Competing Motivations in Grammar and Usage

Brian MacWhinney is Professor of Psychology, Computational Linguistics, and Modern Languages at Carnegie Mellon University. He has developed a model of first and second language acquisition, processing, and disorders called the Competition Model, which describes how language learning emerges from forces operating on lexically-based patterns across divergent timeframes. It has been tested through cross-linguistic experimentation, neuroimaging, online language learning, and analysis of the CHILDES and TalkBank corpora. His recent publications include The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk (3rd ed; Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000) and, co-edited with Roberta Klatzky and Marlene Behrmann, Embodiment, Ego-Space, and Action (Psychology Press 2008).

Andrej Malchukov is a Senior Researcher at the St. Petersburg Institute for Linguistic Research (Russian Academy of Sciences) and is currently affiliated to the University of Mainz as a Visiting Professor. In addition to descriptive work on Siberian languages, his main research interests lie in the domain of language typology. His publications include the edited volumes The Oxford Handbook of Case (with Andrew Spencer; OUP 2009), Studies in Ditransitive Constructions: A Comparative Handbook (with Bernard Comrie and Martin Haspelmath; Mouton de Gruyter 2010) and Impersonal Constructions: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective (with Anna Siewierska; John Benjamins 2011).

Edith Moravscik is Professor Emerita of Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she has taught for over 30 years. Her publications include the textbooks An Introduction to Syntax and An Introduction to Syntactic Theory (both Continuum 2006), and Introducing Language Typology (CUP 2013) and the edited volumes Functionalism and Formalism in Linguistics (with Michael Darnell, Frederick Newmeyer, Michael Noonan, and Kathleen Wheatley; John Benjamins 1999) and Formulaic Language (with Roberta Corrigan, Hamid Ouali, and Kathleen Wheatley). She has also published a number of articles on language typology and universals, Hungarian grammar, and conflict resolution.

1. Introduction, Edith Moravscik
PART I: Competition in syntax: Grammatical relations and word order
2. Resolving alignment conflicts: A competing motivations approach, Andrej Malchukov
3. Animate object fronting in Dutch: A production study, Monique J. A. Lamers and Helen de Hoop
4. Patterns in competing motivations and the interaction of principles, John A. Hawkins
5. Why move? How weight and discourse factors combine to predict relative clause extraposition in English, Elaine J. Francis and Laura A. Michaelis
6. A statistical model of competing motivations affecting relative clause extraposition in German, Jan Strunk
7. Competition in argument interpretation: Evidence from the neurobiology of language, Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky and Matthias Schlesewsky
8. Competition all the way down: How children learn word order cues to sentence structure, Caroline F. Rowland, Claire Noble, and Angel Chan
9. Competing constraints in children's omission of subjects? The interaction of verb finiteness and referent accessibility, Mary E. Hughes and Shanley E. M. Allen
10. Competing cues in early syntactic development, Grzegorz Krajewski and Elena Lieven
PART II: Competition in morphosyntax and the lexicon
11. Conflicting vs. converging vs. interdependent motivations in morphology, Wolfgang U. Dressler, Gary Libben, and Katharina Korecky-Kroll
12. On system pressure competing with economic motivation, Martin Haspelmath
13. Apparently competing motivations in morphosyntactic variation, Britta Mondorf
14. Formal vs. functional motivations for the structure of self-repair in German, Martin Pfeiffer
15. Six competing motives for repetition, John Haiman
PART III: General issues and the extension of the approach
16. Motivating competitions, John W. Du Bois
17. Competing motivation models and diachrony: What evidence for what motivation?, Sonia Cristofaro
18. Where do motivations compete?, Frederick J. Newmeyer
19. Politeness distinctions in personal pronouns: A case study of competing motivations, Johannes Helmbrecht
20. Or-constructions: Monosemy vs. polysemy, Mira Ariel
21. Sentence grammar vs. thetical grammar: Two competing domains, Gunther Kaltenbock and Bernd Heine
22. 22. Conclusions: Competition across time, Brian MacWhinney