Asymmetrical trajectories: The past and present of –body/–one

Abstract

The set of English [+human] pronominal quantifiers has been variable for at least 500 years, with the compound forms –body and –one competing since Middle and Early Modern English. This change has still to run its course (cf. Nevalainen & Raumolin-Brunberg, 2003:78). Using corpora of historical texts, we track the development of these variants alongside the demise of the earlier variant –man. Then, drawing on contemporary and regionally diverse corpora, we trace the continued development of –body/–one variation through the 20th century. The trajectories reveal paradigmatic leveling in the late 19th century and the rise of –one as the dominant form. However, grammatical, social, and lexical developments continue. Most striking is that after an initial phase of historical leveling, the different lexical quantifiers—any, every, some, no—go their own ways in the collection of varieties examined here, demonstrating that the mechanisms shaping evolutionary pathways across the globe are not only systemic, but also retain local alternations.

‘I don't come off as timid anymore’: Real‐time change in early adulthood against the backdrop of the community

“…English has two sets of PRONOMINAL QUANTIFIERS for human referents: – body and – one , which appear with the stems any – , every –, some –, and no – (Nevalainen and Raumolin‐Brunberg ; D'Arcy et al. ; Jankowski and Tagliamonte ). These are exemplified in (4) through (7):…”

“…This conditioning factor remains strong in British corpora until the early twentieth century (D'Arcy et al. : 294).…”

“…The variable is not socially salient and does not appear to index social meaning (D'Arcy et al. : 296–297); however, it does have longstanding stylistic associations. The – body variant showed an early association with less‐formal contexts (Raumolin‐Brunberg : 315–316; Raumolin‐Brunberg and Kahlas‐Tarkka : 68).…”

“…Conversely, since the beginning of the eighteenth century, the competing – one has been the more literary, prestigious variant (D'Arcy et al. : 291–293, 298; see also Jespersen : 444; Quirk et al. : 376–378).…”

Variação discursiva e gramaticalização: o controle de condicionamentos semântico-pragmáticos e o princípio da persistência

“…Os padrões de variação podem revelar traços das fontes lexicais e/ou de diferentes etapas do processo de gramaticalização percorrido por cada variante que ainda estejam sendo preservados em seu uso variável, o que costuma ser relacionado, na literatura da área, a um dos princípios de gramaticalização propostos por Hopper (1991), o princípio da persistência (cf. D ' ARCY et al, 2013;TAGLIAMONTE, 2012;TAVARES, 2014;TORRES CACOULLOS, 2011).…”