Mikroforandringer i to engelske aspektkonstruktioner og visualisering deraf: Hilpert-metoden

When addressing language change, people often focus primarily on structural changes such as grammaticalization processes and similar types of change. However, changes also occur at a level which is not necessarily structurally reflected, as is the case of collocational, colligational, and collostructioal change. In usage-based language models such changes are of great importance to the language system. In this paper we will focus on changes in constrution-verb relations in the English progressive and imperfective constructions as reflected in the Corpus of Historical American English in the period 1810-2009, making use of what could be called the Hilpert method (after Martin Hilpert who is somewhat of a pioneer in this field), which involves motion charts generated via googleVis as an analytical tool and a means of visualization of otherwise abstract and structurally unobservable language changes.