Today’s Innovations, Tomorrow’s Conventions: Usage-based approaches to incipient developments in English
Edited by David Lorenz and David Tizón-Couto
Special issue of Functions of Language 32:1 (2025) v, 161 pp.
David Lorenz
List of John Benjamins publications in which David Lorenz is involved.
Title
2025 Today’s innovations, tomorrow’s conventions: Usage-based approaches to incipient developments in English Today’s Innovations, Tomorrow’s Conventions: Usage-based approaches to incipient developments in English, Lorenz, David and David Tizón-Couto (eds.), pp. 3–15 | Introduction
2024 Potential grammaticalization of epistemic phrases: What could be might be Functions of Language 31:3, pp. 262–288 | Article
This paper deals with the potential grammaticalization of English (it) could be and (it) might be into epistemic sentence adverbs in analogy to maybe. They can occur in adverb-like positions and functions in informal language use, e.g. (it) could be something good has begun, often with the… read more
2023 Chapter 5. Could be, might be, maybe: Mechanisms of grammaticalization in synchronic use and perception Different Slants on Grammaticalization, Hancil, Sylvie and Vittorio Tantucci (eds.), pp. 124–146 | Chapter
In grammaticalization, functional reanalysis and formal reduction are often regarded as elements of a unified diachronic process, though rooted in general communicative and cognitive preferences. The present study tests these claims in synchronic language use by investigating potential cases of… read more
2020 Converging variations and the emergence of horizontal links: To -contraction in American English Nodes and Networks in Diachronic Construction Grammar, Sommerer, Lotte and Elena Smirnova (eds.), pp. 243–274 | Chapter
The guiding question of this paper is how (horizontal) connections are established when new items enter the network of constructions. It presents a quantitative, corpus-based study of the development of to-contraction (e.g. want to > wanna) in American English since the 19th century. From a… read more
2020 Chapter 4. Not just frequency, not just modality: Production and perception of English semi-modals Re-Assessing Modalising Expressions: Categories, co-text, and context, Hohaus, Pascal and Rainer Schulze (eds.), pp. 79–108 | Chapter
We review reduction and contraction in modalizing expressions of the type V-to-Vinf from the perspective of production, perception and mental representation. A corpus study of spoken American English shows reduction/contraction as a continuous process which is subject to phonological and… read more
2013 From reduction to emancipation: Is gonna a word? Corpus Perspectives on Patterns of Lexis, Hasselgård, Hilde, Jarle Ebeling and Signe Oksefjell Ebeling (eds.), pp. 133–152 | Article
In this paper I propose an emancipation effect that may follow from the ‘reducing effect’ of frequency (Bybee 2006): if a reduced realization of an item gains in frequency, it will become conceptually independent from the full form. In a context of grammaticalization, I show that this is the case… read more