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Choices over time

Choices over time. Some methodological issues in research into current change. Bas Aarts, Jo Close and Sean Wallis Survey of English Usage University College London {b.aarts, j.close, s.wallis}@ucl.ac.uk. Introducing DCPSE. The Diachronic Corpus of Present-day Spoken English

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Choices over time

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  1. Choices over time Some methodological issues in research into current change Bas Aarts, Jo Close and Sean Wallis Survey of English Usage University College London {b.aarts, j.close, s.wallis}@ucl.ac.uk

  2. Introducing DCPSE • The Diachronic Corpus of Present-daySpoken English • orthographically transcribed spoken BrE • fully parsed, searchable with ICECUP and FTFs • 400,000 words each from • LLC (‘Survey Corpus’) • ICE-GB • balanced by text category • not evenly distributed by year • LLC: samples from 1958-1977 • ICE-GB: 1990-1992

  3. What can a parsed corpus tell us? • Parsed corpora contain tree diagrams • Use Fuzzy Tree Fragment (FTF) queries to get data • An FTF: • A matchingcase in a tree:

  4. will vs. shall • Barber (1964) • “[T]he distinctions formerly made between shall and will are being lost, and will is coming increasingly to be used instead of shall.” • Mair and Leech (2006) • lexical counts in Brown family of corpora (written) • BrE and AmE: shall falls (~50%) with time 1960s BrE 1990s BrE 1960s AmE 1990s AmE will 2,798 2,723 2,702 2,402 shall 355 200 267 150

  5. will vs. shall 1960s BrE 1990s BrE 1960s AmE 1990s AmE will 2,798 2,723 2,702 2,402 shall 355 200 267 150 • Barber (1964) • “[T]he distinctions formerly made between shall and will are being lost, and will is coming increasingly to be used instead of shall.” • Mair and Leech (2006) • lexical counts in Brown family of corpora (written) • BrE and AmE: shall falls (~50%) with time • Transatlantic convergence: AmE and BrE are distinct in 1960s but not distinct in the 1990s

  6. will vs. shall 1960s BrE 1990s BrE 1960s BrE 1990s BrE will 2,798 2,723 shall 355 200 N-will 997,202 997,277 N-shall 999,645 999,800 • Questions... • Are will and shall true alternates in each case? • what about will not, shall not, won’t, shan’t and interrogative forms? • do we include ’ll ? • Mair and Leech cite log-likelihood of words • a kind of c2 for [{x, x’}, {N-x, N’-x’}](x, x’ = frequency of item, N, N’ = corpus size) • it tells us that shall is less frequent in the later corpus • it does not tell us whether will is replacing shall N = 1M

  7. will vs. shall 1960s BrE 1990s BrE 1960s AmE 1990s AmE will 2,798 2,723 2,702 2,402 shall 355 200 267 150 • Questions... • Are will and shall true alternates in each case? • what about will not, shall not, won’t, shan’t and interrogative forms? • do we include ’ll ? • Mair and Leech cite log-likelihood of words • a kind of c2 for [{x, x’}, {N-x, N’-x’}](x, x’ = frequency of item, N, N’ = corpus size) • it tells us that shall is less frequent in the later corpus • it does not tell us whether will is replacing shall • we’ve reanalysed data using c2 for [{x, x’}, {y, y’}]

  8. will vs. shall • Questions... • Are will and shall true alternates in each case? • what about will not, shall not, won’t, shan’t and interrogative forms? • do we include ’ll ? • Mair and Leech cite log-likelihood of words • a kind of c2 for [{x, x’}, {N-x, N’-x’}](x, x’ = frequency of item, N, N’ = corpus size) • it tells us that shall is less frequent in the later corpus • it does not tell us whether will is replacing shall • we’ve reanalysed data using c2 for [{x, x’}, {y, y’}] • Can we show a change in use in speech? • Can we show change over this period?

  9. will vs. shall vs. ’ll (DCPSE) • Use parsing to find plausible alternates • Create FTFs like this for shall, will and ’ll • Then create FTFs for shall not and will not • Subtract from first set of results (a different experiment) • These counts exclude • negative forms: shall not, shan’t, will not, won’t • subject-auxiliary inversion

  10. will vs. shall vs. ’ll (DCPSE) shall will ’ll c2(’ll) shall will ’ll c2(shall) c2(will) TOTAL 124 501 663 1,288 15.71 2.16 0.01 LLC 46 544 638 1,228 16.48 2.26 0.01 ICE-GB 170 1,045 1,301 2,516 c2 36.63s TOTAL • Consider the three-way alternation • Most variation is for shall

  11. will vs. shall vs. ’ll (DCPSE) shall will+’ll will ’ll c2(’ll) shall will ’ll c2(will) TOTAL 124 501 663 1,164 0.58 0.47 LLC 46 544 638 1,182 0.58 0.47 ICE-GB 170 1,045 1,301 2,346 c2 2.11ns TOTAL If will and’ll behave similarly, group them

  12. will vs. shall vs. ’ll (DCPSE) shall will+’ll will ’ll shall will+’ll c2(shall) c2(will+’ll) TOTAL 124 1,164 1,288 15.71 1.14 LLC 46 1,182 1,228 16.48 1.19 ICE-GB 170 2,346 2,516 c2 34.52s TOTAL If will and’ll behave similarly, group them

  13. will vs. shall vs. ’ll (DCPSE) shall will+’ll will ’ll shall will+’ll c2(shall) c2(will+’ll) TOTAL 124 1,164 1,288 15.71 1.14 LLC 9.7% 46 1,182 1,228 16.48 1.19 ICE-GB 3.7% 170 2,346 2,516 c2 34.52s TOTAL If will and’ll behave similarly, group them

  14. shall over time (DCPSE) p(shall | {shall, will, ’ll}) 0.4 0.3 LLC 0.2 ICE-GB 0.1 0 Proportion of alternates that are shall, by year 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995

  15. shall over time (DCPSE) p(shall | {shall, will, ’ll}) 0.4 0.3 LLC 0.2 ICE-GB 0.1 0 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 error bars based on Poisson Proportion of alternates that are shall, by year

  16. Focusing on true alternation all words VP better { ‘progressivisable VP’ truealternates VP(¬prog) VP(prog) • Aim: to focus on true alternation • minimise other sources of variation • Consider changing use of the progressive

  17. The progressive (DCPSE) • FTF to retrieve progressives from DCPSE • Identifying the alternates (see Smitterberg 2005; Aarts, Close & Wallis forthcoming) • VP(prog) • Exclude be going to future (automatic) • VP(¬prog) • Exclude imperatives, infinitives, (benefits of using a parsed corpus)

  18. The progressive over time (DCPSE) p(VP(prog)| {VP(prog), VP(¬prog)}) LLC ICE-GB 0.07 0.06 0.05 0.04 0.03 0.02 0.01 0 • The rise of the English progressive in spoken English (as a proportion of alternates) 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995

  19. Conclusions • We focus on true alternation to investigate if replacement is occurring by considering: • variation (over time) where there is a choice • hierarchies of alternates • as with {shall, {will, ’ll}} • This can be difficult • Requires a linguistic argument • May require careful examination of cases • It is extensible to other types of experiment, e.g. interaction between choices

  20. References Aarts, Bas, Jo Close and Sean Wallis (forthcoming) Recent changes in the use of the progressive construction in English. In: Bert Cappelle and Naoaki Wada (eds.) Festschrift for (secret). Barber, Charles (1964) Linguistic change in present-day English. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd. Mair, Christian and Geoffrey Leech (2006) “Current Changes in English Syntax,” The Handbook of English linguistics, ed. by Aarts, Bas, and April McMahon, 318-342, Blackwell Publishers, Malden MA. Nelson, Gerald, Sean Wallis and Bas Aarts (2002) Exploring natural language: working with the British component of the International Corpus of English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Smitterberg, Erik (2005) The Progressive in 19th-Century English: A Process of Integration. (Language and Computers: Studies in Practical Linguistics 54.) Amsterdam: Rodopi.

  21. Bas Aarts, Jo Close and Sean Wallis {b.aarts, j.close, s.wallis}@ucl.ac.uk www.ucl.ac.uk/english-usage

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