Using corpus data for comparing actual history to potential alternatives

Pinning down some effects of unstressed syllable reduction in Middle

English

Nikolaus Ritt, Vienna

nikolaus.ritt@univie.ac.at Department of English: NatSIDE Research Group

Basic assumptions & a central question • Languages are inherently historical, or evolutionary systems of

competence constituents that are transmitted together.

• To be transmitted, they need to be expressible in physiologically viable ways, they need to be inferable from their expression in one another’s context, and their expressions need to be experienced as functional.

• Thus, among other things, the historical stability of each constituent depends also which other constituents are around in the system that gets transmitted.

• This predicts co-adaptedness among constituents, a coherence of languages as historical systems, and also that changes affecting a specific (set of) constituents may cause adaptive changes in others.

BUT HOW TO IDENTIFY CO-ADAPTATIONS?

Overview

Goals of this talk

• Try to identify potential effects of a sound change on the usage of the words affected by it, and thereby develop an idea of how a specific phonological change may cause further, and possibly ‘therapeutic’, changes in other parts of the grammar and in the lexicon.

• Try to determine, specifically, if and how language usage responds to problems (such as ambiguities) that a sound change may create.

Overview

Goals continued

• Try to find a method by which changes in the usage patterns of words may at all be related to the effects of a sound change.

• I.e. address the problem that, while both word usage and sounds change constantly, there is really no obvious way to determine whether a causal relation exists even only potentially between changes simply because they occur concomitantly or in close succession.

Cum/Post hoc, ergo propter hoc does not work

Phenomena (I)

Loss of schwa in unstressed final syllables in ME Stage 1: ə → Ø/ X__#V

Himm ˈsholld(e) onn ˈeorþe ˈshæwenn (c.1180 Orrmulum H 876)

Stage 2: ə → Ø/ X__#

Vor ˈwan(e) þu ˈsittest ˈon þin(e) ˈrise (c.1200 Owl and Nightingale 894)

Stage 3: ə → Ø/ X__Y, where XY is phonotactically acceptable.

For, ˈlording(e)s, ˈsith I ˈtwelf yeer ˈwas of ˈage, ˈthonk(e)d be ˈGod, that ˈis eˈtern(e) on

ˈlyve, (c.1390 Chaucer, “Wife of Bath’s Prologue”, CT D4–5)

Phenomena (II)

Word forms which, after schwa loss, wound up ending in /nd/ Examples: blind+e > blind ‘blind, adj.’

land+e > land ‘land, dat.’

erende > errand ‘errand’

ende > end ‘end’

libb+ende > libbend ‘living’

send+e > send ‘send, pt.’

wen+d+e > wend ‘thought’

brenn+ed+e > brennd ‘burnt’

bitacn+ed > bitakend ‘signified’

wernede > wernd ‘warned’

The Central Issue

Did the fact that word forms like

blinde ‘blind, adj.’, lande ‘land, dat.’, erende ‘errand’, , ende ‘end’, libb+ende ‘living’, sende ‘send’, wende ‘thought’, brennde ‘burnt’, bitacned ‘signified’ ,

earned, etc.

wound up ending in /nd/ after schwa loss affect their usage and their frequencies?

Why should it and how should one find out?

Extant accounts

Preliminary Observations and Hypotheses Schwa-loss changed the phonotactic structure of prosodic words • It made medial clusters final (or changed the ratio between medial and

final expressions in favour of the latter)

blinde > blind, erande > erand, hælende > hælend

• Final clusters are less natural that medial clusters. Before words with consonantal onsets, they produced long consonants sequences at word boundaries Were those avoided by preferring to use –nd forms before vowel initial

words?

Preliminary Observations and hypotheses Schwa-loss changed the phonotactic structure of prosodic words • It produced tautosyllabic coda clusters where there had been two syllables.

kenned > /kend/, moned > /mɔ:nd/, openede > /ɔ:pənd/

• It produced mergers of phonotactic word shapes

Xnde, Xnd, Xned, Xnede > Xnd

binde, wind, moned, wonede > /bind/, /wind/, /mɔ:nd/, /wo:nd/

• The original phonotactic shape differences were morphotactically

distinctive, while the new shapes were now highly ambiguous. Did usage change so that ambiguities were reduced?

Pre-loss Structure Morph Structure Examples

Xnd {root}+Ø (N, A, V) wind, freond; blind, gesund; bind (IMP), fond (PT), sennd (PPT)

Xnde {root}+{infl} (N,A,V) lande, kinde; blinde, hende; finde, stonde

Xned {root}+{PT/PPT}+Ø kenned, earned, wuned

Xnede {root}+{PT/PPT}+{infl} kennede, turnede, ernede

Eventual Monosyllables: Pre Schwa-loss

nd-forms N, A, V

ned-forms Past Tense or Participle Forms Simple Rule

Pre-loss Structure Morph Structure Examples

σs[Xnd]σw {root}+{Ppres}+Ø halend, sceppend (mostly nominalized)

σs[Xnd] σw[e] σw

{root}+{Ppres}+{infl} specinde, queðende, singinde

σs[ned] σw {root}+{PT/PPT} iopened, bitacened, fastened

σs[ned] σw[e] σw

{root}+{PT/PPT}+{infl} hercenede, wilnede, glistnede

Eventual Disyllables: Pre Schwa-loss

nd-forms Present Participles

ned-forms Past Tense or Participle Forms Simple Rule

Extant accounts

Morphotactic distinctiveness of all eventual nd-items before schwa loss

nd-forms σ N, A,V roots

σσ Present Participles

ned-forms σ(σ) Past Tense or Participle Forms

Morphotactic ambivalence of nd-items after schwa loss

nd-forms: σ: N, A,V OR Past T/P

land, blind, mend vs.

bann+ed, pin+ed, kenn+ed

σσ: Present Participles OR Past T/P

liv+end, com+ind, stink+ind vs.

even+ed, summon+ed, betacen+ed

Question The morphological ambivalence of phonotactic word shapes creates processing difficulties.

“Any incoming string that shows the critical diagnostic properties of an

inflected form […] will automatically trigger an attempt at segmentation, [and]

is responded to more slowly than an unambiguously monomorphemic

stimulus.”

Post, Marslen-Wilson, Randall & Tyler (2008: 1)

Did speakers of English change their usage in response to the processing

difficulties brought about by schwa loss?

How can one find out?

Problem • One can easily measure the usage of post-schwa loss /nd/-words by looking

a corpus of post-schwa loss English.

• But one cannot compare it to their usage in a pre-schwa loss corpus, because in pre-schwa loss English, most post-schwa loss /nd/ words did not yet end in /nd/.

Our solution We created a corpus of hypothetical post schwa-loss English, by taking a pre-schwa loss corpus, and treating all potential inputs to schwa-loss as outputs. This gave us a corpus of English in which schwa loss had occurred, but nothing else whatsoever had happened. The we compared the frequencies and the usage of /nd/ words in the two corpora, and looked for significant differences.

This is what we did. We … (a) … took a corpus of pre-schwa loss English.

(b) … assumed that schwa loss has occurred, and check the frequency and the

distribution of its hypothetical outputs in the corpus. This represents hypothetical usage data of an English in which schwa loss occurred, but in which speakers otherwise carried on as if nothing had happened.

(c) … compared the frequencies and distributions of schwa-loss outputs in

hypothetical post schwa loss English to those of schwa-loss outputs in an actual post-schwa loss corpus.

(d) … we took these differences to reflect potential responses to schwa loss, if they were statistically significant, and indicated at least a weak effect size.

Our corpus

Penn Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English Pre-schwa loss sample: periods MX1 & M1: 1150-1250 (258090 words) Post-schwa loss sample: period M4: 1420-1500 (260116 words)

Our search All items ending in –nd, –nde, –nVd, –nVde

Our method We transferred our results into an access data base

& added data fields for (a) part-of-speech, (b) left and right context, (c) number

of syllables after schwa loss, (d) reverse spelling

The database

Did -nd words select for vowel initial followers after schwa loss?

V C

Hypothetical 26,57 73,17

Actual 31,21 68,79

Chi-square 13

p 0,00036703

Effect 0,06526405

V C

Hypothetical 26,62 73,38

Actual 33,63 66,37

Chi-square 5

p 0,02547948

Effect 0,06489849

All –nd items Only –nd < -nde or -nede

Significant differences, but hardly any effect size No adaptive response

0,00

10,00

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30,00

40,00

50,00

60,00

70,00

80,00

90,00

100,00

Hypothetical Actual

Pres P

Past (P)

Was the ambiguity of disyllabic –nd forms resolved?

comind vs. summoned

The replacement of -Vnd by -ing as a present participle marker did more or less

remove any morphological ambiguity of disyllabic, initial-stressed -nd words.

Post-Schwa Loss

Pres P Past (P)

Hypothetical 81,39 18,61

Actual 6,84 93,16

Chi-Square 295,774

p < 0,0001

Effect 0,5797472

Was the ambiguity of monosyllabic –nd forms resolved?

0,00

20,00

40,00

60,00

80,00

100,00

120,00

V V(V/R)

Hypothetical Late ME

P

M

0,00

20,00

40,00

60,00

80,00

100,00

120,00

V V(V/R)

Actual Late ME

P

M

sinn+ed/hand vs. blind/moan+ed

In Actual Late ME the weight of –nd words was more indicative of their morphological complexity than in Hypothetical Late ME

Hypothetical P M

V 97,35 2,65

V(V/R) 62,88 37,12

Chi-Square 230,518

p < 0,0001

Effect 0,44539912

Actual P M

V 98,18 1,82

V(V/R) 32,51 67,49

Chi-Square 858,339

p < 0,0001

Effect 0,71563639

Ambiguity of forms in which –nd was preceded by more than a short vowel (i.e. by a potential foot)

0,00

10,00

20,00

30,00

40,00

50,00

60,00

70,00

80,00

(>V) P (>V) Past (P) (>V) Pres P

Hypothetical vs. Actual Late ME

Hypothetical

Actual

sound/errand vs. moaned/summoned vs. cumind

(>V) P (>V) Past (P) (>V) Pres P

Hypothetical 25,49 26,11 48,40

Actual 28,59 70,59 0,83

Chi-Square 690,723

p < 0,0001

Effect 0,55381889

Conclusion

• We have seen that in actual Late ME, the phonotactic shape of final –nd words was more clearly indicative of their morphological structure than in Hypothetical Late Middle English.

• The changes bringing this about restored a situation that had obtained before schwa loss.

• They can at least potentially, and hypothetically be regarded as adaptive responses to undesirable side effects of schwa loss.

• We do not think that we would have seen the observed patterns without the special method we applied.

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