Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-mzp66 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-09T17:42:56.243Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Asymmetrical trajectories: The past and present of –body/–one

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Alexandra D'Arcy ,
Bill Haddican ,
Hazel Richards ,
Sali A. Tagliamonte  and
Ann Taylor
Alexandra D'Arcy
Affiliation:
University of Victoria
Bill Haddican
Affiliation:
Queens College-CUNY
Hazel Richards
Affiliation:
University of York
Sali A. Tagliamonte
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Ann Taylor
Affiliation:
University of York
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The set of English [+human] pronominal quantifiers has been variable for at least 500 years, with the compound forms –body and –one competing since Middle and Early Modern English. This change has still to run its course (cf. Nevalainen & Raumolin-Brunberg, 2003:78). Using corpora of historical texts, we track the development of these variants alongside the demise of the earlier variant –man. Then, drawing on contemporary and regionally diverse corpora, we trace the continued development of –body/–one variation through the 20th century. The trajectories reveal paradigmatic leveling in the late 19th century and the rise of –one as the dominant form. However, grammatical, social, and lexical developments continue. Most striking is that after an initial phase of historical leveling, the different lexical quantifiers—any, every, some, no—go their own ways in the collection of varieties examined here, demonstrating that the mechanisms shaping evolutionary pathways across the globe are not only systemic, but also retain local alternations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , October 2013 , pp. 287 - 310
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Aronoff, Mark. (1976). Word formation in generative grammar. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. Harald. (2008). Analyzing linguistic data. A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, Allan. (1984). Language style as audience design. Language in Society 13:145–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan, & Finegan, Edward. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. (1976). The in-group: One and its compounds. In Reich, P. A. (ed.), The second LACUS forum 1975. Columbia: Hornbeam Press. 229–237.Google Scholar
BNC Consortium. (2007). The British National Corpus, version 3 (BNC XML Edition). Distributed by Oxford University Computing Services. Available at: http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/.Google Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle, & D'Arcy, Alexandra. (2009). Localized globalization: A multi-local, multivariate investigation of be like. Journal of Sociolinguistics 13:291–331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chambers, J. K. (1995). Sociolinguistic theory: Linguistic variation and its social significance. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny. (2005). Age and generation-specific use of language. In Ammon, U., Dittmar, N., Mattheier, K. J., & Trudgill, P. (eds.) Sociolinguistics: An introductory handbook of the science of language and society. 2nd ed.Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 1552–1563.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Docherty, Gerard J., & Foulkes, Paul. (1999). Derby and Newcastle: Instrumental phonetics and variationist studies. In Foulkes, P. & Docherty, G. (eds.), Urban voices. London: Arnold. 45–71.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. (1999). Linguistic variation as social practice. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Embick, David. (2008). Variation and morphosyntactic theory: Competition fractionated. Language and Linguistics Compass 2:59–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Elizabeth, Campbell, Lyle, Hay, Jennifer, Maclagan, Margaret, Sudbury, Andrea, & Trudgill, Peter. (2004). New Zealand English. Its origins and evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Elizabeth, Maclagan, Margaret, & Hay, Jennifer. (2007). The ONZE corpus. In Beal, J. C., Corrigan, K. P., & Moisl, H. L. (eds.), Creating and digitizing language corpora. Vol. 2. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. 82–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Görlach, Manfred. (1991). English as a world language—The state of the art. In Görlach, M. (ed.), Englishes. Studies in varieties of English 1984–1988. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 10–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haddican, Bill. (2008–2013). A comparative study of language change in Northern Englishes. Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) of Great Britain. Res 061250033. University of York.Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd. (2003). Grammaticalization. In Joseph, B. & Janda, R. (eds.), The handbook of historical linguistics. Malden: Blackwell. 575–601.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul, & Traugott, Elizabeth. (2003). Grammaticalization. 2nd ed.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. (1914). A Modern English grammar on historical principles. Part II. Syntax. Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätbuchhandlung.Google Scholar
Johnson, Daniel E. (2009). Getting off the GoldVarb standard: Introducing Rbrul for mixed-effects variable rule analysis. Language and Linguistics Compass 3:359–383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keller, Rudi. (1989). Invisible-hand theory and language evolution. Lingua 77:113–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiesling, Scott, Dilley, Laura, & Raymond, William D. (2006). The variation in conversation (ViC) project: Creation of the Buckeye Corpus of Conversational Speech. Available at: http://buckeyecorpus.osu.edu/BuckeyeCorpusmanual.pdf. Accessed November 16, 2011.Google Scholar
Kishimoto, Hideki. (2000). Indefinite pronouns and overt n-raising. Linguistic Inquiry 31:557–566.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroch, Anthony. (1994). Morphosyntactic variation. In Beals, K. (ed.), Papers from the 30th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society: Parasession on variation and linguistic theory. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. 180–201.Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony, Santorini, Beatrice, & Diertani, Ariel. (2004). Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English. Available at: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCEME-RELEASE-2/index.html.Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony, Santorini, Beatrice, & Diertani, Ariel. (2010). Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English. Available at: www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCMBE-RELEASE-1/index.html.Google Scholar
Kytö, Merja. (comp.) (1996). Manual to the diachronic part of the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts: Coding conventions and lists of source text. 3rd ed.Helsinki: Department of English, University of Helsinki. Available at: http://khnt.hit.uib.no/icame/manuals/hc/INDEX.HTM.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1990). The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change. Language Variation and Change 2:205–254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. (2001). Principles of linguistic change: Social factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Larson, Richard K., & Marušič, Franc. (2004). Indefinite pronoun structures with APs: A reply to Kishimoto. Linguistic Inquiry 35:268–287.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lehmann, Christian. (1982). Thoughts on grammaticalization. A programmatic sketch. Arbeiten der Kölner Universalien-Projeckts. Cologne: Univesität zu Köln, Institut für Sprachwissenschaft.Google Scholar
Maclagan, Margaret, Gordon, Elizabeth, & Lewis, Gillian. (1999). Women and sound change: Conservative and innovative behaviour by the same speakers. Language Variation and Change 11:19–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milić, Louis T. (1990a). The Century of Prose Corpus. Literary and Linguistic Computing 5:203–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milić, Louis T.. (1990b). A new historical corpus. ICAME Journal 14:26–39.Google Scholar
Milroy, Lesley. (1980). Language and social networks. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Milroy, Lesley, Milroy, James, & Docherty, Gerald. (1997). Phonological variation and change in contemporary spoken British English. Final Report to the ESRC, R000234892. Newcastle upon Tyne: Newcastle University, Department of English Literature, Languages and Linguistics.Google Scholar
Milroy, Leslie, & Gordon, Matthew. (2003). Sociolinguistics: Method and interpretation. Malden: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu, & Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. (2003). Historical sociolinguistics: Language change in Tudor and Stuart England. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu, Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena, Keränen, Jukka, Nevala, Minna, Nurmi, Arja, & Palander-Collin, Minna. (1998). Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Helsinki: University of Helsinki, Department of English.Google Scholar
Pitt, Mark, Dilley, Laura, Johnson, Keith, Kiesling, Scott, Raymond, William D., Hume, Elizabeth, & Fosler-Lussier, E. (2007). Buckeye Corpus of Conversational Speech. 2nd release. Columbus: Ohio State University, Department of Psychology. Available at: www.buckeyecorpus.osu.edu.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey, & Svartvik, Jan. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
R Core Development Team. (2012). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Available at: http://www.R-project.org/.Google Scholar
Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. (1991). The noun phrase in early sixteenth-century English: A study based on Sir Thomas More's writings. Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki 50. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar
Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena. (1994). The development of the compound pronouns in –one and –body in Early Modern English. In Kastovsky, D. (ed.), Studies in Early Modern English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 301–324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena, & Kahlas-Tarkka, Leena. (1997). Indefinite pronouns with singular human reference. In Rissanen, M., Kytö, M., & Heikkonen, K. (eds.), Grammaticalization at work: Studies of long-term developments in English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 17–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rissanen, Matti. (1967). The uses of ‘one’ in Old and Early Middle English. Helsinki: Modern Language Society.Google Scholar
Rissanen, Matti. (1997). Whatever happened to the Middle English indefinite pronouns? In Fisiak, J. (ed.), Studies in Middle English linguistics. Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 103. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 513–529.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rissanen, Matti, Kytö, Merja, & Palander-Collin, Minna. (eds.) (1996). Early English in the computing age: Explorations through the Helsinki Corpus. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Sankoff, David, Tagliamonte, Sali A., & Smith, Eric. (2005). Goldvarb X: A variable rule application for Macintosh and Windows. Toronto: University of Toronto, Department of Linguistics. Available at: http://individual.utoronto.ca/tagliamonte/Goldvarb/GV_index.htm.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A. (1996–1998). Roots of identity: Variation and grammaticalization in contemporary British English. Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) of Great Britain. Ref R000221842. University of York.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A.. (2003–2006). Linguistic changes in Canada entering the 21st century. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) research grant 410-2003-0005. University of Toronto. Available at: http://individual.utoronto.ca/tagliamonte/.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A.. (2006). Historical change in synchronic perspective: The legacy of British dialects. In van Kemenade, A. & Lou, B. (eds.), Handbook on the history of English. Malden: Blackwell. 477–506.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A., & D'Arcy, Alexandra. (2007). Frequency and variation in the community grammar: Tracking a new change through the generations. Language Variation and Change 19:199–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A., & Hudson, Rachel. (1999). Be like et al. beyond America: The quotative system in British and Canadian youth. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3:147–172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A., & Roeder, Rebecca Virginia (2009). Variation in the English definite article: Socio-historical linguistics in t'speech community. Journal of Sociolinguistics 13:435–471.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Ann. (1994). Variation in past tense formation in the history of English. In Izvorski, R., Meyerhoff, M., Reynolds, B., & Tredinnick, V. (eds.), University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 1:143–159.Google Scholar
Taylor, Ann, Nurmi, Arja, Warner, Anthony, Pintzuk, Susan, & Nevalainen, Terttu. (annotators) (2006). Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence, parsed version. Compiled by the CEEC Project Team. York: University of York, and Helsinki: University of Helsinki. Distributed through the Oxford Text Archive.Google Scholar
Venezky, Richard L., & Healey, Antonette diPaolo. (1980). A microfiche concordance to Old English. Publications of the Dictionary of Old English 1. Toronto: The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.Google Scholar
Watt, Dominic, & Milroy, Lesley. (1999). Patterns of variation and change in three Newcastle vowels: Is this dialect leveling? In Foulkes, P. & Docherty, G. (eds.), Urban voices. London: Arnold. 25–46.Google Scholar
Wells, Stanley, & Taylor, Gary. (eds.) (1986). William Shakespeare. The complete works. Electronic ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zanuttini, R. (2008). Encoding the addressee in the syntax: Evidence from English imperatives. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 28:185–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar