Directional evidence revisited

End weight bias and templating in conjoined phrase postmodification

Abstract Full Paper (PDF)

The tendency of speakers and writers to place larger constructions at the end of sentences, whether consciously or unconsciously, is well established. Often this question of ‘end weight’ is usually discussed in relation to grammatical transformations. In this short paper we demonstrate a simple method for investigating a similar phenomenon in coordination patterns where conjoins are either noun phrases, e.g. the X of Y or Z, or prepositional phrases, e.g. the X of Y or of Z. We then investigate whether the coordinated noun phrases (Y, Z) are themselves postmodified, either by another prepositional phrase or by a clause. As postmodifying phrases and clauses are potentially expansive, they are grammatically complex and we operationalise them as signifiers of ‘weight’. We find that both sets of coordination patterns are end-sequence biased by weight.

We also find an elevated frequency for patterns where both first and last conjoins in the sequence are greater than would be expected were they independently selected. Setting aside potential explanations of directional influence, which cannot be decided inductively, we focus instead on the content of these doubly-postmodified constructions and examine them for evidence of templating, i.e. lexical-syntactic repetition.

We also show that these results are not explicable by semantic ordering in coordination, and contrast evidence from prepositional and clausal postmodification with that from premodifying adjective phrases, where scope ambiguity may also be a factor.

Are embedding decisions independent?

Evidence from preposition(al) phrases

Abstract Full Paper (PDF)

One of the more difficult challenges in linguistics research concerns detecting how constraints might apply to the process of constructing phrases and clauses in natural language production. In previous work (Wallis 2019) we considered a number of operations modifying noun phrases, including sequential and embedded modification with postmodifying clauses. Notably, we found a pattern of a declining additive probability for each decision to embed postmodifying clauses, albeit a pattern that differed in speech and writing.

In this paper we use the same research paradigm to investigate the embedding of an altogether simpler structure: postmodifying nouns with prepositional phrases. These are approximately twice as frequent and structures exhibit as many as five levels of embedding in ICE-GB (two more than are found for clauses). Finally the embedding model is simplified because only one noun phrase can be found within each prepositional phrase. We discover different initial rates and patterns for common and proper nouns, and certain subsets of pronouns and numerals. Common nouns (80% of nouns in the corpus) do appear to generate a secular decline in the additive probability of embedded prepositional phrases, whereas the equivalent rate for proper nouns rises from a low initial probability, a fact that appears to be strongly affected by the presence of titles.

It may be generally assumed that like clauses, prepositional phrases are essentially independent units. However, we find evidence from a number of sources that indicate that some double-layered constructions may be being added as single units. In addition to titles, these constructions include schematic or idiomatic expressions whose head is an ‘indefinite’ pronoun or numeral.

Is language really “a set of alternations?”

The perspective that the study of linguistic data should be driven by studies of individual speaker choices has been the subject of attack from a number of linguists.

The first set of objections have come from researchers who have traditionally focused on linguistic variation expressed in terms of rates per word, or per million words.

No such thing as free variation?

As Smith and Leech (2013) put it: “it is commonplace in linguistics that there is no such thing as free variation” and that indeed multiple differing constraints apply to each term. On the basis of this observation they propose an ‘ecological’ approach, although in their paper this approach is not clearly defined.