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The Effect Of Usage On Degrees Of Constituency: The Reduction Of Don't In English, Joan Bybee, Joanne Scheibman

English Faculty Publications

In this paper we take the position that there are many degrees of constituency and that these derive in a direct manner from the frequency with which elements are used together: elements that are frequently found next to each other show a tighter constituent structure than those that collocate less frequently. We use both phonological and functional evidence from conversation to argue that repetition conditions chunking (Haiman 1994), sometimes overriding the syntactic and semantic logic of the organization of utterances. Our study examines the reduction of don't in American English conversation. We find that don't is reduced the most in …