Variation in Language: System- and Usage-based Approaches

Aria Adli, Marco García García, Göz Kaufmann, Aria Adli, Marco García García, Göz Kaufmann

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9783110384574
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Historical & Comparative Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Where is the locus of language variation? In the grammar, outside the grammar or somewhere in between? Taking up the debate between system- and usage-based approaches, this volume provides new discussions of fundamental issues of language variation. It includes several highly insightful theoretical contributions as well as innovative empirical studies considering different types of data, the role of priming in language change and rare phenomena.

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Part 1: System, usage, and variation

Frederick J. Newmeyer, University of Washington, University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University Canada

Language variation and the autonomy of grammar13

Abstract: This paper takes on the question of whether the facts of language variation call into question the hypothesis of the autonomy of grammar. A significant number of sociolinguists and advocates of stochastic approaches to grammar feel that such is the case. However, it will be argued that there is no incompatibility between grammatical autonomy and observed generalizations concerning variation.

1Introduction

The point of departure of this paper is a set of propositions which, while not universally accepted among linguists, have at least a wide and ever-increasing currency. They are, first, that a comprehensive theory of language has to account for variation (Weinreich, Labov and Herzog 1968 and much subsequent work); second, that much of everyday variability in speech is systematic, showing both social and linguistic regularities (Labov 1969 and much subsequent work); third, that language users are highly sensitive to frequencies, a fact that has left its mark on the design of grammars (Hooper 1976 and much subsequent work); and fourth, that an overreliance on introspective data is fraught with dangers (Derwing 1973 and much subsequent work). The question to be probed is whether, given these propositions, one can reasonably hypothesize that grammar is autonomous with respect to use. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the concept of the ‘autonomy of grammar’, along with some theoretical and methodological considerations relevant to its understanding. The central section 3 examines and attempts to refute recent claims that the facts surrounding language variation show that autonomy is untenable. Section 4 is a brief conclusion.

2The autonomy of grammar

I characterize the Autonomy of Grammar as follows:

(1)The Autonomy of Grammar (AG):
A speaker’s knowledge of language includes a structural system composed of formal principles relating sound and meaning. These principles, and the elements to which they apply,are discrete entities. This structural system can be affected over time by the probabilities of occurrence of particular grammatical forms and by other aspects of language use. However, the system itself does not directly represent probabilities or other aspects of language use.

Put informally, grammars do not contain numbers. My conclusion will be that even adopting the points of departure above, AG is a motivated hypothesis.

Three important methodological considerations will be assumed throughout the paper:

(2)	Three considerations of methodology:
	a.	It is incorrect to attribute to grammar per se what is adequately explained by extragrammatical principles.
	b.	Given that grammars are models of speaker knowledge, facts that a speaker cannot reasonably be expected to know should not be attributed to grammar.
	c.	Knowledge of the nature of some grammatical construct is not the same kind of knowledge as that of how often that grammatical construct is called upon in language use.

I begin with some fairly obvious and somewhat trivial examples of these points and then turn to more complex cases. As far as (2a) is concerned, nobody would suggest that speakers with a serious head cold should be endowed with a separate grammar, even though their vowels are consistently more nasalized than those of the healthier members of their speech community. Appeal to the partial blockage of the passages involved in speech production suffices to explain the phenomenon. Many different types of generalizations fall under (2b). For example, speakers might know that adjectives like asleep, awake, and ajar are different from most other adjectives in that they do not occur prenominally. But they can hardly know that the reason for their aberrant behavior derives from the fact that these adjectives were historically grammaticalizations of prepositional phrases (awake was originally at wake ). A child in acquiring his or her language does not learn the history of that language. Along the same lines, children acquiring German learn the principles involved in V2 order and those acquiring English learn to produce the retroflex ‘r’ sound. But neither learn that these elements of their languages are typologically quite rare. Likewise, speakers cannot be assumed to know epiphenomenal facts, that is, properties of their language that are the byproduct of other properties (which may or may not be part of knowledge). Speakers know principles of Universal Grammar and they know (implicitly) that such-and-such a sentence is ungrammatical. But they do not know that the ungrammaticality results in part from a particular principle. It takes complex scientific reasoning to arrive at such a conclusion. In other words, not everything that a linguist knows is necessarily known by the speaker. As two linguists whose attention to data is legendary put it:

Not every regularity in the use of language is a matter of grammar. (Zwicky and Pullum 1987: 330, cited in Yang 2008: 219)

Finally, to exemplify (2c), I know the meaning of the definite article the, its privileges of occurrence, and its pronunciation. I also happen to know that I am more likely to use that word than any other word of English. These however are different ‘kinds of knowledge’. I learned the former as an automatic consequence of acquiring competence in English. The latter is a metalinguistic fact that arose from conscious observation and speculation about my language.

So given these considerations, how can we know what to include in models of grammatical competence and what to exclude from it? In particular, given the theme of this volume, how can we know to what extent (if at all) variability is encoded in the grammar itself? As it turns out, classical formal grammar has nothing to say about probabilistic aspects of grammatical processes, except to hypothesize that where we find variability we have ‘optional’ grammatical rules. For example, in Chomsky (1957) active and passive pairs were related by an optional transformational rule. No attempt was made to capture as part of the rule the fact that actives are used more frequently than passives and are used in different discourse circumstances. In fact, an approach to grammar excluding the direct representation of probabilities might be the best one to take if it could be shown, in line with (2a–c), that the probabilities in question are a different sort of knowledge from grammatical knowledge or are not in any reasonable sense ‘knowledge’ at all.

So the crucial question is to what extent speakers actually ‘know’ the probabilities associated with points of variation and if they do know them, then what kind of knowledge that is. One alternative to their knowing probabilities might be that quantitative aspects of speaker behavior are no more than a reflection of principles that, in their interaction, lead them to act in a certain way a certain percentage of the time. Let me give an example of an epiphenomenal consequence of interacting principles that is drawn from everyday life. My place of work is four blocks north of where I live and four blocks west. I could construct a ‘grammar of my walk to work’ to characterize my procedure for proceeding from my home to my office. Each intersection that I cross has a traffic light. If the first ligh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Front Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• System and usage: (Never) mind the gap
• Part 1: System, usage, and variation
• Part 2: Rare phenomena and variation
• Part 3: Grammar, evolution, and diachrony
• Endnotes
• Appendix