Beyond the Lemma Inflection-Specific Constructions in English Sally

Beyond the Lemma: Inflection-Specific Constructions in English Sally Rice and John Newman University of Alberta AACL 2008 BYU 14 March 2008

Bertrand Russell’s Emotive Conjugations singular 1 I’m tenacious 2 you’re stubborn 3 he’s pigheaded

inflection-specific meaning and behavior (idiosyncracies of meaning, form, collocation, genre, and distribution)

Form Idiosyncracies in a Typical Athapaskan Verb Paradigm

Form Idiosyncracies in another Typical Athapaskan Verb Paradigm

TAM-Based Idiosyncracies of some Basic Verbs Rice & Newman 2005

SUBJ x TAM Idiosyncracies in BNCall Rice & Newman 2005 GO INF 1. SG 2 3. SG 1. PL 3. PL PRES I need to PAST I PROG I PERF I am/was I have/had you have/had go go went going you need to you you are/were go go went s/he/it need to s/he/it is/was s/he/it has/had we are/were we have/had going gone they are/were they have/had go goes went we need to we we go go went they need to they go go went going gone gone

SUBJ x TAM Idiosyncracies in BNCall Rice & Newman 2005 GO INF PRES PAST PROG PERF 1. SG 6% 3% 2% 4% 0% 2 2% 10 % 0% 3. SG 13 % 4% 10 % 15 % 2% 1. PL 6% 0% 1% 2% 0% 3. PL 2% 6% 1% 2% 3%

SUBJ x TAM Idiosyncracies in BNCCC Rice & Newman 2005 THINK INF 1. SG 2 3. SG 1. PL 3. PL I need to PRES PAST I PROG I I am/was PERF I have/had think thought thinking thought you need to you you are/were you have/had think thought thinking s/he/it needs to s/he/it is/was s/he/it has/had we have/had thinks thought thinking we need to we we we are/were thought thinking thought they need to they are/were they have/had think thought thinking thought

SUBJ x TAM Idiosyncracies in BNCCC Rice & Newman 2005 THINK INF PRES PAST PROG PERF 1. SG 80 % 93 % 82 % 65 % 75 % 2 10 % 2% 2% 8% 11 % 3. SG 7% 0% 5% 9% 10 % 1. PL 2% 2% 7% 12 % 0% 3. PL 1% 3% 4% 6% 4%

rid allow VVB-base VVZ-3 sg. pres VVI-inf VVD-past VVG-prog VVN-perf part

Inflectional idiosyncracies of EAT and DRINK Newman & Rice 2003

Distributional idiosyncracies of A, Aer, Aest Newman & Rice 2006

Collocational idiosyncracies of A, Aer, Aest Newman & Rice 2006

Really idiosyncratic gradable As rath(e) rather rathest nigh near next former first later nearest foremost latest

inflection-specific meaning and behavior (idiosyncracies of meaning, form, collocation, genre, and distribution) Commitment to usage-based approaches like CG, RCG language-specific construction-specific inflection-specific Application of corpus linguistic methodologies and mindset

Inflectional Islands Syntactic (constructional), semantic, and collocational properties tend to inhere in individual inflections of a lexical item in a register-specific manner. These properties may not extend across all the inflections (the paradigm) to characterize the lemma as a whole.

English Pronominal Inflection searched BNC and CAE with Mark Davies’ corpus tool: Variation in English Words and Phrases: http: //view. byu. edu tracked person & case distribution/skew for pronouns examined frequencies and collocations

English Pronominal Inflection NOM ACC/ OBL POSS DET IND POSS REFLEX 1 SG I me my mine myself 2 you yourself/ves 3 SG. M he him his himself 3 SG. F she her herself 3 SG. N it it its itself 1 PL we us ourself/ves 3 PL they them theirs themself/ves

English Pronominal Inflection NOM ACC/ OBL POSS DET IND POSS REFLEX 1 SG I me my mine myself 2 you yourself/ves 3 SG. M he him his himself 3 SG. F she her herself 3 SG. N it it its itself 1 PL we us ourself/ves 3 PL they them theirs themself/ves

Top 20 Collocates for Pro + V (=NOM)

Percent Attraction of Pro to Pro + CAN Frame Attraction of “he” = (no. of “he+CAN” in construction over total no. of “he” in corpus) x 100, following Schmid 2000)

Percent Attraction of Pro to Pro + WILL Frame Attraction of “he” = (no. of “he+WILL” in construction over total no. of “he” in corpus) x 100, following Schmid 2000)

Collostructional Analysis of 3 SG + CAN/WILL Collostructional analysis based on attraction/repulsion of “she/he/it” to the construction “Pro + CAN” or “Pro + WILL” [size of corpus = number of verbs (V*)]; Stefanowitsch & Gries 2003

PRO like to vs. PRO hope to (BNC-cc) you like to I hope to

English Pronominal Inflection NOM ACC/ OBL POSS DET IND POSS REFLEX 1 SG I me my mine myself 2 you yourself/ves 3 SG. M he him his himself 3 SG. F she her herself 3 SG. N it it its itself 1 PL we us ourself/ves 3 PL they them theirs themself/ves

Top 20 Collocates for V + Pro (=ACC? )

Top 10 Collocates for P + Pro (=OBL)

Distributional Idiosyncracies (CAEall + BNCall) prep + PRO Reliance of “to+me” (= no. of “to+me” in corpus over total no. of PREP+PRO in corpus) x 100, following Schmid 2000)

English Pronominal Inflection NOM ACC/ OBL POSS DET IND POSS REFLEX 1 SG I me my mine myself 2 you yourself/ves 3 SG. M he him his himself 3 SG. F she her herself 3 SG. N it it its itself 1 PL we us ourself/ves 3 PL they them theirs themself/ves

Top 20 Collocates for Pro’s NP (=GEN)

Distributional Idiosyncracies (AECall + BNCall) my KINTERM Reliance of “my+mother” (= no. of “my+mother” in corpus over total no. of PRO. POSS+NN* in corpus) x 100, following Schmid 2000)

3 SG Distributional Idiosyncracies (BNCall)

1 SG Distributional Idiosyncracies by Genre

1 PL Distributional Idiosyncracies by Genre

Our Manifesto de-lemmatize! inflected forms have a life of their own (Tao 2001, 2003) put lemmas aside (as done earlier with syntactic rule in favor of constructions) substitute words-in-context or WICs (intersection of genre, register, & inflection) aim low! find the “hierarchy of lower-level structures. . . [that] specify the actual array of subcases and specific instances that support and give rise to the higher-level generalization” RWL, Concept, Image, & Symbol, 1991: 281 -282

Thank you. sally. rice@ualberta. ca john. newman@ualberta. ca

THE VERB ISLAND HYPOTHESIS THE INFLECTIONAL ISLAND HYPOTHESIS Tomasello 1992, 2004 Rice & Newman 2005 V <<< V inflection >>> inflection l children tend to use uninflected verb roots before inflected forms l adults use particular inflected forms of individual verbs on a register-specific basis l verb inflections are mastered on a verb-by-verb basis l verb inflections adhere to verbs on a verb-by-verb basis l generalization is gradual l particularization is gradual l initially, particular verbs “strand” inflections l eventually, inflections “strand” particular verbs

The Inflectional Island Hypothesis Rice & Newman 2005 l uneven distribution of inflection l lexical items may have “weighted” inflectional profiles l weightings may be universal (experientially motivated) or languagespecific l inflectional categories are lexically & pragmatically meaningful (and not just part of grammatical house-keeping or concord relationships) l especially “weighty” inflected items (WICs) may idiomaticize and grammaticalize

Distributional Idiosyncracies (AECall + BNCall) my BODY PART

lemmas • argument structure(s) words in context (WICs) • syntactic constructions • lexical meaning inflected forms + • distribution patterns (usage) • collocations & N-grams • pragmatic associations “have a life of their own” Thompson & Hopper 2001: 44 • incipient grammaticalization & idiomaticization

WICs locus of lexicalization and grammaticalization active in borrowings and morphological realignment spawn psychological associations, induce priming effects

l Corpus-based constructionists approaches allow us to leave the paradigm behind. l Paradigms (lemmas) have value for some purposes, but they often end up straight-jacketing an analysis. l The conceit of the paradigm tends to distract linguists from looking at the lexical semantics of inflected forms in their own right. l Some items do escape the shackles of the paradigm and actually become lexical items in their own right (as in Russellian conjugations).