From qualifiers to quantifiers: semantic shift at the paradigm level (2022)

Abstract: Language change has often been conceived as a competition between linguistic variants. However, language units may be complex organizations in themselves, e.g. in the case of schematic constructions, featuring a free slot. Such a slot is filled by words forming a set or ‘paradigm’ and engaging in inter-related dynamics within this constructional environment. To tackle this complexity, a simple computational method is offered to automatically characterize their interactions, and visualize them through networks of cooperation and competition. Applying this method to the French paradigm of quantifiers, I show that this method efficiently captures phenomena regarding the evolving organization of constructional paradigms, in particular the constitution of competing clusters of fillers that promote different semantic strategies overall.

## introduction language change is often depicted as a competition between an entrenched variant, and an innovative, rising competitor; e.g. the replacement of of course by obviously @xcite in present day canadian english, of werðan by becuman in middle english @xcite , of moult by beaucoup and très in middle french @xcite , of en par dans as the chief locative preposition in modern french @xcite , or of the former syntactic patterns for negation and interrogation by the periphrastic do pattern @xcite . such a competition, however, is difficult to evidence. for instance, what can the way construction @xcite (e.g. 'the black prince plundered his way eastward to narbonne and back') possibly replace? moreover, in the case of a clear replacement, the replacement is seldom total. for instance, the periphrastic do did not replace auxiliaries, and some verbs like need are still found with the older pattern; moult was replaced by two different words, but they both show uses that moult had not, and they do not cover the whole functional range that was carried by moult. the french en was replaced by dans in most locative contexts, but it remains more frequent than its newer counterpart @xcite ; corpus and language statistics for corpora of the leipzig corpora @xcite . similarly, while be going to can be seen as a competitor for will, both auxiliaries differ semantically; furthermore, it has been argued that they both feature semantic retention pertaining to their respective origins @xcite . the same phenomenon has been observed for discourse markers based on prepositional adverbs in french @xcite . in the meanwhile, it has been posited that frequency rise evidenced by lexical items or constructions is a sign of semantic expansion @xcite . this hypothesis would provide a convenient account of the phenomena mentioned above: language change is, first and foremost, a semantic shift; if this semantic shift spills over the semantic domain of an existing form, competition arises over this overlap; if this semantic shift leads to meanings and functions that were not formerly expressed in the language, no competition occurs and there is no competitor. in this sense, lexical competitions are a sign of a semantic shift, and help identify ongoing language changes; yet language change may happen without any obvious competition. in this paper, another perspective on the interplay between semantic change and competition is offered. indeed, competition may arise within a given linguistic form dominion, especially in the case of schematic constructions, that is, constructions that feature an open slot that can be filled by different arguments (e.g. the way too + {adj/adv} intensifier construction). these arguments can compete against one another, within the construction. moreover, this competition needs not be one-to-one: since a large number of arguments are involved, the competition may unfold between different clusters of arguments. therefore, we can detect such paradigmatic competitions by looking at the correlations and anti-correlations between the frequency dynamics of the different fillers. to give a somehow hypothetical example of this semantic shift at the paradigm level, we may consider the paradigm of classifiers (e.g. in thai or in korean), which categorizes nouns according to a set of principles. this categorization can, for instance, be driven by considerations of shape, or by considerations of function @xcite . these two broad principles may in principle both co-exist and compete over time, and individual classifiers typically fall into one or the other broad group of function-based classifiers and shape-based classifiers (things being more blurry in practice). in this regard, we can conceive of three levels of semantic change, that are not mutually exclusive. the first is the constructional level, which corresponds to a significant change in the broad scope of the nouns to which the construction applies, for instance through the recruitment of new classifiers to operate on nouns that were previously beyond the scope of the construction, e.g. the emergence of a new classifier for the class of machines. the second level is that of the individual classifiers; e.g. the reanalysis of thai /khan/ from a shape-based classifier to a function-based one. the third level is what i refer to as the 'paradigmatic level'. this happens when one group takes over the nouns that were classified by the other group. nouns become then re-classified according to a new set of principles. in this case, the individual classifiers do not have to undergo semantic change; and the broad 'classifiers' construction still applies to the same nouns. yet, these nouns are now preferentially categorized in a new way (e.g. function over shape); therefore, the properties that are made salient by the choice of a specific classifier are now different. this kind of paradigmatic reorganization is for instance illustrated by the different yet overlapping semantic roles of verb classifiers in the related nyulnyul and warrwa languages @xcite . this kind of semantic change only reveals itself at the scale of a system of linguistic units, such as constructional paradigms. as a result, traditional tools, such as word embeddings that rely on collocations @xcite , cannot be readily expected to account for it. in this paper, i offer a simple method to detect such a paradigmatic reor-ganization. i illustrate it on the french quantifier construction un n de (e.g. une profusion de), which exactly mirrors the english quantifier construction a n of (e.g. a lot of ), whose historical development has already been studied @xcite . besides the entrenchment of the construction in middle french, i evidence, by looking at the network of correlation between the fillers frequencies, a major paradigmatic shift occurring in modern french. a qualitative analysis of the competing clusters is also offered. ## network of interactions in this section, i present indicators of a major shift within the paradigmatic organization of the quantifier construction, based on the dynamical interactions between the paradigm members. ## linguistic interpretation now that we have evidenced an ongoing competition between two different clusters of the quantifiers construction, it is worthwhile to shed light on the extent to which these clusters provide conflicting perspectives on the quantification of things. in order to better understand the functional range of each cluster, we can consider the arguments that are associated with each quantifier -that is to say, the individual paradigms of nouns attached to the single members of the construction. quantitative techniques based on word embeddings have been developed to automatically assess how the semantic organization of a constructional paradigm evolves diachronically @xcite ; @xcite . an even more relevant quantitative tool to capture the semantic shift of the quantifiers is the cluster characterization based on collexeme analysis @xcite . since a range of methods already exist, and their application to this case study would constitute a contribution in itself, yet without any original methodology to offer, i shall remain here at a qualitative level. the more modest goal of this section is therefore to briefly illustrate how the dynamicsbased methods outlined above evidence phenomena that make sense from a linguistic point of view. in what follows, i discuss the functional roles of each different fillers by simply looking at their ten most frequent collocates. ## conclusion language change, as it unfolds over several, interrelated levels of the linguistic organization, is inherently complex. to understand the diachronic processes that a form or a construction participates in, tracking its frequency soon faces drastic limitations: besides the s-curve pattern of entrenchment, frequency is volatile and extremely variable, for no when considering schematic constructions, that is, constructions that can host a variety of fillers, similarly to an ecological niche, change can occur on three levels: 1) on the level of the individual fillers (whenever they undergo functional change); 2) on the level of the construction, typically through the recruitment or loss of new fillers, that is, through changes in its syntactic productivity @xcite ; and finally 3) in the way the fillers are organized within the construction, that is, on the paradigm level, leading to a new way to categorize the semantic space on which the construction applies. although all three changes are expected to occur to an extent in a given process, such a process can be better characterized by one or the other of these changes. all these changes are instances of semantic shifts; while it is clear that the first two changes affect meaning (that of the individual filler in 1, that of the construction as a whole in 2), the third kind of change is less obvious. yet, as it redefines the categories in which the arguments of the construction are partitioned, it evidences different features of these arguments. this kind of semantic shift is especially prevalent when considering tight categories applying to a broad class of words, such as determiners, classifiers, or auxiliaries. examples of this shift are the emergence of french demonstratives @xcite or the change in the auxiliaries in old spanish @xcite . in our example of the french paradigm of quantifiers, we have shown that the construction underwent a significant paradigmatic change in the 1801-1950 period. this paradigmatic change can be related, at least on a qualitative level, to semantic considerations regarding the logic underlying the different partitioning of nouns by the two competing clusters. individual change does not seem to play a large role in this picture, even though un nombre de is more versatile than the other quantifiers and is likely to have undergone a semantic shift. constructional change does occur to some extent (the nouns covered by the innovative cluster do not all overlap with the nouns covered by the entrenched cluster). among the innovative quantifiers, those tied to a precise quantity such as une douzaine de ('a dozen') are the more likely to be associated with new nouns, indicative of a semantic opening of the quantifier construction towards a 'measure' meaning, while it was more closely associated to a 'count' one @xcite . this latter change may also be due to an increasing proportion of scientific texts in the corpus. yet, the remarkable cluster competition that unfolds throughout the nineteenth century is testimony enough that the paradigm level is the most suited to understand the change phenomenon in this period. this study is a first step, an invitation to consider more systematically language change from a systemic perspective, especially with the help of automated tools, that are most needed to deal with the intrinsic complexity of these systems. although the analysis presented here could be refined with the use of a wider range of methods, i hope that the results are intriguing enough to foster further interest in changes unfolding on the paradigm level.