Linguistics ETDs
Publication Date
5-1-2014
Abstract
This dissertation adopts a functional, usage-based perspective on language to highlight key changes in American English address over the past century, especially the development of 'you guys' and its expansion across second-person plural contexts. Based on data from the Corpus of Historical American English and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (among other corpora), the study tracks the increasing usage, gradual restructuring, semantic generalization, and shifting registers of 'you guys', including the interactions of those changes as the form has grammaticalized. This work offers an explanation, therefore, as to why 'you guys' has been uniquely reshaped into a pronominal unit with non-masculine meanings in American English, while other appositive uses such as 'you men' and 'you fellows' have retained their structural and semantic properties with far greater fidelity.
Language
English
Keywords
language change, grammaticalization, addressives, pronouns, you guys, American English, chunking, semantic generalization, frequency of usage, register, usage-based linguistics, cognitive linguistics
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Linguistics
Level of Degree
Doctoral
Department Name
Department of Linguistics
First Committee Member (Chair)
Axelrod, Melissa
Second Committee Member
Bybee, Joan
Third Committee Member
Koops, Christian
Fourth Committee Member
Scheibman, Joanne
Recommended Citation
Sienicki, Ben. ""Hey, y'guys!": A diachronic usage-based approach to changes in American English address." (2014). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/ling_etds/31
Comments
Submitted by Benjamin James Sienicki (bsienick@unm.edu) on 2014-02-16T02:26:01Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Sienicki, Dissertation (UNM Linguistics), Spring 2014.pdf: 864008 bytes, checksum: 84f3eb8e5d04db6a52889c1e35815347 (MD5), Approved for entry into archive by Doug Weintraub (dwein@unm.edu) on 2014-07-12T16:30:26Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Sienicki, Dissertation (UNM Linguistics), Spring 2014.pdf: 864008 bytes, checksum: 84f3eb8e5d04db6a52889c1e35815347 (MD5), Made available in DSpace on 2014-07-12T16:30:26Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Sienicki, Dissertation (UNM Linguistics), Spring 2014.pdf: 864008 bytes, checksum: 84f3eb8e5d04db6a52889c1e35815347 (MD5)