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Three is company?

Three is company?. On the use and characteristics of augmentation in English absolutes Nikki van de Pol KU Leuven FWO - Flanders. Structure of the talk. Theoretical background The absolute construction The early history of augmentation Data – Methodology Research questions Data

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Three is company?

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  1. Three is company? On the use and characteristics of augmentation in English absolutes Nikki van de PolKU LeuvenFWO - Flanders

  2. Structure of the talk • Theoretical background • The absolute construction • The earlyhistory of augmentation • Data – Methodology • Research questions • Data • Methodology • Results • Conclusion • References

  3. Theoretical background

  4. The Absolute Construction (AC) • The public legal obstacle having been removed, however, caution required that the final lifting of the ban depend upon the Law Society changing its rules. (BNC, Solicitors' partnerships: the law in practice. 1992) • But with Niki and Andre working at the ministry of finance, what else could I do? (Leuven Drama Corpus, The Duel, 1968) • non-finiteconstruction • predicate + (pro)nominal subject • predicate = participle (prototypically) ornoun/NP, adjective/AdjP, adverb/AdvP, prepositionalphrase, infinitive • Twomain types: augmented: introducedby a preposition (in PDE typicallywith(out)) (2) orunaugmented: notintroducedby a preposition (1) • wide range of semantic relations with the matrix clauseoftensimilar to thoseexpressedbyfinite (subordinate) adverbialclauses

  5. The earlyHistory of Augmentation • If in OE and especially in ME a specificmeaningneeds to bestressed, a relevant preposition is added to the absolute. • These so-calledaugmentedabsolutes have more specific and restrictedmeaningsthanunaugmentedabsolutes and the introductoryprepositionfunctions as a kind of conjunction. • After: anteriority: ... after which Solempnytefynysshed an honorable feest was holden within the great Halle of Westmynster... (The new chronicles of England and France 1516) • Upon: short-timeanteriority: …at whichetymeuppon the more knowledge had, ye wolde assemble al the noble men… (PENN, letters to Surrey, 1520-1528) • Before: posteriority: And if upon Examination it shall appeare that any of the aforesaid Goods were carried out unlesse for Exportation or before sufficient Security given for their Exportation… (PENN, Statutes VII, 1695-1699)

  6. A Brief History of Augmentation (2) • According to the literature, therewere more than 20 different prepositionsbeingused as augmentor in ME (full list in Visser 1973). • With-absolutes were used since OE and expressed manner/accompanying circumstance • With: manner/accompanyingcircumstance: …he stant by-fore þejugge, witis heed enclined, wit his ægenicastadoun,… (Helsinki corpus, Rievaulx's De InstitutioneInclusarum, 1420-1500)

  7. Data – Methodology

  8. Research Questions • Although augmented ACs tend to be simply described as ‘regular’ (unaugmented) ACs preceded by a preposition, there appear to be several differences -- subtle as well as more striking -- between the two types (Kortmann 1995). • Therefore the current presentation will investigate 1. how augmentation developed in ModE and PDE 2. how the choice between augmented and unaugmented ACs correlates with the following factors • i. ease of processing, as transpires from coreferentiality preferences (Kortmann 1995: 213) • ii. occurrence in various registers • iii. the semantic relation with the matrix clause (temporal, causal, etc.) • iv. degree of productivity 3. Whether there is any broader linguistic importance to the phenomenon of augmentation

  9. Methodology • Corpus-based research • EModE + LModE (1500-1914) • most registers: PENN parsed corpora of English • poetry: personalselection of poems • near spoken language (LModEonly): direct speech taggedfragmentsfrom the Old Bailey Corpus • PDE (1968-1994) • most registers: BNC • Drama: Leuven drama corpus • Search methods • For Penn: used the corpus’sparsing system; searchedforAC-tags and filtered out wrong codingsmanually • For the others: read the entire subcorpus and filtered out ACs manually

  10. Data 9621 ACs in total (3484 forEModE, 2153 forLModE and 3984 for PDE)

  11. Coreference • Semanticidentitybetween the AC subject and an element of the matrix clause (3) or the entireprecedingdiscourse (4) (3) A group of children, their dirty faces streaked with tears, clung to her tattered gown. (BNC, Crown in darkness,1991) (4) So they were browghteyn and rede.That done, one of them was gyven to the knyghtemarshalles man,… (PENN, Troubles of Mownt, 1555)

  12. Basicsemantic relations • Purelyadverbial (i.e. reason (5), condition, concession, anteriority,…) (5) These are the things that we have both missed out on over the last few years, both of us working at all times. (BNC, Kylie Minogue: the superstar next door. 1989) • Elaboration (includesaddition and exemplification) i.e. additional context is provided without anyspecificadverbialrelationbeingstressed (6)Of the land he had surrendered, all the Essex land and Lavenham (Suff.) went to the queen and her feoffees, with the rest of the Suffolk land going to John Howard.(BNC, Richard III, 1991) • Accompanyingcircumstance (containssimultaneity, vaguest type of adverbialrelation and therefore a sort of bridging subtype) (7)The lights changed and the truck pulled off with Chase trying to keep his balance and looking thoroughly bemused. (BNC, Angel Hunt, 1991)

  13. Results

  14. The development of augmentation • Strong increase (p<0.001) of the relativefrequency of with-augmentedACs vs. unaugmentedACs • Otheraugmentation types (e.g. after, before) are all but lost • Possiblereason: grammaticalization of withfromspecificaugmentorintosemanticallyempty absolute marker. (van de Pol & Cuyckens 2011) • ACswithotheraugmentorsprobablycame to beseen as wronglyformulatedfinitesubordinateclauseswithellipsis (‘Aftersilencecommanded’ sounds better as ‘Aftersilence had been commanded’) 4% 1% 7% 22% 1% 44%

  15. The development of augmentation • The grammaticalizationtheory is supportedby the factthat PDE with-augmentedACscan express the exact same range of semantic relations as theirunaugmentedcounterparts. (cf. also Stump 1985:13 & Kortmann 1995) • This was notyetfully the case in EModEand the with-AC semantics were probably even more restricted before that.

  16. Despite-augmentation • About the only other augmentor still available in PDE seems to be one that was not present in previous periods and thus relatively new ‘despite’ (8) Nevertheless, despite this work spanning almost half a century, it can be understood as forming a coherent and systematic theory. (BNC, Public law and political theory, 1992) • It is perhaps not surprising that it is the meaning that is situated highest in the cline of semantic specificity/informativeness (Kortmann 1991: 121) that should sometimes require a more semantically specific augmentor again • Indeed, even with-augmented ACs usually are accompanied by the adverb ‘even’ to support their concessional interpretation (9) Complex component testing even with ATE available can take hours. (BNC, Artificial intelligence techniques for improving aircraft maintenance efficiency. 1991)

  17. Augmentation and coreference • With-augmentationoccursmuch more often (p<0.001) in cases wherethere is nocoreferencerelationbetween the AC subject and an element of the matrix clause. As such, itseemswith-augmentationhelps to increaseease of processing when the connection to the matrix clause is looser • The sametendencycanalreadybeobservedforModE

  18. Augmentation and register Apart from the steadyincrease of the proportion of with-ACs the most interestingdevelopment is that the registers thatoriginally displayed the highestwith-AC frequencies, are the most conservative in PDE, showing the highestproportion of unaugmented ACs In addition(near-) spoken Englishalsoappears to have a markedpreferenceforwith- augmentedACs

  19. Augmentation and register • If we look at the comparisonbetweenchannels, i.e. written versus spokenregisters, we can indeed see a markedpreferenceforwith-augmentedACs • in (near-) spoken English • Thismayagaintie in with the factthat ‘with’ as ‘absolute marker’ enhancesease of processing to a certaindegree. Such a trait is more useful in spoken languagewherethe hearercannot go back to adjust a faultyinterpretation in the way a reader can. • Although the difference is lessoutspoken in PDE, it is highlystatisticallysignificant (p<0.001) in bothperiods.

  20. Augmentationand semantics • With-augmentedACsstarted out as slightly more innovative in theiruse of mereelaboration & border adverbialmeanings (p = 0.055) • In PDE with-ACsrepresent more adverbial relations thanunaugmentedAcs (p<0.001) • Probably the developmentstartedwithwith-ACsbecausetheyoriginally had a manner/accompanyingcircumstancemeaning • In PDE speakers/writersmayprefer the more accessibleaugmented variant to express a meaningthey more typicallyassociatewithconjunctioninitiatedfinitesubordinateadverbialclauses

  21. Augmentation and semantics (2) • We canobserve the change of with-ACs • intoexpressingpurelyadverbial relations • probably most clearly in the causal domain • (p<0.001 for the with-ACsincrease in • causalusebetweenLModE and PDE andfor the fall in causaluse of unaugmented • ACs in the sameperiod)

  22. Augmentation and productivity • With respect to productivitybothvariants are aboutequallyproductive and remainso over the threeperiodsunderinvestigation (as basedon a preliminarycountusing MI scores)

  23. Augmentation and the gerund/postmodifiernetwork • Overlap with ‘regular’ prepositionalpostmodifiers (10) He showed us a toy that he had made as a boy: a little square box of painted wood with a glass panel (NO AC, prepositional phrase as postmodifier) (11) He showed us a toy that he had made as a boy: a little square box of painted wood with a glass panel on top (12) He showed us a toy that he had made as a boy: a little square box of painted wood with a glass panel set in the top (BNC In the echoey tunnel. 1991, original example) (13) He showed us a toy that he had made as a boy: a little square box of painted wood, a glass panel having been set in the top (prototypical unaugmented AC) TYPICAL AC USE POSTMODIFIER LIKE USE

  24. Augmentation and the gerund/postmodifiernetwork • Overlap withgerunds (14) I don't claim to know that God exists, I only claim that he does without my knowing it, and while I claim as much I do not claim to know as much; indeed i cannot know and God knows I cannot.(Leuven drama corpus, Jumpers, 1972) (NO AC, gerund) (15) Life was fraught enough for the Stevenses as it was, with the constant care of Jennifer, without her adding to their problems. (BNC False impressions. 1990) (16) Nobody walks out of there without me saying, Yes it's good for you. (BNC, interview, 1991) (17) He loved to wake and hear the large house stirring, with himself enfolded in it. (BNC, Van Gogh: a life, 1990) (18)The first part of Gaudium et Spes returns again and again to the theme of Christ, the New Adam who fully reveals man to man, himself making man's vocation clear(BNC Modern Catholicism: Vatican II and after 1991) (19) … but it had never occurred to her, she being neither proud nor ashamed of it, nor even thinking it very out of the ordinary. (BNC, King Solomon's carpet, 1992)(prototypical unaugmented AC) GERUND LIKE FORM TYPICAL AC FORM

  25. Augmentation and the ing-form/modifiernetwork  augmentationincreases overlap withpostmodifiers and gerunds and createsfuzzyboundaries  construction is lessisolated and thuslesslikely to disappearthan in otherGermaniclanguagessuch as Dutch whereusuallyonly the postmodifier overlap exists

  26. Conclusion

  27. Conclusion • With-augmentation is the onlyfrequentlyused type of augmentation in PDE becausewith has become a semanticallyemptyAC-markercapable of expressinganysemanticrelationunaugmentedACscan • Semantically, augmentedACs have in factcome to express purelyadverbialmeanings more oftenthantheirunaugmentedcounterparts over time • However, the higher the semanticspecificity of the AC the higher the chance of a different, more specificaugmentorshowing up (e.g. despite) even in PDE

  28. Conclusion (2) • There are signsthatwith-augmentationincreasesease of processing as augmentation is used more often in the spoken language and in cases where the AC is more distantfrom the matrix because of lack of coreferentiality. • There is virtuallynodifference in productivitybetweenaugmented and unaugmentedACs • The overlap of ACswithgerunds and postmodifyingclauses; enhancedby the phenomenon of augmentation, makes the constructionlessisolated and thuslesslikely to disappearthan in otherGermaniclanguagessuch as Dutch

  29. References • Berent, G. P. 1975. 'English absolutes in functional perspective'. In R.E. Grossman et al. eds. Papers from the parasession on functionalism: A paravolume to CLS 20, 10-33. • BNC: The British National Corpus, later part 20th century, 100 m words. Department of Linguistics, University of Oxford. (http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/corpus/index.xml? ID=intro). • Helsinki Corpus of English Texts: Diachronic and Dialectal, 750-1700, 1.5 m words. Department of English, University of Helsinki. Third edition, (http://icame.uib.no/ hc/). • Huber, Magnus; Nissel, Magnus; Maiwald, Patrick; Widlitzki, Bianca. 2012. The Old Bailey Corpus. Spoken English in the 18th and 19th centuries. www.uni-giessen.de/oldbaileycorpus, (access 04-06-2013). • Kortmann, B. 1991. Free adjuncts and absolutes in English: problems of control and interpretation. London & New York: Routledge. • Kortmann, B. 1995. 'Adverbial participial clauses in English'. In M. Haspelmath & E. König eds. 1995. Converbs in a cross-linguistic perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 189-237. • PPCEME: The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English, 1500-1710, 1.7 m words. Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania. CD-ROM, first edition, (http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/). • PPCMBE: The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Modern British English, 1700-1914, 1 m words. Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania. CD-ROM, first edition, (http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/). • Stump, G. T. 1985. The semantic variability of absolute constructions. Dordrecht: Reidel.

  30. References (2) • van de Pol, Nikki and Cuyckens, Hubert. 2011. Present-day English absolutes: a multiple-source construction? Presentation at the International workshop on Gradualness in change and its relation to synchronic variation and use. Pavia, 30-31 May 2011. • Visser, Frederikus Theodorus. 1973. An historical syntax of the English language. Leiden: Brill.

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