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3 - Grammar Change in the Network

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2024

By
Nikolas Gisborne
Edited by
Eva Duran Eppler ,
Nikolas Gisborne  and
Andrew Rosta
Eva Duran Eppler
Affiliation:
Roehampton University, London
Nikolas Gisborne
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Andrew Rosta
Affiliation:
University of Central Lancashire, Preston
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Summary

This chapter discusses the emergence of the HAVE perfect in English, paying particular attention to the development of the perfect participle, as a vehicle for discussing what causes directionality in language change, the English HAVE perfect being just one example of the emergence of a category which is a common property of Standard Average European. There are three main claims: that the change to a HAVE perfect only involves one strictly syntactic change, the reanalysis of a complement as an adjunct; that there are semantic changes in the participle driven by the bleaching of HAVE; and that the emergent new category of participle is driven by these semantic changes. The evolution of participles involves the creation of a new linguistic category, in a particular grammatical environment, which is analogous to an ecological niche in evolutionary change.

Keywords

HAVE perfectBE perfectparallel evolutiondirectionality in changegrammaticalisationacquisitionparticiplesmixed categoriesconversionreanalysiscategory emergencecausal structurecognitive bias
Type
Chapter
Information
Word Grammar, Cognition and Dependency , pp. 76 - 103
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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