The (socio-)linguistic cycle of Definite Article Reduction

Rupp, Laura

doi:10.1515/flih.2007.215

Cited by 5 publications

(15 citation statements)

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“…First, Rupp (2007) has in fact argued for the occurrence of a reduced form of the demonstrative in the history of English; namely, DAR. In the context of analysis that is presented here, it is important to note that DAR is a characteristic feature of dialects in the north of England, including York English (see Rupp 2007, Tagliamonte & Roeder 2009, and references therein for details). Previous research (e.g.…”

Section: Discussion: Evidence For the Historical Development Of The Dmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The examples are from Rupp & Page-Verhoeff 's (2005: 335-6) study of the use of the reduced form by eight speakers in a number of villages situated at the Yorkshire-Lancashire border. Whereas DAR is commonly taken to be a reduced form of the definite article, Rupp (2007) maintains that the most plausible perspective on the reduced form is that it derived from the final [t] of the distal demonstrative (a possibility previously contemplated by Brunner 1962). For this reason, Richard Epstein (p.c.)…”

Section: Situational Deixismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…suggests that DAR is best renamed DR (Demonstrative Reduction). Among the arguments that Rupp (2007) presents for the DR view is that the range of different variants in which the reduced form may occur -[t, θ, ʔ] -follows naturally from a process of lenition, while the DAR perspective needs to make a special assumption to be able to account for the occurrence of [t]: the so-called 'assimilation theory' (see Jones 2002 for a description of and problems with this theory as an adequate explanation for the occurrence of [t]). 13 Second, while this may not be immediately obvious, the meaning of the demonstrative does appear to have weakened over time.…”

Section: Situational Deixismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While our earlier studies considered reduced determiners and the zero article (Rupp 2007; Tagliamonte & Roeder 2009), we now turn to the complex demonstrative. Several questions immediately arise: When did the complex demonstrative construction emerge, what is its function, and what has been its place in the English determiner system over time?…”

Section: Introduction: the Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

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This here town: evidence for the development of the English determiner system from a vernacular demonstrative construction in York English

Rupp

Tagliamonte

2017

English Language and Linguistics

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The English variety spoken in York provides a unique opportunity to study the evolution of the English determiner system as proposed in the Definiteness Cycle (Lyons 1999). York English has three vernacular determiners that appear to represent different stages in the cycle: the zero article, reduced determiners and complex demonstratives of the type this here NP (Rupp 2007; Tagliamonte & Roeder 2009). Here, we probe the emergence and function of demonstratives in the cycle from the joint perspective of language variation and change, historical linguistics and discourse-pragmatics. We will argue that initially, the demonstrative reduced in meaning (Millar 2000) and also in form, resulting in Demonstrative Reduction (DR) (previously known as Definite Article Reduction (DAR)). This caused it to become reinforced. Data from the York English Corpus (Tagliamonte 1996–8) and historical corpora suggest that the use of complex demonstratives was subsequently extended from conveying ‘regular’ deictic meanings to a new meaning of ‘psychological deixis’ (Johannessen 2006). We conclude that survival of transitory stages in the cycle by several historical demonstrative forms, each in a range of functions, has given rise to a particular sense of ‘layering’ (Hopper 1991). Our analysis corroborates the idea that grammaticalization trajectories can be influenced by discourse-pragmatic factors (Epstein 1995; Traugott's 1995subjectification).

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Section: Discussion: Evidence For the Historical Development Of The Dmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Situational Deixismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Situational Deixismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introduction: the Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

This here town: evidence for the development of the English determiner system from a vernacular demonstrative construction in York English

Rupp

Tagliamonte

2017

English Language and Linguistics

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“…On the other hand, Jones (2007) notes a much larger extent of DAR use in certain studies. Rupp (2007) and Jones (2002) agree that, in spite of the name of the process, the 'reduced' tokens do not come from the phonetic reduction of the standard definite article. He reports the direct opposite of the FRED results (for instance), putting the use of the standard form at 8.5 per cent in the speech of three interviewees.…”

Section: Details Of the Processmentioning

confidence: 91%

Operationalising salience: definite article reduction in the North of England

Rácz¹

2012

English Language and Linguistics

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Definite article reduction (DAR) is a dialectal variable confined to the North of England. In DAR dialects, the standard article alternates with a reduced one, which is mostly realised as a glottal stop and sometimes as a voiceless fricative before vowels. DAR is a salient sociolinguistic marker in the sense of Labov (1972) andTrudgill (1986). This article argues that its salience is derived from its status as a good boundary marker that listeners can utilise in order to segment the speech stream.Salience is the property of a variable which makes it cognitively or perceptually prominent both for speakers of the dialect and for speakers of other dialects. DAR is a salient marker inasmuch as it shows variation and style shifting, can be an identity marker, and has long been recognised by layperson and linguist alike as a typical feature of Northern speech.It will be argued that DAR is salient since it is a good word-boundary marker. The reduced article constitutes domains of low transitional probability, which listeners exploit to segment the speech signal. It has been recognised that word segmentation plays a major role in speech processing and that listeners use statistical inferences (besides other kinds of information) to locate word boundaries. The conclusion is that the salience of DAR can be derived from its distributions, as these distributions result in the variable's perceptual prominence.

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The Reduced Definite Articleth’ in Late Middle English and Beyond: An Insight from the Definiteness Cycle

Nykiel

2015

J Ger Ling

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I first show that the reduced form of the definite article th' is present throughout Middle English and Early Modern English. Then I highlight the differences in the pragmatic functions of the reduced form and full form of the article in three prose texts taken from the late 15th century and the 16th century. Given the differences, late Middle English and the first century of Early Modern English are closer to having two definite articles rather than one. The development of the reduced form th' is part of the DP cycle in that th' emerges as the function of the weakens. Finally, I tentatively argue that th' is reanalyzed as the head of DP around 1500, after being initially base-generated in nP, at which point th' is closer to a nominal marker than to a definite article. *

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The (socio-)linguistic cycle of Definite Article Reduction

Cited by 5 publications

References 6 publications

This here town: evidence for the development of the English determiner system from a vernacular demonstrative construction in York English

This here town: evidence for the development of the English determiner system from a vernacular demonstrative construction in York English

Operationalising salience: definite article reduction in the North of England

The Reduced Definite Articleth’ in Late Middle English and Beyond: An Insight from the Definiteness Cycle

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