Search results for "grammaticalization"
showing 10 items of 43 documents
The grammaticalization and pragmaticalization of cleft constructions in Present-Day English
2012
The present paper examines the development of the variation between a marked and an unmarked infinitival complement clause in three types of cleft constructions in 20th century English. Data from corpora of written and spoken British (BrE) and American English (AmE) evidence a significantly divergent development of these clefts types in speaking when compared to writing. The written corpora show a steady increase in the frequency of clefts, and a decrease of the to-infinitive paired with an increase of the bare infinitive, thus a reversal of preferences in both varieties in all three types of clefts. This erosion of to as an (optional) grammatical marker leads to a higher degree of syntacti…
From matrix clause to discourse marker: the grammaticalization of Hauptsache
2021
[EN] This paper has a double purpose. On the one hand, it intends to prove the existence of a discourse marker (DM) Hauptsache. This element preserves the core conceptual meaning of the homonymous noun, but differs from it with regard to its morphosyntactic and semantic features as well as to its discourse-organizing, information structuring, and modal functions. On the other hand, the emergence of Hauptsache as a discourse particle is explained on the grounds of a grammaticalization process similar to the ones described for the prototypical German DMs. Evidence drawn from a corpus of German and Austrian parliamentary protocols will show in which ways the six fundamental processes implied i…
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.
Més enllà de la gramaticalització: el desenvolupament del marcador discursiu «no obstant això» en català
2019
[cat] L'objectiu d'aquest treball és analitzar l'emergència del MD no obstant això en català. Aquesta evolució permet posar en relleu que no tot canvi en la gramàtica ha de ser estudiat des de la Teoria de la Gramaticalització, alhora que fa palesa la necessitat d'analitzar els canvis sintàctics en el context social i cultural en què es van donar. En el cas de no obstant això, l'estudi minuciós de les seves primeres ocurrències en català evidencia que, lluny de ser el resultat d'una gramaticalització, aquest marcador va sorgir com a resultat del calc gramatical d'una partícula originada en el llatí medieval.
Connectors i processos de gramaticalització
2005
In this article, we analyse the characteristics of the grammaticalization process that originates connectors, taking as analysis corpus the book «Costums de Tortosa». We have identified the temporal forms that became interordinate connectors (causal, consecutive, concessive, conditional and adversative), and have outlined the characteristics of the semantic change and of the sintactical reanalysis which can be observed in this process. As an example of this general process, we have analysed the semantic change in the case «encara» / «encara que» and the sintactical reanalysis in the semifixed structure «jasia ço que».
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.
Southeast Asia as a Linguistic Area
2006
The languages belonging to the families of Mon-Khmer, Tai, Sinitic, Hmong-Mien, and Chamic (Malayo-Polynesian) spoken in mainland Southeast Asia share a considerable number of properties due to contact-induced convergence. General characteristics of the languages in this area are the lack of obligatory grammatical categories and the central role of pragmatics (indeterminateness), syllabic morphology, and relatively flexible correlations between word class and syntactic positions (versatility). The following properties will be described in some more detail: word order, numeral classifiers, cooccurrence patterns of the verb with coverbs, tense-aspect-modality markers and directional verbs, an…
Possession and volition in the development of modal meanings: a case-study from Sicilian
2019
This article analyses two Sicilian modal constructions involving vuliri 'want' + infinitive and aviri a ‘have to’ + infinitive. They are used to express modal values, both non-epistemic and epistemic, and futurity. Based on Langacker's Cognitive Grammar assumptions, we describe the semantic network associated with each modal, as well as their semantic overlap. In addition, we describe how modal values interact with temporal-aspectual inflection. Our analysis shows that the epistemic values of vuliri are quite peripheral, while aviri a shows a high degree of polysemy, both in the non-epistemic and in the more abstract epistemic domain. The non-epistemic-to-epistemic shifts depend on the cont…
Modal verbs, future and grammaticalization in Old Catalan : a cognitive approach
2015
The process of grammaticalization of Catalan modal verbs deure, haver and tenir involves a semantic change, a rise of new meanings and an increase in their semantic network. On the one hand, deontic modal verbs develop inferential evidential meanings, and, on the other, future meanings (posteriority).This corpus-based study focuses on the rise of future meanings of modal verb deure ('must') (between the 12th and the 16th centuries). We have been able to analyse the process of grammaticalization with absolute reliability thanks to the applied technology of the Corpus of Old Catalan (CICA and CIGCA), in which linguistic variation is quite representative. This study takes a cognitive perspecti…