Herb,
   I want to thank you for fleshing this out so thoughtfully. You're
right; it's not at all unusual for words to take on grammatical
function, and analogy does give us a kind of familiarity that makes it
seem somewhat natural.
   My own ideas about grammar leaking are being influenced by this bottom
up view. If you have the idea that abstract rules govern language use,
then why so many instances where the rules don't seem to apply? But if
you think of those "rules" as patterns, it's not such a problem. It's a
much more fluid and dynamic model. Individuals pick up on a pattern
because they find it useful, and this spreads to others, so it's
dynamic in two ways. The fact that it "breaks the rules" is irrelvant,
since the rules are nothing more than an observation about what is
happening.>
   We do spend so much time on list trying to put constructions into
categories. (Much more time than we do talking about how they
function.) Frequency may be what makes us feel something is right, but
that feeling can be dangerous when applied to someone else's language
or to dynamically evolving forms.
   These are very much new thoughts for me, less and less tentative over
time.

Craig,
>
> You tend to look at these questions from cognitive and functional
> perspectives and I tend to see them through a historical lens.  These
> two approaches are complementary rather than incompatible because most
> of diachronic change in morphosyntax is, or at least starts out,
> analogical.  A simple, almost trivial example, is the spreading
> replacement of "by accident" with "on accident" by analogy to "on
> purpose."  The replacement of strong verb forms by weak is another
> example, such as "swelled" as the past participle of "swell" replacing
> the older "swollen." We still hear "It's swollen up badly," but we also
> hear without a sense of oddness "It's swelled up badly."  Or we have
> older cases, like the Elizabethan "He hath holpen his servant Israel"
> from the older KJV translation of the Magnificat vs. the modern "has
> helped."  Analogy is a cognitive process and is at the root of a vast
> amount of morphosyntactic change, though certainly not all of it.
>
> "Due to" has become so widely used as a compound preposition in American
> English that we no longer remark on it.  Older style guides might reject
> it, but few writers or teachers in this country worry about it today.
> Edmond suggests that the British attitude towards "due to" hasn't
> relaxed quite so far, and this may mark a dialect difference.  Perhaps
> the most obvious cases of adjectives becoming heads of compound
> prepositions are verbs in -ing, that is, present participles like
> "according," "owing," "depending," and many others, derived adjectives
> that become parts of compound prepositions and gradually lost their
> synchronic adjectival status as their meaning changes.  Analogy like
> this tends to lead to just such grammaticalization, that is, to the
> semantic bleaching of a form as a result of metaphor or metonymy so that
> the form takes on a more functional rather than lexical role.
>
> It is largely because of the cognitive processes of language change
> through analogy that Sapir's maxim "All grammars leak" is so profoundly
> true.  We have changes that are in progress, so that in some cases a
> word may have traits both of adjectives and of prepositions and doesn't
> fit neatly into either category, which is closer to what Sapir meant.
>
> Herb
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
> Sent: 2008-03-27 08:24
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: due to
>
> Edmond,
>    I'm not overly fond of your examples, but "due to" is used in that
> way
> in the states enough by thoughtful people (like myself) that I wouldn't
> call it an error. "Owing to" seems rare to me, and would probably seem
> lightly stuffy on these shores. Which probably just means I'm defending
> my own natural tendencies.
>     "Due to inclement weather, the game has been cancelled.">
>     "Due to problems with the network feed, we are delaying the
> program."
>    Because I am doing so much reading in cognitive (and construction)
> grammars, it suddenly seems strange to me that we need to classify the
> construction according to some more abstract principles. If grammar
> builds bottom up rather than top down, then there's no need for this.
>    We can think of it as a lower level schema.
>    "Due to X, Y has been done."  "Due to X, Y will happen."
>    I think it means something like "as a result of" or "because of". All
> three allow us to reduce causation to a noun construction. We say
> "because it rained" or "because of the rain." But we don't say "because
> the rain" or "because of it rained."
>    It's hard for me to see "due" as adjective here (though it would be
> in
> "the book is due today") because "due to" seems to head a construction
> that is at least commonly adverbial, laying out reasons for action in
> the main clause. But it doesn't head a clause. So preposition seems
> closest.
>    But I think it's more productive to think of it as a schema that
> allows
> certain kinds of meanings than it is to spend so much energy finding
> its classification.
>    All grammars leak because the language never needed to hold water in
> the first place. (I'm working on the right phrasing for that one.)
>    I hope that's more than rambling.
>
> Craig
>
>> As an English English speaker I note that, in the discussion over 'due
>>> to', no
>> one has referred to what is regarded as a common error over here, one
>> which is
>> bidding fair to become standard.  You all refer to 'due' correctly in
> my
>> view as
>> an adjective.  But it is now often used here as the first word of an
>> adverbial
>> prepositional phrase thus:
>>
>> They cancelled the match due to the rain.
>> Due to his complaints the menu was withdrawn.
>> Due to the protests from the Catholic clergy, a free vote has now been
>> allowed in the Commons.
>>
>> I myself wince when reading these, preferring 'owing to' in place of
> 'due
>> to'.  Has this error found any takers in America?
>>
>> Edmond
>>
>>
>>
>> Dr. Edmond Wright
>> 3 Boathouse Court
>> Trafalgar Road
>> Cambridge
>> CB4 1DU
>> England
>>
>> Email: [log in to unmask]
>> Website: http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/elw33/
>> Phone [00 44] (0)1223 350256
>>
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