Begging the question: chunking, compositionality and language change^*

* This article derives from research the author contributed to co-authored work with Joan Bybee (Bybee and Moder, forthcoming).

Abstract

This examination of the diachronic pathway of development of the formulaic expression beg the question illustrates the dynamic nature of ‘fixed’ formulaic expressions. Using discourse analysis of contexts of use, beg the question is shown to have been introduced as a technical term within a narrow semantic niche. Its frequency within that niche aided its evolution into a fixed chunk. Subsequent changes in the common ground of readers led to a constriction of the niche and a concomitant loss in the compositionality of the chunk. Most importantly, the chunk regained compositionality through contextually supported re-analysis and re-emerged as a dynamic new construction within a new communicative niche.

Keywords:

• Chunking
• compositionality
• formulaic language
• language change
• usage-based

Notes

* This article derives from research the author contributed to co-authored work with Joan Bybee (Bybee and Moder, forthcoming).

1. Example (1) and the examples that follow for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries come from Early English Books Online. Eighteenth-century examples come from Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century examples come from the Corpus of Historical American English. Examples from 1990 to 2010 come from the Corpus of Contemporary American English. The examples from these databases are cited using the author or title and year of the original publication.

2. Although the analysis reported here uses American English sources for the contemporary usage, these examples demonstrate that similar changes have taken place in contemporary British English. A search of the BBC website reveals numerous twentieth- and twenty-first century examples similar to those in (3) and (4).