Economy%20as%20a%20Third%20Factor%20in%20Language%20Change

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Economy as a Third Factorin Language Change

• Elly van Gelderen
• Arizona State University
• http//www.public.asu.edu/gelderen/elly.htm

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Goals - outline

• Language change as an area to see third factors
  at work.
• Two Economy Principles
• Linguistic Cycles
• Feature Economy
• Conclusions/speculations

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Third factor (FLB), e.g. Chomsky 2007

• (1) genetic endowment, which sets limits on the
  attainable languages, thereby making language
  acquisition possible
• (2) external data, converted to the experience
  that selects one or another language within a
  narrow range
• (3) principles not specific to the Faculty of
  Language. Some of the third factor principles
  have the flavor of the constraints that enter
  into all facets of growth and evolution, ...
  Among these are principles of efficient
  computation"

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If there are Principles, they should be visible
in Lg Change

• Two main patterns (van Gelderen 2004 etc)
• a) Phrase to Head
• b) Up the tree both phrases and heads
• Principles acquisition and derivation

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(a) Spec gt Head

• Full pronoun to agreement
• Demonstrative that to complementizer
• Demonstrative pronoun to article
• Negative adverb phrase to negation marker
• Adverb phrase to aspect marker
• Adverb phrase to complementizer

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and (b) higher in the tree

• On, from P to ASP
• VP Adverbials gt TP/CP Adverbials
• Like, from P gt C (like I said)
• Negative objects to negative markers
• Modals v gt ASP gt T
• Negative verbs to auxiliaries
• To P gt ASP gt M gt C
• PP gt C (for something to happen)

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Spec to Head and Merge over Move

• HPP
• XP
• Spec X'
• na wiht X YP
• not gt nt
• Late Merge

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Lexical gt Functional/Late Merge
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Third factor Economy accounts

• Head Preference Principle (HPP)
• Be a head, rather than a phrase, i.e.
• analyze something as small as possible'
• Late Merge Principle (LMP)
• Merge as late as possible

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Two problems w/ HPP and LMP

• Minor Move is just internal merge
• Major Language Change proceeds in a cycle. HPP
  and LMP are 2 stages but 2 more
• (a) how is the head lost,
• (b) how is the specifier replaced

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Head gt 0 is solvable e.g. iconicity

• Null hypothesis of language acquisition
• A string is a word with lexical content.
• Faarlund (2008) explains that "the child misses
  some of the boundary cues, and interprets the
  input string as having a weaker boundary (fewer
  slashes, stronger coherence) at a certain point"
• My alternative Feature Economy

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Some Micro-Cycles

• Negative (neg)
• neg indefinite/adverb gt neg particle gt (neg
  particle)
• Definiteness
• demonstrative gt article gt class marker
• Agreement
• emphatic gt pronoun gt agreement
• Auxiliary
• V/A/P gt M gt T gt C
• Clausal
• pronoun gt complementizer
• PP/Adv gt Topic gt C

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Negative Cycle in Old English450-1150 CE

• a. no/ne early Old English
• b. ne (na wiht/not) after 900, esp S
• c. (ne) not after 1350
• d. not gt -not/-nt after 1400

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The Linguistic Cycle, e.g. the Negative Cycle

• HPP
• NegP
• Spec Neg'
• na wiht Neg YP
• not gt nt
• Late Merge

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Negative Cycle

• Arg/Adjunct Specifier Head affix
• semantic gt iF gt uF
• Once, there are only uF on e.g. ne, a new element
  is needed. Hence, the cycle.

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DP Cycle (old way)

• a. DP b. DP
• dem D' ? D' (HPP)
• D NP D NP
• art N
• ? ?
• c. DP
• D'
• D NP
• -ngt0 N
• renewal
• through LMP

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or through Feature Economy

• a. DP gt b. DP
• that D' D'
• i-ps D NP D NP
• i-locu- N the N
• i-phi u-phi i-phi
• Hence (1) I saw the
• (2) I saw that/those.

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Demonstratives

• (1) demonstrative/adverb gt definite article gt
  Case/non-generic gt class marker gt 0
• Old Norse
• (2) ok hinn siðasta vetr er hann var í Nóregi
• and the last winter that he was in Norway
• (Bjarni's Voyage 41.8)
• (3) konung-ar-nir
• king-P-DEF
• the kings'.
• (4) ok var þann vetr ...
• and was that winter
• and he was during that winter ....'
• (Fóstbræðra Saga 78.11)

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Doubles in Old Norse

• (1) þau in storu skip those the big ships
• Those big ships.
• (2) þitt hitt milda andlit
• your the mild face
• your mild face'
• (3) fé þat allt
• money that all
• all that money'

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More change (Swedish etc)

• (1) bok-en book-the
• (2) han den gamle vaktmästeren he the old janito
  r-DEF
• (2) den där bok-en
• the here bok-DEF
• that book'.
• (3) denna bok(en)
• that book-DEF

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Changes

• DP
• Poss D'
• NP D nP
• Dem þau n
• that n skip
• in 3NeuP
• the'
• DEM is spec or head in can move

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The History of English

• Interpretable features
• (1) se wæs Wine haten se wæs in Gallia rice
  gehalgod.
• he was wine called and was in Gaul consecrated
• (2) hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon
• how those-NOM.P nobles-NOM.P courage did
• 'how the nobles performed heroic acts' (Beowulf
  3)

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loss of iF

• (1) gife to þa munecas of þe mynstre
• give to the monks of the abbey (Peterborough
  Chron 1150)
• (2) the (Wood 2003 69)
• (3) Morret's brother came out of Scoteland for
  th'acceptacion of the peax
• (The Diary of Edward VI, 1550s)

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Renewal

• (1) It was just I I was just looking at there
  them down there (BNC FME 662).
• (2) Oh they used to be ever so funny houses you
  know and in them days They used to have big
  windows, but they used to a all be them there
  little tiny ones like that. (BNC - FYD 72)

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Dutch-Afrikaans

• (1) die man daar
• that man there
• (2) Daardie teenstrydighede was egter nie
• those contradictions were however not

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St'át'imcets all stages

• (1) c?a tisxwápm?x-a
• this ART-Shuswap-REF
• This Shushap' (van Eijk 1997 169)
• (2) DP c?a D'
• D nP
• ti n'
• n NP
• -a sxwápm?x
• (3) l-c?a
• visible, proximal here'.

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Feature Economy select minimum from the lexicon

• Locative Specifier Head affix
• semantic gt iF gt uF gt --
• Head gt (higher) Head gt 0
• iF / uF uF
• uF is a Probe

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Agreement and cycles

• emphatic gt full pronoun gt head pronoun gt agreement
  
• semantic gt i-phi gt u-1/2 i-3 gtu-phi

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Head to head

• VgtAUX
• go motion gt future
• have possessiongtperfect
• PgtAUX
• to directiongtmood
• on locationgtaspect
• PgtC
• for locationgttimegtcause
• after locationgttime

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Cycles

• Cyclical changes are due to Economy
• Negative, Demonstrative, Agreement, and
  Perfective Cycles, Clause marking Reason
• HPP and LMP, or
• Semantic features are reanalyzed as grammatical
  (and interpretable as uninterpretable)

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After from P gt C

• (1)Fand þa ðær inn æþelinga gedriht swefan æfter
  symble
• found then there in noble company sleeping
  after feast (Beowulf 118-9)
• (2) þær wearþ Heahmund biscep ofslægen, fela
  godra monna æfter þissum gefeohte cuom micel
  sumorlida.
• after this fight, there came a large
  summer-force' (Chronicle A, anno 871)
• (3) Æfter þysan com Thomas to Cantwarebyri
• After this, Thomas came to Canterbury'.
• (Chronicle A, anno 1070)

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Percentages of demonstrative objects (Dem) with
after and fronting

• Beowulf Chronicle Chronicle A
• lt892 gt892
• Dem 2/653 2/26 8 17/22 77
• Fronting 2/653 7/26 27 12/22 55

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• (1) After that the king hadde brent the volum
• (Wyclyf 1382, taken over in Coverdale 1535 and
  KJV 1611, from the OED).
• (2) Aftir he hadde take þe hooli Goost (c1360
  Wyclif De Dot. Eccl. 22).
• (3) After thei han slayn them (1366
  Mandeville174).
• Four stages
• PP PP 900 (Chronicle A) present
• PP (that) 950 (Lindisfarne) - 1600 (OED 1587)
• P that 1220 (Lambeth) - 1600 (OED 1611)
• C 1360 (Wycliff) - present

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From P gt C

• PP CP
• P DP gt C TP
• after after
• u-phi 3S (u-phi)
• ACC uACC
• In English, no phi, but Germanic C-agreement.

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Back to the SMT

• Language is a perfect solution to interface
  conditions.
• Are both interfaces equally important??
• Chomsky favors SEM/C-I the conflict between
  computational efficiency and ease of
  communication is resolved to satisfy the CI
  interface (2006 9).
• I want to suggest

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The challenge the dual nature of N and V need
for /- interpretable f

• DP Theta gt discourse
• (position gt morphology)
• V Theta and TMA
• Macro Cycle goes from (a) to (b) to (a)
• a) Movement links two positions and is thereby
  economical (synthetic) uninterpretable/EPP
• b) Avoid syncretism Iconicity is economical
  (analytic) semantic and interpretable features

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Two forces

• Jespersen "the correct inference can only be
  that the tendency towards ease may be at work in
  some cases, though not in all, because there are
  other forces which may at times neutralize it or
  prove stronger than it".
• Von der Gabelentz (1891/1901 251/256)
  "Deutlichkeit" ('clarity') and "Bequemlichkeit"
  ('comfort').

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And uF is normal

• Chomsky (2002 113) sees the semantic component
  as expressing thematic as well as discourse
  information. If thematic structure was already
  present in proto-language (Bickerton 1990), the
  evolutionary change of Merge made them
  linguistic. What was added through
  grammaticalization is the morphology, the second
  layer of semantic information.