From hand-carved to computer-based: Noun-participle compounding and the upward strengthening hypothesis

Abstract

This paper addresses the recent history of noun-participle compounding in English. This word formation process is illustrated by forms such as hand-carved or computer-based. Data from the COHA shows that over the last two-hundred years, such forms have undergone a substantial increase in type and token frequency. These quantitative changes motivate an exploration of the qualitative changes that have accompanied them. A diachronic analysis of the noun and participle types that are recruited into noun-participle compounds reveals that the word formation process has changed substantially with regard to its component parts. While the observable changes in noun-participle compounding match several defining criteria of grammaticalization, it is argued here that these developments are more usefully seen as a process of constructional change. To distinguish between those two, this paper develops an idea that is called the upward strengthening hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, grammaticalization happens when the activation of a node in a constructional network strengthens not only that node itself, but also a node that is situated at a higher, more abstract level of that network.

Entrenchment inhibition: Constructional change and repetitive behaviour can be in competition with large-scale “recompositional” creativity

“…Traugott and Dasher 2002;Terkourafi 2015;Tantucci 2013Tantucci , 2017aTantucci , 2017b) with a special emphasis given to the diachronic relationship between repetition and 'bottom-up' constructional abstraction (i.e. Hilpert 2015). In this study we also endorse the view of language as an adaptive system (cf.…”

“…In Hilpert (2015) it is noted that hapax legomena do not arise significantly after both the type and the token increase of the NP-Pp construct. This is posited as one of the reasons to reject an upward strengthening process being fully at play throughout the development of the compound.…”

“…fromHilpert (2015) in section 3.1). For instance, in the case of the Pp based, we looked for all instances of respectively Atlanta-based, !…”

Text frequency does not correlate with priming sensitivity – a response to De Smet and Van de Velde

“…Yet it is here that I part ways with De Smet & Van de Velde. While I fully share their hypothesis that priming sensitivity and compositionality are correlated (see Hilpert 2015: 27), I will argue in the next sections that there is in fact no such correlation between priming sensitivity and text frequency.…”

Response to Wärnsby

“…working from the principle that speakers generalize as little as possible but as much as is necessary. There appears to be corpus-based evidence that some types of change involve more schematization (or strengthening of the cognitive representation of a schema) than others (Hilpert 2015), and this seems to be further supported by computational work on emergent systematicity in simulated languages (van Trijp and Steels 2012).…”