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Abstract: Although variation and heterogeneity are generally recognized as a characteristic of linguistic usage, they are hardly conceived as a fundamental dimension of grammar. Introducing a distinction between an exemplum linguistics and a datum linguistics, we show that the history of the language sciences, both conceptually and descriptively, is organized around opposing conceptions of what a linguistic fact is. While Generative Grammar and its practitioners are clearly examples of the first, corpus linguistics illustrates the second conception. The upsurge of datum linguistics and of usage based models since the beginning of the 21st century allows for a fundamental reassessment of the functional role of variation in language. We show that while the biolinguistic program rests on the negation of the sociocultural framing of the language faculty and denies any functional impact of communicational competence in shaping language and grammars, constructional approaches and usage-based linguistics make room for a Darwinian sociocultural conception. In such a conception, communication is a leading force in the emergence and stabilization of human linguistic competence, both diachronically and synchronically. In this approach, variation and heterogeneity are to be seen as core factors in shaping language. Thus, as argued some 50years ago by Weinreich, variation and heterogeneity are to be regarded as structurally functional, and as fundamental dimensions of language. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Noam Chomsky’s most recent research paradigm, the Minimalist Program (MP), overtly proclaims continuity with earlier phases of transformational-generative linguistics. Despite its (limited) use of terminology from these earlier phases and its continued focus on many of the same issues with which Chomsky and his followers have always been concerned, at a conceptual level MP represents a dramatic break with earlier generative theories. MP adopts many of the assumptions and goals of the linguistic research projects that emerged before, alongside, and contrary to Chomsky’s own, the ones which have come in the linguistic literature to be called functionalism. While this shift has had significant consequences in linguistics, in part driving convergences between functionalist and formalist approaches, its consequences have yet to be fully realized in fields like philosophy and cognitive science that have based many foundational assumptions on just those aspects of generativism now challenged by Chomsky’s own theory. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Semantic accounts of verb pattern alternations often rely on observations about ‘verb disposition’: the preference of verbs with particular lexical semantic characteristics for one of two competing constructions is taken as a clue to the semantic differences between the two constructions. For instance, it has been observed with regard to the English dative alternation that verbs of refusal such as deny and refuse are perfectly acceptable in the ditransitive construction but much less so in the so-called prepositional dative construction with to (compare They refused the convict a last cigarette with ? They refused a last cigarette to the convict); and this contrast has been presented as evidence for the hypothesis that the prepositional dative highlights the actual movement of the theme toward the receiver (e.g. [Goldberg, A.E., 1992. The inherent semantics of argument structure: the case of the English ditransitive. Cognitive Linguistics 3, 37–74]). This paper discusses the merit of verb disposition as evidence for semantic hypotheses about alternating constructions and presents the results of a corpus-based study of verb disposition in the Dutch dative alternation. On the basis of [Gries, S., Stefanowitsch, A., 2004. Extending Collostructional Analysis: a corpus-based perspective on alternations. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 9, 97–129] method of ‘distinctive collexeme analysis’, the alternating verbs with a statistically significant preference for the Dutch ditransitive are separated from those with a statistically significant preference for the prepositional dative in a corpus of contemporary Dutch newspaper language. The results of this test provide the basis for a number of empirically valid generalizations about the semantic parameters driving the dative alternation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper investigates the nature of the substitutions used for the dental fricatives (/θ/ and /ð/) by Dutch learners of English as a second language. By means of an OT analysis, the underlying reasons for the difficulties encountered with these sounds are brought to light. The present data reveal that phonetics (or acoustics) rather than phonology plays a major role in the selection of the phonemes used to substitute the dental fricatives. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]