Search results for " Grammaticalization"
showing 10 items of 11 documents
Passive in motion: the Early Italian auxiliary andare (‘to go’)
2014
The Italian construction andare ‘to go’ + (transitive) past participle expresses a passive meaning when occurring in a perfective past tense (1), whereas it conveys an additional deontic sense of (impersonal) obligation when used in an imperfective tense (2) (Bertinetto 1991; Giacalone Ramat 2000). A further constraint on the passive reading is represented by the semantics of the participle, necessarily expressing a negative value of ‘loss/destruction’; this value is moreover conceived as ‘non-intentional’, as the impossibility to express the agent (*da qualcuno) shows: (1) I documenti andarono distrutti. (*da qualcuno) the documents go. prf.3pl destroy.pst.ptcp.pl (by someone) ‘The documen…
Agency and agentive prepositions in Late Latin
2011
I propose the results of an analysis whose object is the expression of the Agent by means of a prepositional phrase in Post-Classical and Late Latin passive constructions. My interest comprises both the prepositions used in Latin to encode the passive Agent (namely ab), and those constituting the bases for the development in the Romance languages (namely per and de). The analysis is based on the functional approach to Transitivity proposed by Hopper and Thompson 1980 and on Cognitive Grammar, specifically on Langaker 1991 and the various Luraghi’s works on prepositions and cases in ancient Indo-European languages.
Paths of grammaticalization of Early Latin per/per-: A cognitive hypothesis
2016
The paper describes the semantic network of the Early Latin preverb per- and its relation with the corresponding preposition per ‘through’. Making use of the Cognitive Grammar framework, we argue that the basic spatial semantics of both preverb and preposition (here called the “PER relation”) can account for the whole set of concrete and abstract meanings per and per- express. In spite of this common semantic nucleus, however, per- and per differ as to the mechanisms at work in the development and organization of their semantic continua, thus imposing a differentiated analysis at the semantic as well as the morphosyntactic level. In this respect, the notions of grammaticalization and lexica…
Paths of Grammaticalisation of the Early Latin per/per-: a Cognitive Hypothesis
2017
The paper describes the semantic network of the Early Latin preverb per- and its relation with the corresponding preposition per ‘through’. Making use of the Cognitive Grammar framework, we argue that the basic spatial semantics of both preverb and preposition (here called the “PER relation”) can account for the whole set of concrete and abstract meanings per and per- express. In spite of this common semantic nucleus, however, per- and per differ as to the mechanisms at work in the development and organization of their semantic continua, thus imposing a differentiated analysis at the semantic as well as the morphosyntactic level. In this respect, the notions of grammaticalization and lexica…
A diachronic study of the (negative) additive «anche» in italian
2016
Resum: En italià modern (IM), els mots additius negatius són elements focalitzadors que típicament se sotmeten a la concordança negativa amb una negació oracional o amb un altre element legitimador de la negació. En aquest article investiguem l’evolució diacrònica d’un element additiu negatiu, neanche ‘ni/ni tan sols’. En italià antic (IA, varietat florentina entre 1200 i 1370), no hi ha testimonis de focalitzadors additius negatius morfològicament complexos com neanche. En canvi, l’element corresponent no negatiu additiu, anche, podia combinar-se amb un marcador negatiu o amb algun altre element negatiu: né/non… anche ‘ni/ni tan sols’. Mostrem que en IA (i) el mot additiu no negatiu anche …
Secondary grammaticalization and the English adverbial -ly suffix
2015
Author's version of an article in the journal: Language sciences. Also available from the publisher at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2014.10.003 This paper discusses the secondary grammaticalization of the English adverbial -ly suffix and makes claims about the concept of secondary grammaticalization. Secondary grammaticalization is defined as the development of a new grammatical function in an already grammatical element. It is shown that the development of the -ly suffix involves a number of the processes which are associated with grammaticalization, e.g. paradigmatization, specialization, obligatorification, subjectification, layering and persistence. However, none of these proces…
Epistemic uses of the verb decir in La Paz Spanish Digamos and dice
2017
This paper explores semantic extensions and pragmatic functions of two evidential forms found in La Paz Spanish, digamos ‘let’s say’ and dice ‘s/he says’. Both forms are inflected forms of the verb decir ‘to say’. The form dice ‘s/he says’ has the function of a reported evidential form, conforming to results from previous studies (Babel 2009; Olbertz 2007; Travis 2006; Laprade 1981), while the form digamos is used according to a previously unnoticed function of an inferential evidential.
Going in Homer: The Role of Verb-Inherent Actionality Within Self-Propelled Motion-Event Encoding
2019
The paper aims at investigating the encoding of self-propelled motion events in Homeric Greek in the light of the typology of motion events, taking into account the case of to go. The verbal class of the self-propelled motion refers to those verbs expressing the idea of a simple translational motion, such as to go, to move, without any information about the manner of motion (see, by contrast, the class of the manner-of-motion verbs, such as to run, to swim) or about the path of motion (see, by contrast, the class of the path verbs, such as to enter, to exit). According to Talmy (2000), world languages can be distinguished depending on whether they prototypically express the semantic compone…
Auxiliaries
2014
The prototypical auxiliary in Ancient Greek is eimí “to be”, which is involved in some participial periphrases conveying aspectual value and variously interacting with the synthetic forms within the inflectional paradigm. However, many other verbs are involved in the Greek periphrastic constructions, although their status as auxiliaries is still a matter of debate. Resent research in grammaticalization allows to describe the entire range of such verbs in prototypical terms, that is, as a coherent category which includes more central and peripheral, i.e. less grammaticalized members.
Intensificatori e soggettificazione in latino: sulla grammaticalizzazione di maxime
2022
The aim of this paper is to investigate the grammaticalization path of the intensifying adverb maxime in Early Latin, within the perspective of the so-called ‘subjectification’ theory. Despite the difficulty of drawing discrete boundaries within the multifunctional category of adverbs, the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic analysis of maxime across different contexts of use allows us to identify at least three main functions of this adverb in early Latin texts, mostly in the Roman comedy of Plautus and Terence. In particular, adopting the perspective of the Functional Discourse Grammar, it is shown that maxime is used as (i) degree adverb, which modifies a large range of elements acting at …