| Hu, Yanan; Geeraerts, Dirk; Speelman, Dirk (upcoming publication) Hypothesis Testing and beyond: A Corpus-based Case Study of Chinese Analytic Causatives |
| This paper is a demonstration of employing quantitative modeling to test a hypothesis in Cognitive Linguistics, and steps further to bridge empirical bottom-up researches and theoretical top-down studies. For this purpose, we address the (in)direct causation hypothesis for Chinese analytic causatives by building a statistical model with the variables derived from the conceptual distinction, based on the data extracted from UCLA2. The results reveal the hypothesis is significant for distinguishing the Chinese lexemes, but that a good part of variation is still left out. From this it follows that we argue for a multivariate framework of causation, which integrates structural/grammatical, conceptual/semantic and lexical factors to account for Chinese analytic causatives, and we find the theoretical support in Wolff’s study. That again comes around to verification of using quantification for hypothesis testing and unearthing the authentic buried pattern in linguistic reality. |
| Pijpops, Dirk; Beuls, Katrien (upcoming publication) Regularisatiedruk op de Nederlandse werkwoorden. Een gevalstudie van agent-gebaseerde modellering |
| The goal of this paper is to act as a proof-of-concept of agent-based modelling as a potentially useful tool for Dutch historical linguistics. To this end, we will present a basic agent-based model of the competition between regular and irregular verb inflection in Dutch. While the weak paradigm has provided our language with a transparent strategy of past tense formation since Proto-Germanic, a large number of high frequent verbs remain entrenched in their irregular past tense forms. We will investigate which mechanisms we need to implement in order to model this competition, and discuss what the possibilities of agent-based modelling are. |
| Pijpops, Dirk; Speelman, Dirk (upcoming publication) The influence of agentivity on the argument realization of the psychological verbs: a multivariate regression analysis of the reflexive alternation in Dutch |
| This article presents a corpus study of the Dutch psychological verbs ergeren (‘to annoy’), interesseren (‘to interest’), storen (‘to disturb’) and verbazen (‘to amaze’). These verbs exhibit a syntactic alternation between their seemingly synonymous reflexive and transitive case frames, as in Elizabeth ergert John vs. John ergert zich aan Elizabeth (both: ‘Elizabeth annoys John’). The data were analyzed through logistic regression modelling. It was found that the alternation was most strongly determined by the choice of verb, as well as by the agentivity and topicality of the participants. That is, within each of the four verbs separately, more agentive and informationally lighter stimuli, as well as informationally lighter experiencers, elicited the use of the transitive case frame. However, contrary to expectations based on theoretical accounts of argument realization (Dowty 1991, Langacker 1991, Croft 1993, Levin & Rappaport-Hovav 2005), verbs whose lexical meaning entailed a more agentive experiencer did not more often realize this experiencer in subject position than other verbs. We were also unable to predict the dominant case frame of a verb based on their historical semantic development. |
| Pijpops, Dirk; Van de Velde, Freek (upcoming publication) Ethnolect speakers and Dutch partitive adjectival inflection. A corpus analysis |
| This study applies the methodology described by Gries & Deshors (2014) within the framework of the Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (Granger 1996) to the partitive genitive inflection in post-quantifier adjectives in the Moroccan Dutch ethnolect. This implies fitting a logistic regression model on data from the commensurable ConDiv and Moroccorp corpora to investigate the differences between the L1 variety and the (early L2 / 2L1) ethnolect variety. It was found that the Moroccan Dutch language users do not differ from ‘ordinary’ Dutch language users in the realisation of the partitive genitive -s suffix, neither through an outspoken preference for one of the inflectional variants, nor in the factors determining the alternation. This is considered a rather surprising result, as such differences do exist for a number of other grammatical phenomena (Cornips and Rooij 2003; Van de Velde and Weerman 2014). This finding can tell us something about the inflectional status of the partitive genitive. It appears that it is less untransparent than other quirks in adjectival inflection. |
| Zenner, Eline; Kristiansen, Gitte; Geeraerts, Dirk (upcoming publication) Individual differences and in situ identity marking: Colloquial Belgian Dutch in the reality TV show "Expeditie Robinson" |
| Over the past decades, both sociolinguists and Cognitive Linguists have shifted their attention to idiolects, individual differences and intra-speaker variation (e.g. Hernández-Campoy & Cutillas-Espinosa 2013; Barlow 2013). This paper aims to add to this trend by conducting a bottom-up analysis of the speech of twelve participants to the Dutch reality TV show "Expeditie Robinson" (known as “Survivor” in the Anglo-Saxon world). Based on manual transcriptions of three seasons of the show (35 hours of recordings), we build quantitative profiles tracking each participant's use of two features of Colloquial Belgian Dutch (an informal, substandard but supraregional variety of Dutch). The first feature, word-final t-deletion, is located below the level of awareness (e.g. nie(t) 'not'), the second feature concerns the use of the personal pronoun gij instead of jij ('you') and can be seen as located above the level of awareness. Relying on the speaker profiles, we monitor and compare the speakers' style-shifting across discourse situations. Specifically, we focus on register differences (contrasting informal and formal speech) and differences in group make-up (verifying the impact of the absence or presence of Netherlandic Dutch participants - who typically do not use Colloquial Belgian Dutch). Inferential statistical analyses of the individual speaker profiles reveal striking differences between the two linguistic markers. The most outspoken differences between the participants are found for group accommodation strategies in the use of the personal pronoun gij, ranging from no adaptation (e.g. Meredith, using 84% gij in dialogues without Netherlandic Dutch participants and 85.7% in dialogues with Netherlandic Dutch participants) to nearly complete accommodation (e.g. Geert, showing a drop from 94.1% use of gij in homogeneous dialogues to only 22.2% gij in heterogeneous conversations). Interestingly, these different levels of accommodation can be linked to the degree to which the participants are involved with strategic planning and voting schemes during the game: the more strategic the player, the more he or she will accommodate to the Dutch. As such, this paper demonstrates how a combination of bottom-up analyses of individual language use, quantitative statistical techniques and qualitative analysis of discourse extracts can reveal (deliberate) in situ identity creation by means of linguistic markers. |
| Zhang, Weiwei (upcoming publication) Visualizing onomasiological change: Diachronic variation in metonymic patterns for WOMAN in Chinese |
| This paper introduces an innovative method to aid the study of conceptual onomasiological research, with a specific emphasis on diachronic variation in the metonymic patterns with which a target concept is expressed. We illustrate how the method is applied to explore and visualize such diachronic changes by means of a case study on the metonymic patterns for WOMAN in the history of Chinese. Visualization is done with the help of a Multidimensional Scaling solution based on the profile-based distance calculation (Geeraerts, Grondelaers, and Speelman 1999; Speelman, Grondelaers, and Geeraerts 2003) and by drawing diachronic trajectories in a set of MDS maps, corresponding to different metonymic targets. This method proves to be effective and feasible in detecting changes in the distribution of metonymic patterns in authentic historical corpus data. On the basis of this method, we can show that different targets exhibit different degrees of diachronic variation in their metonymic patterns. We find diachronically more stable targets (e.g. IMPERIAL WOMAN), targets with a dominant trend in diachronic variation (e.g. A WOMAN), and targets with highly fluctuating historical variation (e.g. BEAUTIFUL WOMAN). Importantly, we can identify the cultural and social changes that may lie behind some of these changes. Examining the results uncovered by the method offers us a better understanding of the dynamicity of metonymic conceptualizations. |
| Pizarro Pedraza, Andrea (upcoming publication) Who said ‘abortion’? Semantic variation and ideology in Spanish newspapers’ online discussions. |
| In this paper, we defend the study of semantic variation from a Cognitive Sociolinguistics perspective. Through a case study on the semantic variation of ‘abortion’ in Spanish newspapers’ comments, we investigate quantitatively the influence of the independent factors (‘source’, ‘date’, ‘ideology’, ‘gender’, ‘quote’) on conceptual onomasiological variation. The chi-square tests show that ‘ideology’ and ‘quote’ affect significantly the preference for direct (to abort) or indirect expressions (to murder) and for particular conceptual bases (e.g. DEATH/TO KILL, NOT HAVE A BABY, TRIP TO LONDON…), pointing to two different conceptualizations of ‘abortion’ for defenders and detractors. By demonstrating the entrenchment of particular construals in their established discourses, we exemplify the indexical power of semantic variation. |
| Van de Velde, Freek; Lamiroy, Béatrice (upcoming publication) The expression of possession and the differential speed of grammaticalisation in West Germanic and Romance |
| This article inquires into the external possessor in West Germanic and Romance. Against other accounts in the literature, it argues that the distribution of the dative external possessor can neither be explained by reference to Standard Average European, nor by substrate influence. Instead it is argued that its diachronic decline is due to an increased configurationality or tighter structure in the noun phrase. This increase in configurationality can be considered as a case of constructional grammaticalisation, as slots for determination and modification become progressively more fixed. One of the claims here is that this grammaticalisation process proceeds at different rates in cognate languages. |