Rhythmic Grammar

Julia Schlüter is Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Universität Paderborn, Germany.

• Chapter 1 Introduction1.1. The state of the art1.2. Aims and scope1.3. The structure of the argumentChapter 2 The Principle of Rhythmic Alternation introduced2.1. Outline2.1.1. The universality of rhythmic organization2.1.2. Isochrony types: stress timing vs. syllable timing2.1.3. Compensation strategies2.1.4. Functional explanations for rhythmic alternation2.2. Previous research on rhythmic influences on English grammarChapter 3 Methodology3.1. Corpora and their limitations3.2. The phonology of written language3.3. Concordance software and search procedures3.4. Tests of statistical significanceChapter 4 Analysis of attributive structures4.1. Introduction4.2. Worse vs. worser from EModE to nineteenth-century English4.3. A-adjectives in PDE4.4. Mono- and disyllabic variants of past participles4.4.1. Drunk vs. drunken from ME to PDE4.4.2. Broke vs. broken from ME to PDE4.4.3. Struck vs. stricken from ME to PDE4.4.4. Knit vs. knitted from ME to PDE4.4.5. Lit vs. lighted from ME to PDE4.4.6. Summary4.5. A quite vs. quite a from EModE to PDE4.6. The order of coordinated colour adjectives in PDE4.7. Negated attributive adjectives in PDE4.8. SummaryChapter 5 Analysis of verbal and adverbial structures5.1. Introduction5.2. Negated sentence adverbs in PDE5.3. Suffixed and suffixless adverbs5.3.1. Quick vs. quickly from EModE to PDE5.3.2. Slow vs. slowly from EModE to PDE5.3.3. Scarce vs. scarcely in PDE5.4. Marked and unmarked infinitives5.4.1. Infinitives dependent on active make in EmodE and LModE5.4.2. Infinitives dependent on passive make from EmodE to nineteenth-century English5.4.3. Infinitives dependent on passive bid in nineteenth-century English5.4.4. Infinitives dependent on the marginal modal dare from EModE to PDE5.5. A-prefixation of -ing-forms5.5.1. A-prefixation of -ing-forms following set from EModE to PDE5.5.2. A-prefixation of -ing-forms following go from EModE to PDE5.6. SummaryChapter 6 Theoretical implications6.1. Introduction6.2. Optimality Theory6.2.1. Universal, violable and ranked constraints6.2.2. A critique of Optimality Theory6.2.3. OT approaches to language variation and change6.3. Spreading activation models6.3.1. Principles of neural action6.3.2. Networks in production and perception6.3.3. Implications of the alternation of activation and recovery6.3.4. Interactivity between levels6.3.5. Limits to interactivity6.3.6. Language variation and change in a neuro- and psycholinguistic perspective6.3.7. Limitations of interactive activation modelsChapter 7 Conclusion7.1. Synopsis7.2. Outlook