The Innovative Usage Thread

[äreo]

And on that note...

Today I caught myself using a past participle gaven for give instead of given, clearly intending the same aspect with gaven as I have when I use aten instead of eaten.

Any examples of where you use aten vs. eaten to illustrate the distinction? Sounds interesting.

[Travis B.]

And on that note...

Today I caught myself using a past participle gaven for give instead of given, clearly intending the same aspect with gaven as I have when I use aten instead of eaten.

Any examples of where you use aten vs. eaten to illustrate the distinction? Sounds interesting.

I talked it over with my mom, who actually makes the same exact distinction between eaten, aten, and ate (p.p.) that I make, and from discussing it with her (even though the linguistic terms are mine, not hers), the distinction between eaten and aten is one of atelic versus telic respectively. I had already figured out that those two differ from ate (p.p.) in that those are imperfective while ate (p.p.) is perfective; when put in laymans' terms, my mom corroborated this as well. Likewise, ate (p.p.) appears to be telic as well, even though the nature of telicity seems to be different for it, in that it refers to a discrete event rather than a continuous process.

I have eaten snails. (I have gone through the process of eating snails at some point, and I might eat more snails at some point.) i.e. imperfective and atelic
I have aten snails. (I have gone through the process of eating snails at some point, and am done eating snails, possibly permanently.) i.e. imperfective and telic
I have ate snails. (I have finished eating snails at some point, and am complete for that moment, even though I may eat snails again.) i.e. perfective and telic

From all appearances, given, gaven, and gave (p.p.) form an analogous system. I similar three-member systems can be formed for all strong forms which have a different stem vowel in their preterite and their historical past participle, and where their historical past participle also ends in -(e)n, e.g. shaken, shooken, and shook (p.p.) and driven, droven, and drove (p.p.). (Not all these seem to be common, though; for instance, while I have caught myself using the written, wroten, wrote (p.p.) system, wroten is not that common, unlike aten.)

There are other examples of such systems that differ somewhat. For instance, a system with an extra perfective and atelic role is formed by drunk, drunken, dranken, and drank (p.p.) respectively, where drunk and drank (p.p.) are both perfective, drunken and dranken are both imperfective, drunk and drunken are both atelic, and dranken and drank (p.p.) are both telic.

However, if a smaller system can be similarly formed, the imperfective and atelic role and the perfective and telic role are always the ones taken, with the traditional past participle always taking the first role and the traditional preterite always taking the third role. Consider bitten versus bit (p.p.), chosen versus chose (p.p.), or ridden and rode (p.p.) without the hypothetical *roden form.

Two-member systems can also be formed for verbs that can have both an -(e)n past participle and a -ed past participle, where the former is simply imperfective and atelic while the latter is perfective and telic, corresponding to the first and the third of the system above. A good example of such a pair is shown versus showed (p.p.). Similar effects can be obtained just about anywhere where a strong past participle can alternate with a weak participle, taking to the respective roles, e.g. boughten versus bought (p.p.).

[Travis B.]

I really do wonder just how widespread this is in reality, as this seems like this whole elaborate system of working new aspectual meanings onto the existing traditional English tense-and-aspect system, taking advantage of forms already extant or new forms that can be very easily innovated from existing forms.

I would be much surprised if this truly were particular to a small, local set of dialects rather than merely being something wider spread but generally overlooked.

(My mother, for that matter, does not speak the same dialect as myself, herself being from Kenosha and sounding like it.)

[Travis B.]

My gawd your dialect makes mine seem conservative with its past participles - lol.

It's crazy, I just pay attention and it seems that people here really spam -en on our irregular PPs, LOL!

Mine makes up for it with its diachronic phonology, though.

As for -en, most of the cases I see you use sound grammatical to my ears, but still feel a bit odd if I actually try to say them by themselves.

But then, it is already established that my dialect does interesting things with tense and aspect with regard to alternate past participle forms, and I have already noticed that often forms sound odd to my ears if I say them in a contrived sentence or by themselves, but which I will catch myself using repeatedly in Real Life, and in usages that I find grammatical in retrospect as well.

For instance, callen sounds quite odd to me if I say it by itself, but in many actual example sentences I can think of it sounds quite natural to me.

Your dialect doesn't attach aspect (and/or tense) to these past participle forms, does it, though, as far as I can recall?

I haven't noticed any aspect stuff with regards to it around here, but that could be from not paying attention enough.

Okay, because the attaching of new aspectual distinctions to past participle forms would be something that would significantly motivate the innovation of new past participle forms, like the aforementioned callen.

[äreo]

Telicity is the shit.

I have heard a kid around here (Houston-area suburbs) say "dranken", but he used it adjectivally.

Now I've not paid too much attention to the occurrence of "tooken" vs. "taken" in dialects which feature the former, but I hear "tooken" quite a bit in South Florida. I once was playing chess with a friend, and he'd totally missed a good opportunity to capture one of my pieces, and when he noticed, he said "I wish I would've tooken it." I repeated, "you wish you would've tooken it?" He repeated the original sentence, not seeming to think two seconds about any issue of grammaticality. I'm not sure I remember hearing him (or any of my other acquaintances there who use "tooken") say "taken" tho, so I'll have to talk to him (them) sometime.

[Travis B.]

Telicity is the shit.

I have heard a kid around here (Houston-area suburbs) say "dranken", but he used it adjectivally.

This I am not familiar with.

Now I've not paid too much attention to the occurrence of "tooken" vs. "taken" in dialects which feature the former, but I hear "tooken" quite a bit in South Florida. I once was playing chess with a friend, and he'd totally missed a good opportunity to capture one of my pieces, and when he noticed, he said "I wish I would've tooken it." I repeated, "you wish you would've tooken it?" He repeated the original sentence, not seeming to think two seconds about any issue of grammaticality. I'm not sure I remember hearing him (or any of my other acquaintances there who use "tooken") say "taken" tho, so I'll have to talk to him (them) sometime.

This could be an innovation there, or this could be something imported from elsewhere, considering the level of migration to Florida from other parts of the US.

In this case, these cases of tooken are places where saying tooken, being imperfective and telic, would be valid in my own dialect. However, likely under standard language influence, taken is also valid in this position despite being imperfective and atelic, also likely due to that, being atelic, it can be interchanged for anything telic. Actually took is very much valid here too in my dialect but with different connotations due to being perfective (as well as telic), referring to the taking of the piece as a singular event rather than as a process.

It would be interesting to see just how widespread the kinds of systems my dialect has really are, especially as I have my doubts as to whether it really is specific to my dialect. In this case, the thing to look for is whether specific meanings are being enunciated by particular past participle forms, or whether individual forms are merely being used as dialectal or informal variants simply in the place of the standard form.

[Travis B.]

Telic versus atelic do not feel like the best words describing the difference between, say, tooken and taken, even though whenever I try to think about them rationally the difference seems to be best described as that.

For instance, if I were to say "I have tooken up paintball" (i.e. I had dabbled in paintball in the past), it feels more past-y than, "I have taken up paintball" (i.e. I have started playing paintball), which feels much more present-y. Of course, one can analyze this as telicity; "past-y" meaning that something completed, i.e. telic, and "present-y" meaning that something has not completed or is otherwise open-ended, i.e. atelic.

Yet the telicity analysis does not feel right subjectively for some reason, it is not how my mind seems to subjectively analyze this, even though it is also consistent as well with if I were to contrast "I had tooken up paintball" with "I had taken up paintball". In this case had tooken seems to imply anterior past completion whereas had taken seems to imply anterior past beginning left open-ended, i.e. telic versus atelic.

Maybe it is because all the telic cases are not merely completed at some point but rather past completion that makes the word telicity feel wrong, as telic should theoretically allow for future completion that this does not allow for.

Yet I do not know of a better term for neatly summing this up a distinction between past completion and left open-ended as is expressed here.

Anyone know of any better term here than telicity?

[finlay]

Tooken is a word i'm fairly sure i've heard in scotland, so i doubt that it's an innovation in your area...

[Wattmann]

I've just heard, over the BBC, a reporter with /θ ð/ /f v/
Oh my gawd, we're posting in ve innovative usage fred!

How common is this?

[jmcd]

Tooken is a word i'm fairly sure i've heard in scotland, so i doubt that it's an innovation in your area...

Yeah, I used to even use it in writing for school when I was in the first few years of primary school.

I've just heard, over the BBC, a reporter with /θ ð/ /f v/
Oh my gawd, we're posting in ve innovative usage fred!

How common is this?

It's very common in parts of Southeast England and it also appears elsewhere. Th-fronting is at least 50 year old but its use by a BBC reporter may be more recent.

[finlay]

It's increasingly common all over England, and it's spread to parts of Scotland too; in Glasgow it coexists with θ→h.

[Travis B.]

Tooken is a word i'm fairly sure i've heard in scotland, so i doubt that it's an innovation in your area...

That I am pretty sure of. The part that I am wondering about more is the use of forms like it to express aspect.

[Boşkoventi]

While there is a definite imperfective versus perfective element here, with aten in particular being clearly imperfective, there is more going on here than just that...

...

Yet I do not know of a better term for neatly summing this up a distinction between past completion and left open-ended as is expressed here.

Anyone know of any better term here than telicity?

It sounds to me like it's a static vs. dynamic distinction, similar to that in German passives (cf. Der Kuchen ist gegessen "The cake is (has been) eaten" vs. Der Kuchen wurde gegessen "The cake got/was/became eaten"):

(Traditionally, the perfect refers to a "past event with present relevance", or "completed action with incomplete relevance", i.e. an event occurred, and the resulting state continues into the present.)

1a) We've eaten all the food. -- imperfective and stative; refers to the resulting state, without regard to the event that caused it, i.e. "we are in a state of having eaten all the food"
1b) I have eaten snails. -- "I am in a state of having eaten snails" - since the state is ongoing, you may eat snails again

2a) We've aten all the food. -- perfect, but also imperfective (!), since it refers to an ongoing state; replaces the original perfect - focuses on the event rather than the resulting state
2b) I have aten snails. -- focuses on the event rather than the state; "I have the experience of eating snails" - seems to imply completion, but maybe not necessarily?

3a) We've ate all the food. -- (past) perfective - focuses on the event as a whole, without regard to temporal structure (or any resulting state)
3b) I have ate snails. -- (same)


I'm curious, then, how you would interpret "We ate all the food / I ate snails" (personally, I'd use this for the third sentence). Though the preterite, for me, seems to (usually / often) require a temporal adverb of some sort, e.g. "I ate snails when I was in France". (It may be implied: "We ate all the food (before you got here; that's why there's nothing to eat)".) Perhaps your "have" + preterite is a way around this?


This would explain the "present-y-ness" of the "eaten/taken" forms: the 'static perfect' (eaten/taken) refers to a present state, while the 'dynamic perfect' (aten/tooken) refers to a past event, which happens to have present relevance (pretty much the traditional perfect tense/aspect). From these and your later examples with "tooken up paintball", it also seems to tie into an experiential aspect, similar to that of Chinese. (Going by the Chinese examples, your 'dynamic perfect' would be the experiential form.)

Importance of the resulting state / experiential-ness may depend on the definiteness / specificity of the object -- try substituting "the snails" in the above sentences.

This could also explain why you don't allow forms like *sangen: singing is (in its usual intransitive use, at least) atelic, and doesn't result in a state; therefore you don't make the distinction. Might something like ?We've sangen that hymn work?


Also ...

Demonstrating that your explanation does not make sense and what your explanation actually means is neither creepy nor weird.

No, that's OK, but your particular explanation is creepy and weird.

[King of My Own Niche]

I had a friend the other day who used the plural of "acrostic" as "acrostixes", apparently as some kind of odd back-tracking from "matrix" "matrices". I thought it was a pretty interesting derivation, especially since it could be applied to "agnostic" "agnostixes", "bulimic" "bulimixes", "clitic" "clitixes", etc.

[Travis B.]

While there is a definite imperfective versus perfective element here, with aten in particular being clearly imperfective, there is more going on here than just that...

...

Yet I do not know of a better term for neatly summing this up a distinction between past completion and left open-ended as is expressed here.

Anyone know of any better term here than telicity?

It sounds to me like it's a static vs. dynamic distinction, similar to that in German passives (cf. Der Kuchen ist gegessen "The cake is (has been) eaten" vs. Der Kuchen wurde gegessen "The cake got/was/became eaten"):

(Traditionally, the perfect refers to a "past event with present relevance", or "completed action with incomplete relevance", i.e. an event occurred, and the resulting state continues into the present.)

1a) We've eaten all the food. -- imperfective and stative; refers to the resulting state, without regard to the event that caused it, i.e. "we are in a state of having eaten all the food"
1b) I have eaten snails. -- "I am in a state of having eaten snails" - since the state is ongoing, you may eat snails again

2a) We've aten all the food. -- perfect, but also imperfective (!), since it refers to an ongoing state; replaces the original perfect - focuses on the event rather than the resulting state
2b) I have aten snails. -- focuses on the event rather than the state; "I have the experience of eating snails" - seems to imply completion, but maybe not necessarily?

3a) We've ate all the food. -- (past) perfective - focuses on the event as a whole, without regard to temporal structure (or any resulting state)
3b) I have ate snails. -- (same)


I'm curious, then, how you would interpret "We ate all the food / I ate snails" (personally, I'd use this for the third sentence). Though the preterite, for me, seems to (usually / often) require a temporal adverb of some sort, e.g. "I ate snails when I was in France". (It may be implied: "We ate all the food (before you got here; that's why there's nothing to eat)".) Perhaps your "have" + preterite is a way around this?


This would explain the "present-y-ness" of the "eaten/taken" forms: the 'static perfect' (eaten/taken) refers to a present state, while the 'dynamic perfect' (aten/tooken) refers to a past event, which happens to have present relevance (pretty much the traditional perfect tense/aspect). From these and your later examples with "tooken up paintball", it also seems to tie into an experiential aspect, similar to that of Chinese. (Going by the Chinese examples, your 'dynamic perfect' would be the experiential form.)

Importance of the resulting state / experiential-ness may depend on the definiteness / specificity of the object -- try substituting "the snails" in the above sentences.

Your explanation here seems to actually make quite a deal of sense as a way to explain this without resorting to telicity (and the problems with its use here).

About "We ate all the food / I ate snails", to me they are almost identical to "We've ate all the food / I've ate snails" respectively. I do not perceive any need to have any adverbial forms with them.

There is one remaining issue, however. In your scheme here "I've aten snails" is quite different from "I've ate snails", but to me the two are quite similar, with the only real difference being perfectivity. The are also quite similar to "I ate snails". So hence it might make sense to modify it slightly, so as to give:

"I have eaten snails.": static imperfective perfect
"I have aten snails.": dynamic imperfective perfect
"I have ate snails.": dynamic perfective perfect, but implying simple past
"I ate snails.": simple past, but implying dynamic perfective perfect

This could also explain why you don't allow forms like *sangen: singing is (in its usual intransitive use, at least) atelic, and doesn't result in a state; therefore you don't make the distinction. Might something like ?We've sangen that hymn work?'

Actually, "*We've sangen that hymn" does not work at all. There is no *sungen either. Just "We've sang that hymn" and "We've sung that hymn" (and "We sang that hymn"), and I do not notice any significant difference between the two (three, actually) except merely as a matter of register in the case of "We've sung that hymn".

[TaylorS]

While there is a definite imperfective versus perfective element here, with aten in particular being clearly imperfective, there is more going on here than just that...

...

Yet I do not know of a better term for neatly summing this up a distinction between past completion and left open-ended as is expressed here.

Anyone know of any better term here than telicity?

It sounds to me like it's a static vs. dynamic distinction, similar to that in German passives (cf. Der Kuchen ist gegessen "The cake is (has been) eaten" vs. Der Kuchen wurde gegessen "The cake got/was/became eaten"):

(Traditionally, the perfect refers to a "past event with present relevance", or "completed action with incomplete relevance", i.e. an event occurred, and the resulting state continues into the present.)

1a) We've eaten all the food. -- imperfective and stative; refers to the resulting state, without regard to the event that caused it, i.e. "we are in a state of having eaten all the food"
1b) I have eaten snails. -- "I am in a state of having eaten snails" - since the state is ongoing, you may eat snails again

2a) We've aten all the food. -- perfect, but also imperfective (!), since it refers to an ongoing state; replaces the original perfect - focuses on the event rather than the resulting state
2b) I have aten snails. -- focuses on the event rather than the state; "I have the experience of eating snails" - seems to imply completion, but maybe not necessarily?

3a) We've ate all the food. -- (past) perfective - focuses on the event as a whole, without regard to temporal structure (or any resulting state)
3b) I have ate snails. -- (same)


I'm curious, then, how you would interpret "We ate all the food / I ate snails" (personally, I'd use this for the third sentence). Though the preterite, for me, seems to (usually / often) require a temporal adverb of some sort, e.g. "I ate snails when I was in France". (It may be implied: "We ate all the food (before you got here; that's why there's nothing to eat)".) Perhaps your "have" + preterite is a way around this?


This would explain the "present-y-ness" of the "eaten/taken" forms: the 'static perfect' (eaten/taken) refers to a present state, while the 'dynamic perfect' (aten/tooken) refers to a past event, which happens to have present relevance (pretty much the traditional perfect tense/aspect). From these and your later examples with "tooken up paintball", it also seems to tie into an experiential aspect, similar to that of Chinese. (Going by the Chinese examples, your 'dynamic perfect' would be the experiential form.)

Importance of the resulting state / experiential-ness may depend on the definiteness / specificity of the object -- try substituting "the snails" in the above sentences.

Your explanation here seems to actually make quite a deal of sense as a way to explain this without resorting to telicity (and the problems with its use here).

About "We ate all the food / I ate snails", to me they are almost identical to "We've ate all the food / I've ate snails" respectively. I do not perceive any need to have any adverbial forms with them.

There is one remaining issue, however. In your scheme here "I've aten snails" is quite different from "I've ate snails", but to me the two are quite similar, with the only real difference being perfectivity. The are also quite similar to "I ate snails". So hence it might make sense to modify it slightly, so as to give:

"I have eaten snails.": static imperfective perfect
"I have aten snails.": dynamic imperfective perfect
"I have ate snails.": dynamic perfective perfect, but implying simple past
"I ate snails.": simple past, but implying dynamic perfective perfect

This could also explain why you don't allow forms like *sangen: singing is (in its usual intransitive use, at least) atelic, and doesn't result in a state; therefore you don't make the distinction. Might something like ?We've sangen that hymn work?'

Actually, "*We've sangen that hymn" does not work at all. There is no *sungen either. Just "We've sang that hymn" and "We've sung that hymn" (and "We sang that hymn"), and I do not notice any significant difference between the two (three, actually) except merely as a matter of register in the case of "We've sung that hymn".

This just gave me an idea for Mekoshan!!!

[Nortaneous]

"it became a thing that people would casually mention it to each other"

[Astraios]

I do that. (We've had it in here before too.)

[Rui]

This actually isn't an innovative use or anything, but in recent years, I've heard numerous news sources referring to President Obama "growing the economy" among other examples...

For me, "grow" is not a transitive verb. I don't know if it's just I wasn't exposed to such examples as I was learning English when I was younger, or what it is, but yeah, that sentence is ungrammatical to me. I would say something like "President Obama made the economy grow" or something along those lines.

NE: The only instances I can think of of using "grow" transitively is saying "I grew tomatoes in my garden" and "I grew 2 inches" I think...so maybe it just sounds weird when used metaphorically or if there's some other specification in the subcategorization frame or something?

[----]

"I grew 2 inches" isn't transitive; '2 inches' here functions as an adverb.

[Jipí]

"I grew 2 inches" isn't transitive; '2 inches' here functions as an adverb.

I think I'ma have that in either dative or instrumental in my conlang:

Ang nakasay mapangyam yo.
AF grow-1S fingerwidth-DAT four.
'I grew four fingerwidths.'

vs.

Ri nakasaran disuyereng ay.
CAUF grow-3P.INAN banana-PL-A.INAN 1S.
'I grow bananas / I let bananas grow.'

vs.

Nakasyan ganjang.
grow-3PM child-PL.A.
'Children grow.'

The thirteen-years old in me is just chuckling at the idea of horribly machine-translated spam headlines that imply you should grow penises in your garden (and get all the ladies) …

[Rui]

"I grew 2 inches" isn't transitive; '2 inches' here functions as an adverb.

I was hesitant to include that one as well, so I guess I didn't need to

[Travis B.]

This actually isn't an innovative use or anything, but in recent years, I've heard numerous news sources referring to President Obama "growing the economy" among other examples...

For me, "grow" is not a transitive verb. I don't know if it's just I wasn't exposed to such examples as I was learning English when I was younger, or what it is, but yeah, that sentence is ungrammatical to me. I would say something like "President Obama made the economy grow" or something along those lines.

NE: The only instances I can think of of using "grow" transitively is saying "I grew tomatoes in my garden" and "I grew 2 inches" I think...so maybe it just sounds weird when used metaphorically or if there's some other specification in the subcategorization frame or something?

This really is not an innovation at all. People speak of things such as "He grows vegetables in his garden" all the time, in the present tense. You might not be familiar with this usage personally, but it really is a common one in reality. It is this usage from which Obama's stems, and its commonness is why people have not remarked on his usage there.

[Travis B.]

This just gave me an idea for Mekoshan!!!

This seems like such a major innovation that it is almost hard to believe that it might actually be very dialectal.

Yet I know it is not just something that I am thinking up myself, because my mother emphatically agreed with it as a thing, actually in laymans' terms spelling out how this works herself well beyond anything I had told her (so she was not merely just agreeing with me because I am her son, as she was telling me things about this that I clearly had not told her). It was quite interesting that she happened to be as aware of this as being a thing as she was; the snails examples actually originally came from how she explained it.

And that she herself intuitively agrees with this indicates that it is not really local, as she actually natively speaks a somewhat different dialect than I do, something more akin to a progressive GA with some Chicago dialect influence rather than my own Milwaukee dialect. This probably extends the minimum range of this at least to the area between Milwaukee and Chicago, if not further.

[Boşkoventi]

Your explanation here seems to actually make quite a deal of sense as a way to explain this without resorting to telicity (and the problems with its use here).

About "We ate all the food / I ate snails", to me they are almost identical to "We've ate all the food / I've ate snails" respectively. I do not perceive any need to have any adverbial forms with them.

There is one remaining issue, however. In your scheme here "I've aten snails" is quite different from "I've ate snails", but to me the two are quite similar, with the only real difference being perfectivity. The are also quite similar to "I ate snails". So hence it might make sense to modify it slightly, so as to give:

"I have eaten snails.": static imperfective perfect
"I have aten snails.": dynamic imperfective perfect
"I have ate snails.": dynamic perfective perfect, but implying simple past
"I ate snails.": simple past, but implying dynamic perfective perfect

I don't think "perfective perfect" works, as the perfect seems to be inherently imperfective (yay confusing terms!), since by its very definition it refers to the temporal structure of an event, so "I have ate snails" must be something else. Maybe the term you want is completive (i.e. referring to / emphasizing the completion of an event)? Otherwise I'm not sure ... maybe "dynamic perfective" for the third, and "static perfective" (i.e. could the distinction be similar to that for the two perfect forms?) If not, then "simple past" / "preterite" / "aorist" (???) for the last one -- it doesn't seem to have any strong connotations of aspect.

This really is not an innovation at all. People speak of things such as "He grows vegetables in his garden" all the time, in the present tense. You might not be familiar with this usage personally, but it really is a common one in reality. It is this usage from which Obama's stems, and its commonness is why people have not remarked on his usage there.

Phrases like "growing the economy" or "growing your business" don't feel like the same thing to me, though (even if they're almost certainly based on analogy with phrases like "growing vegetables"). I think the problem is that when you talk of "growing vegetables", the meaning behind "growing" seems to be "raising" or "nurturing" *, whereas in "growing the economy" it sounds like a more literal "making bigger".

* That is, "I'm growing vegetables" doesn't mean I'm taking existing vegetables and making them bigger, which is what the examples with "economy" or "business" feel like.