Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

The diachronic change of word-formation patterns is currently gaining increasing interest in cognitive-linguistic and constructionist approaches. This paper contributes to this line of research with a corpus-based investigation of nominalization with the suffix -ung in German. In doing so, it puts forward both theoretical and methodological considerations on morphology and morphological change from a usage-based perspective. Regarding methodology, the long-standing topic of how to measure the productivity of a morphological pattern is discussed, and it is shown how statistical association measures (...) can be applied to quantify the relationship between word-formation patterns and their bases. These findings are linked up with theoretical considerations on the interplay between constructional schemas and their respective instances. (shrink)

Because they involve individual-level cognitive processes, psychological explanations of linguistic phenomena are in principle testable against individual behaviour. The present study draws on patterns of individual variation in corpus data to test explanations of productivity. Linguistic patterns are predicted to become more productive with higher type frequencies and lower token frequencies. This is because the formation of abstract mental representations is encouraged by varied types but counteracted by automation of high-frequency types. The predictions are tested for English -ly and -ness-derivation, (...) as used by 698 individual journalists in the New York Times Annotated Corpus and 171 members of Parliament in the Hansard Corpus. Linear regression is used to model individual variation in productivity, in relation to type and token frequency, as well as several other predictor variables. While the expected effects are observed, there is also robust evidence of an interaction effect between type and token frequency, indicating that productivity is highest for patterns with many types and not-too-infrequent tokens. This fits best with a view of entrenchment as both a conservative and creative force in language. Further, some variation remains irreducibly individual and is not explained by currently known predictors of productivity. (shrink)

The present article investigates a set of discourse connectors in the academic lecture genre from the viewpoint of the inseparable pair of pragmatics and cognition. Making use of theMICASEcorpus for data retrieval, a selection of discourse constructions encoding comparative contrastive meanings are analysed and their distinctive features are critically described and explained. The aim is to show how each particular genre promotes the use of certain constructions. TheMICASEdatabase reveals that, among all the subgroups of complementary contrastive constructions, some seem incompatible (...) with the academic lecture contexts by virtue of the particular characteristics of this specific genre. (shrink)

This paper investigates frequency effects in the L2 acquisition of the catenative verb construction by German learners of English from a usage-based perspective by presenting findings from two experimental studies and a complementary corpus study. It was examined if and to what extent the frequency of the verb in the catenative verb construction affects the choice of the target-like complement type and if the catenative verb construction with a to-infinitive complement, which is highly frequent in English, is more accurately acquired (...) and entrenched than the less frequent variant with an -ing complement. In all three studies, the more frequent construction with a to-infinitive yielded higher numbers of target-like complement choices. Furthermore, it was shown that the verb’s faithfulness to the construction made a significant prediction of a target-like complement preference. It is argued that a higher faithfulness promotes a target-like entrenchment of the construction and motivates a taxonomic generalisation across related exemplars. Furthermore, the results provide support for the idea that the mental representation of language is comprised of item-specific as well as more abstract schema knowledge, where frequency determines the specificity with which the construction is entrenched. (shrink)

This paper examines, on the basis of a longitudinal corpus of 50 early modern authors, how change at the aggregate level of the community interacts with variation and change at the micro-level of the individual language user. In doing so, this study aims to address the methodological gap between collective change and entrenchment, that is, the gap between language as a social phenomenon and the cognitive processes responsible for the continuous reorganization of linguistic knowledge in individual speakers. Taking up the (...) case of the prepositional passive, this study documents a strong community-wide increase in use that is accompanied by increasing schematicity. A comparison of the 50 authors reveals that regularities arising at the macro-level conceal highly complex and variable individual behavior, aspects of which may be explained by studying the larger (social) context in which these individuals operate (e. g., age cohorts, community of practice, biographical insights). Further analysis, focusing on how authors use the prepositional passive in unique and similar ways, elucidates the role of small individual biases in long-term change. Overall, it is demonstrated that language change is an emergent phenomenon that results from the complex interaction between individual speakers, who themselves may change their linguistic behavior to varying degrees. (shrink)