Projects

Current projects

Dynamics of language change: emergence and loss of causative constructions in Middle English

OVERVIEW

When addressing how languages change over time, scholars have generally focused on how and why new linguistic constructions come into being. Language change, however, is not a one-way process; equally important to understand the dynamics of change is the study of how and why linguistic constructions are lost. If we want to fully account for the multifaceted nature of language change, it is of primary importance to consider that emergence and loss are processes that are intimately connected and not to split the reasons for emergence from the reasons for loss. This holistic approach has been rarely taken in the past, with the result that the relations and the interactions between emergence and loss are still unclear. The goal of the present project is to enhance our understanding of the dynamics that underlie language change by bringing emergence and loss together and, ultimately, provide a unified account of language change. The testing ground for this project are the innovations that characterize several causative constructions in Middle English (c. 1150-1500), focusing in particular on the factors that led to the emergence of have, get, cause, gar and make, and on those that caused the loss of hatan and do. The perspective adopted in this project does not conceptualize the changes affecting these verbs as isolated. Instead, these verbs are assumed to be part of what is typically referred to in the Construction Grammar tradition as a dynamic, associative network, in which constructions are interconnected through different kinds of links. The changes that involved Middle English causative constructions will be investigated by combining qualitative analyses with quantitative methods. Ultimately, this project not only aims to deepen our understanding of how change occurs, but also to provide the first comprehensive picture of the causative verb network in Middle English.