments are distinguished cross-
linguistically, I found myself engaged in something much more far-reaching
and ambitious: the explanation of language change, variation, and typology.
Why does change proceed in certain directions, why do we get the variation
that we do, why do we get certain variants and not others? How do grammars
carry out the task of encoding the expressive functions of language, and what,
if any, are the limits on how this is done? Why are certain patterns ubiquitous,
across languages and in a single language, while others are rare or non-
existent?
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/6/2021, SPi
xii preface
preface xiii
xiv preface
List of Abbreviations
Adj adjective
ASC Argument structure construction
AUX Auxiliary
BDT Branching Direction Theory
CCore Conceptual Core
CS Conceptual Structure
CWG Continental West Germanic
DM Distributed Morphology
DOM Differential object marking
DSM Differential subject marking
GB (theory) Government Binding theory
GF grammatical function
HPSG Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar
IPP Infinitivus Pro Participio
IS information structure
LFG Lexical Functional Grammar
LID Lexeme Identifier
MGG Mainstream Generative Grammar
MOD Modal
ModE Modern English
ModG Modern German
N noun
Neg Negative
NP noun phrase
OE Old English
OHG Old High German
P&P Principles and Parameters Theory
PA Parallel Architecture
PG Proto-Germanic
PLD primary linguistic data
PP prepositional phrase
RG Relational Grammar
SAI subject Aux inversion
SD Standard Dutch
UG Universal Grammar
V verb
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/6/2021, SPi
VP Verb Phrase
VPR Verb projection raising
WALS World Atlas of Language Structures
WF West Flemish
ZT Zürich German
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 18/6/2021, SPi
PART I
F OU N DAT ION S
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 18/6/2021, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 18/6/2021, SPi
1
Overview
My primary concern in this book is how human languages get to be the way
they are, why they are different from one another in certain ways and not in
others, and why they change in the ways that they do. Given that language
is a universal creation of the human mind, the central question is why there
are different languages at all. Why don’t we all speak the same language?
This chapter lays out the general foundations of inquiry into this question in
contemporary linguistic theory, and the specific assumptions that inform the
answers developed in this book.
I call this central question ‘Chomsky’s Problem’.1 Chomsky’s own answer,
hinted at in Chomsky (1965) and further developed in Chomsky (1973, 1981)
and other work, has been that in a sense we do all speak the ‘same language’.
What we produce is the external manifestation of a universal, biologically
determined, abstract faculty of the human mind, called Universal Grammar
(UG). This classical Chomskyan account, which I refer to throughout
as Mainstream Generative Grammar (MGG), has the following main
components:
1 The parallel with Chomsky’s “Orwell’s Problem” and “Plato’s Problem” is intended.
Language Change, Variation, and Universals: A Constructional Approach. Peter W. Culicover, Oxford University Press.
© Peter W. Culicover 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198865391.003.0001
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