Title: About text frequencies in historical linguistics: Disentangling environmental and grammatical change
Abstract: Abstract This paper is concerned with the limitations of inferring grammar change from variable text frequencies in historical corpus data. We argue that fluctuating frequencies of grammatical variants in real time are a function not only of changing grammars but are also conditioned by what we call ‘environmental’ changes (for example, content changes) that affect the textual habitat. As a case study, we explore the English genitive alternation in the Late Modern English period and demonstrate that the English