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Corpus-based Approaches to Register Variation
Edited by Elena Seoane and Douglas Biber
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 103] 2021
► pp. 51–84

Chapter 3
How register-specific is probabilistic grammatical knowledge?

A programmatic sketch and a case study on the dative alternation with give

| KU Leuven
| University of Birmingham
| Vrije Universiteit Brussel | KU Leuven
| KU Leuven
| KU Leuven
While there is preliminary evidence about the importance of register in linguistic choice-making processes, systematic studies focusing on the interaction between register and language-internal constraints are lacking in variationist linguistics. This contribution sketches an ongoing project in which two well-understood grammatical alternations (dative alternation and future marker alternation) are analysed with variationist methods, focusing on the role of register defined at the intersection of mode (spoken vs written) and formality (formal vs informal). Probabilistic corpus models will be complemented with rating experiments to investigate to what extent they correlate with participants’ ratings, and to illustrate the importance of methodological diversity in investigating usage-based theories of grammar. We present corpus results of a case study on the dative alternation with give.
Keywords: register, variationist analysis, usage-based approach, probabilistic grammar, dative alternation, grammatical choice-making, two-fold methodology, formality
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Register in variationist linguistics
  • 3.A programmatic sketch
    • 3.1Research questions
    • 3.2Methodology
      • 3.2.1Corpus data
      • 3.2.2Experimental track
  • 4.Case study: The dative alternation in English
    • 4.1Variable context
    • 4.2Language-internal constraints
      • 4.2.1Constituent length
      • 4.2.2Pronominality
      • 4.2.3Complexity
      • 4.2.4Frequency
      • 4.2.5Definiteness
      • 4.2.6Animacy
      • 4.2.7Verb sense
    • 4.3Analysis
    • 4.4Results
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 8 December 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.103.03eng
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