Entrenchment in Usage-Based Theories

Blumenthal-Dramé, Alice

doi:10.1515/9783110294002

Cited by 205 publications

(15 citation statements)

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“…As Langacker (1987) comments, “Every use of a structure has a positive impact on its degree of entrenchment” (p. 57). Entrenchment has been employed to explain L1 development (Blumenthal-Dramé, 2012), predicting that repeated use of a linguistic form in one structure minimizes the possibility that this form could be used in another structure (Braine & Brooks, 1995). For instance, repeated occurrences of fall in I / you fall and she / he falls help children build the inference that I / you / she / he fall(s) the book is unacceptable.…”

Section: Entrenchment and Preemption In Language Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of entrenchment and preemption in second language learners’ acceptance of English denominal verbs

Zhang

Mai

2017

Applied Psycholinguistics

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Entrenchment and preemption are theorized to constrain the novel use of well-attested constructions. This study tested the effects of these two mechanisms in second language (L2) learners’ acceptance of English denominal verbs (DVs). Two groups of Chinese English-L2 speakers (fourth-year English major students and teachers of English) judged the acceptability of English locatum (e.g.,Lucywateredthe rose) and location (e.g.,Lisaboxedthe apples) DVs. Results based on both corpus and introspective frequencies show that the fourth-year learners’ judgments on the acceptability of all DVs were significantly negatively influenced by the frequency of nominal forms of the DVs, suggesting that entrenchment constrains L2 learners from accepting English DVs. Results based on introspective frequency demonstrate that the teachers’ judgments on the acceptability of all DVs were significantly negatively affected by the frequency of alternative verbs, demonstrating that preemption has a role to play in restricting L2 learners’ acceptance of English DVs. Moreover, the obtained DV frequency based on both corpus and learners’ introspection is a significant factor that helps all the participants’ acceptance of the English DVs, suggesting that the more frequently a DV is used, the more likely L2 learners are to judge it as acceptable.

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Section: Entrenchment and Preemption In Language Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of entrenchment and preemption in second language learners’ acceptance of English denominal verbs

Zhang

Mai

2017

Applied Psycholinguistics

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“…And Schmid (2000: 39) proposes a "From-Corpus-to-Cognition Principle: frequency in text instantiates entrenchment in the cognitive system. " More recently, some have adopted a more critical and questioning stance on the relationship between corpus frequency and entrenchment (Schmid 2010, Blumenthal-Dramé 2012) and yet it is generally assumed that comprehension and production are similar and that for frequency of usage there is essentially a simple input-output model with a single conception of entrenchment covering both comprehension and production. From this perspective, comprehension and production are two sides of the same coin.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual differences and usage-based grammar

Barlow¹

2013

IJCL

131

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Since usage-based theories such as cognitive grammar assume an intimate relationship between mental representations of grammar and the processing of instances of language (usage events), corpora have an important role in the development of grammatical analyses. One consequence of relying on corpus data is that individual differences in usage tend to be obscured. To overcome this problem and investigate individual differences in spoken usage, we examine a large corpus consisting of the spoken output of six White House press secretaries. The results provide strong evidence that within this one particular discourse context the patterns of speech of each individual are clearly recognisable. Furthermore, these idiolectal preferences are consistent and are maintained over a period of at least a year or two. In addition, we briefly explore some theoretical consequences and possible explanations for the disparity found between the speech of the individual and that of the discourse community.

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“…The variation can be partly explained by the frequency of the adverb and (to a lesser extent) by its frequency relative to that of its base. The fact that simple token frequency comes out as the best predictor is somewhat surprising in light of the work by Hay (2001, 2003) and Blumenthal-Dormé (2012). This discrepancy may be due to our method, which focuses on high-frequency adverbs to begin with, or it may be due to the choice of case study, as ly -adverbs lean closer to the inflectional end of morphological complexity than the complex forms studied by Hay and Blumenthal-Dormé.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimenting on the past: a case study on changing analysability in Englishly-adverbs

Smet¹,

Velde²

2017

English Language and Linguistics

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While it is undoubtedly true that historical data do not lend themselves well to the reproduction of experimental findings, the availability of increasingly extensive data sets has brought some experimenting within practical reach. This means that certain predictions based on a combination of synchronic observations and uniformitarian thinking are now testable. Synchronic evidence shows a negative correlation between analysability in morphologically complex words and various measures of frequency. It is therefore expected that when the frequency of morphologically complex items changes, their analysability will change along with this. If analysability decreases, this should in turn be reflected in decreasing sensitivity to priming by items with analogous composition. The latter prediction is in principle testable on diachronic data, offering a way of verifying the diachronic effect of frequency change on analysability. In this spirit, the present article examines the relation between changing frequency and priming sensitivity, as a proxy to analysability. This is done for a sample of 250 English ly-adverbs, such as roughly, blindly, publicly, etc. over the period 1950–2005, using data from the Hansard Corpus. Some of the expected relations between frequency and analysability can be shown to hold, albeit with great variation across lexical items. At the same time, much of the variation in our measure of analysability cannot be accounted for by frequency or frequency change alone.

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Entrenchment in Usage-Based Theories

Cited by 205 publications

References 0 publications

Effects of entrenchment and preemption in second language learners’ acceptance of English denominal verbs

Effects of entrenchment and preemption in second language learners’ acceptance of English denominal verbs

Individual differences and usage-based grammar

Experimenting on the past: a case study on changing analysability in Englishly-adverbs

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