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Modeling diachronic change in the third person singular: a multifactorial, verb- and author-specific exploratory approach1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2010

STEFAN TH. GRIES  and
MARTIN HILPERT
STEFAN TH. GRIES
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106–3100, [email protected]
MARTIN HILPERT
Affiliation:
Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), School of Language and Literature, Albertstr. 19, 79104 Freiburg, [email protected]
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Abstract

This study addresses the development of the English third-person singular present tense suffix from an interdental fricative (giveth) to an alveolar fricative (gives). Based on the PCEEC corpus, we analyze more than 20,000 examples from the time between 1417 and 1681 to determine (i) the temporal stages in which this development took place and (ii) the factors that are correlated with this change.

As for (i), we use a bottom-up clustering method which shows that the shift from -(e)th to -(e)s is best characterized as consisting of five stages. As for (ii), we examine multiple language-internal and language-external factors, including several variables proposed in earlier accounts. We fit a generalized linear mixed-effects model, which allows us to predict nearly 95 per cent of all inflectional choices correctly, thus revealing which factors shaped the development over time in a data-driven and highly precise way.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , November 2010 , pp. 293 - 320
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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