Language contact; Construction Grammar; complex prepositions
Abstract :
[en] Constructions of the type [P (Det) N P], the so-called complex prepositions, have drawn much attention in recent studies. One of the reasons to explain this is to be found in the fact that no consensus has been reached on their classification as lexical or grammatical elements of language. This is an aspect which has been discussed by such linguists as Schwenter and Traugott (1995), Huddleston and Pullum (2002), Hoffmann (2004, 2005) and Fagard (2009), to name but a few. Another reason for the increased interest in complex prepositions is the fact that they are constructions that are attested in many European languages (Hüning 2014: 433). The interesting thing about the latter observation is that complex prepositions are not rooted in Proto-Indo European, but are relatively recent developments. The question hence arises as to how this type of construction came to be used within different subgroups of languages such as the Romance and Germanic languages.
Another aspect that has been pointed by Bechet (2014) is the fact that some complex prepositions show a certain degree of identity in terms of form and/or meaning across languages. Cases in point are the English complex prepositions in place of and in spite of, which are attested in French as à la place de and en dépit de, but also in Dutch as in plaats van and ten spijt (van). On the basis of corpus evidence, it has been shown that both constructions are first attested in French, which lays the foundations for a contact-induced interpretation of parallel developments across French, English and Dutch. The purpose of this presentation is twofold. I will first determine the extent to which French has exerted influence on English and Dutch for the emergence and development of the abovementioned constructions. As a second step, I will propose a schematization of the emergence and development of these two complex prepositions in English and Dutch in an arborescent
design on the basis of results from a corpus study by Bechet (2014). For such a representation, a conceptualization borrowed from Construction Grammar is proposed, namely the inheritance hierarchy (Goldberg 1995: Ch. 3, 2006: 13).
Disciplines :
Languages & linguistics
Author, co-author :
Béchet, Christophe ; Université de Liège > Département de langues et littératures modernes > Langue anglaise & Linguist.synchro.& diachro.de l'anglais
Language :
English
Title :
Contact-induced development of complex prepositions: An instance of cross-linguistic mapping at the lexicon-syntax interface
Alternative titles :
[fr] Développement de prépositions complexes induit par contact: un exemple de projection interlinguistique dans l'interface lexique-syntaxe
Publication date :
2015
Commentary :
Sources
Bechet, C. (2014). The Influence of French on Grammatical Constructions in English and Dutch: A cognitive approach in a contrastive-historical study (Unpublished master’s thesis). Université de Liège, Liège, Belgium.
Fagard, B. (2009). Prépositions et locutions prépositionnelles : Un sémantisme comparable ? Langages, 173, 95-113.
Goldberg, A. (1995). Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Goldberg, A. (2006). Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hoffmann, S. (2004). Are Low-Frequency Complex Prepositions Grammaticalized? On the
Limits of Corpus Data - and the Importance of Intuition. In H. Lindquist & C. Mair (eds.),
Corpus Approaches to Grammaticalization in English (pp. 171-210). Amsterdam: John
Benjamins Publishing Company.
Hoffmann, S. (2005). Grammaticalization and English Complex Prepositions: A corpusbased
study. London: Routledge.
Huddleston, R. & Pullum, G. K. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hüning, M. (2014). Over complexe preposities en convergentie. In Velde, F. Van de, Smessaert, H. et al. (uitg.), Patroon en argument: Een dubbelfeestbundel bij het emeritaat van William Van Belle en Joop van der Horst (pp. 433-445). Leuven: Universitaire Pers Leuven.
Schwenter, S. A. & Traugott, E. C. (1995). The Semantic and Pragmatic Development of
Substitutive Complex Prepositions in English. In A. H. Jucker (ed.), Historical Pragmatics:
pragmatic developments in the history of English (pp. 243-273). Amsterdam: John Benjamins
Publishing Company.
