"In order that" -- a data driven study of symptoms and causes of obsolescence

TL;DR

This empirical study investigates the decline of the grammatical subordinator 'in order that' over the 20th century, linking its obsolescence to socio-cultural shifts and the rise of infinitive constructions using data-driven methods.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive, data-driven approach combining philological and statistical analysis to study language obsolescence and identifies key higher-order processes influencing this change.

Findings

Significant decline in 'in order that' usage since early 20th century

Socio-cultural changes and rise of infinitives are major causes of obsolescence

Higher-order processes from above influence grammatical change

Abstract

The paper is an empirical case study of grammatical obsolescence in progress. The main studied variable is the purpose subordinator in order that, which is shown to be steadily decreasing in the frequency of use starting from the beginning of the twentieth century. This work applies a data-driven approach for the investigation and description of obsolescence, recently developed by the Rudnicka (2019). The methodology combines philological analysis with statistical methods used on data acquired from mega-corpora. Moving from the description of possible symptoms of obsolescence to different causes for it, the paper aims at presenting a comprehensive account of the studied phenomenon. Interestingly, a very significant role in the decline of in order that can be ascribed to the so-called higher-order processes, understood as processes influencing the constructional level from above. Two kinds of higher-order processes are shown to play an important role, namely i) an externally-motivated higher-order process exemplified by the drastic socio-cultural changes of the 19th and 20th centuries; ii) an internally-motivated higher-order processes instantiated by the rise of the to-infinitive (rise of infinite clauses).