Culture in a radically usage-based model of language change, with special reference to constructional attrition

• Dirk Noël ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Hong Kong

     University of Hong Kong

     RAE de Hong Kong (China)

     
• Localización: Review of cognitive linguistics, ISSN 1877-9751, Vol. 22, Nº. 1 (April 2024), 2024, págs. 100-123
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • This article offers theoretical and programmatic reflection on how the impact of culture on language change should be accounted for from a radically usage-based diachronic construction grammatical perspective, with a focus on how cultural change can cause constructions to disappear from a language. It approaches this question through an assessment of how culture is incorporated in Schmid’s (2020) Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization model of ‘the dynamics of the linguistic system’. Against the backdrop of various proposals on the effect of ‘democratization’ in Anglo-Saxon culture on subtractive historical developments in the modal domain of English, and based on a study of interpersonal variation in the intrapersonal longitudinal development of a declining modal construction, the paper argues that the influence of culture on language change is mediated by entrenchment and that culture has a more extensive impact on entrenchment than the EC-model currently allows for.