The nature of language as a ‘dynamic open system’ (Lemke Reference Lemke1995: 138) indicates that flexibility and fluidity may be displayed at every corner of the language architecture. Aiming to capture some of the grammatical variations that emerged in disparate time frames, Categories, Constructions, and Change in English Syntax recounts Denison’s ‘rich, diverse, innovative, and inspiring work’ (i) in ‘exploring the syntax of English by combining synchrony and diachrony’ (3). In the light of Denison’s eclectic methodology, authors of each chapter, who are his former students and colleagues, adopt several research methods either quantitatively investigating the chronological patterns of syntactic shifts in given categories and constructions, or qualitatively elaborating on the dynamics of syntactic change across languages within specific timeframes.
The collection begins with the editors’ introduction on the motives for and the significance of the collection, and the strengths of Denison’s approach, as well as the themes and outlines of individual chapters. The ensuing 14 chapters are organised in three themes: (i) approaches to grammatical category change (Chapters 1–5), elucidating the ambiguous categoricity of various function words; (ii) approaches to constructional change (Chapters 6–10), concentrating on semantic interpretations of interpersonal, relative and other complex constructions; and (iii) comparative and typological elaborations of language change (Chapters 11–14), where categories and constructions from English and European languages are explored in detail. In terms of their contribution and implication, the collection successfully accommodates several research orientations, ranging from Construction Grammar (John Payne, Dan McColm & Graeme Trousdale, Elizabeth Closs Traugott), intersubjectivity in grammaticalisation (Ayumi Miura, Laurel J. Brinton, Christian Mair), gradualness (Bas Aarts, Cynthia L. Allen), analogy and diffusional change (Bettelou Los, Olga Fischer & Hella Olbertz), historical sociolinguistics (Merja Kytö & Erik Smitterberg, Benedikt Heller & Benedikt Szmrecsanyi), literary criticism (Sylvia Adamson), to Lexical Functional Grammar (Kersti Börjars & Nigel Vincent).
Based on the tenets of Construction Grammar (CG) and nature of construction change, Payne conducts a corpus-assisted investigation on the semantic relation of of-PP constructions in present-day English (PDE), challenging Lyon’s (Reference Lyons1986) intuitive approach to the status of personal pronouns. The frequency analysis of of-PP constructions in the British National Corpus confirms that the categorial status of of-PP can be viewed as a complex construction clustering around a single core with unified morphosyntactic behaviours. In comparison to s-genitives and the oblique genitive, according to Payne, the semantic relation of of-PP is ‘a superset to s-genitives’ (49), with features such as quantity, theme, location, part-whole and property. The second chapter concerning CG examines the bolstering effect of constructions in the diachronic variation. Whatever, whose use as an interjection is freshly detected in contemporary English, is searched and processed by the Variability-Based Neighbour Clustering for accurate periodisation. McColm & Trousdale quantitatively enhance Brinton’s (Reference Brinton2017) evolutionary mechanism of pragmatic markers, casting new light on the directionality and patterns of constructionalisation. The study is empirically significant in its potential to be generalised to the developmental path of other categorial membership, and theoretically sound in its corroboration of the grounding principle of CG. The last study operating under the framework of CG is Chapter 4, where Traugott examines the origins and present-day usages of better, sooner, and rather constructions in diverse corpora, attempting to verify Van linden’s (Reference Van linden2015) research. The results indicate that the three comparative modals are identical in categorial status residing in the same micro modal construction, but different in schematic status with the former belonging to the Advice construction and the latter two subsets of the Preference construction. Moreover, a converging developmental path is detected amongst the three, even if distances are not as evenly distributed in the constructional continuum as in the grammaticalised continuum. Traugott’s chapter theoretically conceptualises diachronic construction changes to be the prerequisite of semantic constructionalisation.
Concentrating on the intersubjective aspect of grammaticalisation, the first themed chapter is Miura’s Chapter 7, which scrutinises how ‘causation, transitivity, duration of emotion, and animacy of the target of emotion’ (173–178), crystallise the boundaries between impersonal and non-impersonal constructions in several historical sources. Compared to non-impersonal constructions I loue and I hate, the analysis of impersonal constructions me liketh and me lotheth suggests that they favour cause-subject constructions, inanimate targets, lower transitivity and shorter duration of emotion in Old English (OE) and Middle English (ME). Despite a relatively limited sample size of constructions, Miura’s chapter still contributes to the study of the developmental path of interpersonal verbs and adds value to the linguistic understanding of intersubjective constructions. Brinton’s chapter, touches upon the forms, features, functions and shifts of an intersubjective comment clause if you ask me in PDE as well as the history of English. The three proposed developmental trajectories from ‘literal to pragmatic, content to procedural, and non-subjective to intersubjective meanings’ (206–207) further corroborate Traugott & Dasher’s (Reference Traugott and Dasher2002) ‘interpersonal first’ proposal of semantic change. The strength of Chapter 8 lies in Brinton’s innovative handling of the intersubjective comment construction from the pragmatic perspective and generalisations of the tendency from content to procedural meaning. As the last chapter concerning grammaticalisation, Chapter 14 concentrates on the orthographical, morpho-lexical, and grammatical standardisation processes of American and British English, where Mair proposes an integrative approach combining up-to-date digital technologies with traditional philological thinking, exemplified by the chronology of several variations, such as -or/-our, -er/-re, toward/towards, and help. Mair pinpoints the divergence that occurred in the nineteenth century, and emphasises the significance of grammaticalisation and the ‘horror aequi factor’ (353) of constructions over standardisation in both varieties. In this regard, Mair’s research not only strengthens Schneider’s five-phase dynamic model but also broadens the scope of language standardisation study with instances from different strata of grammatical systems. All in all, the three chapters contribute respectively to the dichotomy of intersubjective constructions, interpersonal aspects of grammaticalisation and the relationship between grammaticalisation and standardisation.
The third contribution of the collection is oriented towards the gradualness of language change in Chapters 2 and 5. Aarts revisits the classification of for as a preposition, subordinator, and complementiser, arguing its categoriality as purely prepositional. Supported by large-scale data retrieved from the International Corpus of English (Great Britain), Aarts claims that prepositional for functions as a clause-introducer marking the NP subject in the structure of for + NP, for + Finite Clause and for NP to VP, which better explains the parallel in the pattern V/Adj/N for NP to VP (e.g. call/essential/the need for us to cooperate) and gradual changes of status. The approach not only scrutinises complex lexical entries of for and that constructions but also addresses the problem of reanalysis in the diachrony of for… to constructions. With the category change of prepositional of in Chapter 2, Allen in Chapter 5 diverts her attention to definite article, challenging the traditional notion as well as discussing the emergence of SE, the umbrella term for se and seo in OE. Engaging with Crisma’s (Reference Crisma, Sleeman and Perridon2011) early criteria of definite articles, i.e. clear interpretation of nominal arguments and definite marking of morphemes, Allen suggests that the latter should be the foremost concern. Unlike mainstream quantitative methodology, Allen qualitatively analyses Latin and English versions of Ælfric’s Grammar, and authenticates Denison’s (Reference Denison, van Kemenade and Los2006) contention on the gradual attainment of distinctive features of determiners. Stemming from the common ground of gradualness, Chapters 2 and 5 together provide a focussed study of minor categories.
As far as analogy and diffusional change are concerned, Los, in Chapter 6, explores how analogy accounts for the diffusional change of to-infinitival constructions from OE to late Middle English. Given that the initial status of to-infinitive is a derivation of a bare infinitive with a preposition to in OE, Los argues for its potential to become a verb complement and the addition of a fifth stage (Exceptional Case-Marking constructions) to De Smet’s (Reference De Smet2013) model. The semantic analogy between to-infinitive and to-PP indicates that clauses expressing desires are widely detected in the first four stages, whereas clauses of thinking and declaring prevail in the last stage. Los’ five-stage model refines previous explanations of the procedural spread of verbal complements and attributes to the gradual diffusion of the lexicon as the underlying motivation for semantic change. The second study tackling the issue is Fischer & Olbertz’s research, where they conduct a comparative analysis of the English have to and Spanish tener que testing the ubiquity of analogy. Corpus evidence shows that the former resembles the latter in forms and semantics of neighbouring collocations, and the analogical pathways are converging as a semi-modal auxiliary expressing necessity. The study challenges the asymmetry of analogical processes cross-linguistically and highlights the effectiveness of frequency distribution in the detection of diffusional changes. In sum, the two studies either mono-linguistically or cross-linguistically testify to the universality of analogy in language change.
Turning to historical sociolinguistics, Kytö & Smitterberg inspect the effects of gender and social class on the clausal and phrasal coordination of the conjunction and in the Old Bailey Corpus. The overarching tendency depicted in a crosstabulation of eight variables is twofold: (i) a relatively steady increase in the clausal usage, and a slight decrease in the phrasal coordination across time; and (ii) speakers of low and high social status and females prefer clausal coordination to phrasal counterparts. The empirical study substantively illuminates the progression of and in historical spoken English and the incremental effect of social variables. Another chapter concentrating on the social aspects of language variation is Chapter 13, where Heller & Szmrecsanyi successfully include fourteen English varieties, and present findings on regional patterns of s-genitives and of-genitives used in varieties of English, namely Inner, Advanced Outer and Outer Circle. The Conditional Inference Tree algorithm is adopted for a cross-varietal comparison, further displaying the prevalence of s-genitives in Inner Circle varieties, and statistically significant genitive choices (i.e. possessor animacy, constituent length, final sibilancy). Chapters 4 and 10 provide valuable insights into the historical, social, linguistic, and cognitive interpretation of constructions.
The remainder of the volume comprises two chapters. Börjars & Vincent’s chapter explores the syntactic and semantic profiles of ‘will’ verbs in North and South Germanic via Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG). The synchronic and diachronic examination of vilja and its counterparts endorses Bybee, Perkins & Pagliuca’s (Reference Bybee, Perkins and Pagliuca1994) proposition of a semantic shift from ‘desire, willingness, intention to predication’ (294). The authors conclude that diachronic variations are triggered by the interaction of forms and functions at different speeds, whose mode is difficult to capture unless in a form-function unity, like LFG.
Regarding the last theme, Sylvia Adamson’s Chapter 9 is somewhat special in that she addresses how intrinsic cognitive principles cause misunderstandings and mistranscriptions of texts. To minimise misreadings resulted from mistranscriptions, consciousness, misquotations, and editorial corrections of texts, Adamson suggests that integration of qualitative historical linguistics, literary criticism, and sociolinguistics shall resolve the issue in relative constructions (which, that, and who), where the text-to-context technique is operationalised at the contextual level of texts, cultures, and intellects.
To recap the fourteen chapters herein, the multi-facets, multi-levels and dynamicity of English syntactic constructions are comprehensively examined by prominent grammarians inspired by Denison. The only minor inconsistency readers may encounter is Chapter 9, whose qualitative interpretation seems to diverge from mainstream statistical applications. As I see it, this is exactly the objective of the editors, to offer a full spectrum of research methodologies in the light of Denison’s eclectic approach – the integration of theoretical assumptions and speculations with empirical analyses of synchronic and diachronic syntax. To this end, the book not only serves as an invaluable academic asset to linguists but also a memoir dedicated to one of the greatest minds of English historical linguistics in the twenty-first century.
