Decline (and disappearance) - the negative side of recent change in standard English - Geoffrey Leech's presentation at the Helsinki Corpus Festival

1. Decline (and disappearance)
- the negative side of recent change in
standard English
❦❦
❦❦ Geoffrey Leech
Geoffrey Leech
Lancaster University
Lancaster University
Helsinki Corpus Festival
Helsinki Corpus Festival
❦❦
❦❦
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2. The focus of diachronic linguistics, in
studying changes in language use,
has been very much on innovation and expansion
- the positive aspects of linguistic change (e.g.
grammaticalization)
rather than on decline and disappearance.
In this presentation, I plan to focus on the negative
side of language change:
Focus on
 (a) corpus evidence for decline in frequency;
 (b) some likely reasons for decline in frequency;
 (c) the mechanisms of change.
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3. Acknowledgements
Paul Baker (Lancaster) Nick Smith (Salford)
Marianne Hundt (Zűrich) Christian Mair (Freiburg)
Paul Rayson (Lancaster) Amanda Potts (Lancaster)
Matteo Di Cristofaro (Lancaster)
Funding bodies since 1998: Arts and Humanities Research Board
The British Academy
The Leverhulme Trust
Reference:
G.Leech, M. Hundt, C. Mair and N. Smith (2009) Change in Contemporary
English: a Grammatical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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4. Evidence provided by:
The Brown Family of corpora
Comparable corpora of American English
(AmE) and British English (BrE) at roughly 30-
year intervals
1901 1931 1961 1991/2 2006
BE06
BrE BLOB BLOB- LOB FLOB (Paul
-1901 1931 Baker)
AmE B- Brown Frown AmE06
(Potts
BROWN & Di
Cristo-
faro)
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5. The make-up of each corpus
Each 1-million-word corpus has 500 text samples
allotted to 15 genre categories
grouped into four subcorpora
Press: genres A-C, c. 178,000 words
General Prose: genres D-H, c. 413,000 words
Learned/Academic: genre J, c. 159,000 words
Fiction: genres K-R, c. 257,000 words
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Each whole corpus is just over 1,000,000 words
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6. A Sample from the 1901 Corpus
(What was written English like 110 years ago?)
The second purse shown here is knitted
with some of Messrs. Pearsall's twisted
silk, upon which small beads of a suitable
colour have been threaded.
(from text E04, category E -
Skills, trades & hobbies)
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7. Six brief case studies of decline in frequency:
1) the preposition upon
2) the conjunction for
3) the passive voice
4) wh- relative clauses
5) modal auxiliaries
6) prepositional phrases
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8. The preposition upon in British and
American English (1901-2006)
Upon this point British Foreign Policy has never altered. (B-LOB 1931)
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9. Lexically bound use of upon
as a possible factor in its decline in frequency
..the ability to call upon influential people…
..different policies may be debated and decided upon…
..black women’s voices have had an impact upon the
discourses of feminism…
Once upon a time
Stratford-upon-Avon
Lexically free use of upon:
Upon this point British Foreign Policy has never altered.
(BLOB-1931)
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10. Lexically bound vs. lexically free use of upon
I am determined to bestow a gift upon you.
There was a scuffle upon the deck.
1000
900
800
700
600
all upons
500
bound upons
400
300
200
100
0
b-lob 1931 lob 1961 f-lob 1991 be06 2006
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11. Decreasing frequency of upon in BrE as a
percentage of potential upons (ons + upons)
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12. Conjunction for
A proprietary remedy should be used, for this is
better than any home-made one.
(B-LOB, E)
In the first place, the statement that a real crime is
one about which the good citizen would feel
guilty is surely circular. For how is the good
citizen to be defined in this context unless as
one who feels guilty about committing the crimes
that Lord Devlin would class…
(F-LOB, G)
Paratactic rather than hypotactic linkage
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13. Decline (and eventual disappearance?) of for as a
causative conjunction
13

14. Increasing use of the conjunction
because:
She felt a bit afraid of the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle, because they
were so large. [BNC] I know Marie likes me cos she told me. [BNC]
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
BLOB 1901 BLOB 1931 LOB 1961 FLOB 1991 BE06 2006
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15. Decline of for as contrasted with the rise of
because and since (BrE 1931-1991)
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16. The declining frequency of the BE-passive
between 1961 and 1999:
If a crime has been committed,…those responsible must be
punished.
American English British English
Brown Frown %age LOB F-LOB %age
1961 1992 change 1961 1991 change
Per 11,588 9,254 -20.1% 13,260 11,614 -12.4%
million
words
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17. (Be-)Passive in BrE and AmE
When a crime has been committed, the victim should be supported.
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18. Can we classify increasing frequency trends according to
their likely explanations?
What about decreasing frequency trends?
 Grammaticalization – the process of turning e.g. semi-modals like
lexical material into grammatical material be going to
 Colloquialization (or informalization) ?– adapting e.g. negative con-
written language toward spoken norms tractions (can’t etc.)
 Americanization ?- following the American lead; e.g. Did you guys eat
adapting to American habits or conventions yet?
 Densification (of content) – Packing more e.g. press headlines
meaning into less space PM slams Labour
Party leader
 Other possible facilitators of change include:
 Prescriptivism e.g. relativizer that vs. which
 Democratization e.g. decline of Mr., Mrs.,
Miss, etc.
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19. Restrictive relative clauses: another
apparent case of colloquialization
1. the woman to whom Which of these types
you were talking of relative clause are
2. the woman you were decreasing in
talking to frequency, and which
are growing in
1. the matter which you frequency?
mentioned Decreasing ?
2. the matter that you The red ones
mentioned Increasing ?
3. the matter you The green ones
mentioned
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20. The “Sacred That” rule
and the decline of (restrictive) relative which
as in: the matter which you mentioned
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21. The increase of relative that
as in: the matter that you mentioned
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22. Declining frequency of the modals and growing frequency
of the semi-modals in AmE and BrE, 1901-2006
22

23. The declining frequency of the modals in
AmE over 100 years
(from the Corpus of Historical American English – COHA)
18000
16000
14000
12000
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s
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24. Selected modals in BrE (Brown Family)
When will you get there? May I help you? We must go. I shall resign.
3500
3000
2500
w ill
2000
may
must
1500
shall
1000
500
0
BrE 1901 BrE 1931 BrE 1961 BrE 1991 BrE 2006
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25. The decline and fall of need, ought to and
shall: ‘paradigmatic atrophy’,
‘distributional fragmentation’
‘paradigmatic atrophy’: need (constructed as a modal)
has no variability for person, number, tense, polarity or
finiteness.
He needn’t have worried.
The same applies to ought to.
He ought to remember, but he doesn’t.
‘distributional fragmentation’: shall suffers from
contextual limitations – of person, of genre, - and occurs
very unevenly across the corpus text types.
We shall demonstrate this in the next section.
Shall I go on?
The quorum of the committee shall be three. 25

26. MUST in 20th century BrE and AmE (per million words)
(e.g. They must have been worried last night.
I keep thinking I must do something about it.
Our party is destroying itself … they must split.)
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27. need (as a core modal) in BrE and AmE
1901-2006 Oh, you needn’t be alarmed. Need you ask?
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28. Have to compared with need to in BrE
and AmE 1901-2006
We have to hurry. You needed to be careful.
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29. The accelerating increase in the use of
NEED to as a ‘semi-modal’
We may all need to become more aware
of how we use water, to learn ways of
managing and conserving supplies.
(FLOB F09)
Nevertheless the picture in the mind of
western man seriously needs to be
corrected. (LOB E22)
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30. BrE written English: epistemic and non-
epistemic categories 1961 – 1991.
1400
1200
1000
800 unclear
other
600 epistemic
400
200
0
may may might might should should must must
LOB FLOB LOB FLOB LOB FLOB LOB FLOB
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31. Converging frequencies of modals and semi-modals in
spoken BrE, 1960s – 1990s (from equivalent samples of
DCPSE (Diachronic Corpus of Present-day Spoken English)
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32. The s-genitive vs. the of-genitive vs.
Noun + Noun sequences
 (1) the fruit of the coconut palm (Brown, F34) - N1of N2
 (1a)the coconut palm’s fruit - N2’s N1
 (1b)coconut palm fruit - N2 N1
(2a) the centre of the city of Bristol - N1 of N2 of N3
(2b) Bristol’s city centre - N3’s N2 N1
(2c) Bristol city centre - N3 N2 N1
(3a) UK carbon reduction potential =
(3b) The potential for the reduction of carbon in the UK
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33. Decreasing use of prepositional phrases
Increasing use of Noun+Noun sequences
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34. Conclusion
The evidence considered today is consistent
with the assumption that declining use of
linguistic forms is simply the negative side of
trends which lead to increasing use elsewhere in
the language.
The positive determinants of change
(grammaticalization, colloquialization, etc.) are
explanations for positive change which indirectly
may provide explanations for negative change.
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35. The End
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