This chapter reviews the relation between gesture and the natural signed languages of deaf communities. Signs were for centuries considered to be unanalyzable depictive gestures. Modern linguistic research has demonstrated that signs are composed of meaningless parts, equivalent to spoken language phonemes, that are combined to form meaningful signs. The chapter discusses a system called homesign used where a deaf child with hearing parents is not exposed to signed languages during language acquisition. Two ways in which gesture may become incorporated into a signed language through the historical process of grammaticalization are described. In the first, gestures are incorporated into a signed language as lexical signs, which go on to develop grammatical meaning. In the second, ways in which the sign is produced, its manner of movement, and certain facial displays, are incorporated not as lexical signs but as prosody or intonation, which may develop grammatical meaning. Finally, the chapter critically examines a new view in which certain signs are considered to be fusions of sign and gesture and proposes a cognitive linguistic analysis based in the theory of cognitive grammar.

The chapter introduces the material used for the study, that is, the Old Bailey Corpus (OBC) as well as the Old Bailey Online resource and the Proceedings that the OBC has been based on. The analytical frameworks adopted are also discussed, comprising the corpuslinguistic approach, and the historical sociopragmatics, the language variation and change, and the grammaticalization and pragmatic-semantic change frameworks. Attention is also paid to the late modern courtroom and to the issues of relevance to the study of past spoken interaction based on written records.

In this chapter, we first sketch a number of assumptions underlying diachronic research in order to understand how researchers sketch the emergence of discourse connectives (and discourse markers) in language. We then review the discussion about the theoretical framework underlying the diachronic evolution of discourse connectives, that is, in which conceptual terms this linguistic process is best accounted for, grammaticalization or pragmaticalization. We then turn to a general description of the evolution from clause combining strategies to coordinating and subordinating connectives. Different case studies are presented in order to illustrate typical and less typical cases of language change in the area of connectives: the semantic evolution from temporal meaning to concessive meaning of French cependant (‘yet’), the peculiar semantic evolution from cause to contrast of Italian però (‘but’) (5.3.2), and a diachronic account of the synchronic polysemy of French alors.

Chapter 8 presents a new empirical study to illustrate how CL insights can help inform L2 teaching and learning of Chinese modal verbs. It offers a study that compared the effectiveness of a newly designed CL-based instructional method with that of the traditional instruction used in a mainstream Chinese textbook in the United States. The proposed CL-based instruction taps learners’ analytical abilities to see connections between the root and extended meanings of modal verbs as well as the subtle distinctions among them. The chapter suggests sample focus-on-form communicative tasks that simulate real-life scenarios. By following up these tasks with CL-based explicit explanation, teachers of Chinese can ensure long-term retention and automation in L2 acquisition of modal verbs.

Historical linguists investigate those contexts that are considered to be most relevant to language change, given the theoretical approach adopted and the phenomena to be investigated. The topic of this chapter is usage-based perspectives on language-internal change, especially as conceptualized in the frameworks of research on grammaticalization, semantic-pragmatic change, and diachronic construction grammar. Contexts may be immediate, local “co-texts” or wider linguistic discourse contexts. Contexts tend to be wide and discursive as change begins to occur and local after it has occurred. I discuss the roles in enabling change of ambiguity, of pragmatic inferencing, and of “assemblies of discursive uses” such as have been proposed in work on constructionalization. With respect to contexts for “actualization,” the step-by-step language-internal spread (or loss) of a change that has occurred, focus is on host-class expansion and on the often analogy-driven changes across contexts, especially as revealed in corpus work.

Chapter 3 explores the characteristics of pragmatic markers and focuses on both their function during a particular period and their development over time. Diachronically, pragmatic markers develop from content words, phrases, or clauses that gradually acquire a distinctive syntactic form and discourse-pragmatic functions and follow various pathways, from adverb > conjunction > pragmatic marker, from sentence-internal adverb > sentential adverb > pragmatic marker, from main clause > ambiguous clause > parenthetical, from adverbial or imperative clause > pragmatic marker. A number of examples of such pathways are provided, where it is shown that the historical data may be messy and require nuanced interpretation. For clausal pragmatic markers, the “matrix clause hypothesis” is critically examined. The process of language change that best accounts for the development of pragmatic markers, including lexicalization, pragmaticalization, grammaticalization, and cooptation, is still a matter of debate, though the majority view is that if “grammar” is broadly understood, pragmatic markers are best seen as undergoing grammaticalization (decategorialization, desemanticization).

Chapter 8 reveals that languages change over time, with new variants developing and others going obsolete. This chapter aims, firstly, at giving the reader insights into the phenomenon of language change, which has resulted in a wide variety of languages spread throughout our planet that can be grouped into language many families that will be surveyed. We will ask why languages change and provide examples of changes that affect different parts of the grammar, with special attention to grammaticalization. We stress that languages are not getting better or worse as a result of these changes. While we see that under the right circumstances a language can “split” and develop into two or more different languages, attention is also paid to the fact that languages can go extinct. With that general background, we can ask whether the study of language change has resulted in an argument that could support the Innateness Hypothesis for language. To this end, we will ask whether there are certain properties of languages that are immune to change and if so, whether this can be explained if we assume that these properties are anchored in the innate system?

This chapter discusses the close interconnection between developments (1960-2000) in historical and universal-typological linguistics, in three general areas:

1. 1. methodology and practice of reconstruction, with debates about comparative reconstruction and typological feasibility; establishment and reconstruction of distant genetic relationships; relation to cross-linguistic variation.

2. 2. expression and interpretation of language universals: implicational universals and typological hierarchies; semantic maps, relating language-specific forms to universal semantic categories; representativeness: sampling methodology, distinction of linguistically motivated vs. accidental distributions; validity (strength) of universals; discussion about whether the only valid universals map function and form, resting on cognitive principles (iconicity, economy); interpretation of synchronic universals as by-products of diachronic principles, or as constraints on possible or (later) probable pathways of diachronic change or reconstruction (e.g., due to instability or low frequency of a given state), or as lying in the mechanisms of language change.

3. 3. grammaticalization: first developments (1970s), intensified interest (1980s) and ‘real boom’ (1990s); phonological, morpho-syntactic, and semantic/pragmatic dimensions; co-evolution of meaning and form (Parallel Paths Hypothesis (PPH)); universal (reduced number of) pathways of diachronic change relating to various aspects of grammar; significant tool in reconstruction; much debate about, e.g., the unidirectionality of change, and the part played by ‘structural reanalysis’.

The three case studies presented in this chapter demonstrate that the six of-binominals introduced in Chapters 3 and 4 form a grammaticalization path, starting at the N+PP and ending, in most cases, at the BI (cake is the exception). The chapter begins with a discussion about the differences between grammaticalization and lexicalization, since both processes are plausible in this case. Then, looking at the first nouns beast, cake and hell (an animate, inanimate, and abstract first noun respectively) and using a range of historical corpora, this chapter presents a qualitative diachronic analysis that looks at first attestations of and discusses the use of these first nouns in the six of-binominal constructions presented in Chapters 3 and 4. Ultimately this chapter substantiates the claim that first nouns progress from the N+PP to the head-classifier, in some cases pseudo-partitive, then the EBNP, the EM, and the BI. Furthermore, it argues that the process demonstrated is indeed grammaticalization rather than lexicalization.

This chapter reviews the existing Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) work on diachronic syntax and morphosyntax and shows how the tools of language description developed by RRG can also be used to account for several aspects of language change. Drawing evidence from developments which have occurred in a wide range of languages, it is argued that RRG allows for a more fine-grained analysis of diachronic processes than theoretically neutral approaches, that it answers fundamental questions about the nature and causes of syntactic change, and that it is not a mere tool of linguistic description, but a theory that makes falsifiable empirical predictions.

This chapter demonstrates that the demonstratives zhè and gè in Mandarin Chinese and its dialects were grammaticalized from two general classifiers in late Middle Chinese, both of which originated from ordinary nouns. Based on diachronic facts and dialectal data, the present analysis addresses the motivation and mechanism for the course of development from classifiers to demonstratives. This finding may make a significant contribution to historical linguistics.

Based on a database of more than 1,000 subdialects of Chinese, this chapter demonstrates that the distal demonstratives in these subdialects are phonologically derived from their corresponding proximal demonstratives, which were themselves grammaticalized from classifiers in Late Middle Chinese. This finding identifies a new type of mechanism leading to the emergence of grammatical items: within a pair of two closely related grammatical elements, the basic and unmarked member originates from a lexical source, and gives rise to the other member through certain phonological principles. The domain of demonstratives thus illustrates how processes of grammaticalization and phonological derivation can interact, giving rise to the emergence of new grammatical forms.

The aim of this chapter is to provide the basic principles, examples and possible causal models of diachronic changes that lead to the emergence of efficient language structures. I argue that they are at least partly motivated by the pragmatic mechanisms and heuristics discussed in the previous chapters. This chapter provides diachronic evidence of efficient reduction and enhancement. Alternative explanations are also discussed. I offer an overview of influential theories that specify the causal mechanisms of language change leading to efficient formal and semantic changes, including grammaticalization. In addition, the chapter addresses the motivations for suppletive and compositional forms, emergence of efficient word order patterns and a more philosophical question about the role of teleology in explanations of language change.

Chapter 8 of Discourse Syntax (Discourse Markers) deals with elements within discourse which do not belong to the core clause but are either placed at the sentence periphery or within it as insertions. The chapter shows that discourse markers mainly serve the needs of spoken, interactive discourse, and that they are placed in variable sentence positions and also occur as characteristic discourse marker sequences. Discussing the use of discourse markers in different text types, the chapter highlights that discourse markers have a bracketing and an interactive function in spoken discourse, but that there is also some text-linguistic variation, such as a use in scripted discourse or in online writing to mark a certain informality. The issue of syntactic variation is covered by a discussion of the positioning of the discourse marker then. The chapter also touches upon the development and use of “actually” as a discourse marker, the rise and grammaticalization of discourse markers as parentheticals, and their role in language proficiency.