<table><thead><tr><th colspan="3">Distinctive for POS progressive</th><th colspan="3">Distinctive for PREP progressive</th></tr><tr><th>Verb</th><th>N</th><th>coll. strength</th><th>Verb</th><th>N</th><th>coll. strength</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>dringen 'jostle'</td><td>27</td><td>6.635</td><td>verdwijnen 'disappear'</td><td>18</td><td>6.6376</td></tr><tr><td>opwachten 'wait for'</td><td>23</td><td>5.6457</td><td>trainen 'practice'</td><td>18</td><td>5.583</td></tr><tr><td>lezen 'read'</td><td>20</td><td>4.9052</td><td>winkelen 'shop'</td><td>15</td><td>5.526</td></tr><tr><td>popelen 'be impatient'</td><td>19</td><td>4.6587</td><td>doen 'do'</td><td>29</td><td>5.4062</td></tr><tr><td>juichen 'cheer'</td><td>19</td><td>4.6587</td><td>stijgen 'rise'</td><td>12</td><td>4.4165</td></tr><tr><td>luisteren 'listen'</td><td>18</td><td>4.4122</td><td>onderhandelen 'negociate'</td><td>16</td><td>4.1561</td></tr><tr><td>pronken 'shine'</td><td>14</td><td>3.4279</td><td>zoeken 'search'</td><td>16</td><td>4.1561</td></tr><tr><td>genieten 'enjoy'</td><td>11</td><td>2.6911</td><td>repeteren 'rehearse'</td><td>10</td><td>3.678</td></tr><tr><td>aankomen 'arrive'</td><td>10</td><td>2.4458</td><td>afnemen 'decrease'</td><td>12</td><td>3.5201</td></tr><tr><td>denken 'think'</td><td>8</td><td>1.9556</td><td>dalen 'err, roam'</td><td>9</td><td>3.3091</td></tr><tr><td>zwaaien 'wave'</td><td>8</td><td>1.9556</td><td>verliezen 'lose'</td><td>8</td><td>2.9405</td></tr><tr><td>eten 'eat'</td><td>20</td><td>1.8515</td><td>zakken 'sink, lower'</td><td>8</td><td>2.9405</td></tr><tr><td>zweten 'sweat'</td><td>10</td><td>1.7203</td><td>verbouwen 'rebuild'</td><td>7</td><td>2.5721</td></tr><tr><td>drinken 'drink'</td><td>10</td><td>1.7203</td><td>vervagen 'fade'</td><td>7</td><td>2.5721</td></tr><tr><td>zijn 'be'</td><td>7</td><td>1.7107</td><td>voetballen 'play soccer'</td><td>7</td><td>2.5721</td></tr><tr><td>roesten 'rust'</td><td>9</td><td>1.512</td><td>filmen 'film'</td><td>6</td><td>2.2039</td></tr><tr><td>staren 'stare'</td><td>6</td><td>1.4659</td><td>herstellen 'repair'</td><td>6</td><td>2.2039</td></tr><tr><td>huilen 'cry'</td><td>6</td><td>1.4659</td><td>inhalen 'catch up'</td><td>6</td><td>2.2039</td></tr><tr><td>schreeuwen 'yell'</td><td>6</td><td>1.4659</td><td>ontstaan 'arise'</td><td>6</td><td>2.2039</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>opbouwen 'build up'</td><td>6</td><td>2.2039</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>voltrekken 'realise'</td><td>6</td><td>2.2039</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>zwemmen 'swim'</td><td>6</td><td>2.2039</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>bidden 'pray'</td><td>5</td><td>1.836</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>gebeuren 'happen'</td><td>5</td><td>1.836</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>ontwikkelen 'develop'</td><td>5</td><td>1.836</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>toenemen 'increase'</td><td>5</td><td>1.836</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>afbouwen 'diminish'</td><td>4</td><td>1.4683</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>afbrokkelen 'crumble (down)'</td><td>4</td><td>1.4683</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>inventariseren 'make inventory'</td><td>4</td><td>1.4683</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>onderzoeken 'investigate'</td><td>4</td><td>1.4683</td></tr></tbody></table>

(continued)
<table><thead><tr><th colspan="3">Distinctive for POS progressive</th><th colspan="3">Distinctive for PREP progressive</th></tr><tr><th>Verb</th><th>N</th><th>coll. strength</th><th>Verb</th><th>N</th><th>coll. strength</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>terugkomen 'return'</td><td>4</td><td>1.4683</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>terugtrekken 'retreat'</td><td>4</td><td>1.4683</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>uitzoeken 'find out'</td><td>4</td><td>1.4683</td></tr></tbody></table>

Precisely because the total frequencies are taken into account, the absolute frequency of a verb is not determinative for its distinctiveness for a given construction. For example, in Table 24 the verbs *denken* ‘think’ (N=8) and *zwaaien* ‘wave’ (N=8) are considerably less frequent than *eten* ‘eat’ (N=20), yet still have a higher collostructional strength. In short, a collostructional analysis gives a statistically more reliable account of the differences between the constructions with respect to the verbs that occur in them.

What conclusions can be drawn from Table 24 with respect to the differences between the two constructions? The theoretical assumption that underlies this analysis, one that is broadly carried by the cognitive-functional model (see, e.g. Langacker 1987, 1991b; Goldberg 2006; Booij 2010, Hilpert 2014), is that more schematic (i.e. syntactic) constructions are also inherently meaningful. The underlying idea with a collostructional analysis is that the semantics of the verbs that are distinctive for a given construction tells us something about the meaning of the construction. Bybee (2010) has criticized the collostructional analysis precisely on this point: it does not bring in semantic factors, so one cannot draw any semantic conclusions from it. While her premise is correct (no semantic parameters are brought into play), the results of our analysis clearly invalidate her conclusion: comparing the two lists of distinctive verbs in Table 24, a clear semantic pattern can be observed. The verbs that are distinctive for the POSTURAL progressive (even if a limited list) confirm the earlier analysis in Lemmens (2005b) which showed that the POSTURAL progressive is characterized by a marked preference for ‘stative’ verbs (*wachten* ‘wait’, *opwachten* ‘wait for’, *slapen*
‘sleep’), cognitive and/or attitude verbs (*denken* ‘think’, *huilen* ‘cry’, *schreeuwen* ‘yell’, *staren* ‘stare’, *kijken* ‘watch’) and idiomatic expressions (*juichen* ‘cheer’, *popelen* ‘be anxious’, *dringen* ‘jostle’; *aankomen* ‘happen’).⁸

The verbs that are distinctive for the **PREPOSITIONAL** progressive are strikingly different and, overall, express the notion of ‘change’. It is no coincidence that the verbs *worden* ‘become’ (e.g. *ouder worden* ‘become older’, *vuil worden* ‘become dirty’) and *veranderen* ‘change’ emerge as the most distinctive verbs. In the list of verbs significantly attracted to the **PREPOSITIONAL** progressive, one further observes change verbs such as *afbrokkelen* ‘crumble down’, *afbouwen* ‘diminish’, *opbouwen* ‘build up’, *ontwikkelen* ‘develop’, *toenemen* ‘increase’, *vervagen* ‘fade’, etc. or goal-directed motion verbs such as *stijgen* ‘rise’, *dalen* ‘sink, lower’, *zakken* ‘drop’, etc. (possibly used metaphorically).

In more general terms, we can posit, on the basis of the above analysis, that the **PREPOSITIONAL** progressive has a marked preference for telic verbs (often **CHANGE** or **MOTION** verbs), while the **POSTURAL** progressive has a preference for atelic verbs. The most distinctive verbs for each construction, respectively *worden* ‘become’ and *wachten* ‘wait’, crystallize this semantic contrast quite nicely. This is further confirmed when one classifies all the attestations according to the traditional four Vendlerian aspectual categories (Vendler 1967), as presented in Table 25. This classification was done manually for each sentence, for which contextual features were taken into account, e.g. *ik zit te schrijven* ‘I sit to write’ (atelic) vs. *ik zit een brief te schrijven* ‘I sit to write a letter’ (telic).

<table><caption>**Table 25.** Aspectual preference of POSTURAL and PREPOSITIONAL progressive</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">ASPECTUAL CLASS</th><th colspan="2">PREP</th><th colspan="2">POS</th><th rowspan="2">TOTAL</th></tr><tr><th>Freq</th><th>Pct</th><th>Freq</th><th>Pct</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="2">activity</td><td rowspan="2">512</td><td>49%</td><td rowspan="2">1282</td><td>93.4%</td><td>1794</td></tr><tr><td>29%</td><td>71.5%</td><td>100%</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">achievement</td><td rowspan="2">331</td><td>32%</td><td rowspan="2">47</td><td>3.4%</td><td>378</td></tr><tr><td>88%</td><td>12%</td><td>100%</td></tr></tbody></table>

(continued)
<table><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">ASPECTUAL CLASS</th><th colspan="2">PREP</th><th colspan="2">POS</th><th rowspan="2">TOTAL</th></tr><tr><th>Freq</th><th>Pct</th><th>Freq</th><th>Pct</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>accomplishment</td><td>197</td><td>19%</td><td>36</td><td>2.6%</td><td>233</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td>85%</td><td></td><td>15.5%</td><td>100%</td></tr><tr><td>state<br>(zijn 'be')</td><td>0</td><td></td><td>8</td><td>0.6%</td><td>8</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>100%</td><td>100%</td></tr><tr><td><strong>TOTAL</strong></td><td><strong>1040</strong></td><td><strong>100%</strong></td><td><strong>1373</strong></td><td><strong>100%</strong></td><td><strong>2413</strong></td></tr></tbody></table>

The differences are significant: $Chi^2 = 622.565$, df=2, p=0 (the category 'state' was not taken into account, given its low frequency).⁹

The analysis of the verbs that occur in the two progressive constructions shows that the two progressives typically recruit different verbs. Overall, the difference is that the **POSTURAL** progressive typically takes static, atelic verbs (with *wachten* 'wait' as the exemplar verb), whereas the **PREPOSITIONAL** progressive typically takes dynamic and telic verbs (with *worden* 'become' and *veranderen* 'change' as exemplar verbs). The larger context of these constructions, as reflected in the different types of adverbial modifiers that occur with them, confirms this different semantic profile. We will not present a full-fledged analysis here (see Lemmens 2017b for details), but merely present a summary of our findings concerning the temporal, locational and processual modifiers that occur in these progressive constructions.

Different kind of temporal modifiers can occur in these constructions: durative modifiers (e.g. *de hele dag* 'all day', *nog steeds* 'still', *nog* 'still'), repetitive modifiers (e.g. *steeds weer* '(over and over) again'), punctual modifiers (e.g. *op dat ogenblik* 'at that moment', *net* 'just', *nu* 'now') and general temporal modifiers that indicate a larger temporal frame (e.g. *vandaag* 'today'). A $Chi^2$ test indicates that the temporal modifiers occur significantly more frequently with the **PREPOSITIONAL** progressive ($Chi^2 = 24.519$; df = 1; p = $7.4^{-7}$). Moreover, within the set of different kinds of temporal modifiers, punctual modifiers that refer to a specific point in time (e.g. *net* 'just', *op dat moment* 'at that moment', *juist toen* 'just
when', etc.) occur more frequently with the **PREPOSITIONAL** progressive. With the **POSTURAL** progressive there are in contrast more repetitive and general temporal modifiers than expected. In sum, the **PREPOSITIONAL** progressive typically involves a punctual focus on the event or action; the **POSTURAL** progressive involves a more general perspective.

As far as the locative modifiers are concerned, some marked
differences can be observed as well. In the (abundant) non-progressive
uses of posture verbs (see Lecture 5) a locative complement is usually
obligatory unless we are dealing with a ‘pure’ postural use of the verbs,
e.g. *hij zit niet, maar staat* ‘he is not sitting but standing’. In the progressive
construction, in contrast, the locative modifier is optional: *Hij zit (op een
stoel) te lezen* (litt. he sits (on a chair) to read). Nevertheless, a locative
modifier occurs in 601 cases (44%, on a total of 1,373) for the **POSTURAL**
progressive (also frequent in metaphorical usage); in the **PREPOSITIONAL**
progressive such modifiers only occur in 126 cases, or 12%, on a total
of 1,040. This difference is statistically significant (Chi² = 281.721;
df = 1; p = 0). In addition, with the **POSTURAL** progressives, there often
is an accumulation of locative modifiers (two or even three) which
strengthens the locative character of the description. The semantics
of the locative modifier is also different for the two constructions. In
the **POSTURAL** progressive, the locative modifiers tend to refer to quite
specific locations and, in the case of multiple modifiers, one observes a
gradation of the locative scope, from a larger location to a smaller one
or vice versa (e.g. in the house > in the kitchen > on the table). In the
**PREPOSITIONAL** progressive, in contrast, the locative modifiers are more
vague, often anaphoric, indications such as, for example, *hier* ‘here’ and
*daar* ‘there’, or larger locations such as *in Nederland* ‘in the Netherlands’.
In short, the frequency and type of locative modifiers confirm the
more descriptive nature of the context in which the **POSTURAL** progressive
is used: in the most typical (and thus distinctive) cases, the activity
expressed by this construction is situated in a rather specifically described
location.
Finally, process modifiers express, in one way or another, a modification of the action itself; they can for example refer to DEGREE (e.g. erg ‘badly’), PROGRESS (e.g. *geleidelijk* ‘gradually’, *langzaam(aan)* ‘slowly’) or MANNER (e.g. *efficient* ‘efficiently’). Also here, one notices a marked difference. In the POSTURAL progressive, the process modifiers typically pertain to the MANNER in which the action is carried out, e.g. *geduldig* ‘patiently’. In the PREPOSITIONAL progressive, in contrast, the process modifiers that tend to occur pertain to either DEGREE (e.g. erg ‘badly’) or PROGRESS (e.g. *geleidelijk* ‘gradually’, *langzaam(aan)* ‘slowly’). If any degree modifier occurs with the POSTURAL progressive, it typically is one which marks moderation, e.g. (*maar*) *wat* ‘(just) a bit’. This expresses a certain purposelessness which is also typical of the POSTURAL progressive; it is one of the aspects which trigger the negative connotations that are often associated with the POSTURAL progressive.¹⁰

Assembling all these observations on the temporal, locative and process modifiers, we can conclude that the PREPOSITIONAL progressive clearly has a more processual focus (punctual time adverbials, few and unspecific locative modifiers, frequent modifiers of degree and progress), while the POSTURAL progressive has a more situational focus (wider time frame, salient locative modification, modifiers of manner and Agent-related modifiers).

From an onomasiological perspective which considers how an ongoing situation will be coded in Dutch, the use of the POSTURAL progressive can actually be related to non-progressive use of posture verbs in Dutch. As said in Lecture 5, these verbs are the preferred, unmarked coding when one wants to express the location of an entity in space in Dutch. For example, one says *Mijn sleutels liggen op de tafel* ‘my keys lie on the table’ or *Het boek staat in het rek* ‘the book stands on the shelf’ rather than *Mijn sleutels zijn op de tafel* ‘my keys are on the table’ or *Het boek is in het rek* ‘the book is on the shelf’; out of context the latter two both sound quite unidiomatic.¹¹ Similarly, when Dutch speakers locate an Agent carrying out an action, they will be strongly inclined to follow the
same logic and use a POSTURAL progressive, rather than a PREPOSITIONAL progressive, even if the latter is not always excluded. As indicated above, the locative nature is often explicitly expressed via modifiers, but this need not be so. It can also be more subtly expressed by a larger narrative or descriptive character of the discourse.

## 7.4 Concluding remarks

In this lecture, we have illustrated how locative expressions can grammaticalize to aspectual markers. More particularly, we have considered how progressive and durative aspect is expressed in the Germanic languages, and particularly in Dutch, where the posture verbs have grammaticalized to progressive auxiliaries. We have shown how, in these aspectualized (or auxiliated) uses, the posture verbs are used in contexts that no longer refer to any posture or location, and even occur with ongoing motion events. This could be taken to suggest that they have become synonymous with the PREPOSITIONAL progressive *aan het V zijn* ‘be at the V’. However, our corpus-based has shown that these POSTURAL progressive constructions retain a marked preference for static atelic events, as opposed to the PREPOSITIONAL progressive construction which prefers dynamic telic verbs, and in particular verbs referring to a change. We have suggested that these preferences of the POSTURAL progressive constructions have persisted from their postural and locational uses, as many of the activities expressed in the POSTURAL progressive reflect our daily experiential realities associated with sitting, standing, and lying (see Newman and Rice 2004 for similar observations for English *sit/stand/lie and V*).

Moreover, the analysis of the different types of adverbial modifiers that tend occur in these constructions have indicated that the POSTURAL progressive has a more situational focus, while the PREPOSITIONAL progressive clearly has a more processual focus. This, we argue, can be related to the strong preference that Dutch speakers have to use a posture verb whenever location is to be expressed, be this the location of a given
entity in space (e.g. keys on the table) or the location of an activity (an Agent doing something somewhere).

Within the family of the Germanic languages, Dutch has pushed the use of posture verbs furthest. Most of the other Germanic languages do have similar patterns of use, including progressive constructions (even if the latter are different in form, i.e. a coordination construction, e.g. English *sit and read*).¹² Why Dutch has gone furthest, is still an open question and requires further detailed diachronic study. What is quite striking, is that English is least committed to the use of posture verbs, even if they have not completely disappeared. Why this is so will be addressed in the next lecture.

## Notes

1. Bertinetto et al. (2000) also point out, however, that the French progressive *être en train de V* 'be in the process of V' is a notable exception to this pattern.

2. See, however, Breed et al. 2017 for an interesting comparison of the *BUSY* and the *POSTURAL* progressive in Dutch and Afrikaans, a language spoken in South-Africa that is derived from Dutch. In Afrikaans, the *BUSY* progressive (*besig om te V* lit. 'busy for to V') has become the standard progressive construction, whereas in Dutch it remains fairly peripheral (less frequent and more constrained).

3. See, however, Song 2002 who (on the basis of posture verbs in Korean) argues that this need not always be so. We are not concerned here with the different steps in the evolution of Dutch posture verbs towards aspectual auxiliaries but focus on their aspectual uses in contemporary Dutch.

4. This sentence was said to me one day by my mother on the phone, when she was explaining how she had been walking around a crowded city all day, shopping, doing all kinds of things, wasting a lot of time.

5. See also Leys (1985: 275–6) and Ebert (2000: 619) who claim that the two constructions have become interchangeable. Vismans (1982) suggests some semantic difference in terms of ‘uninterruptedness’ (for the *POSTURAL* progressive), but that does not hold (see Lemmens 2015).

6. http://www.nujij.nl/algemeen/met-besluit-van-kamp-komt-er-einde-aanturbulente.26731260.lynkx

7. http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/944/Celebrities/article/detail/1829044/2014/03/25/Justin-James-Dean-Bieber-mikt-op-nieuw-wereldrecord.dhtml
8 The combinations ‘stand to cheer/jostle/be anxious’ are mostly used to refer to a state of being impatient without any location or posture being at issue. The combination zitten+aankomen (‘sit+arrive’) builds on a progressive reading of aankomen ‘arrive’; literally the expression means ‘be arriving’ whence the idiomatic meaning ‘happen soon’.

9 All Chi² calculations were done using K. Preacher’s online tool: Preacher, K. J. (2001, April). Calculation for the chi-square test: An interactive calculation tool for chi-square tests of goodness of fit and independence [Computer software]. Available at http://quantpsy.org.

10 In their analysis of English *sit/stand/lie and V* construction, Newman and Rice (2004) observe that the particle *around* is also typical for this construction and often refers to idling, e.g. *sitting around and doing nothing*.

11 This does not mean that *zijn* ‘be’ is impossible; for example, it may be common in questions about the whereabouts. Lemmens and Perrez (2010, 2012, 2018) present a discussion of the use of *zijn* ‘be’ in the productions of French learners of Dutch and show that it is particularly the accumulation of *zijn* ‘be’ that comes across as unidiomatic rather than a single use.

12 For recent work on Swedish progressive construction with posture verbs see, e.g. Hilpert and Koops (2008), Kvist Darnell (2008) or Blensenius (2015).
# Diachronic perspectives on posture and placement verbs

## 8.1 Posture verbs in Germanic languages

When it comes to the use of cardinal posture verbs (CPV), English is quite different from Dutch, despite their common ancestry (both are Germanic languages): (i) the use of CPVs is not compulsory in English and mostly even dispreferred (a coding with *be* is often more common, e.g. *My cup is on the table*) and (ii) the semantic extension of CPVs in English is much more limited. As indicated in Lecture 6, also the use of the English placement verbs *set* and *lay* is quite limited, and mostly the general verb *put* is preferred. The present lecture will be concerned with why English is so different in this respect. The special status of English in this regard is also observed by Dunn et al. (2007):

> In fact, if one compares English *sit*, *stand*, *lie*, and *hang* to [...] Dutch *zitten*, *staan*, *liggen*, and *hangen*, one is struck by the fact that the two sets of verbs are cognate and very close in meaning, yet the Dutch set forms a real positional verb system, while the English set does not. It may be that [English has] a potential positional verb system, while Dutch [has] an actual positional verb system. (Dunn *et al.*, 2007: 189)

There are two hypotheses to explain this difference: (i) either
Dutch has (massively) extended the use of CPVs over time, including aspectualized constructions, discussed in the previous lecture (lexical gain and auxiliation) or (ii) English has retracted the semantic coverage and the use of CPVs (lexical loss). The former hypothesis is unlikely, given that all the other Germanic languages use posture verbs in the way that Dutch does; one would thus have to assume that they all developed in the same way independently, which is quite unlikely. That shows, even if this is still to be confirmed by a full-fledged comparative diachronic analysis, that Dutch has indeed extended the use of CPVs further than the other Germanic languages. In earlier work (Lemmens 2005b), I have suggested that the Germanic languages can be positioned on a cline regarding the obligation to use a posture verb to express the location of entities, where Dutch is situated on one end (high obligation) and English on the other (low obligation), with German and Swedish (and the other Scandinavian languages) straddling the middle. The second hypothesis is thus more likely, viz. that English has lost the use of posture and placement verbs. This is also suggested by the older phases of English which reveal usage patterns of the CPVs that are quite similar to the ones observed for Dutch. In the following, we will first consider these older uses of the CPVs in English and the reasons for their demise. In the second part, we will consider the changes that have affected the English placement verbs.

## 8.2 The demise of posture verbs in English

Unlike the other Germanic languages, English does not use posture verbs as basic location verbs, but generally prefers the neutral verb *be* (e.g. *My car is in the garage* rather than *My car {stands/is standing} in the garage*). Data from the *Oxford English Dictionary* (henceforth *OED*), however, suggest that in earlier periods, the English CPVs were used in contexts that are quite similar to those one still finds in contemporary Dutch or Swedish. More specifically, from a qualitative perspective the English CPVs were amply used in locative contexts (i.e. uses that refer to the location of an
inanimate entity) as is still common in contemporary Dutch, for example. In what follows, we will first present a short (non-exhaustive) overview of such uses; next we will consider the causes of their demise. The overview will be fairly schematic and refers back to our discussion of posture verbs in (contemporary) Dutch, presented in Lecture 5. The examples below, illustrating such more ‘exotic’ uses, are all drawn from the OED.¹

Stand

OBJECTS ON THEIR BASE

The verb *stand* was used to refer to objects in functional position on their base; the following examples talk about the (default) location of looms, coaches, and receptacles (*food* in 1d metonymically refers to food in a container on its base).²

(1) a. a weauers shop or workehouse where his _loomes_ **stand**. (1585, H. Junius Nomencl. 183/2)

b. The Black Swan in Holborn where the Alisbury and other _coaches_ **stand**. (1665, in Verney Mem. II. 241)

c. þa sexe _waterrfetless_ [ML: receptacle] þatt _stodenn_ wiþþ þatt waterr þær. (c1200, Ormin 14412)

d. Some _food_ **stood** on the table. (1818, Scott Hrt. Midl. xvii)

PLANTS GROWING UPWARDS FROM THEIR ROOTS

A logical extension of the meaning ‘be on one’s base’ is the use of *stand* to refer to the location of plants growing upwards from their roots; as with the previous cases, the actual vertical extension does not really matter.

(2) a. I haue seene many _trees_ **stand** so thicke... (1618, W. Lawson New Orch. & Gard. viii. (1623) 22)

b. If fyer ... cacche ... the _corn_ **stondynge** in feeldis. (1382, Wyclif Exod. xxii. 6)

EXTENSION AWAY FROM ORIGIN

The image schema of an object on its base can subsequently be
subjected to image schematic transformation, such as rotation where the
entity's origin is no longer at base location and the extension can go in
any direction, such as stubbles of a beard growing 'sideways' on one's face
as in 3a or the direction of the wind as in 3b.

(3) a. His _mustachies ... standing_ as stiff as if he wore a Ruler in his mouth.
(1592, Greene Defence Conny-catching Wks. (Grosart) XI. 72)

b. The _wind stood_ most easterly. (1635, Brereton Trav. (Chetham Soc.) 77)

OBJECT IN ITS FUNCTIONAL POSITION

In some contexts, *stand* could be used to refer to an object in
functional position, even when this position was not the entity’s default
position or when the object does not have a base, as is the case of the
sword ‘standing through the body’ in 4.

(4) þe _suerd ..._ thoru hir _stode_. (a1300, Cursor M. 11371)
the sword ... through her stood

INGRESSIVE STAND TO V

In some contexts, the use of *stand* seems to be used to express aggressive aspect, i.e. that someone is on the point of doing something, as in 5, strikingly similar to the Dutch construction *staan te V* ‘stand to V’ (= be about to V).

(5) And the curtains they neer **stood to tear** them. (a1800, Dk. Athole's Nurse xi. in Child Ballads IV.)

**He stands** to lose twenty thousand. (1861, Temple Bar II. 150)

Lie

Also the verb *lie* could be used in a wider range of contexts than in
Present-day English (even if here more uses seem to have been preserved).

ROUND OBJECTS AND SUBSTANCES

As illustrated in the examples below, *lie* could be used to express the
location of round objects (*currants*) or substances (*blood*) which assume a
horizontal expansion under gravity.
(6) a. To make them buy their *currantes* (which **lay** vpon their hands)
(1628, Digby Voyage Medit. (1868) 68)

b. His **blod** on erth sced **lijs**. (a1300, Cursor M. 1129)

LAND, PLAINS, FIELDS, ETC. (HORIZONTAL EXPANSION IN SPACE)

The verb *lie* was also used to refer to geotopographical location, which expresses a two-dimensional ('sheet-like') view of the entity's location.

(7) vii **acres** of Mede, **liggyng** in the Mede beside the Brigge of Chartesey. (1455, Rolls of Parlt. V. 313/1)

ROADS AND METAPHORICAL COUNTERPARTS (LINEAR EXTENSION)

The location of line-type or ribbon-type of entities (or objects
conceived as such) could also be expressed with the verb *lie*, as shown in
the following examples.

(8) The counties through which the <u>road</u> to London <u>lay</u>. (1849,
Macaulay Hist. Eng. x. II. 567)

(9) There **lies** your _way_. (1596, Shakes. *Tam. Shr.* iii. ii. 212)

ABSTRACT ENTITIES (POINT FIGURES)

Finally, as in contemporary Dutch, English *lie* is attested in usages
referring to the ‘location’ of abstract entities, as in (10).

(10) a. We could not for a moment expect such _indications_ to _lie_ upon
the surface. (1879, S. C. Bartlett Egypt to Pal. v. 99)

b. If the _choice_ **lay** only between a tax on property and a tax on income. (1845, McCulloch Taxation i. iv. (1852) 109)

Sit

The verb *sit* could be used to refer to the location of smaller animals
such as frogs, birds, insects and serpents, as illustrated in 11. Strikingly
(again), these uses find a perfect equivalent in contemporary Dutch
where *zitten* ‘sit’ is to be used. The posture of birds and frogs (and rabbits
and mice) arguably resembles that of a crouched human being (=sitting
with legs bent); insects and legless creatures are close to the ground and
can therefore be coded with *sit* (if they are said to be lying, they are dead).

## CANONICAL POSTURE OF BIRDS, FROGS, INSECTS, 0-PEDS

(11) a. All maner of fowlys that **syt** in trees. (1486, Bk. St. Albans d ij b)

b. ... one frogge þat **sit** at Mulne vnder cogge. (c1250, Owl & Night. 86)

c. How the **Bee** sits on the Bloom. (1667, Milton P.L. v. 25)

d. **Wormes** and **serpentes** on hem **seeten**. (13..., Pains of Hell (Vernon MS.) 217)

## BEING (CLOSELY) CONTAINED

One of the common extended uses of *sit* one finds in the older English data (also, significantly again, similar to contemporary Dutch) is where it refers to ‘being (closely) contained’, like a ring said to sit on one’s finger (example 12a), a post sitting snugly in their place (example 12b), a village located amidst the meadows (example 12c) or even metaphorically, a spirit ‘sitting’ in one’s eyes (example 12d).

(12) a. Which **Ring** ... where it on a finger **sat** [etc.]. (1390, Gower Conf. II. 23)

b. Slots must be cut in the bottom half of them [sc. the horizontal pieces] where they meet the **posts**, so that they will **sit** nicely. (1958, Listener 28 Aug. 309/3)

c. The **village** of Cocurès, **sitting** among vineyards and meadows. (1879, Stevenson Trav. Donkey 179)

d. Mark you what spirit **sits** in St. Johns eyes? (1821-2, Shelley Chas. I, ii. 34)

## CLOSE CONTACT

The verb *sit* also occurred in contexts referring to being in a fixed position or close contact; the similarity with Dutch uses is again quite striking, especially when the particle *fast*(te) (now no longer possible) is
added which is etymologically related to Dutch *vast* 'fixed'.

(13) a. It wole make hise <u>heeris longe</u> & make hem <u>sitte</u> faste. (c1400, Lanfranc's Cirurg. 188)

b. A <u>Coat</u> that <u>sits</u> close to the Body. (1687, Miége Gt. Fr. Dict. ii. s.v)

c. My <u>sekenes</u> <u>sat</u> ay so nigh my herte. (c1402, Lydg. Compl. Bl. Knt. 18)

As pointed out by Newman (2002b: 19), this use of *sit* is still possible today, e.g. *Our house sits (snugly) between two adjoining ones* (his example); he calls this ‘good fit *sit*’.

*Coding variations*

Strikingly, in the OED data, one finds coding variations that again are quite similar to what one finds in Dutch (and the other Germanic languages). We will limit ourselves here to three examples concerning the location of cities or towns in example 14, that of celestial bodies in example 15, and that of the wind in example 16. As has been explained for Dutch, such coding variation implies a variation in the way in which a given scene is conceptualized; each is said to impose their own conceptual imagery.

CITY/TOWN

As indicated above, the location of cities or villages can be expressed by the verb *lie* ('geotopographical location'), as in 14c, but alternative codings are possible with *sit* 14a,c expressing the idea of close containment or contact, or with *stand* as in 14b. The latter context activates an image of a vertical scale on which the town is located (notice the use of *low*).

(14) a. The evylle <u>Town</u>, that <u>sytt</u> toward the ende of Hungarye. (c1400, Mandeville (1839) i. 7)

b. The <u>toune</u> <u>standeth</u> lowe, and the Ryver passeth thorough. (1548, Hall Chron., Edw. IV, 233 b)

c. The which <u>tenement</u> <u>syttyth</u> and <u>lyyth</u> by ye tenement of John Clerk. (1504, Bury Wills (Camden) 102)
## CELESTIAL BODIES

The examples in 15 show that either *sit* or *stand* could be used to refer to the location of celestial bodies (stars, planets, etc.). Again, the different choices imply a different conceptual image: *sit* implies the regular fixed location of the celestial body, as in 15a; the use of *stand* in 15b is to be seen against the background of the sun and the moon as moving objects (or perceived as moving) that can hold their movement ('stand still').

(15) a. ... whether the _sterre_ _sitte_ est or west or north. (c1391, Chaucer _Astrol._)

b. And _the sunne_ and _the mone_ _stoden_, to the tyme that [etc.]. (1382, Wyclif Josh. x. 13)

## WIND

A final illustration of different conceptual imagery implied by different lexical choices is given in 16, talking about the wind. The use of *stand* in 16a conceptualizes the wind as having a direction, coming from a particular origin and going somewhere. The use of *sit* in 16b evokes a more static location of the wind, possibly even suggesting that it seems 'fixed' there and is not changing. The use of *lie* in 16c is quite different, as it refers to the wind that quiets down; the image here builds on the contrast with a standing posture referring to activity (or readiness to act); lying (down) is then giving up this position of activity or readiness for activity. Notice that the same experiential motivation can be given for the particles *up* and *down* in English, where the former refers to activity (e.g. *The machine is up and running*) and the latter to inactivity (e.g. *The network is down again*). Significantly, the latter situation is typically expressed in Dutch with *liggen*, often with the particle *plat* 'flat'.

(16) a. If the _winde_ _stande_ in that doore, it standh awry. (1546, J. Heywood Prov. (1867) 56)

b. When the _wind_ _sitteth_ West, it is alwaies rain. (1610, Holland Camden's Brit. 587)
c. When the East *wind* began to **lie**, which for certeine daies had
blustred and raged. (1600, Holland Livy xxv. 569)

In sum, the OED data suggest that the older uses of the CPVs in
English had a semantic coverage that, at least qualitatively, is comparable to
what one finds in contemporary Dutch (and other Germanic languages).
However, the OED data do not allow a quantitative usage analysis since the
OED does not give any indication as to whether these uses were frequent
or not. The corpus study presented in Lesuisse and Lemmens (2018),
covering the period 1500 to 1920, however, confirmed that the locational
uses of the English CPVs were fairly entrenched in the earlier periods, but
that they statistically significantly declined in the evolution to Present-Day
English, with metaphorical uses of *lie* being a clear exception to the overall
trend. Many of the uses given above will indeed sound quite strange or
very literary at best to contemporary English speakers (cf. the quote from
Newman 2002b on this, mentioned in Lecture 6). Combined with the
strong preference in contemporary English to use the verb *be* in a locative
construction, this indeed suggests that these uses have been lost in English.
What triggered this loss? In earlier work (Lemmens 2014), I have suggested
three different explanations for the ‘demise’ of the English CPVs.

The first hypothesis is that the posture verbs have disappeared
under French influence. As is commonly known, English has borrowed
massively from French, including verbs relating to either motion or
location, such as *enter*, *exit*, *place*, *situate*, etc. These verbs do not fit the
Germanic pattern very well, since they express the path (or location)
in the verb when Germanic languages typically express the path in a
particle and the verb typically expresses the manner of motion or location
(whence Talmy’s 2000 characterization of English as a satellite-framed
language, see Lecture 9). This first hypothesis is quite unlikely, as it
would only have affected the (manner of) location verbs and not the
(manner of) motion verbs which continue to be used productively in
English. In addition, as the OED data show, the posture verbs were still
used as locative verbs long after the French influence, whose peak is to be
situated in the middle of the 12th century.

The second hypothesis is that the demise of the posture verbs is due
to important changes in the English aspectual system, notably the rise
of the *ing*-form.³ As a rule, in contemporary English, state verbs cannot
occur in the *ing*-form, yet the CPVs form a notable exception to this: they
can be used in the *ing*-form to denote a temporary situation, e.g. *She was
sitting on the sofa*, while the base form is used for more permanent states,
e.g. *The statue stands in the park* (see Mufwene 1984). The hypothesis
would be that at the time that the *ing*-form came into being, its semantics
were in conflict with the static semantics of the CPVs, disfavouring
their use in locative contexts. The other Germanic languages have not
developed an equivalent to the *ing*-form and the CPVs cannot occur
in a progressive construction (cf. Lemmens 2005b, 2015). This only
constitutes indirect evidence, however. What needs to be done is, first of
all, to confirm that the lexical demise of CPVs in English coincides with
the grammaticalization of the *ing*-form as some progress and, secondly,
that the two processes can be related semantically. It is, in fact, possible
to link up the rise of the *ing*-form (and thus the new semantic distinction
of temporary vs. permanent state) with the demise of the posture verbs
as basic locative verbs. Strang (1982) observes that before 1600 the use
of the *ing*-form was still fairly unsystematic and that its use only became
systematic or grammatically required after 1700. She points out that ‘the
central function of the [be + ing] construction is to present the action of
a verb as being an activity rather than an event, result or state of affairs’
(1982: 443). There are two important consequences, Strang points out,
viz. (i) that the *ing*-form should thus be largely confined to uses with
subjects that have a human referent (or a referent viewed as capable of
activity) and (ii) that it is favoured more by activity verbs than others.
More generally, there is an increase of the frequency of the progress due
to new narrative possibilities: ‘the construction is a, and perhaps the,
principal means of introducing into narrative a sense of ongoing activity,
as distinct from witnessed events or actions' (1982: 446). What is then the relationship with the demise of the CPVs? The increased frequency of the *ing*-form may have created a particular problem for CPVs that were used both with human subjects in a particular posture (which despite the overall static nature could somehow still be interpreted as an activity of maintaining a particular body posture) and inanimate subjects. The semantic conflict of the use of the *ing*-form and the posture verbs is particularly acute for the contexts with an inanimate subject (the Figure being located). As a result, the use of CPV would be discouraged to express the location of inanimate objects as in the examples given above. If that is so, then the rise of the *ing*-form should co-occur with, or possibly slightly precede, the demise of the posture verbs.

However, an exploratory pilot study on the verb *sit* suggests that the rise of the *ing*-form and decline of posture verbs do not converge. The pilot study is based on a small sample of fiction texts from 14th to the 20th century, from which all attestations of *sit* were extracted (905 in total).⁴ If the hypothesis is correct that the demise of the posture verbs is due to a semantic conflict between the *ing*-form and the posture verbs, then the use of the posture verbs can be expected to decrease when the *ing*-form starts to become systematic (post 1700). This is not confirmed by the corpus used in this pilot study, which actually shows a peak in the use of *sit* post 1700, as shown in Table 26, visualized in Figure 15 (based on the normalized frequencies per 10,000).

<table><caption>Table 26. Frequencies of *sit* in the sample corpus</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th></th><th>1350-1400</th><th>1500-1600</th><th>1600-1700</th><th>1700-1750</th><th>1800-1850</th><th>1900-1950</th><th>TOTAL</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>#words</td><td></td><td>399,021</td><td>76,132</td><td>101,527</td><td>643,328</td><td>350,275</td><td>293,903</td><td><strong>1,864,186</strong></td></tr><tr><td>sit</td><td>N</td><td>98</td><td>26</td><td>29</td><td>132</td><td>482</td><td>138</td><td><strong>905</strong></td></tr><tr><td>(all)</td><td>norm. N</td><td>2.5</td><td>3.4</td><td>2.9</td><td>2.1</td><td>13.8</td><td>4.7</td><td><strong>4.9 (av.)</strong></td></tr><tr><td>sit</td><td>N</td><td>16</td><td>3</td><td></td><td>13</td><td>11</td><td>1</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>locative &amp; metaph.</td><td>norm. N</td><td>0.4</td><td>0.4</td><td></td><td>0.2</td><td>0.3</td><td></td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>
<figure><img src="image_27.png" /><figcaption>Figure 15. Normalized frequency of *sit* in the sample corpus</figcaption></figure>

Most of these uses are with human subjects, but even the uses with inanimate entities do not show a marked decrease in the period under consideration. The data sample is actually too small to be sufficiently reliable. Nevertheless, the pilot study suggests that the semantic conflict between the *ing-* form does not explain the demise of the posture verbs.

The third, and possibly most plausible hypothesis, is drawn from Newman (2009: 46):

> The English posture verbs, to the extent they develop locative meanings, do so in relatively limited ways and it may be that the fluctuation in action/state interpretations of these verbs is relevant to understanding the limited nature of this type of extension.

In other words, Newman attributes the non-grammaticalization of English CPVs to a double yet opposite development of these verbs: they come to express the inchoative aspect without the expected particle expressing the path of motion (*down* for *sit* and *lie*, *up* for *stand*); at the same time, the verb-particle combinations themselves begin to be used to refer to a static situation (e.g. *sit down for hours*). As was pointed out in Lecture 6, also here, English differs from the overall tendency found in
the Germanic languages.

While Newman’s hypothesis is promising, the empirical study he provides in support is based on only one of the three cardinal posture verbs (*sit*) in a small and fairly non-representative corpus (the King James’ Bible). Nevertheless, Newman’s hypothesis seems to be the most promising of the three hypotheses that Lemmens (2014) has suggested. To test this hypothesis further, we have undertaken a more extensive corpus study for all three posture verbs (Lesuisse and Lemmens 2018).⁵

This study was based on three different corpora. For the Early Modern English period, we had to combine two corpora to arrive at a sufficiently large data set: the *Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English* (PPCEME) and the *Early English Books Online corpus* (EEBO)⁶. For the Later Modern English period we used the *Corpus of Late Modern English Texts* (CLMET), which covers the period from 1710 to 1920. Using the concordancer AntConc⁷, all the occurrences of *sit*, *lie* and *stand* were extracted from these corpora. For the CLMET corpus, which is quite large, the number of attestations were randomly limited to 1,500 for each verb.

Once all the noise was removed, we retained 2,651 attestations for *sit*, 2,897 for *stand*, and 2,611 for *lie*. These attestations were subsequently annotated in a spreadsheet according to eleven different parameters, the most important of which are the type of Figure (human, inanimate, concrete or abstract), the usage of the verb (postural, locational, metaphorical, copular), the presence of a Ground specification (for location events), the presence of a nominal or adjectival complement and, most importantly for testing Newman’s hypothesis, the presence of the particle (for the postural uses only).

In order to test Newman’s hypothesis, we need to look at the postural construction; more specifically, we need to compare the constructions with and without particle (e.g. *sit* vs. *sit down*, or *stand* vs. *stand up*) and what type of event they refer to, static (‘be in a state’) or dynamic (‘get into a state’). Recall that neither of these constructions can be exclusively restricted to
the static or the dynamic interpretation, Newman's hypothesis being that it
is precisely this fuzziness in the system that prevented the English CPVs to
further grammaticalize into locative constructions. If Newman's hypothesis
is correct, then the corpus should show an increase of what we could label
'bidirectional constructional incongruity', i.e. when a construction's use is
incongruous with that construction's original meaning. More specifically,
this constructional fluctuation should lead to an increase of particle
constructions referring to static events ('being in a state') and an increase of
particle-less constructions to refer to dynamic events ('getting in a state').

We will not be much concerned with the details here and only
summarize the main findings reported in more detail in Lesuisse and
Lemmens (2018). The main trends found in the corpus are presented in
Figures 16, 17, and 18. To visualize these, the findings are calculated for
periods of 70 years; for each period, the frequency of the two constructions,
the construction without a particle (-P) and the construction with a particle
(+P), and whether these refer to a static or a dynamic event are presented.

These graphs show that the static use of CPVs dominates overall,
except for *sit* which appears much more divided and does not favour
the static interpretation, as also stated in Newman (2009). Furthermore,
on the whole, all throughout the Modern English period, the expected
constructional patterns have been attested: the particle-less construction (or
'bare construction') refers to a static event while the particle construction

<figure><img src="image_28.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 16.** Evolution of the static and dynamic interpretations within particle and particle-less constructions for *lie* (Lesuisse and Lemmens 2018: 66)</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_29.png" /><figcaption>Figure 18. Evolution of the static and dynamic interpretations within particle and particle-less constructions for *stand* (Lesuisse and Lemmens 2018: 66)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_30.png" /></figure>

expresses a dynamic event (constructional congruity). Most importantly though, the static-dynamic fuzziness mentioned by Newman is visible in these graphs, as there are clear cases of constructional incongruity, where particle constructions have a static interpretation and bare constructions, a dynamic interpretation.

However, the evolution of the particle-less construction with a dynamic interpretation is not clear. Some increase is noticeable for *sit* and *stand* in Late Modern English, from 1710, but not for Early Modern English, the period on which Newman bases his hypothesis. Moreover, when conflating the evolution of the particle-less construction with the evolution of the dynamic use as a whole, it appears that both are decreasing for all the three CPVs, except for the last two periods 1780-1850 and 1850-
1920, where both the dynamic interpretation and the particle-less dynamic construction are increasing. Therefore, while there is no indication of the non-prototypical construction gaining ground on the postural uses, there is a slight increase of the construction but not for the period Newman claims.

In sum, the data show that the constructional fluctuation (that Newman holds responsible for the blocking of the grammaticalization of posture verbs) does occur, but it turns out that such incongruent uses represent only a modest portion of the whole set of occurrences, invariably under 4% of the total number of occurrences per period. At first sight, it seems unlikely that these fluctuations would have disrupted the overall grammaticalization of CPVs. However, these uses, which all concern human posture, do constitute the prototypical uses of the CPVs, and prototypical centres are known to be highly influential for the evolution of the entire category. Thus, the impact of the fluctuation between the static and dynamic interpretations may have been much higher than what the lower percentages suggest, since the development of CPVs into locative markers exclusively depends on the prototypical anthropocentric uses (Dunn et al., 2007). In sum, Newman's hypothesis may still be correct, but our more extensive corpus still does not provide sufficiently solid statistical evidence to confirm it.

While the percentages of bare dynamic uses (i.e. without a particle) by themselves may not give a clear picture, our data allow us to set them off against the frequency of locative and copular uses. In other words, if Newman's hypothesis is correct that the rise of the bare dynamic postural use is responsible for the demise of the English CPVs, then this evolution, even if minimal, should lead to a decrease of the locative and copular uses. This is what is presented in Figure 19, from which one can also infer that the postural uses dramatically increase in relation to the other constructions, a general indication of the halted grammaticalization of the CPVs already shown above.

The picture that emerges is not entirely clear. First of all, the bare dynamic postural uses first go down, and then up again, but the
<figure><img src="image_31.png" /><figcaption>Figure 19. Evolution of the bare dynamic postural, locative and copular constructions (vis a vis all uses) (Lesuisse and Lemmens 2018: 69)</figcaption></figure>

percentages are very low and fairly close. The locative uses continue to decrease over the entire period. However, what is perhaps most relevant here is to look at the copular constructions, as the most grammaticalized uses of the CPVs (e.g. *you stand amazed at this preamble*). Their uses do rise at first but decrease later on which co-occurs with the (slight) increase of the bare dynamic construction occurring between 1780 and 1920.

In sum, our data confirms some confusion between static and dynamic uses and construction type (with or without particle); however, the rise of the bare dynamic use is only minimal and while it does co-occur with an overall decrease of CPV use, it still remains an open question whether this rise is indeed the (sole) triggering factor. Strikingly, the demise of the CPVs does not seem to come on its own, as also the placement verbs (see Lecture 6) have been affected, which will be discussed in the next section.

## 8.3 The demise of *set* and the rise of *put*

It will be recalled from the discussion of the placement verbs in Lecture 6 that also for these verbs English is the odd one out within the Germanic language family, given that there is a strong preference for the
general verb *put* to be used. The placement verbs *set* and *lay* have become infrequent and more constrained semantically, and the original causative counterpart of *stand*, the Old English *stellan* (related to Dutch *stellen* and Swedish *ställa*) has basically disappeared from the (standard) language.⁸ The entries in the *Oxford English Dictionary* make it clear that it was quite restricted in use early on, occurring in the meaning of ‘set an example’ 17a, ‘establish a law’ 17b, ‘place cannons, troops, and the like’ 17c and 17d, which is also the latest attestation given (1901).

(17) a. Hwelce bisena he ðær **stellende** wæs. (c893 tr. Orosius *Hist.* ii. ii. §1)

which example he there putting was (=which example he set there)

b. He wolde þe lawe leoflyche holde As god ... i þis world **stolde**. (c1275 *Serving Christ* 60 in Old Eng. Misc. 92)

he wanted the law dearly (up)hold as god ... in this world set

c. The Jnglismen ... raiset thair camp, to **stel** cannounes .. at the hil of the place namet Pinkincleuch. (1596 J. Dalrymple tr. J. Leslie *Hist. Scotl.* (1895) II. 298)

d. On the slope the horses were ... forced to **stell** themselves back against the heavy propulsion of the carts behind. (1901 G. Douglas *House with Green Shutters* 7)

According to the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, the verb *stell* (meaning ‘put, fix, place firmly’) is restricted to Scottish English. It does not occur in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) or the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA).⁹ In what follows, we will not be much concerned with the disappearance of *stell*, but focus on the other two important diachronic changes, i.e. the demise of (locational) *set* and the rise of *put*. Much like the general verb *be* used in the postural domain, the verb *put* neutralizes over the different postures (or orientations) of the placed entity.
Set

The definitions given first in most dictionaries indicate that *set* is like *put*, e.g.

‘To **put** in a definite place (**the manner of the action being implied** either in the verb itself or in the context); to **put** (more or less permanently) in a definite place.’ (*Oxford English Dictionary*; my emphasis)

‘To **carefully put** something down somewhere, especially something that is difficult to carry.’ (*Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English*; my emphasis)

The vast majority of uses concerns the notion of **PUT IN POSITION**, **ARRANGE**, **FIX**, **ADJUST**, e.g. *set a problem, set a pattern, set the alarm clock, set the table, set the fire, set the stage*. The uses of the verb *set* are thus for the most part no longer locational, but profile the manner, functionality, or effort, notions that are absent with the verb *put*. These features have persisted from the original use of *set* as the causative counterpart of *stand* which refers to an entity in functional position (cf. above). The object affected by a setting event typically has the properties of being ‘settable’, i.e. having one or more adjustable parameters (e.g. *on/off*). The kind of entities figuring as the direct object of *set* is more constrained compared to those occurring with *put* (comparable to one meaning of Dutch *zetten* ‘set’). The semantic difference between *put* and *set* is reflected in different types of constructions: *set* typically occurs in a two-argument construction expressing **TRANSITIVITY** (‘AGENT AFFECTS PATIENT’), whereas *put* necessarily has three arguments and expresses **CAUSED MOTION** (‘AGENT MOVES THEME TO GOAL’), with the Goal expressed obliquely, e.g. *he put the bowl *(on the table)**. The two verbs *put* and *set* do share that they both can have complements that concern manner, e.g. *put/set things right*. Mostly, such a complement occurring with *set* expresses a specification pertaining to the range of settable parameters, e.g. *set the alarm clock at 5 o’clock*. Importantly, *set* can still be used as a locational verb, although it is much
less common than *put*; in these cases, the obliquely expressed location is
also compulsory, e.g. *set the cup* *(on the floor)*.

The focus on functionality is something that was already present
early on; the Old English verb *settan* quite commonly occurred in such
contexts, further strengthened by prefixation (common in Old English),
e.g. *āsettan* 'place', *besettan* 'appoint', *forsettan* 'obstruct', *foresettan* 'place
before', *ofzetten* 'afflict', *onsettan* 'oppress', *tosettan* 'dispose', *unsettan*
'put down', *wihsettan* 'resist'. These forms find many cognates in
contemporary Dutch, German or Swedish (but not always with the
same meaning), e.g. Dutch: *aanzetten* 'turn on', *bezetten* 'occupy', *verzetten*
'resist', *voorzetten* 'present', *afzetten* 'cheat, rip off', *ontzetten* 'clear out', etc.
Such uses continued in Middle English; for instance, the *Middle English
Compendium* (University of Michigan) lists 37 different entries for ME
*setten*, many of which are similar to uses of contemporary Dutch *zetten*,
e.g. *setten in werkinge* 'put (sth.) in operation or use' or *setten on werk*, 'put
(sb.) to work' which are comparable to Dutch. *in werking zetten* 'set into
operation' and *aan het werk zetten* 'set at the work'.

In sum, English *set* has fairly much lost its locative uses and has
shifted its prototypical meaning to center around functionality. These
uses are very much like those one finds with the cognates of *set* in the
other Germanic languages, where cognates of the Old English verb *stellan*
have been affected (mostly so in Dutch, slightly less so in German and
Swedish). This suggests that these two changes find their origin already
in Proto-Germanic, but this remains speculative.

Put

The verb *put* functions in contemporary English as the default
placement verb: (i) it is neutral with respect to the position of the placed
entity, (ii) it has the weakest collocational restrictions, and (iii) the highest
idiomatic power. Studies by Goldberg *et al.* (2004) have shown moreover
that also in language acquisition *put* functions as a basic verb (which they
call a 'general purpose verb') that helps children to acquire the meaning
of the CAUSED MOTION construction on the basis of the input, as it allows them ‘to note a correlation between the meaning of a particular verb in a constructional pattern and the pattern itself’ (2004: 299).

The verb *put* has a striking diachronic evolution characterized by a gradual semantic bleaching (‘denegativization’), leading to a competition with *set* and eventually ousting the latter as a default placement verb. The verb is derived from Old English *pȳtan* ‘push, poke, thrust, put out (eyes)’; this verb thus refers to an action that implies considerable force, often involving instruments (weapons, hands, etc.), as illustrated in 18.

(18) a. ʒif þu me **puttest** in þet eže (1225 MS Lamb. in R. Morris Old Eng. Homilies (1868) 1st Ser. 15 (MED))
if you me put (=stab) in the eye

b. þe stronge man **putte** [L. impegit] aʒen þe stronge man, & boþe togidere fellen. (c1382 Bible (Wycliffite, E.V.) (Bodl. 959) (1969) Jer. xlvi. 12)
the strong man stabbed again the (other) strong man, and both together fell

The usage of poking or stabbing someone in the eye as in 18a, is quoted in the OED to have been quite common. The diachronic study by Pauwels (2000) shows how *put* shows a marked increase of frequency in Early Modern English, and changes from a two-place predicate to a three-place predicate. Pauwels carries out quite detailed analyses of the nature of the Agent, Theme (puttee) and Goal constructed with *put*, but he does not make all that many true generalizations about the various constructions. He does make an occasional reference to the violence or force that is originally present in the semantic structure of *put*. He says about Middle English *putten* that it ‘would prototypically conceptualize the use of force which is involved in violating the boundaries marking the present (source) location of an entity, or, alternatively, the boundaries of the new location of destination’ (2000: 86). As shown in example 19, in Middle English the notion of FORCE indeed continues to be an important
part of the verb’s semantic structure, where it is often used in the context
of thrusting weapons into a body, kicking one’s feet against someone or
something, or throwing or casting something.

(19) a. He smat hine ... and þat <u>sweord</u> **putte** in his muð. [c1275(?a1200)
Lay. *Brut* (Clg A.9) 9028]

He threw him ... and the sword put in his mouth

b. Than the Jewes toke a <u>speere</u> to a blynde knyght, named
Longeus and <u>sette</u> yt to the ryght syde of Jhesu and comaunded
hym for to <u>putt</u>. [a1500 *Nicod*. (4) (Hrl 149) 75]

then the jews took a spear to a blind servant named Longeus and
set it to the right side of Jesus and ordered him to put (=thrust,
stab)

Note the contrast in 19b between *setten* ‘set’ (place the spear to the side) and *putten* ‘put’ (thrust the spear into the body).

Given this meaning, it is quite normal that *put* predominantly occurred
in negative contexts, i.e. BRING SOMEONE IN A NEGATIVE, HUMILIATING, etc.
POSITION, mostly involving some force as well, as illustrated in 20. This can
also be a case of removing, as in 20a ‘put him away from joy’ or put someone
at the mercy of someone else 20b or in the context of seizure 20c.¹⁰

(20) a. The saule ... offendid them ... Therfore of very ryght, thei
aught to exclude hym and **put** hym <u>from thi joy</u>. [a1500 (1465)
Leversedge *Vision* (Add 34193) 28]

the soul offended them ... therefore by right they ought to
exclude him and put him (away) from the joy

b. I **putte** me in <u>Goddys</u> *mercy*. [a1450 *Castle Persev*. (Folg
V.a.354) 3007]

I put myself in God’s mercy

c. The Son of Man **put** hym <u>in prese</u>, wylfully to suffre dethe for
mankynde. [c1500(?a1475) Ass.Gods (Trin-C R.3.19) 1755]

the son of man put himself in seizure, willfully to suffer death
for mankind
Often the verb *put* occurs with particles that refer to movement away from a more desirable position, e.g. *put abac* ('drive off/out by force'), *put awei* ('expell'), *put doun* ('defeat, humiliate'), *put asunder* ('separate, destroy, in pieces'), *put lowe* ('to bring to a low position, to humble'), *put under* ('conquer, subdue'), *put out*, etc. Some examples are given in 21.

(21) a. The enmyes wer sor **putt** abacke, by the whiche victiously the bataille was wonne. [c1475 *Body Pol.* (Cmb Kk.1.5) 136/23]
the enemies were surely put back, by (virtue of) which the battle was won victiously

b. Riche men ben cleped to festes, and pouere folk ben **put awey** and rebuked. [(c1390) Chaucer *CT.Pars*. I.444]
rich men are called to parties, and poor people are put away and repressed

c. Suche .. shulde **putte downe** themself in humilite vndir God.
[a1500 Chartier Treat.Hope (Rwl A.338) 63/19]
such (people) should put themselves (down) in humility under
God

d. And pouerte pursued me and **put** me **lowe**. [c1400(c1378) PPl.
B (LdMisc 581) 11.61]
and poverty pursued me and brought me down

At the same time, during the Middle English period there is also
a considerable degree of generalization as well: the *Middle English
Compendium* (University of Michigan) lists 28 different entries for ME
*putten* 'put', showing the onset of modern usage, as in 22.

(22) a. Baldeli **putte** I vp my <u>hende</u>. (a1400 *Cursor* (Frf 14) 24458)
boldly put I up my hand

b. þe <u>water</u> o þe flum þou ta And **put** it vp apon þe land.
(a1400(a1325) *Cursor* (Vsp A.3) 5833)
the water of the river you take and put it up on the land

c. That <u>arke</u> schalle not be taken from that place where Ieremias the
prophete **putte** hit. [?a1475(?a1425) *Higd*. (2) (Hrl 2261) 3.187]
the ark shall not be taken from the place where Jeremiah the
prophet put it

The semantic evolution of *put* can thus be summarized as changing
from forceful thrusting, to bringing into a negative place (mostly
forcefully as well), to placement where no force is involved at all. In
contemporary English, when *put* is used as a placement verb, it has
become completely ‘denegativized’. This semantic evolution has been
confirmed by a pilot study by Lemmens and David (2006), based on
a corpus of 2,66 million word collection of (semi-randomly selected)
British literary texts, from 14th (1387) till first half 20th century (1927),
freely available through *The Victorian Literary Studies Archive* and *The Project
Gutenberg*.¹¹ Table 27 and Figure 20 show the frequency of *put* throughout
the different time periods further distinguished by whether it occurred
in a negative, positive or neutral context. The data show a clear increase
(from 21% to 81%) of the neutral uses of *put* towards an unmarked
placement verb (which also explains the increase of its overall frequency)
and a sharp decrease of the negative uses (from 71% to 15%). Perhaps
somewhat surprising is the overall low frequency of positive uses of *put*
throughout the entire period. In other words, a usage like *This puts me
in a state of happiness* while not impossible remains quite untypical. One
possible explanation, still to be confirmed by further corpus research, is
that it may be the verb *set* that will be used in positive contexts, since it
often refers to careful placement.¹²

However, while in Present-day English, *put* has evolved to a neutral
verb when real placement is at issue, it turns out that in idioms and
metaphorical uses, the negative contexts are preserved. Lemmens and
David (2006) did an analysis of the semantic prosody of *put* based on the
Bergen corpus, comprising both British and American English, from the
1960s (BROWN/LOB) and the 1990s (FROWN/FLOB), which showed
that the proportion of ‘negative’ uses for idioms was indeed quite high
<table><caption>Table 27. Semantic prosody for *put* over time</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>14th cy</th><th>15th cy</th><th>16th cy</th><th>17th cy</th><th>18th cy</th><th>19th cy</th><th>20th cy</th><th>Total</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>NEGATIVE</td><td>126<br>70.8%</td><td>140<br>55.8%</td><td>34<br>45.9%</td><td>48<br>47.1%</td><td>180<br>38.0%</td><td>99<br>22.4%</td><td>49<br>14.5%</td><td><strong>649</strong></td></tr><tr><td>POSITIVE</td><td>17<br>9.6%</td><td>11<br>4.4%</td><td>8<br>10.8%</td><td>8<br>7.8%</td><td>58<br>12.2%</td><td>34<br>7.5%</td><td>15<br>4.5%</td><td><strong>151</strong></td></tr><tr><td>NEUTRAL</td><td>35<br>19.7%</td><td>100<br>39.8%</td><td>32<br>43.2%</td><td>46<br>45.1%</td><td>236<br>49.8%</td><td>310<br>70.1%</td><td>273<br>81.0%</td><td><strong>1,031</strong></td></tr><tr><td>TOTAL</td><td><strong>178</strong></td><td><strong>251</strong></td><td><strong>74</strong></td><td><strong>102</strong></td><td><strong>474</strong></td><td><strong>442</strong></td><td><strong>337</strong></td><td><strong>1,830</strong></td></tr></tbody></table>

<figure><img src="image_32.png" /><figcaption>Figure 20. Semantic prosody for *put* over time</figcaption></figure>

(41% of the cases, versus 40% positive uses and 19% neutral uses). Here are some typical examples of such idiomatic uses:

to put the heat (the screws) on someone, to put a project in cold storage, to put one's neck on the line, put to shame, put to death, to put a noose around one's neck, to put a gun on someone's head, to put one's head in the lion's den/jaws, to put one's shirt on something, to put somebody in the hot seat, to put the skids under something, to put someone on the rack, to put the knife in, to put somebody through the wringer, etc.
One of the typical combinations in metaphorical uses is with the preposition *through* which invariably centers around the notion of a difficult passage, typically *trouble*, *suffering*, *tests*, *hard work*, etc.

At first sight, the semantic evolution of *put* originally referring to thrusting or stabbing to a neutral placement event may be somewhat surprising. However, when comparing this to other Germanic languages, one sees that while they have preserved the original placement verbs SET, LAY and STELL (see Lecture 6), other verbs have entered the domain of placement verbs (in the context of containment) that are semantically quite similar, i.e. German *stecken/stopfen*, Swedish *sticka/stoppa*, and Dutch *steken/stoppen*. The first verb of each of these pairs is related to English *stick* and is similar to the original meaning of *put*, i.e. ‘insert a (elongated) object into an entity’; the second verb derives from the meaning ‘insert a stopper/plug into an opening’. It may thus very well be that the neutralisation of English *put* found its origin in contexts of caused containment. While plausible (also in view of the examples cited above), this hypothesis is to be tested further with more elaborate diachronic research.

## 8.4 Concluding remarks

This lecture has discussed the use of posture and placement verbs in English from a diachronic perspective. The major goal of such a diachronic study is to find an explanation for why English no longer uses the three cardinal posture verbs and their causative equivalents as the other Germanic languages do but prefers two general verbs for both events, namely *be* (for location) and *put* (for placement).

Newman (2009) has suggested that the grammaticalization of the English posture verbs *sit*, *lie* and *stand* has been cut short by the use of these static verbs to refer to a dynamic event (‘getting into a posture’). The corpus study presented in Lesuisse and Lemmens (2018) has tentatively confirmed this, even if some issues remain to be solved.
The demise of the placement verbs *set*, *lay*, and *stell* (obsolete) may
possibly be linked to the halted grammaticalization of the posture verbs: if
one no longer uses the posture verbs as basic locative verbs distinguishing
different ways of being located in space, why should one continue using
specific placement verbs? The early loss of *stell* and the early specialization
of *set* to uses referring to functionality may have facilitated that demise
and the lexical gaps were filled by *put* which developed from a verb
referring to forceful containment to a neutral placement verb, possibly via
intermediate neutral containment. The ‘denegativization’ of *put* has been
confirmed by corpus research which, however, also showed that negative
uses of *put* continue to abound in metaphorical and idiomatic uses and
that positive uses remain quite rare.

Notes

1 The data are drawn from the electronic version of the OED from which all occurrences of the verbs *sit*, *lie*, and *stand* have been extracted. This means that the attestations discussed here are not constrained to those in the entries for each verb but come from anywhere in the dictionary. References to the sources are taken over from the OED.

2 As will be recalled from Lecture 5, in Present-day English *sit* is sometimes used in these contexts, especially to suggest the entity is not used (which Newman 2002b refers to as ‘non-activity *sit*’).

3 This hypothesis was first suggested to M. Lemmens by Jaqueline Guéron (personal comm. 20/09/2003).

4 See Appendix 1 for a list of texts used for this pilot study on English *sit*.

5 Putting Newman’s hypothesis to the test is only one of the goals of Lesuisse and Lemmens (2018); the study also looked at (and confirmed) the entrenchment of the locative and copular uses of the posture verbs in earlier periods of English. We will not consider these two aspects here. Lesuisse and Lemmens (2018) draws on previous (unpublished) work in Lesuisse (2016).

6 Developed by Petré (2014), the Early English Books Online corpus counts 525 million words covering the period 1474-1700.

7 http://www.laurenceanthony.net/software/antconc/

8 For a good study on the historical development of placement verbs in English, see Pauwels (2000).
9 Both corpora are available at https://www.english-corpora.org/

10 The now obsolete word *prese* refers to the seizure of something by a lord for his own use from his feudal tenants or dependents; here this is used in the context of Jesus who puts himself at the mercy of God.

11 *The Victorian Literary Studies Archive* is available at http://victorian-studies.net/; the Project Gutenberg, at http://www.gutenberg.org. See Appendix 2 for a complete list of the texts used for this study.

12 I thank Zhengguang Liu for suggesting this idea which we will explore in our future work.
## Lecture 9

# Typological perspectives on location

## 9.1 Typological perspectives on motion and location

The focus of the preceding lectures has been on the cardinal posture verbs *SIT*, *LIE*, and *STAND* and their causative counterparts placement verbs (*SET*, *LAY*, *STELL). As to the posture verbs, the main focus was on Dutch, where the verbs *zitten* ‘sit’, *liggen* ‘lie’ and *staan* ‘stand’ have developed into basic locative verbs which are used, and often obligatorily so, to express the location of any entity in space (Lecture 5). Moreover, as discussed in Lecture 7, these verbs have grammaticalized to (semi-)auxiliaries marking progressive or durative aspect (*liggen/zitten/staan* + *te* + *V* ‘sit/lie/stand + to + V’). In addition, Dutch also uses specific causative counterparts to these verbs, originally in perfect pair-wise contrasts: *zitten/zetten* ‘sit/ make-sit’, *staan/stellen* ‘stand/make-stand’ and *liggen/leggen* ‘lie/make-lie’ (Lecture 6). In the course of time, this neat paradigm has, however, been disturbed by some internal shifts and by other verbs that have entered the paradigm. Lecture 8 discussed how English is the odd one out in the Germanic language family, as it does not use these posture verbs all that often anymore and prefers the general verb *be*. Similarly, it also prefers the general placement verb *put* over the more specific placement verbs *set* and *lay* (*stell* having disappeared completely from standard English). The
diachronic case studies indicate that English used to use the posture and placement verbs much like the other Germanic languages but has lost these usages over time.

The present lecture expands the comparative focus by adopting a larger typological perspective, offering a more general account of why the Germanic languages prefer to use posture verbs, whereas other languages, like French, do not. The main focus will often still be on posture and placement verbs but other expressions pertaining to either location and motion will be considered as well, since the larger constructions and the way in which spatial information is structured may be different in different languages. In the last section of this lecture, we will also briefly talk about co-verbal gestures. The issues and findings that will be discussed in the present lecture are part of a larger ongoing research project that compares locative descriptions in different languages (Dutch, English, Swedish, and French). Some of this work (notably on Dutch as a foreign language) is done in collaboration with Julien Perrez (University of Liège, Belgium).

My work on Dutch posture verbs originally started quite a while ago when I was teaching Dutch to French speaking people in Belgium.¹ In my classes, I was struck by the great difficulties that francophone learners of Dutch have with the correct use of posture verbs (cf. also some discussion of this in Lecture 5). Clearly, as we have seen in the previous descriptions, the use of posture verbs in Dutch is indeed quite complex but the bigger question is why French speakers would have so much difficulty in mastering the semantic subtleties of these verbs, all the more so because French does have equivalent expressions: *être debout* (lit. ‘be on end’ = ‘stand’), *être assis* (lit. ‘be seated’ = ‘sit’), and *être couché* (lit. ‘be laid’ = ‘lie’).² The answer to that question is as simple as it is fundamental: while French does have the linguistic expressions to refer to the three cardinal postures, it tends not to use them, even in contexts where human posture is at issue. While this may at first sight be striking, it is one of the exponents of a larger typological distinction that has been
described by Talmy (2000), *viz.* the distinction between satellite and verb-
framed languages. Talmy talks about this distinction when he discusses
the different lexicalization patterns that languages provide to express
the different components of motion events. The basic components of
a Motion event are the Figure (the entity moving), the Ground (the
locational anchor relative to which the movement is conceptualized), the
Path, and Motion itself. Other, less basic, components, such as Manner
or Cause, can also be integrated into the linguistic structure. According to
Talmy, there are three privileged lexicalization patterns in the languages of
the world depending on which components are conflated:

(i) Motion + Path, e.g. *enter, ascend*

(ii) Motion + Manner/Cause, e.g. *stumble, trot, chop (down)*, etc.

(iii) Motion + Figure, e.g. *rain, spit*

Kopecka (2006) points out that there is actually a fourth possibility not
mentioned by Talmy that is quite common, especially in French:

(i) Motion + Ground, e.g. *frame, bottle*, etc.

The lexicalization patterns that conflate components of a motion
event in one language may remain distinct in other languages. Strikingly,
languages generally fall into two basic typological categories: verb-framed
languages and satellite-framed languages. The former express the core
of the event (Motion and Path) in the verb, e.g. French *Il entra dans la
chambre* (lit. ‘he entered in the room’) or *Il traversa la rue* (‘he crossed the
street’). Satellite-framed languages express the Path in a satellite and the
verb expresses a Co-event, usually Manner or Cause, e.g. English *He slid
down from the tree* or *He kicked the ball away*. In verb-framed languages,
manner is expressed peripherally (e.g. *Il entra en courant* ‘he entered
dancing’) if it is expressed at all, since it generally tends to be omitted. It
is rarely omitted in Satellite-framed languages.

Extensive experimental research on manner-of-motion verbs³ has
shown quite convincingly that Satellite-framed languages (e.g. Germanic
languages, Russian, Mandarin) ‘tend toward greater specification of manner, probably because the lexicon provides a large collection of verbs that conflate manner with change of location (*crawl*, *swoop*, *tumble*, etc.), often conflating cause as well (*dump*, *hurl*, *shove*, etc.)’ (Berman and Slobin 1994: 118). Verb-framed languages, such as Spanish, Hebrew, and Turkish ‘are less elaborate in this regard, but are often more elaborate in description of location of protagonists and objects and of endstates of motion’ (ibid.). In other words, Satellite-framed languages could be regarded as ‘manner-rich’ languages (large variety expressions of manner of motion verbs used frequently), whereas verb-framed languages would be ‘manner-poor’ (lower number of manner of motion verbs used less frequently). As Slobin (2006) points out, this has considerable cognitive implications: ‘The psycholinguistic consequence [...] is that the language learner and language user must make a number of distinctions of manner of movement that might well be ignored by users of languages with less diverge vocabularies in the domain’ (Slobin 2006: 71).

We will not elaborate much further on the study of motion events, but return to location events and more specifically to the question what the distinction between Satellite and Verb-framed languages has to do with the differences between Dutch and French with respect to the expression of static location mentioned above. In fact, Talmy’s term ‘Motion event’ may be somewhat misleading, since right from the start, it comprises both motion and location: ‘The basic Motion event consists of one object (the FIGURE) moving or located with respect to another object (the reference object or the GROUND)’ (2000,II: 25). This means that the distinction that has been illustrated above with motion verbs also applies to the locative domain. Consider example 1 about the location of a fly on the ceiling.

(1) a. De vlieg zit op het plafond.
the fly sits on the ceiling (Gm. *sitzt auf*, Sw. *sitter på*)

b. La mouche est au plafond
the fly is at the ceiling
In the Germanic languages (Satellite-framed) a location event is
typically expressed with a posture verb which specifies the ‘manner’ in
which the entity is located. In French, in contrast (Verb-framed), the verb
does not provide any information on the manner of location; it merely
expresses location (or rather, ‘existence within a location’ since être ‘be’ is
actually an existence verb). In addition, the semantics of the preposition
is also different: in Dutch (and the other Germanic languages), the
preposition specifies a fairly specific relationship (here, one of support),
whereas in French, a neutral preposition is used: à (here in the allomorph
au which includes the definite article) is a highly grammaticalized
preposition that has no salient link with space anymore. In other words,
even while the Dutch preposition op ‘on’ (just like English on) is also
frequently used in non-spatial context (e.g. op tijd ‘on time’), it has
retained its (specific) spatial meaning as its prototype; French à does not
have the same semantic specificity.

However, the linguistic parallels between motion and location
are only partial. First of all, as pointed out in Lemmens and Slobin
(2008), there is a difference as to where the semantic core of the
event is expressed. For a motion event (real motion), the semantic
core is expressed either by the verb (Verb-framed languages) or by
the Satellite (Satellite-framed languages). However, the core of a
locative relation is always expressed by the preposition. For example,
a posture verb by itself does not express location; it only does that in
combination with an adverbial or prepositional phrase that expresses a
location. Compare for instance, *He is standing, not sitting*. Without any
locative complement, these uses merely refer to posture (manner); it
is only when a Ground is added (e.g. *He is sitting on a chair*) that the
whole encodes location.

A second complication is that within the Germanic languages,
which are all Satellite-framed, there are considerable differences in the
use of posture verbs. This was discussed in Lecture 8, which described
how English has lost the use of ‘manner-specific’ posture and placement
verbs which have given way to the ‘manner-neutral’ verbs *be* and *put*.
In other words, while English is clearly a manner-rich language in the
domain of (real) motion (as is typical of Satellite-framed languages),
it is manner-poor in the domain of static location. In fact, it behaves
very much like a Verb-framed language like French. While French has
had an enormous influence on the English language, we have already
dismissed this influence as a possible cause of the demise of the manner-
specific posture and placement verbs (see Lecture 8). It can be pointed
out in passing that the typological work by Ameka and Levinson (2007)
confirms these differences, as they situate Dutch, English and German in
three different typological groups, even if they are in the same language
family: they put English in the group that uses ‘dummy’ verbs (like *be*),
Dutch in the group that uses a small set of posture verbs, and German in
the group that uses a larger set of positional verbs. They do not elaborate
on this; however, in one of the articles in that thematic issue of the
journal *Linguistics*, Dunn *et al*. (2007) mention that Dutch has an actual
positional system, whereas English has a potential positional system (see
the full quotation in the introduction of Lecture 8). Striking also is that
their research project did not include any Romance languages which,
from the perspective of the distinction between Satellite and Verb-framed
languages, is quite relevant.

In order to compare the inter-Germanic differences in more detail
as well as study the differences with Romance languages, we have set
up a research project, conveniently called the *Oral Picture Description
Project* (OPD-project for short). The main goal of the OPD-project
is to study cross-linguistic differences in locative expressions and do
so from different perspectives, as described in more detail in the next
section.

9.2 Cross-linguistic differences in locative expressions

Inspired by the elicited frog-stories that have been used for motion
verbs (see Berman and Slobin 1994; Strömqvist and Verhoeven 2004),
the OPD-project builds on elicited descriptions of five pictures from
two wordless picture books for children. Each picture depicts a different
kind of environment: (1) a clothing shop for kids, (2) a shoe store,
(3) a bedroom where a family is getting dressed for a party, (4) a street
market, and (5) a butcher's shop. Each picture thus has a typical array of
objects, respectively clothes (Picture 1), shoes and shoeboxes (Picture
2), furniture and clothes (Picture 3), vegetables (Picture 4; at three
vegetable stands), and meat and delicacies (Picture 5). (See Appendix
3 for a black & white reproduction of these five sentences.) However,
they also show people interacting with objects, such as a shop assistant
carrying shoe boxes, a market woman holding up a bunch of carrots,
a woman folding clothes on a counter, people trying on shoes, a man
tying his tie in front of the mirror, or a butcher slicing meat or laying it
on a dish.

The subjects who participated in the quasi-experiments were asked to
describe each picture, one after the other, on the basis of a lead-question,
targeting particular entities. For example, for Picture 1 (a clothing shop
for kids) the lead-question was *Can you tell me where the clothes are in this
shop and what type of clothes they are?* The resulting descriptions are (short)
descriptive monologues, told to the experimenter, situated in front of them.
The subjects were presented one picture at a time, in a random order for
different participants to avoid any order effect. The subjects were seated on
a chair without armrests. Before starting the description, they could hold
the picture for a while to study it and then were asked to place it on a stand
placed slightly to the right of them (at about 1m distance) and start their
description. The productions were video-taped and transcribed verbatim.
Afterwards the data were annotated in ELAN, which also allows analysis of
co-verbal gestures.

There were 12 participants for each language studied in the project:
for French, the participants were undergraduates at the University of
Lille, France; for English, these were undergraduates at the University of
Berkeley, and for Dutch, these were undergraduates at the University of Leuven, Belgium. We also recorded 22 French-speaking learners of Dutch, undergraduates at the University Saint-Louis Brussels, Belgium. Prior to the experiment, the learners all took a foreign language proficiency test, allowing us to establish three different levels of proficiency (roughly speaking, intermediate, intermediate advanced, and advanced). In total, the elicitation study thus contains 58 video-recordings, with five different descriptions per participant.

The analysis looks at the linguistic and gestural expression of locative events. Linguistically, a locative event need not necessarily be described with a single sentence or clause. First of all, a locative event may be expressed below the level of a clause, as in the examples in 2.

(2) a. dan hangt er naast de kassa nog een rek **met sokken op** (OPD-DU-04)⁴

then to the left of the counter there is another rack with socks on
b. en helemaal links onderaan staat dan ook weer een rekje **met kleren** (OPD-DU-06)

and completely at the bottom left, there is yet another rack with
clothes

In each of these two examples, there are two location events,
one expressed in the main clause (locating the counter and the rack
respectively) and one via a prepositional clause with the preposition *met*
'with'. In 2a, the prepositional phrase contains a locative postposition
(*op* 'on') which expresses the locative relation between rack and socks;
in 2b, there is no such overt expression of the locative relation. All such
prepositional expressions (which we call 'non-autonomous locative
events') have been identified but have so far not been included in our
analyses.

A second complication concerns the embedding of locative events,
as in 3.
(3) tussen de twee [...] nachttafels is er een bed waarop [...] twee hemden en een broek liggen (OPD-Du2F-12)

between the two [...] bedside tables, there is a bed on which [...] two shirts and one pair of trousers lie

From a strictly syntactic point of view, there are two separate locative clauses, each referring to two different locative events: the main clause ('between the two [...] bedside tables, there is a bed') locates the bed which functions as the Ground for the location of the clothes, presented in the following relative clause ('on which two shirts and a pair of trousers lie'). On a functional level, however, this can be regarded as one single locative event, as the speaker is targeting the location of the clothes, where the main clause is merely an auxiliary event to locate the Ground (the bed). In other words, while on the level of the main clause, the bed is a Figure located within the room (Ground), it functions as a secondary Figure in the larger locative event the speaker is targeting, i.e. the location of the clothes which thus can be considered the primary Figure. Such complex constructions do have an impact on the way in which the information is structured and as discussed below, Dutch and French use different information structuring strategies. As we are interested in the expression of the location of entities, we have considered clauses as separate locative clauses whenever they locate two different figures; in the case of the example above, we have thus annotated the two clauses separately. Strikingly, even if the three data sets for the native speakers are of comparable size, the harvest of locative clauses ranges from approximately 400 (for both English and French) to 900 for Dutch. While this is only a first view, this suggests that in Dutch location is talked about much more in separate (autonomous) locative phrases than in English and French.

Each locative clause has subsequently been annotated according to various parameters, including identification of the Figure (the entity located), the Ground, the verb (lemma form), the (semantic) verb type, the construction type, and the verb satellites. This method makes it
possible to analyze the encoding of location events from a combined lexical and constructional perspective. In a later analysis, we will also look at co-verbal gestures. In what follows, we will present some results: first, we look at lexical differences; next, we consider constructional differences and show how they interact with both lexical choices and information structuring; finally, we will also consider some data from an L2 perspective (Dutch by francophone learners).

### 9.2.1 Lexical analysis

The verb types have been characterized via the following categories (we use English as a metalanguage here, as also indicated by the single quotes):

- POSTURE verbs: verbs that express the posture of the located entity, i.e. ‘sit’, ‘lie’, ‘stand’, and ‘hang’⁵

- NEUTRAL verbs: verbs that are semantically quite empty, often existential or dummy verbs, e.g. ‘be’

- DISPOSITIONAL verbs: (locative) verbs which provide some more precise information about how the entity is located in space; attachment verbs (‘attach’), arrangement verbs, e.g. ‘scatter’, or configuration verbs, e.g. ‘fold’.

- PERCEPTION verbs: ‘see’ (as in ‘One sees some clothes on the bed’)

- POSSESSION verbs: ‘have’ (e.g. ‘The woman has some clothes over her arm’)

- OTHER: any other verb used in a locative clause, e.g. action verbs (‘the father is tying his tie in front of the mirror’), hold-verbs, etc.

- ELLIPSIS: no verb (mostly in enumerative patterns).

If one compares the verb types that are used in the three languages, one gets the distribution given in Table 28 and Figure 21.
<table><caption>Table 28. Distribution of verb types for English, Dutch, and French</caption><thead><tr><th>VERB TYPE</th><th></th><th>ENGLISH</th><th>DUTCH</th><th>FRENCH</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="2">POSTURE</td><td>N</td><td>121</td><td>485</td><td>19</td></tr><tr><td>%</td><td>19%</td><td>52%</td><td>5%</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">DISPOSITION</td><td>N</td><td>36</td><td>2</td><td>78</td></tr><tr><td>%</td><td>6%</td><td>0.2%</td><td>20%</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">NEUTRAL</td><td>N</td><td>377</td><td>264</td><td>218</td></tr><tr><td>%</td><td>59%</td><td>29%</td><td>56%</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">OTHER</td><td>N</td><td>40</td><td>40</td><td>39</td></tr><tr><td>%</td><td>6%</td><td>4%</td><td>10%</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">ELLIPSIS</td><td>N</td><td>67</td><td>135</td><td>33</td></tr><tr><td>%</td><td>10%</td><td>15%</td><td>9%</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">TOTAL</td><td>N</td><td>417</td><td>926</td><td>387</td></tr><tr><td>%</td><td>100%</td><td>100%</td><td>100%</td></tr></tbody></table>

<figure><img src="image_33.png" /><figcaption>Figure 21. Distribution of verb types for English, Dutch and French</figcaption></figure>

The data given in Table 28 and Figure 21 confirm that Dutch prefers the use of posture verbs when talking about the location of entities, whereas both English and French prefer neutral verbs (59% and 56% respectively): basically this is *be* for English, and *être* ‘be’ or presentational *il y a* (equivalent of English *there is/are*) for French. English is thus like
French yet not entirely, since the posture verbs *sit*, *lie* and *stand* are still sometimes used (19%), including cases where the location of inanimate entities is expressed (e.g. *The clothes are lying on the bed*). Another difference between English and French is that if any locational specification is given in French, it is via disposition verbs (20%), and mostly these are attachment verbs (e.g. *être attaché* ‘be attached’, *être collé* ‘be glued/fixed’, etc.); English does not use this much (6%).

The concern that Dutch speakers have with the (correct) use of
posture verbs is also nicely revealed by corrections that speakers make
in their spontaneous speech if the verb they had initially chosen is not
entirely correct, as illustrated in 4.

(4) a. in de rechterzetel **staat euh ligt** een kussen
in the righthand chair **stands** err **lies** a pillow

b. voor het bed **staat euh ligt** één euh twee paar pantoffels
in front of the bed **stands** euh **lies** one euh two pairs of slippers.

Example 4a describes a pillow that has a fairly outspoken upright
 vertikal) orientation which initially incites the speaker to use *staan* ‘stand’
(which is a possible coding for the situation at hand), yet subsequently
corrects to *liggen* ‘lie’ which is the prototypical coding for non-rigid entities
(see Lecture 5). Example 4b refers to a spatially more complex situation:
one pairs of slippers is nicely positioned (making *staan* ‘stand’ the logical
coding since the slippers are in their functional position on their base), but
the other pair is one where the heel of one slipper is placed on top of the
other slipper; the two different ways of being positioned leads the speaker
to correct towards *liggen* ‘lie’ indicating that they have not been placed
properly. The verb *liggen* ‘lie’ is also often used to code messy situations,
which may give another motivation for the speaker’s choice.

In line with the coding preferences of their language, the corrections
one finds in the French data go in the direction of attachment, as in
5a. Also, they use an attachment verb where a Dutch (or even English)
speaker would not, as in 5b.
(5) a. sur le fond de l'image il y a des t-shirts suspen(dus) enfin accrochés sur le mur

in the back of the picture there are t-shirts which are *hung* well *attached* against the wall

b. un lit **collé** contre le mur

a bed *glued* against the wall

One surprising finding that comes out of the comparison of verb types (Table 28 and Figure 21) is that the percentage of neutral verbs is still quite high in Dutch (29%). Is this not in contradiction to the claim made in the previous lectures that in Dutch posture verbs are the preferred (and often even obligatory) coding to express the location of entities? To understand why it is not a contradiction, we need to look at the construction types.

9.2.2 **Constructional analysis**

The construction types in the data have been characterized as basic locative constructions, presentational constructions, identificational constructions, transitive constructions progressive constructions, non-locative constructions, and complex constructions (combinations of the previous ones). Each construction type is briefly presented below.

- **BASIC LOCATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS** (BLC), a concept introduced by Wilkins and Levinson (1998), are constructions of the form <Figure> + <predicate> + <relator> (mostly a preposition) + <Ground>, as in *Most of the shoes stand in the display case* or *Two night tables stand next to the bed*.

- **PRESENTATIONAL CONSTRUCTIONS** (PRES) are constructions in which a Figure is introduced by presentational markers such as *there*+*be* in English, *er* in Dutch, or *il y a* in French, e.g. *Er ligt een bloes in de badkamer* 'there lies a blouse in the bathroom' or *Il y a une dame à la caisse* 'there is a woman at the desk'.

- **IDENTIFICATIONAL CONSTRUCTIONS** (ID) are typically introduced by
cleft-markers to identify a given Figure, e.g. *Les premiers clients que je vois, c'est une dame et une petite fille à la caisse* 'the first clients that I see, it is a lady and a little girl at the desk.'

- TRANSITIVE CONSTRUCTIONS (TRANS) include various constructions with transitive verbs (as opposed to intransitive location verbs or copula-like existential verbs); they come in various subtypes (usually because of the type of verb that is used) such as perception constructions, possessive constructions or constructions with other transitive verbs like *lay, set or hold*.

- PROGRESSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS (PROG) which in Dutch can either be built with *aan het V zijn* 'be at the V' (the verb 'be' followed by a nominalized infinitive expressing the ongoing activity) or, more relevant to the current study, with a (grammaticalized) posture verb followed by an infinitive (*zitten/liggen/staan+te+V* 'lie/sit/stand+to+V'), as discussed in Lecture 7.

- COMPLEX CONSTRUCTIONS are those where a basic locative construction (BLC) is introduced by a presentational construction (e.g. *There are clothes that lie on the bed*) or a transitive (perception, possessive) construction (e.g. *I see t-shirts that are pinned to the wall*). Such complex constructions are a specific way of construing a spatial event where the first construction is used to introduce the Figure and the subsequent locative construction (the second clause) specifies its location. These embedded BLCs have been regarded as a separate category, coded as X+BLC, where the X represents the type of matrix construction, e.g. PRES+BLC or PERC+BLC.⁶

While all of the languages in the study use all of these constructions (except for the postural progressive which is exclusive to Dutch), they do so to a different degree. French, for example, has a higher frequency of the transitive construction than the other languages, but this is mainly due to the higher frequency of the perception verb *voir* 'see'. These are the largest group of constructions in French. They also ave a higher use
of causative verbs, which lies in line with their preference for lexicalizing
the Agentive aspect (see Lecture 6, Table 13). In Dutch, in contrast,
the BLC is the largest group (32%) together with the presentational
construction with a posture verb and a locative complement. This shows
the overall high locative nature of Dutch.

Presentational constructions are obviously quite common for
all languages given the nature of the description task which involves
introducing new items in the discourse. They do show a striking
interaction with different preferences regarding the lexical choices. In
French, a presentational construction is always via a fixed construction (il
y a lit. it there has, 'there is') which contains the neutral verb avoir 'have'
in the third person singular, a 'dummy' subject il 'he' and the locative
particle y 'there'. In English, the use of a posture verb in a presentational
construction is not excluded (e.g. There are clothes lying on the bed), but there
is a strong preference for the verb be (in line with its general preference
to use this verb in locative descriptions). In Dutch, as already indicated,
a posture verb is still the most common verb used in the presentational
construction (about 75%), even if their frequency is lower than in the BLC
(85%). It is this drop in frequency that explains the somewhat unexpected
higher frequency of neutral verbs in Dutch (see Table 28 and Figure 21).

Particularly interesting are the constructional differences between
French and Dutch in the use of the independent and the embedded
BLC (X+BLC), shown in Figure 22 (also showing the figures for the L2
francophone learners of Dutch), as they pertain to different information
structure strategies.

These findings suggest two important differences between French
and Dutch with respect to information structuring. Firstly, the data
indicate that in French, BLCs are often presented in a subordinate clause
(12% X+BLC vs. 23% independent BLCs), more so than in Dutch (3%
X+BLC vs. 33% independent BLCs). This suggests that the locative
information (expressed in the BLC) is often backgrounded in French,
much like manner of motion is subordinate in the case of motion events
<figure><img src="image_34.png" /><figcaption>Figure 22. Independent vs. embedded BLCs in Dutch L1, Dutch L2 and French L1</figcaption></figure>

where it is typically expressed via a syntactically subordinate element. The L2 learners of Dutch nicely straddle the middle.

Secondly, this points at different ways of structuring locative information in French and Dutch, in particular with respect to Figure and Ground relations. In French, native speakers have the tendency to introduce an entity (the Figure) and then provide supplementary locative information on that same Figure. This explains the higher percentage of embedded basic locative constructions in the L1 French corpus, as the French speakers typically use such an accumulative pattern. While such patterning is clearly possible in Dutch, it is not very common (only 3.5%); the typical information structuring pattern in Dutch is to locate an entity which subsequently serves as the Ground for the location of another entity expressed in the following subclause. We have characterized this difference in terms of an onion-model (French) versus a train-model (Dutch). Consider the following examples, representing the contrast.

(6) vous avez un premier **client qui est assis** sur un fauteuil vert you have a first *customer who is seated* on a green sofa
(7) in de slaapkamer staat er een groot **bed** waar verschillende **kledingstukken** op liggen

in the bedroom there stands a big *bed* on which different *clothes* lie

As visualized in Figure 23 (reproduced from Lemmens and Perrez
2018: 145), the French pattern is that of a layered onion: the centre is
the Figure ('customer'), to which an additional layer of information is
added ('sitting on sofa'). The Dutch pattern, in contrast, is that of a chain
of information, much like wagons in a train, as depicted in Figure 24
(ibid.), where different entities play different roles: the first Figure ('bed')
becomes the Ground for the second Figure ('clothes').

As indicated by the event labels, in the French example, we are
dealing with the same locative event in both clauses (location of the
customer), whereas in Dutch, we are dealing with two different locative
events, even if, as we mentioned earlier, from a functional perspective

<figure><img src="image_35.png" /><figcaption>Figure 24. The Dutch train model</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_36.png" /></figure>
one could regard these as building one single event, targeting the location of the clothes. In such a perspective, the first locative event (location of the bed) is auxiliary to the second (the location of the clothes).

These different tendencies are confirmed if we look at the Figure-Ground relationships within subordinate clauses. The situation for French is clear: in 91% of the cases the following subclause gives further information on the entity (either the Figure or the Ground) already introduced the main clause (cf. +BLC above). The tendency for Dutch is more mixed: in about 40% of the cases, more information is given on a Figure or Ground and in about 40% there is a Figure-Ground reversal, i.e. the Figure in the main clause becomes the Ground to locate a new Figure (two different locative events). Strikingly again, the learners straddle the middle.

The above results clearly point to differences between Dutch and French with respect to both the weighing of information (backgrounded in a subordinate clause or not) and the structuring of information (onion-type layering vs. train-like chaining). However, in the current analysis, we have not included non-clausally expressed locative information, such as in *In the bedroom there is a chair with a jacket (on)*. In these cases, the location of an entity (here, the jacket) is not coded as a clause but as a prepositional phrase which demotes the locative information even more. In one way, this lines up with the French tendency (demotion of locative information), but it also harmonizes with the Dutch pattern, as it fits the train model (in the example: location of the chair which is then the Ground for the location of the jacket).

### 9.2.3 Dutch L1 versus Dutch L2

As specified above, we have also elicited descriptions from one group of 22 L2 speakers, francophone Belgians who learn Dutch. The proficiency test has allowed an even distribution in three proficiency groups. The reason why it is interesting to look at these learners is that there is a typological cross-over from a Verb-framed language (French)
to a Satellite-framed language. As discussed above, this also applies (be it with some nuancing) to the domain of location, and in particular to the use of posture verbs. In Lecture 5, we have already mentioned the difficulties that francophone learners have with the use of Dutch posture verbs, as it emerged from written essays by L2 speakers of Dutch (see Lemmens and Perrez 2010). The elicited OPD-data confirm this difficulty perhaps even more clearly (cf. Lemmens and Perrez 2012), as nicely shown by the following explicit hesitations and meta-linguistic comments on their own proficiency.

(8) a. Twee andere klanten **zijn ... zitten** (en)fin euh non ... **staan** voor de comptoir (OPD-Du2F-14-2)

two other costumers are ... sit ... well err no ... stand in front of the counter

b. De eerste **is** euh **ligt** euh <gesture> op de linkse hoek van de foto.
Ja, ik zeg **ligt** maar dat kan ook **staat** zijn. (OPD-Du2F-14-2)

the first is err lies err <gesture> on the left corner of the picture.
Yes, I say ‘lies’ but that can also be ‘stands’

In 8a, the speaker initially uses the neutral verb *zijn* ('be'), then selects the wrong posture verb (*zitten*), then corrects this to *staan*, the appropriate verb encode the posture of these customers. To a native speaker, such hesitation is quite striking given the salient semantic difference between the last two choices. In 8b, the speaker, talking about the location of a chair, provides a meta-linguistic comment on her own coding, indicating her hesitation as to which verb should be used. This is also confirmed quantitatively: the L2 speakers use 372 clauses with posture verbs in their oral descriptions; 97 of these could be regarded as errors (26%); in the data based on written essay used in the study in Lemmens and Perrez (2010), this was only 11%.

The oral data also confirm the learners’ tendency to underuse the posture verbs. At all three levels, the learners still follow the tendency of their native language (French) of using a neutral verb in locative contexts;
there is a decrease over the three levels (50%–45%–39%), but Level 3 speakers still use these verbs almost twice as often as the native speakers (38.6% vs. 20.15%). This decrease is only partially paralleled with a slight (5%) increase of posture verbs (45%–48%–50%, resp.). The Dutch L1 speakers use a posture verb in 74% of the locative clauses.

When comparing the frequency of use of the three cardinal posture verbs, one notices some interesting differences which basically confirm the ‘posture verb confusion’ that we already talked about in Lecture 5. The L2 speakers use *staan* ‘stand’ much less frequently than the L1 speakers, but overuse *liggen* ‘lie’ and *zitten* ‘sit’. The overuse of *liggen* ‘lie’ is mostly due to the learners following the real horizontal dimensions of objects on their base (which should be coded with *staan*) such as the bed in a bedroom (Picture 3) or shoeboxes on the floor or in a storage room (Picture 2). Strikingly, as shown in Table 29, the percentage of errors in the use of posture verbs in the learner data steadily increases over the different levels, even if these differences are not statistically significant ($\chi^2$ = 3.31, df = 2, p = 0.191), which motions to caution. Importantly, the increase of errors is not because the higher proficient learners use more language; there is no significant difference between the proficiency groups in the amount of language produced.

<table><caption>Table 29. Error percentage in the learner data for use of POSTURE verbs</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2"></th><th colspan="2">L2-P1</th><th colspan="2">L2-P2</th><th colspan="2">L2-P3</th></tr><tr><th>N</th><th>%</th><th>N</th><th>%</th><th>N</th><th>%</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th>Total POS errors</th><td>32</td><td>24%</td><td>30</td><td>26%</td><td>42</td><td>34%</td></tr><tr><th>Total POS correct</th><td>100</td><td>76%</td><td>86</td><td>74%</td><td>82</td><td>66%</td></tr><tr><th>TOTAL</th><td>132</td><td>100%</td><td>116</td><td>100%</td><td>124</td><td>100%</td></tr></tbody></table>

On the basis of these results, one might be tempted to conclude that the learners’ proficiency in the domain of locative expressions decreases as the general proficiency increases. This interpretation is, however, incorrect. Instead, we argue that the learners at proficiency level 3 make more posture verb related errors precisely because they are beginning to behave more like
the native speakers. Differently put, more advanced learners show a higher degree of ‘locative sensitivity’ leading to more idiomatically correct Dutch, despite the individual errors. The errors they produce result from their awareness of the necessity to use a posture verb in Dutch.

The errors produced by the learners are of different types, even if it is not always easy (or even possible) to uncover the motivations for these errors; some may be merely due to the stress caused by the experimental setting. Some tendencies can nevertheless be observed. As already indicated, one source of errors stems from the learners relying too strongly on the entity’s real horizontal or vertical dimensions ignoring its being placed on its base. Other errors are triggered by the Figure’s use; for example, a chair incorrectly described as ‘sitting’ (instead of standing, since saliently on its feet), because we sit on it. Conversely, the Ground may lead to some interference, as in the case of a dress incorrectly said to ‘sit’ on a chair (instead of ‘lying’) because typically people sit on a chair.

One of these errors, which lies in line with what has been observed in Lecture 5 (for the written L2 data), is the overgeneralization of *zitten* ‘sit’ in contexts of containment which, however, do not satisfy the conditions for this verb to be used. For example, L2 speakers turned out to use *zitten* ‘sit’ for neatly folded and stacked pullovers in an open shelf-like cupboard; they are clearly contained, but very saliently and visibly in their canonical position, so a coding with *liggen* ‘lie’ is more idiomatic here. Similarly, L2 speakers used *zitten* ‘sit’ for shoes positioned in a shoe shop’s display window. They, too, are contained, but the container is quite large and the canonical position of the shoes is quite salient, triggering a coding with *staan* ‘stand’. Significantly, such overgeneralizations only occur with the most proficient learners (group 3).

In sum, the data from oral descriptions by French-speaking learners of Dutch, reveal that the correct use of the cardinal posture verbs *liggen* (‘lie’), *zitten* (‘sit’) and *staan* (‘stand’) remain one of the major (lexical) stumbling blocks for these learners, even at advanced level. The difficulty arises from the fact that the use of these verbs, which have evolved to basic location
verbs, is fairly compulsory when one wants to express the location of an
entity in space, some exceptional contexts notwithstanding. Influenced
by their native language, French learners will typically use a neutral verb,
mostly *zijn* 'be' to express the location of an entity where Dutch prefers
or requires a posture verb. While at first sight this seems to suggest that
the learners do not seem to improve all that much in their 'locative
proficiency', the data clearly indicate that the learners do improve and that
the more advanced speakers are significantly closer to the native speakers
than to the learners of the two lower proficiency levels.

9.3 Concluding remarks

The data from the Oral Picture Description project has allowed a
comparison of English, French and Dutch with respect to how speakers
of these languages describe the location of entities in space. In this lecture
we have only highlighted a few results that have come out of the project.
The data clearly confirmed some expected typological differences, such
as the extensive use of posture verbs by Dutch speakers, as opposed to
English and French speakers. English still uses posture verbs but clearly
to a much more moderate extent. French, in contrast, hardly uses any
posture verbs at all, even not in reference to the location of people who
are clearly sitting or standing on the stimuli pictures (there were no
instances of people lying). French generally omits coding this information
altogether; if it provides any specific locative information, it tends to
pertain to some form of attachment or arrangement. The more detailed
comparison of Dutch, French, and Dutch L2 data produced by French-
speaking learners, has confirmed these tendencies, but has also led to
new insights, such as the different strategies that the two languages use to
structure locative information. Dutch tends to introduce a Figure which
subsequently (i.e. in the next clause) serves as the Ground to situate
another Figure: we have called this the train-model. French, in contrast,
tends to introduce a Figure and subsequently adds further information on
the same Figure, which we have called the onion-model. Clearly, these
are preferences, not absolute and categorical distinctions.

One additional layer of analysis, which has not been discussed
in this lecture, is that of co-verbal gestures (see Lemmens and Perrez
2015, 2017). Even if this analysis has not yet been fully finalized,
some interesting tendencies have already emerged. For instance, when
comparing the L1 and L2 speakers of Dutch, one observes that the
learners tend to make gestures that are more tied to the reality being
described, such as the shape or size of the object, or an enactment of what
one does with the object (comb your hair, pull out drawers, etc.), whereas
the L1 speakers have more pragmatic gestures that serve to structure the
discourse. If the learners make any pragmatic gestures, they are mostly
meta-linguistic epistemic gestures, indicating that they do not know
the correct expression (see Hostetter and Alibali 2007, 2011 for similar
findings and discussion). Another interesting finding that has emerged
is that there are ‘gesture bursts’, i.e. a significantly higher frequency of
gestures for the description of particular scenes. Sometimes this may be
because of the specific spatial array of the objects described (e.g. a bed
positioned in between to bedtables); this appeared to be true for both
L1 and L2 speakers of Dutch, for example. For the L2 speakers, some
gesture bursts occurred with objects that none of them seemed to know
the term for (e.g. *stapelbed* ‘bunk bed’). Their strategy was thus to use
the (common) word *bed* ‘bed’ and express it being a bunkbed gesturally
(e.g. by holding two flat hands one above the other with some space in
between). Gestures thus provide an interesting and useful compensation
strategy for lower verbal proficiency.

Mostly, co-verbal gestures are not included in linguistic analyses.
However, in the last decades more and more attention is paid to a
multimodal analysis of language which will continue to refine, or even
challenge, some of the ‘traditional’ insights. It can be expected that this is
also true for some of the observations made in this lecture with respect to
the expression of motion and location. Stay tuned for more.
Notes

1 Belgium has three official languages: Dutch (spoken in the Northern part called Flanders), French (spoken in the Southern part called Wallonia), and German (spoken in the eastern part). The capital Brussels is officially bilingual (Dutch and French).

2 Why French uses participial (i.e. resultative) constructions to refer to states was discussed in Lecture 6 (section 6.2).

3 See, among others, Berman and Slobin (1994), Brown and Chen (2013), Hickmann (2007), Hickmann and Hendricks (2006), Slobin (2004); Slobin and Hoiting (1994), Slobin et al. (2014), Strömqvist and Verhoeven 2004. Zlatev and David (2003) observe that there are actually also equipollently framed languages (such as e.g. Thai) that express both manner and path equipollently through serial verb constructions. This will not concern us here.

4 Examples with a reference like this are taken from our corpus of oral picture descriptions (OPD), the labels DU and Du2F refer respectively to native speakers of Dutch and French-speaking learners of Dutch, the last digits (04, in this case) identify the individual speaker.

5 For this study, the verb ‘hang’ is considered a posture verb as well.

6 In the examples given, there is no locative element in the first part, but this is possible, e.g. *I see clothes on the bed that have been laid out there*. While relevant, we will not be much concerned with this difference in the present discussion.
## Lecture 10

# Two case studies in grammaticalization

In this last lecture, I present two case studies on language change and grammaticalization. The first one deals with a specific historical evolution of a Dutch conversational particle towards an evaluative adjective. Strictly speaking, this is not really a case of grammaticalization, but an instance of syntactic reinterpretation and actualization which could, however, be the starting point of further grammaticalization (see Lemmens 2013). Strikingly, this evolution finds a parallel in the evolution of English *OK* (or *okay*) also taken over in other languages. The second study concerns light verb constructions in Odia, an Indo-Aryan language. This study, which is a case of bona fide grammaticalization of lexical verbs to light verbs, is done in collaboration with Kalyanamalini Sahoo (English and Foreign Language University in Hyderabad, India), linguist and native speaker of Odia (see Lemmens and Sahoo 2017, 2019; Sahoo and Lemmens 2017).

## 10.1 From particle to evaluative adjective

The case study on the grammaticalization of evaluative adjectives finds its starting point quite close to home, literally. It started with a particular feature in the Belgian variety of Dutch that my children use, especially in
informal conversation. When I started to look into this particular feature, I discovered that it was not just an anecdotal feature of our family's idiolect, but something that not only occurs more widely in Flanders, but — to my great surprise — also finds parallels in other languages, as will be shown below. Let us first see where all of this started.

The variety of Belgian Dutch that we are talking about here is the one spoken in the central region of Flanders (the Dutch speaking part of Belgium), around the capital Brussels and a bit beyond (mostly, the province of Flemish Brabant). As pointed out by Vandekerckhove and Nobels (2010), this is one of the dominant regiolects in Flanders. In Belgian Dutch in general, but especially in the dialects spoken in that central region, there are quite a number of loan-words from French, due to language contact with French-speaking Wallonia and Brussels (which officially is bilingual but has a larger number of French speakers). One of these loan words, and the starting point of our study, is French *ça va* (pronounced /sava/), which literally means ‘it goes’. It is often used in French as a conversation opener or greeting; a typical conversational exchange is like the one given in 1, with the b-sentence being the answer to the a-sentence.

<table><tr><td>(1) A: Comment</td><td>ça</td><td>va ?</td></tr><tr><td>how</td><td>it</td><td>go.3SG.PRES (= ‘How is it going?’)</td></tr><tr><td>B: ça</td><td>va</td><td>ø/bien/mal.</td></tr><tr><td>it</td><td>go.3SG.PRES</td><td>ø/well/badly</td></tr></table>

The answer in 1b can either be with specific adverbs specifying how things are going ('well', 'badly') or without any such adverbs; in that case, things are going normally, not good but not bad either. This is not unlike a typical English (greeting) conversation: *A: How is it going? B: It's going fine.* even if in English leaving out the adverb work less well.

This conversational use of *ça va* has been taken over verbatim in Belgian Dutch, with the same function. Example 2 presents a personally attested conversation between my son and one of his friends.
(2) A: Hoe gaat het ?
how goes it ?

B: **çava**, en met u?
çava, and with you? (= ‘OK, and you?’)

A: **çavakkes.**
**çava.DIM.PL**

As shown, the phrase *çava* is taken over as a monomorphemic unit (to indicate this, we will henceforth also spell it as one single word); the second use is particularly interesting (and surely odd to someone who does not speak Dutch), as it adds a diminutive suffix in the plural to *çava* (*-ke* is the (informal) Belgian Dutch diminutive form).¹ The use of such a diminutive form for adjectives or conversational phrases is not unusual in Dutch to render one’s speech less formal, and it often occurs in the plural form; some other examples are *hallootjes* (‘hello.DIM.PL’), *saluutjes* (‘bye.DIM.PL’), *okeetjes* (‘ok.DIM.PL’), or *frisjes* (‘cold.DIM.PL’). As the use of the diminutive is not relevant to our study, we will ignore it in the remaining discussion; the main point here is to show how *çava* has been fully integrated into the Dutch system.

Despite the fact that in Belgian Dutch *çava* is considered an unanalyzable unit, its use in 2 follows the French conversational use; we will call this ‘conversational *çava*’, which is quite common in (informal) Belgian Dutch. Its syntactic category is that of a particle or interjection. In this use, it can also be used as a question tag

(3) We zullen het zo doen, **çava**? (constructed example)
we shall do it like this, çava (= ‘OK’)

The more striking use, which was the onset of this study, is the use
of *çava* as a predicative adjective, as in (4).²

(4) a. Die pokémon is nog wel **çava** (www)
that pokémon is still çava (= ‘OK’)

çava.DIM.PL
b. Ik vind de auto persoonlijk ook leuker met een dubbele uitlaat, maar 'k vind het toch ça va nog zo. (www)
I personally find the car also nicer with a double exhaust pipe, but I find it still *çava* (= 'OK') like this

The typical construction in which this predicative *çava* occurs is (in English paraphrase) 'X is still *çava*' (meaning: 'X is still OK') or 'I think/ find X is still *çava*' (meaning 'I find X OK'). The meaning of *çava* is more or less similar to English *OK* and the 'more or less positive' evaluation it denotes typically occurs against the background of a more negative context, which may be explicit in the surrounding discourse or implied. This also explains the frequent use of other modal particles confirming the speaker's stance, such as *nog wel* 'still' in 4a or *toch ... nog* 'still, despite everything' in 4b. As with regular adjectives, *çava* can be modified by intensifying adverbs, as in 5 (underlined).

(5) a. de kotbazen zijn <u>heel erg çava</u> (www)
the landlords are very much çava ('OK')
b. voor de rest is die <u>echt çava!</u> (www)
for the rest this one is really çava ('OK')

The next step in the evolution of *çava* is its use as an attributive adjective as in 6, where it basically means ‘more or less OK’.

(6) a. Maar toch **een çava plaat** om ... (www)
but still a çava ('OK') music record to ...
b. Ziet er nog **een çava cd'ke** uit (www)
looks like a çava ('OK') CD.DIM
c. zij speelden **een çava match** (www)
they played a çava ('OK') game

These examples show that *çava* has become a full-fledged adjective, occurring in both predicative and attributive position.

In Dutch, there is generally no difference between adjectives and adverbs; in principle, an adjective can be used as an adverb without any
change of form. Logically then, *çava* can be used as an adverb, as in 7.
Both are personal attestations, the a-sentence heard on a tv-programme,
the b-sentence produced by one of my children in the context of a
comment on the inferior quality of the bed in his student room.

(7) a. Dit is *çava* gedaan (pers. att. *TV Eén*, 22/02/2012)
   this is çava (‘OK’) done (= fairly well done)
b. Ik slaap *çava* nog wel (pers. att. 20–11–2011)
   I sleep çava (‘OK’) despite all

In 7, *çava* is used as an adverb modifying a verb; some speakers take
it one step further and use *çava* as an adverbial pre-adjectival modifier as
in 8.

(8) a. Da’s toch *çava* logisch (pers. att, 20–11–2012)
   that’s PRT çava (‘OK’) logical
b. nee nee die is echt *çava* knap (www)
   no no, that one (=girl) is really çava (‘OK’) pretty

For many speakers who accept the use of *çava* in informal language
(and even use it themselves perhaps in such contexts), this particular use
of *çava* as a pre-adjectival modifier is not possible at all. I myself still find
it awkward, despite the occasional use by two of my family members
(8a is an attested example, uttered by my youngest son).

To sum up, the French phrase *ça va* ‘it goes’ entered Belgian Dutch
via language contact. This explains why it is not at all used (perhaps not
even understood) by speakers of Netherlandic Dutch (spoken in the
Netherlands). In its initial use, still very common today, it functions
in exactly the same way as in French, as a conversational particle (or
interjection). Next, it begins to be used as a predicative adjective,
subsequently as an attributive adjective, and finally, it can be used as an
adverb, first with verbs, then even as an adjective premodifier.

While the exact chronology of the different steps in the evolution of
çava still need to be confirmed by a more elaborate diachronic study of
this recent language change, there are some motivations for suggesting
the evolution from (i) conversational *çava*, to (ii) predicative *çava*, to
(iii) attributive *çava*, and to (iv) adverbial *çava*. First of all, conversation
*çava* is an exact copy of its original use, and thus a most logical starting
point. Secondly, in Dutch predicative constructions (e.g. ‘X is Y’) the
predicative element (Y), is syntactically open to words of different
categories, such as nouns, particles, or adjectives; the attributive use in
Dutch is fairly much restricted to genuine adjectives; the hypothesis
is that this only occurs later, when *çava* gets established as an adjective.
Thirdly, adverbial use (and in particular pre-adjectival adverbial use)
only seems possible once the adjectival use is fully entrenched. Further
confirmation was found in a small (informal) acceptability experiment in
which 35 Flemish students (19–21 years old) at the University of Leuven,
Belgium were presented with Dutch sentences with *çava* in

(a) predicative use (in English paraphrase: ‘the new Coldplay CD is still *çava*’),

(b) attributive use ('this is a *çava* song'),

(c) adverbial use with verbs ('to play along *çava*'), and

(d) adverbial use with adjectives ('this BMW is *çava* pretty').

Their acceptability rate decreased in line with the suggested evolution,
i.e. predicative use 90% > attributive use 80% > adverbial use 18%
(both types). While this was only an informal inquiry, it suggests that the
predicative use is more entrenched than the attributive use, which is in
turn more entrenched than adverbial use.

However, as already indicated in the introduction, this evolution
is not a genuine instance of grammaticalization (but could be the onset
of it). As will be remembered from Lecture 7, grammaticalization is the
evolution of a lexical item to a grammatical item or that of a grammatical
item that continues to develop new grammatical functions. As Hopper and
Traugott define it, it is ‘the change whereby lexical items and constructions
come in certain linguistic contexts to serve grammatical functions and,
once grammaticalized, continue to develop new grammatical functions’
(2003: 18). According to this definition, the evolution of *çava* is not a case of grammaticalization, since the shift of a conversational particle to an evaluative adjective is not a change of a lexical item to a grammatical item or of a grammatical item to a more grammatical item. Instead, it illustrates a syntactic reinterpretation followed by actualization, that is, the emergence of new constructions as a result of this reinterpretation. As pointed out by De Smet (2012), such a reinterpretation occurs in an unmarked context. The actualization that follows 'spreads from one environment to another on the basis of similarity relations to established uses' (2012: 625). For *çava*, the context of similarity which allows reinterpretation is the use of conversational *çava* and predicative *çava* as shown in 9. In answer to the question how things are going, one can either answer with a full sentence or with just an adjective, as in English (e.g. *How are you doing? Fine*). In other words, where in French, *ça va* is the full answer phrase (lit. 'it goes'), in Dutch, it is only the adjectival core of a what can be considered a shortened phrase (a short answer).

<table><tr><td>(9) a. Hoe</td><td>gaat/is</td><td>het?</td><td>(Het</td><td>gaat/is</td><td>goed.</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>çava.</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>how</td><td>goes/is</td><td>it.</td><td>(it</td><td>goes/is)</td><td>goed</td><td></td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>çava</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>b. Hoe</td><td>was</td><td>de</td><td>film?</td><td>(De</td><td>film</td><td>was)</td><td>goed.</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>çava.</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>how</td><td>was</td><td>the</td><td>movie?</td><td>(the</td><td>movie</td><td>was)</td><td>good</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>çava</td><td></td><td></td></tr></table>

This ambiguity is further enforced by the fact that in Dutch, there is no formal difference between adjectives and adverbs, as shown in (9)a: *gaan* 'go' requires an adverb, *zijn* 'be', an adjective. The high frequency of *çava* in precisely this context, changes its grammatical representation to that of a full-fledged adjective; once that is in place, all other possible adjective uses come into play, again driven by analogy with other evaluative adjectives that are quite similar in meaning or function (like *goed* 'good' or *slecht* 'bad'). The
<figure><img src="image_37.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 25.** Reinterpretation and actualization with Dutch çava (adapted from Lemmens 2013)</figcaption></figure>

reanalysis and actualization can be represented as in Figure 25.

The above account of the evolution of çava in (Belgian) Dutch may seem like a simple case of language change for one particular item. However, and this is quite striking, exactly the same evolution can be observed with English *OK* (also spelled *okay*). The different steps can be illustrated as follows.

**1. Conversational use / question tag**

A: OK, let's go. / Let's go, ok?

B: OK.

**2. Predicative adjective or adverb**

It is OK; he seems OK; it works OK

**3. Attributive adjective**

an OK book; an OK guy; an OK thing to do
The origin of the word *OK* is not entirely clear, but the *Oxford English Dictionary* identifies its origin as an interjection-like form. Read (1963), however, documents that it started out as an abbreviation of *oll korrect* ('all correct'). This actually means that the adjectival reading may have been present right from the start. The first attestation in the OED of *OK* in predicative use dates from 1839 (*The house was OK*); the first attributive uses mentioned by OED come 30 years later (1869, *The O.K. thing to do*; 1874, *We had an ok time till we went to bed*). The predicative uses of *OK* in English occur in typical patterns as, for example, those listed in 10.

(10) Predicative use of English *ok*:

*it's ok to [V]*

*that's ok* (anaphorical back reference)

*X looks/seems/sounds ok*

*X works ok* (adverbial use)

Also the attributive uses seem to have their preferred collocates. A quick search on COCA gives the most frequent collocates of *ok* in the pattern ‘ART [ok/okay] N’ given in Table 30; this is a fairly open pattern as shown by the 45% hapaxes (not listed individually). The nouns typically refer to people or their productions (books, movies, etc.), which is a quite normal context of use for evaluative adjectives.

<table><caption>**Table 30. List of most frequent collocates of attributive ok**</caption><thead><tr><td>Collocate</td><td>N</td><td>%</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>guy</td><td>14</td><td>9.5%</td></tr><tr><td>job</td><td>12</td><td>8.1%</td></tr><tr><td>time</td><td>11</td><td>7.4%</td></tr><tr><td>thing</td><td>9</td><td>6.1%</td></tr><tr><td>place</td><td>6</td><td>4.1%</td></tr><tr><td>movie</td><td>4</td><td>2.7%</td></tr><tr><td>person</td><td>3</td><td>2.0%</td></tr><tr><td>book</td><td>2</td><td>1.4%</td></tr></tbody></table>

(continued)
<table><thead><tr><th>Collocate</th><th>N</th><th>%</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>business</td><td>2</td><td>1.4%</td></tr><tr><td>cafe</td><td>2</td><td>1.4%</td></tr><tr><td>city</td><td>2</td><td>1.4%</td></tr><tr><td>college</td><td>2</td><td>1.4%</td></tr><tr><td>kind</td><td>2</td><td>1.4%</td></tr><tr><td>man</td><td>2</td><td>1.4%</td></tr><tr><td>piece</td><td>2</td><td>1.4%</td></tr><tr><td>plan</td><td>2</td><td>1.4%</td></tr><tr><td>speller</td><td>2</td><td>1.4%</td></tr><tr><td>tech</td><td>2</td><td>1.4%</td></tr><tr><td>= 1 occ.</td><td>67</td><td>45.2%</td></tr><tr><td><strong>TOTAL</strong></td><td><strong>148</strong></td><td><strong>100%</strong></td></tr></tbody></table>

A N-gram search on Google books on ‘an [ok|okay] N’, shown in Figure 26 reveals that the same nouns as in Table 30 play a leading role in the attributive use of *ok*.

In contemporary English, the adjectival use of *ok* is fairly well-entrenched; while there are typically patterns and collocational preferences (as can be expected), its use seems to be fairly productive. The OED data suggest that the evolution that *ok* has followed in English is the same as that of *çava* in (Belgian) Dutch: interjection > predicative adjective > attributive adjective. Unlike in Dutch, however, pre-adjectival adverbial

<figure><img src="image_38.png" /><figcaption>Figure 26. N-grams for ‘an [ok|okay] N’ in Google books</figcaption></figure>
uses of *ok* are not possible in English (*an ok nice film*). The reason for this is that in English, as a rule, adverbs are derived from adjective via the *-ly* morpheme. The adverb form *okayly* does occur (e.g., *the plebeians, who live okayly provided they toe a line*; www), but it is not common.

Interestingly, the English word *ok* has also been borrowed in Dutch (*ok*, *okee*, *oké*), and also here we see the same patterns of use. Dutch *oké* can be used (i) as a conversational interjection or question tag, as in English (*Dit lees ik straks, ok?* 'I read this later, ok?'), (ii) as a predicative adjective (*die film was oké* 'that film was ok'), (iii) as an attribute adjective (*een oké feestje* 'an ok party'), and (iv) as an adverb (*we zitten hier oké* 'we sit ok here'). One even finds the diminutive *okeetjes* ('ok.dim.pl'), as with *çava* (see example (2) above).

In order to evaluate these uses of *oké*, we checked their frequency in a corpus of contemporary spoken Dutch (*Corpus Gesproken Nederlands*), which contains conversations recorded in Belgium and the Netherlands between 1998 and 2004. Almost 6,000 occurrences of *oké* were extracted from this corpus; 98% of these concern uses as a conversational particle or question tag. In only 2%, *oké* was used as a predicative adjective, and in less than 1% as an adverb or as an attributive adjective. In other words, *oké* in standard Dutch has not yet gone as far as *çava* in Belgian Dutch.

Finally, we can mention that also Swedish *okej* ('ok') has known a similar evolution and is used in the same functions. It is quite frequent in general, also as an attributive adjective whose range does not only seem to be more widespread than in English and in Dutch, but also more positive, as suggested by data from a corpus of social media texts (a collection of 10 billion words from different sources: blogs, *Tivitter*, etc.).³ The word *okej* occurs 126 times per million words which is (slightly) more than the common adjective *fin* 'fine, nice' (occurs 124 times per million). In other words, it has become a very common adjective (at least in informal speech). One of the constructions that is quite frequent in Swedish is *helt okej* 'totally ok' (about 460,000 times or 40% of all occurrences); this reinforces the more positive connotation that Swedish *okej* seems to have acquired.
In sum, while a more elaborate diachronic analysis is needed, it
seems that the evolution of *çava* in (Belgian) Dutch, of *ok* in English, *oké*
in Dutch, and *okej* in Swedish show similar patterns of development,
going from an interjection to a predicative adjective which then extends
to attributive use, via similarity with other evaluative adjectives. There
are differences in frequency of use, and *çava* has developed further to a
pre-adjectival adverbial modifier (*çava* + *ADJ* + *N*; e.g. *çava logisch* ‘çava
logical’) which the ‘ok’-family does not allow (Eng.: *an ok nice movie*,
Du.: *een oké goeie film*; Sw.: *en okej bra film*). This difference shows that
*çava* may be undergoing a true grammaticalization towards a positive
intensifier that the ‘ok-family’ is not. The reason for this is that *çava* is
often used in a different context than *ok*, that of a negative pre-context
or expectation, already mentioned earlier. This is reflected in the type
of constructions that *çava* often occurs in, as illustrated in 11 (these
constructions are given in English paraphrase)

(11) a. as far as Xs go, this X is still çava

b. despite X, it was still çava

c. not the best X ever but still çava

The occurrence of çava against the background of a negative
expectation may have triggered its meliorization, i.e. its evolution towards
a more positive meaning ('good') compared to its neutral starting point.
In other words, when used in its original conversational use and perhaps
even in most adjectival uses, çava means 'more or less'; for example, een
çava film 'a çava film' is a film that is not too bad but not too good either.
When used as a modifier of an adjective (çava ADJ), it more often than
not has a positive intensifying effect, as shown in the following examples
(in non-standard Dutch).

(12) a. cocktails worde gemaakt door 2 pro's, die kunne da blijkbaar wel çava goe

cocktails are made by 2 pros, these seem to be çava good
b. Hoe komt da het ni zo goe was dees jaar? ‘Vroeger’ waarde gij toch çava goe?

how comes it that it wasn’t as good this year? you used to be çava good?

In these two examples, *çava* refers to a position on the scale towards the positive (beyond the middle); in this case, because it is combined with *goed* “good” (spelled as *goe* in chat-style) it goes to the positive end of the scale, and the whole phrase means ‘very good’. So far, it has only been attested with positive adjectives, which indicates that it has not grammaticalized completely to a true intensifier (as for example in *goed fout* lit. ‘good wrong’, meaning ‘quite wrong’) but has retained a positive value.

To conclude the first case study in this lecture, we can say that *çava* in (Belgian) Dutch and *oké* in standard Dutch illustrate on-going change triggered by analogy (syntactic reanalysis and actualization). Similar patterns have been observed for English *ok* and Swedish *okej*. Strictly speaking, these changes are not cases of true grammaticalization, but *çava* as used in informal (Belgian) Dutch shows signs of further grammaticalization particularly in its use as a pre-adjectival modifier. So far, this is still restricted to specific (i.e. positive) contexts; whether or not its use will continue to expand and become possible in negative contexts as well (e.g. *çava slecht* ‘çava bad’) impossible to predict. Maybe in ten years’ time, my children’s or my grandchildren’s language will surprise me once more.

## 10.2 Light verbs in Odia

The second case study presented in this lecture is the story of true grammaticalization in the Indo-Aryan language Odia, i.e. the change of a small set of lexical verbs to light verbs, bleached of their semantics, and used to marked aspect and mirativity ('surprise'). As already indicated,
with a linker (LNK) -i. LV constructions thus always take the form
$V_{[lexical]}$-i-$V_{[light]}$, where the main verb occurs in its root form and the
TAM marking occurs on the light verb. The light verb can take several
morphemes carrying grammatical features like ASPect, AUXiliary, Tense,
AGReement, etc. The following sentences illustrate the LV constructions
sar-i-ās 'finish-LNK-come', $k^hā-i-tʃāl$ 'eat-LNK-walk', and $ba|-i-pa|$ 'leave-
LNK-fall'; a more detailed account of their semantics will be given shortly.⁵

(13) a. mo hāṭaru sabu paisā **sar-i-āsilā**
my hand.ABL all money **finish-LNK-come**.PST.3SG
‘The money has all gone from my hand.’

b. se pi|ʰā|āku se ŋebe|u **kʰā-i-tʃālitʃʰi**
he pancake.CL.ACC since.then **eat-LNK-walk**.PERF.3SG
‘He has been eating the pancake since then.’

c. bahuṭa guḍāe kʰāḍya **ba|-i-pa|ilā**
too much food **leave-LNK-fall**.PST.3SG
‘Too much food was left over (unexpectedly).’

The LVs are furthermore distinguished with respect to their
transitivity constraints (which, for most LVs, can be seen as inherited
from their lexical origin): the LVs -jā ‘go’, -tʃāl ‘walk’, -pa| ‘fall’, and -u|ʰ
‘rise’ can only occur with intransitive verbs (including alternating verbs in
their intransitive usage); -de ‘give’, -ne ‘take’, -pakā ‘drop’, -ās ‘come’ can
only occur with transitive or ditransitive verbs; the verbs -bas ‘sit’ and -rah
‘stay’ (which also semantically are quite different, see below) can occur
with both transitive and intransitive verbs. In a constructional perspective,
we characterize the entire LV construction as either intransitive or (di)
transitive, not just the main verb or the LV. For reasons of space, we will
not go into detail here, but refer to Lemmens and Sahoo (2017) for a
more extensive treatment of transitivity constraints of Odia LVs and their
relation with morphologically marked causatives.

When it comes to the meaning of these light verbs in Odia, it is clear
that they have lost their original (lexical) meaning. That does not mean,
however, that they have no semantic value, quite the contrary. Their meaning
can generally be described as ‘event modulation’, as observed by Butt and
Lahiri (2001) and Butt and Geuder (2001) looking at the related language
Urdu/Hindi. For Odia, this event modulation more specifically concerns
(i) an aspectual value for all the light verbs and (ii) a mirative value for some
of them. We will discuss these two features in more detail below.

*Aspectual modulation*

A first aspect of this modulation by Odia LVs concerns the **ASPECTUAL** or **PHASAL VALUE** which can be summarized as follows:

(a) -uṭh 'rise' expresses the **ONSET** of the event;

(b) -bas ‘sit’, -ās ‘-come’, -tʃāl ‘walk’, and -rah ‘stay’ express the **DURATION** of the event;

(c) -jā ‘-go’, -paq ‘-fall’, -de ‘-give’, -pakā ‘-drop’, and -ne ‘-take’ express the **COMPLETION** of the event.

The difference between a single verb construction and a LV
construction with respect to this kind of aspectual modulation is nicely
illustrated by the following contrastive set, where the a-sentence gives a
single verb construction and the other sentences, a LV construction that
expresses a particular phasal profile: COMPLETION in 14b, ONSET in 14c,
and DURATION in 14d.

(14) a. **single verb construction**

bahi-ṭā mū ṭāku **deli**, kințu se nelāni
book-CLF I him **give**.PAST.1SG but he take.PAST.3SG.NEG
‘I gave (= offered) him the book, but he didn’t take it.’

b. LV construction: COMPLETION

bahi-ṭā mū ṭāku de-i-dei (*)kințu se nelāni
book-CLF I him give-LNK-give.PAST.1SG (*but* he take.PAST.3SG.NEG)
‘I gave him the book (*but he didn’t take it).*’ [‘giving’ act is
completed]
### c. LV construction: ONSET

gʰare pashu pashu segiṭa gā-i-uṭʰilā
house.LOC entering entering hesong **sing-LNK-rise**.PAST.3SG
‘While entering the house, he (suddenly) started singing a song.’

### d. LV construction: DURATION

mū trainṭā ḍʰari pārili nāhin kāhinkinā mū āsibā beku
I train-CLF catch could not because I coming time
se mote ṭā bʰauṇi bisayare **kah-i-basilā**
he me his sister about **say-LNK-sit**.PAST.3SG
‘I missed the train because he went on telling me about his sister
when I was about to leave.’

The single verb construction in 14a is neutral as to whether or not the book has been given and received, as shown by the possibility of adding a *but*-clause (note that in English *de* ‘give’ would better be expressed here by ‘offer’), whereas in 14b the book has been given and received, an event that can no longer be cancelled out, which confirms that completion is indeed part and parcel of the meaning of the construction. In 14c, the LV -uṭʰ ‘-rise’ profiles the start of the singing. In 14d -bas ‘sit’ profiles the duration of the talking which caused the speaker to miss the train. For a more elaborate discussion of the difference between single verb and LV constructions in Odia, we refer to Lemmens and Sahoo (2017). However, aspectual profiling is not the complete story of Odia LVs.

### *Mirative value of light verbs*

In addition to the event modulation specified above, six of the Odia light verbs, i.e. -uṭʰ '-rise', -jā '-go', -paq '-fall', -de '-give', -pakā '-drop', and -ne '-take' also have a MIRATIVE VALUE, expressing that the event expressed by the main verb is unexpected or is not supposed to have happened (for whatever reason). For instance, in example 14b above, the LV construction not only expresses that the book has been given, but also that this was not supposed to have happened. Similarly, the singing in 14d is unexpected.
However, the LV construction with -tʃāl ‘walk’ in 13b or the one with -bas ‘sit’ in 14d, both expressing DURATION, do not express mirativity.

All languages seem to have lexical means of expressing surprise, such as, in English, *surprise* (noun and verb) or *out of the blue*. However, what is at issue here are grammatical expressions of mirativity. Often, such expressions of mirativity are indirect, in that they primarily serve another function (e.g. evidentiality marking) and the mirative interpretation is arrived at via pragmatic inferencing. T. Peterson (2017) calls this ‘parasitic’ expressions of mirativity, since the mirative meaning is parasitic on other linguistic categories. In contrast, the six Odia LV constructions mentioned above are ‘non-parasitic’ expressions of mirativity, i.e. expressions that overtly and directly express mirativity as part of their core meaning. That mirativity is part of their meaning, rather than contextually determined, is nicely illustrated by the following examples, where the use of a LV construction is ungrammatical if the event is clearly expected, either because it is explicitly said so, e.g. *I expected X* in 15a, or because the previous discourse has introduced the event which consequently has become part of the interlocutors shared knowledge, as in 15b and 15c.

(15) a. mū bʰābili mery kāndiba boli, ebam se **kāndilā**/
(*kānd-i-delā)

I thought Mary cry.FUT.3SG that, and she cry.PST.3SG/
(*cry-LNK-give*.PST.3SG)

‘I expected Mary to cry, and (indeed) she cried (*cry-give).*’

b. se haʰāt kānd-i-pakāilā. hā, se **kāndilā**
(*kānd-i-pakāilā)

she suddenly cry-LNK-drop.PST.3SG yes she cry.PST.3SG/
(*cry-LNK-drop*.PST.3SG)

‘She suddenly cried (cry.drop). Yes, she cried (*cry.fall / *cry-go).*’

c. se haʰāt kānd-i-pakāilā. se **kāndutʃʰibābele**
(*kānd-i-pakāutʃʰibā-bele)

she suddenly cry-LNK-drop.PST.3SG she cry.PROG.AUX.NMLZ.
moment (*cry-LNK-drop*.PROG.AUX.NMLZ.moment)
mũ goṭie ārāmdāyaka giṭa lagāili

I a comforting song apply.PAST.1SG

‘She suddenly cried. While she was crying (*cry-drop), I put on some comforting music.’

Using a LV in these contexts would lead to contradiction, which indicates that the mirativity is part of the meaning of the LV and not the result of pragmatic inferencing (in which case they would have been cancellable). We thus disagree with Butt and Lahiri who say that the value that LVs add to the event is ‘contextually defeasible information’ (Butt and Lahiri 2001: 30). Instead we see mirativity as part of the LV construction, at least for those that can have a mirative value. Such grammaticalized (non-parasitic) expression of mirativity is quite unusual in the languages of the world, which makes the description of Odia LVs all the more relevant.

Importantly, only some of the LVs express mirativity, i.e. those encoding ONSET or COMPLETION, not the ones encoding DURATION. Within the set of completion LVs, the LV -ne ‘-take’ is a special case, as it often has a self-benefactive reading (typically with a negative connotation) which may or may not have a mirative reading, depending on the context.

The combination of onset (expressed by the LV -uṭʰ ‘-rise’) and mirativity is experientially fairly straightforward: it is the (sudden) onset of the event that is source of surprise. The corpus study presented in Lemmens and Sahoo (2019) confirms this experiential alignment, as the lexical verbs that combine with the LV -uṭʰ ‘-rise’ tend to refer to events that are typically conceived of as spontaneously (and often suddenly) occurring, such as getting into an emotional state (be angry, excited, irritated, etc.), bodily processes (laughing, coughing, shaking, etc.), emission of light (sparkle, shine), fragrance (smell), or sound (shout, scream, bark), or emergence events (arise, reveal, blossom, etc.).⁶

The motivation for the co-occurrence of completion and surprise is different: it is the result of the event that is the key to evaluate the (completed) event which, however, does not correspond to what was
expected. This is not unlike the motivation for (parasitic) mirative readings of perfective or evidential markers which also operate via an assessment of the result.

A further element of complexity is that four COMPLETION LVs (-jā ‘-go’, -paq ‘-fall’, -de ‘-give’, and -pakā ‘-drop’) differ with respect to the degree of mirativity they express. Schematically, we have represented this as in Table 31.

<table><caption>Table 31. Degrees of mirativity for 4 Odia LV constructions.</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>MEANING</th><th>FORM</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td></td><td>'aspectuo-mirative modulation'</td><td>V-i-v</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td>intransitive</td></tr><tr><td>completion</td><td>unexpected (high)</td><td>V-i-paq<br/>(‘V-LNK-fall’)</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>unexpected (lower)</td><td>V-i-jā<br/>(‘V-LNK-go’)</td></tr></tbody></table>

This difference of degree can be explained as a kind of persistence of the original lexical verb. As far as intransitive motion is concerned, *fall* refers to a less controlled and thus more unexpected event than *go*, which typically refers to voluntary intransitive motion. Similarly, *drop* refers to a less controlled event than *give* which typically takes a volitional Agent. In other words, the degree of mirativity can be related to a degree of agentivity and/or of volitionality that has persisted from the original lexical verb.

The different degree of mirativity is confirmed by the corpus study presented in Sahoo and Lemmens (2017), comparing (for each transitivity pair) the contexts in which two different light verbs are used with the same lexical verbs. For the intransitive pair, the data suggest that while both LV constructions encode unexpected events (in general), ‘V-go’ is used for events that are unexpected to a lesser degree, which we have termed ‘expected within the unexpected’. For example, breaking a cup while doing the dishes is unexpected, yet something that one knows might, and often
does, happen ('break-go'); windows, in contrast, being fixed in the wall are more unlikely to break and such events would invariably be coded with 'break-fall'. Similarly, breaking a leg is unexpected (and undesirable), but it is something that we know can happen when one unexpectedly stumbles and falls, for example. The different contexts indicated that the 'V-fall' construction encodes totally unexpected events, whereas 'V-go' encodes events that are unexpected, but for which some element in the context still makes them 'somewhat expected'. This may often be aligned with a different degree of affectedness as well.

For the transitive LV constructions, we found similar confirmation of 'V-drop' expressing a higher degree of mirativity than 'V-give' (but both still having a mirative reading); here, this difference is realized via different contextualized scales (size, impact, strength, intensity, etc.). For example, breaking the top part of a palace ('break-give') requires less force and has less impact than breaking (apart) a whole country ('break-drop'). A similar opposition holds between (unexpectedly) cutting down one tree ('cut-give') versus (unexpectedly) clearing all the trees in an area ('cut-drop'), the latter requiring higher degree of force and having a higher impact. In some cases, the difference pertains more to degrees of unsupposedness, as in a person being distracted and eating all the sweets ('eat-give') versus eating something secretly ('eat-drop'; highly unsupposed and deliberate). Or consider the contrast between a princess opening the door ('open-give', unexpected given her status) versus a girl (qualified in the corpus example as 'shameless') opening her dress in front of everybody ('open-drop', high violation of what is expected as morally good behaviour).

The four durative LVs (-bas 'sit', -ās '-come', -tʃāl 'walk', and -rah 'stay') do not encode mirativity (see Sahoo and Lemmens 2018). The explanation for this, we hypothesize, may be that ONSET and COMPLETION both entail a difference between two states, i.e. (i) pre-onset vs. onset state and (ii) final and post-final state, in addition to there being a result. For the LVs expressing DURATION there is no such difference (all the
states are the same and can thus not be a trigger of surprise) nor is there a
result. The four durative LVs may seem interchangeable, but the corpus
data do show that they have their own profile and preferences:

- the LV -tʃāl ‘walk’ cannot occur with atelic processes (cf. also Neukom and Patnaik 2003: 279); all the 563 corpus attestations are indeed telic;

- the LV -ās ‘come’ typically expresses the continuation of event that started in the past (Neukom and Patnaik 2003 talk about ‘a persistant situation’); it has a preference to occur with motion verbs;

- the LV -rah ‘stay’ does not combine with speech verbs, e.g. ‘speak-come’/‘speak-sit’ vs *‘speak-stay’; it has a preference for static verbs;

- LV -bas ‘sit’ has as its typical meaning ‘be completely engaged in an activity’, it often also has a habitual reading; it has a preference for action verbs.

Most previous work on LVs is either broadly typological or situated
within the framework of generative grammar which is mostly concerned
with the syntactic status of LVs. Some of them posit a single lexical entry
for both the lexical verb and the LV; for example, Butt and Lahiri (2001:
358) state that there is ‘one underspecified lexical entry which allows both
full verbs and light verb uses’. In the construction grammar approach
that we adopt in our work, light verbs are considered as constructions
in their own right with syntactic and semantic properties that differ
from those found with the lexical verbs (which still have semantic roles,
for instance) and auxiliaries. Nevertheless, some of their syntactic and
semantic properties can be linked up with those of their lexical origins;
in other words, they show further evidence of the Hopper’s principle of
persistence (which ‘relates the meaning and function of a grammatical
form to its history as a lexical morpheme’ Hopper 1991: 28, cf. also
Lecture 7). Some of the syntactic properties that have persisted can for
instance be found in the transitivity constraints of the different LVs. On a
semantic level, features relating to (degrees of) agentivity or control can
be argued to have persisted from their lexical origin. In sum, embracing
a constructional account leads to increased theoretical coherence in the description of light verbs as a separate category that can, however, still be related (or contrasted) to other constructions.

Our constructional account thus captures what unites all the LV constructions (in maximal opposition to single verb). At the same time, it also captures what distinguishes them individually: all of the LVs have a particular aspectual profile (onset, completion or duration), and some of them have a mirative reading. As to the larger theoretical impact of this study, our characterization in terms of mirativity adds an innovative perspective to the analysis of LVs in Indo-Aryan languages. While further refinements are to be made, both for Odia and other Indo-Aryan languages, the concept of mirativity allows for a more unified account. Often, mirativity is limited to the notion of ‘surprise’, but as we have shown in our studies, it is a broader category that also includes ‘unsupposedness’ and it can also be related to the notions of ‘abruptness’, ‘suddenness’, or ‘non-volitionality’ that have been suggested in the literature on LVs (see, e.g. Montaut 2006 or Aikhenvald 2012 for a larger view on mirativity). In addition, our corpus-based analyses reveal that these LVs often have collocational and/or contextual preferences, which strengthen their entrenchment as constructions in their own right.

In a larger perspective, the present study may contribute to a better understanding of the grammaticalized expression of mirativity and the status of these constructions within the grammar. The grammaticalization of mirativity, and in particular the expression of ‘unsupposedness’, may find a cultural basis in the Odia speaking community (and those of related languages) in the importance that is attached to compliance to social norms and standards. In many cases, such a reading is accompanied by overtones of disapproval which may come in degrees.

Some further work is needed to clarify certain issues. One of these concerns the usage of the LV -ne ‘-take’. Secondly, while the suggested analysis of different degrees of mirativity finds confirmation in both native-speaker intuition and corpus data, it is warranted that it
be further confirmed by experimental work testing on-line processing
and production of LV constructions, which is planned as a follow-up
study. Finally, our study has looked at the different LVs and their usages,
which included looking at the lexical verbs that they can combine with;
however, we also need to reverse the perspective and consider which
lexical verbs never combine with LVs and why that may be so.

**10.3 Concluding remarks**

This lecture has presented two concrete case studies on language
change and grammaticalization. The first one concerned a specific
historical evolution of the Dutch conversational particle *çava*, a loan from
French, towards an evaluative adjective. As argued, rather than a case of
grammaticalization, this is an instance of syntactic reinterpretation and
actualization. There are indications that the current evolution contains
the onset of further grammaticalization. While this seemed an evolution
idiosyncratic to one particular particle in Dutch, it turns out to be similar
to evolutions one finds for the word *OK* in English and other languages
that have borrowed it. This suggests that this may fit a larger pattern of
semantic evolution for these evaluative words.

The second case study concerned the grammaticalization of a
handful of verbs in the Indo-Aryan language Odia to light verbs which
all express an aspectual value, focusing on either onset, duration, or
completion; in addition, some of them also have a mirative value,
expressing the notion of ‘surprise’ or ‘unsupposedness’. Also here, this
particular case study has larger relevance for related languages, which
have similar light verb constructions. Importantly, our constructional
account holds that the light verbs are constructions in their own right,
which have their own semantic and syntactic properties.

**Notes**

1. The spelling of the loan form *çava* is a problem for Dutch where the letter ζ
(pronounced /s/) does not exist. In addition, the symbol is cumbersome on smartphones. Hence, one often finds spellings like *cava* or *sava*. We will continue to use *çava* throughout.

2 Unless indicated differently, all examples given in this section on *çava* are internet examples (hence the indication ‘www’), from informal discussion platforms, Twitter, blogs, etc. They may have been edited slightly for the sake of clarity. In the (literal) translations into English, we will take over the form *çava*.

3 Available at http://spraakbanken.gu.se/korp/.

4 We will mark the LV with a preceding hyphen (e.g. -jā ‘-go’) to distinguish it from its formally identical lexical counterpart (e.g. jā ‘go’).

5 To facilitate the reading of the examples, the LV constructions will systematically be highlighted in bold-face. Glossing is done following the Leipzig Glossing Rules (see http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php).

6 The corpus that we have used for our study is part of the EMILLE corpus, which is available from the European Language Resources Association (http://www.elra.info/en/), reference ELRA-W0037. The Odia corpus, approximately 2,730,000 words, is a fairly heterogeneous collection of literary, legal, commercial, scientific, and newspaper texts, in Odia script.
<figure><img src="image_39.png" /></figure>
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<figure><img src="image_40.png" /></figure>
# APPENDICES

The lectures in this book summarize a number of studies that have used different corpora, which have been tailor-made to suit the research question.

## Appendix 1: List of texts for pilot study on English *sit*
(Lecture 8)

1300–1400

Chaucer, Geoffrey, *The Book of Duchesse* (1369)

Chaucer, Geoffrey, *Canterbury Tales* (1387–8)

Gower, John, *Confessio Amantis* (1383–90)

1500–1600

Marlow, Christopher, *The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus* (1590)

Marlow, Christopher, *The Jew of Malta* (1592)

Nashe, Thomas, *The Unfortunate Traveller* (1594)

1600–1700

Jonson, Ben, *Bartholomew Fair* (1614)

Behn, Aphra, *The rover, or the banish’d cavaliers* (1677)

1700–1800

Swift, Jonathan, *Gulliver’s Travels* (1735)

Smollet, Tobias, *Roderick Random* (1748)

Fielding Henry, *Tom Jones* (1749)
1800–1900

Austin, Jane, *Emma* (1815)

Bronté, Charlotte, *Jane Eyre* (1847)

Thackeray, William, *Vanity Fair* (1848)

1900–1950

Lawrence, D.H., *Sons and Lovers* (1913)

Huxley, Aldous, *Crome Yellow* (1921)

Woolf, Virginia, *To the Lighthouse* (1927)

Appendix 2: List of texts for the rise of English *put*
(Lecture 8)

The texts used for the pilot study on *put* (Lemmens and David 2006)
are more or less the same as those used for *sit*, but some more texts have
been added especially for the 15th, 16th, and 17th century.

<table><thead><tr><th>AUTHOR</th><th>TITLE</th><th>YEAR</th><th>TOKEN<br>FREQ</th><th>FREQ<br>put</th><th>put per<br>10,000<br>TOKENS</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong>14th cy</strong></td><td></td><td></td><td><strong>390,225</strong></td><td><strong>188</strong></td><td><strong>4.8</strong></td></tr><tr><td>G. Chaucer</td><td>Canterbury Tales</td><td>1387</td><td>182,332</td><td>91</td><td>5.0</td></tr><tr><td>J. Gower</td><td>Confessio Amantis</td><td>1389</td><td>207,893</td><td>97</td><td>4.7</td></tr><tr><td><strong>15th cy</strong></td><td></td><td></td><td><strong>249,570</strong></td><td><strong>267</strong></td><td><strong>10.7</strong></td></tr><tr><td>Th. Malory*</td><td>Morte d'Arthur (vol. 1)</td><td>1470</td><td>168,166</td><td>176</td><td>10.5</td></tr><tr><td>Unknown*</td><td>Travels of Sir John Mandeville</td><td>1499</td><td>81,404</td><td>91</td><td>11.2</td></tr><tr><td><strong>16th cy</strong></td><td></td><td></td><td><strong>182,071</strong></td><td><strong>84</strong></td><td><strong>4.6</strong></td></tr><tr><td>Th. Moore</td><td>Utopia</td><td>1551</td><td>42,319</td><td>24</td><td>5.7</td></tr><tr><td>P. Sydney</td><td>A and Stella</td><td>1584</td><td>17,221</td><td>2</td><td>1.2</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">C. Marlowe</td><td>Faustus</td><td>1590</td><td>12,801</td><td>1</td><td>0.8</td></tr><tr><td>Malta</td><td>1592</td><td>20,544</td><td>11</td><td>5.4</td></tr><tr><td>Th. Nashe</td><td>The Unfortunate Traveller</td><td>1594</td><td>42,787</td><td>23</td><td>5.4</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">W. Shakespeare</td><td>Much Ado About Nothing</td><td>1599</td><td>23,008</td><td>11</td><td>4.8</td></tr><tr><td>As You Like It</td><td>1601</td><td>23,391</td><td>12</td><td>5.1</td></tr></tbody></table>

(continued)
<table><thead><tr><th>AUTHOR</th><th>TITLE</th><th>YEAR</th><th>TOKEN<br>FREQ</th><th>FREQ<br>put</th><th>put per<br>10,000<br>TOKENS</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong>17th cy</strong></td><td></td><td></td><td><strong>184,386</strong></td><td><strong>138</strong></td><td><strong>7.5</strong></td></tr><tr><td>B. Jonson</td><td>Bartholomew Fair</td><td>1614</td><td>39,309</td><td>44</td><td>11.2</td></tr><tr><td>J. Milton</td><td>Paradise Lost</td><td>1676</td><td>82,859</td><td>23</td><td>2.8</td></tr><tr><td>A. Behn</td><td>The Rover</td><td>1677</td><td>62,218</td><td>71</td><td>11.4</td></tr><tr><td><strong>18th cy</strong></td><td></td><td></td><td><strong>643,328</strong></td><td><strong>514</strong></td><td><strong>8.0</strong></td></tr><tr><td>J. Swift</td><td>Gulliver's Travels</td><td>1726</td><td>102,875</td><td>110</td><td>10.7</td></tr><tr><td>T. Smollet</td><td>Roderick Random</td><td>1748</td><td>191,273</td><td>205</td><td>10.7</td></tr><tr><td>H. Fielding</td><td>Tom Jones</td><td>1749</td><td>349,180</td><td>199</td><td>5.7</td></tr><tr><td><strong>19th cy</strong></td><td></td><td></td><td><strong>715,764</strong></td><td><strong>459</strong></td><td><strong>6.4</strong></td></tr><tr><td>J. Austen</td><td>Emma</td><td>1815</td><td>161,974</td><td>73</td><td>4.5</td></tr><tr><td>C. Bronte</td><td>Jane Eyre</td><td>1846</td><td>188,301</td><td>158</td><td>8.4</td></tr><tr><td>W. Thackeray</td><td>Vanity Fair</td><td>1847</td><td>365,489</td><td>228</td><td>6.2</td></tr><tr><td><strong>20th cy</strong></td><td></td><td></td><td><strong>293,903</strong></td><td><strong>342</strong></td><td><strong>11.6</strong></td></tr><tr><td>D.H. Lawrence</td><td>Sons and Lovers</td><td>1913</td><td>165,565</td><td>236</td><td>14.3</td></tr><tr><td>A. Huxley</td><td>Crome Yellow</td><td>1921</td><td>58,527</td><td>49</td><td>8.4</td></tr><tr><td>V. Woolf</td><td>To the Lighthouse</td><td>1927</td><td>69,811</td><td>57</td><td>8.2</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td><strong>TOTAL</strong></td><td></td><td></td><td><strong>2,659,247</strong></td><td><strong>1,992</strong></td><td><strong>7.5</strong></td></tr></tfoot></table>
# Appendix 3: Pictures used in the Oral Picture Description Experiment (Lecture 9)*

<figure><img src="image_41.png" /><figcaption>Picture 1</figcaption></figure>

Source: Roser Capdevila, La festa. Bruxelles: La Galera S.A. Editorial/Casterman, 1984.

<figure><img src="image_42.png" /><figcaption>Picture 2</figcaption></figure>

Source: Roser Capdevila, La festa. Bruxelles: La Galera S.A. Editorial/Casterman, 1984.

<footnote>* Reproduced with permission of the author.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_43.png" /><figcaption>Picture 3</figcaption></figure>

Source: Roser Capdevila, La festa. Bruxelles: La Galera S.A. Editorial/Casterman, 1984.

<figure><img src="image_44.png" /><figcaption>Picture 4</figcaption></figure>

Source: Teresa Ribas, Pilar Casademunt & Roser Capdevila, Les botegues. Bruxelles: La Galera S.A. Editorial/Casterman, 1984.
<figure><img src="image_45.png" /><figcaption>Picture 5</figcaption></figure>

Source: Teresa Ribas, Pilar Casademunt & Roser Capdevila, Les botegues. Bruxelles: La Galera S.A. Editorial/Casterman, 1984.