Priming as a driving force in grammaticalization: on the track of unidirectionality

1
Priming as a driving force in grammaticalization
on the track of unidirectionality

• Gerhard Jäger
• University of Bielefeld, gerhard.jaeger_at_uni-biele
  feld.de
• Anette Rosenbach
• University of Düsseldorf, ar_at_phil-fak.uni-duessel
  dorf.de

2
Unidirectionality of grammaticalization processes

• controversial issue (see e.g. special issue of
  Language Sciences 23 Newmeyer 1998 Lass 2000
  Haspelmath 2004)
• consensus most grammaticalization processes
  cannot be reversed
• Why should that be so?

3
Possible reasons for unidirectionality

• pro unidirectionality
• Haspelmath (1999)
• maxim of extravagance (Keller 1994) as a driving
  force in grammaticalization lack of
  degrammaticalization is due to lack of a
  counteracting principle of anti-extravagance
• contra unidirectionality
• Janda (2001)
• unidirectionality (as a diachronic constraint)
  cannot exist in the light of the individual
  speaker, because current speakers have no
  awareness of a languages history pathways are
  therefore always, in principle, reversable for
  speakers

4
Usage-based account of unidirectionality our
proposal

• psycholinguistic mechanism of priming

5
Organization of talk

1. Introduction
2. Priming
3. Two case studies
4. Space gt time (Boroditsky 2000)
5. Phonological reduction (Shields Balota 1991)
6. A usage-based account of directional change
   (based on priming)
7. Conclusion

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2. Priming

• tendency of speakers to re-use previously
  mentioned/heard linguistic items
• phenomenon may be operating on
• discourse-functional level ? parallelism,
  repetition (cf. e.g. Tannen 1987)
• cognitive/ psycholinguistic level ? priming
• (cf. e.g. Bock 1986 Bock Loebell 1990
  Pickering Branigan 1999 Zwitserlood 1996)

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Priming as a psycholinguistic mechanism

• priming pre-activation
• processing of a stimulus linguistic unit
  (prime) influences (usually facilitates) the
  processing of the same or a similar linguistic
  unit (target)
• prime identical with target repetition
  (direct) priming
• prime similar to target associative (indirect)
  priming
• operates
• on all linguistic levels phonological, semantic,
  lexical, morphological, syntactic priming
• in language production (e.g. Bock 1986)
• in language comprehension (e.g. Luka Barsalou
  2005)
• in dialogue (Pickering Garrod)

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Priming examples

• repetition priming
• (a) At what time does your shop close? ? at
  six(b) What time does your shop close?
• ?six
• (Levelt Kelter 1982)

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Priming examples

• associative priming
• e.g. picture naming task (Flores dArcais
  Schreuder 1987)
• violin easier to name after semantically related
  prime guitar than after unrelated prime chair

primes
doesnt
prime
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Priming examples

• contextual priming
• prime tip of the ...
• target tongue
• (our term specific case of syntactic priming
  words with high contextual probability are easier
  to process (Howes 1951, Boland 1997, McDonald et
  al 2001, inter alia)

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3. Case studies

• 3.1 From space to time
• 3.2 Phonological reduction

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3. 1 Case study I from space to time

• space-time correspondences in language

space time
from London to Paris from Monday to Friday
in England in January, in time of war
at the door at noon
The king rode before the army before the battle started
They are a mile behind us They are an hour behind us
from Deutscher (2005134)
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Space gt time

• presumably universal grammaticalization pathway
  from space to time
• unidirectional
• space gt time
• but not time gt space
• see e.g. Heine et al. (1991)
• Haspelmath (1997)
• Heine Kuteva (2002),
• Hopper Traugott (200385)

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Boroditsky (2000)

• space gt time
• evidence from experimental priming studies
• In how far can spatial expressions prime temporal
  expressions, and vice versa?

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Temporal metaphor

• 2 dominant spatial metaphors to sequence events
  in time (cf. e.g. Clark 1973)

ego-moving metaphor
We are coming up on Christmas.
time-moving metaphor
Christmas is coming up.
(from Boroditsky 20005)
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Spatial metaphor
ego-moving metaphor
object-moving metaphor
(from Boroditsky 2000 6)
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Boroditsky (2000) experiment 1Can space prime
time?

• primes (spatial scenarios consisting of picture
  and a sentence description)
• ego-moving spatial e.g. The dark can is in front
  of me.
• object-moving spatial e.g. The light widget is
  in front of the dark widget.
• targets ambiguous temporal sentences, e.g.Next
  Wednesdays meeting has been moved forward two
  days.
• results after ego-moving spatial prime 73.3
  ego-moving temporal interpretation (i.e. meeting
  is on Friday)after object-moving spatial prime
  69.2 time-moving temporal interpretation (i.e.
  meeting is on Monday)
• space can prime time !

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Boroditsky (2000) experiment 2Can time also
prime space?

• 4 primes
• spatial
• ego-moving e.g. The flower is in front of me.
• object-moving e.g. The hat-box is in front of
  the Kleenex.
• temporal
• ego-moving e.g. On Thursday, Saturday is before
  us.
• time-moving e.g. Thursday comes before Saturday.
• 2 targets
• ambiguous time questions e.g. Next Wednesdays
  meeting has been moved forward two days.)
• ambiguous space questions e.g. Which one of
  these widgets is ahead ?

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Boroditsky (2000) results from experiment 2
(from Boroditsky 2000 14)
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Boroditsky (2000) results from experiment 2

• time to time yes
• Temporal ego-moving prime ? temporal ego-moving
  interpretation
• time-moving prime ? time-moving interpretation
• space to space yes
• Spatial ego-moving prime ? spatial ego-moving
  interpretation
• object-moving prime ? object-moving
  interpretation
• space to time yes
• Spatial ego-moving prime ? temporal ego-moving
  interpretation
• Object-moving prime ? time-moving interpretation
• time to space no
• Temporal ego-moving prime ? spatial ego-moving
  interpretation
• Time-moving prime ? object-moving interpretation

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Boroditsky (200022)

• Apparently, space and time can share structural
  relational information on-line, but this sharing
  is asymmetric spatial schemas can be used to
  think about time, but temporal schemas cannot be
  used to think about space.

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3.2 Case study II phonological reduction

• Phonological reduction in grammaticalization
• phoneme reduction ahg brenjan gt nhg brennen
• phoneme deletion let us gt lets

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Phonological reduction

• In the process of phonological attrition and
  selection , we can identify two tendencies
• A quantitative (syntagmatic) reduction forms
  become shorter as the phonemes that comprise them
  erode.
• A qualitative (paradigmatic) reduction the
  remaining phonological segments in the form are
  drawn from a progressively shrinking set.
• Hopper Traugott (2003 154)

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Priming and phonological reduction

• Shields and Balota (1991)
• experimental study of repetition on
• word length
• amplitude
• results
• both repetition and associative priming lead to
  shortening
• repetition priming also leads to reduced amplitude

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Shields and Balota (1991)

• Typical stimuli
• identical
• Her cat chases our cat under the table.
• related
• Her dog chases our cat under the table.
• unrelated
• Her son chases our cat under the table.

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Shields and Balota (1991)

• method
• subjects
• read sentences in present tense
• had to repeat them by heart in past tense
• cat in our cat was acoustically analyzed

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Shields and Balota (1991) Results

• Duration
• (cat) cat 329 msec
• (dog) cat 340 msec
• (son) cat 350 msec

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Shields and Balota (1991) Results

• Amplitude
• (in comparison to reference vowel)
• (cat) cat -1.62 dB
• (dog) cat -0.11 dB
• (son) cat 0.23 dB

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Shields and Balota (1991) Results

• Amplitude
• difference between repetition (cat cat) and
  other two conditions is significant
• difference between related (dog cat) and
  unrelated (son cat) condition is not significant

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Further evidence

• various studies that show that increased
  probability of a word in a context leads to
  reduced pronounciation
• Jurafsky, Bell, Gregory, Raymond (2000)
• Gahl and Garnsey (2004)
• can be interpreted as phonological reduction
  under contextual priming

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4. A usage-based account of directional change

• (based on priming)

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Priming and similarity

• Priming is related to similarity
• If A and B are similar, then A can prime B
• more general if
• A is probable in a context C, and
• A is similar to B,
• Then
• B is primed by context C

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Priming and similarity

• similarity is reflexive (A is similar to A)
• repetition priming
• contextual probability effects
• similarity is not identity
• associative priming
• guitar can prime violin and vice versa

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Priming and similarity

• similarity can be asymmetric
• Want to is more similar to wanna than vice versa
• spatial configurations are more similar to
  homomorphic temporal configurations than vice
  versa

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Bold hypothesis

• Transitivity
• suppose
• A has high probability in context C, and
• A is similar to B
• then, after sufficiently many repetitions
• Bs probability in context C increases

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Consequences

• suppose
• A is similar to B (in a context C), and
• B is not similar to A (in C)
• then
• the BH (bold hypothesis) predicts that B will
  eventually replace A in C

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Implication for unidirectionality

• unidirectional pathways of language change should
  be decomposable into atomic steps of asymmetric
  similarity
• replication in language use via priming

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Predictions (falsifiable)

• asymmetric similarity is defined in terms of
  priming ? can be tested by means of
  psycholinguistic experiments
• frequency effects transitivity depends on
  frequency of triggering context ? frequent items
  should undergo language change faster