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EPISTEMIC ADVERBS AT THE INTERFACE OF LEXICALIZATION AND GRAMMATICALIZATION Muriel Norde

EPISTEMIC ADVERBS AT THE INTERFACE OF LEXICALIZATION AND GRAMMATICALIZATION Muriel Norde. Outline. Preliminaries the category of adverbs grammaticalization vs. lexicalization Epistemic adverbs synchrony diachrony Theoretical discussion. The category of adverbs. Open or closed class ?

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EPISTEMIC ADVERBS AT THE INTERFACE OF LEXICALIZATION AND GRAMMATICALIZATION Muriel Norde

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  1. EPISTEMIC ADVERBS AT THE INTERFACE OF LEXICALIZATION AND GRAMMATICALIZATION Muriel Norde

  2. Outline • Preliminaries • the category of adverbs • grammaticalization vs. lexicalization • Epistemic adverbs • synchrony • diachrony • Theoretical discussion TIN-dag 03-02-07

  3. The category of adverbs Open or closed class? • Talmy 2000: only N, V and Adj form open classes • Ramat & Ricca 1998: range from relatively open (fortunately) to relatively closed class (monomorphemic advs such as now, just) • Brinton & Traugott 2005: no clear binary distinction between lexical / major / open classes on the one hand and grammatical / minor / closed classes on the other. “Lexical” and “grammatical” items form a continuum. TIN-dag 03-02-07

  4. Adverbs: forms and functions • Adverbs may be: • monomorphemic: she walks fast • derived: she walks slowly • phrasal: she walks like a construction worker • Adverbs may modify: • predicates: she sings beautifully • modifiers: she is incredibly rich • sentences: maybe she is pregnant TIN-dag 03-02-07

  5. Sentence adverbs: semantics • Connecting: however • Speech act: confidentially • Domain: linguistically • Propositional: probably • Event: yesterday • Predicate: quickly TIN-dag 03-02-07

  6. Propositional adverbs • Modal • epistemic: probably, certainly • quotative: allegedly • evidential: evidently • optative: hopefully • Event-oriented evaluatives: unfortunately • Participant-oriented evaluatives: wisely TIN-dag 03-02-07

  7. Epistemic modality • Wide definition: “[…] a speaker’s evaluation of the likelyhood of a state of affairs, as expressed in language” (Nuyts 2001:xv) TIN-dag 03-02-07

  8. Grammaticalization • “Grammaticalization consists in the increase of the range of a morpheme advancing from a lexical to a grammatical or from a less grammatical to a more grammatical status.” (Kuryłowicz 1975 [1965] • “[…] an evolution whereby linguistic units lose in semantic complexity, pragmatic significance, syntactic freedom, and phonetic substance […]”(Heine & Reh 1984) • “A grammaticalization is a diachronic change by which the parts of a constructional schema come to have stronger internal dependencies” (Haspelmath 2004) • taken litterally: ‘having become grammatical’ TIN-dag 03-02-07

  9. Paradigm examples • Motion verb > future auxiliary Eng. to be going to; Du. gaan; Sw. komma att • Demonstrative > complementizer Eng. that; Du. dat • Body part noun > spatial expression Ewe megbé;Da bag ‘back > behind’ → crosslinguistically common and regular TIN-dag 03-02-07

  10. Lexicalization • “recruitment of linguistic material to enrich the lexicon” (Hopper & Traugott 1993) • “today’s grammar may become tomorrow’s lexicon” (Ramat 1992) • Dependent on one’s definition of lexicon • Definition adopted here: Brinton & Traugott 2005 “[…] the view that the lexicon does not exist solely of a list of discrete and fully fixed items but represents a continuum from more to less fixed, from more to less fully conventionalized, and from more to less productive items. […] the continuum models of the lexical / grammatical split and of the lexicon fit better with the historical facts of change, which is often (though not always) gradual in the sense that change occurs by very small steps. • Contra GL conception of grammatical categories as discrete entities TIN-dag 03-02-07

  11. Subtypes of lexicalization • Function words • Pros en cons • [Shaved her legs and then] he was a she (L. Reed) • Suffixes • ologies (object of study, cf, sociology) • isms (ideology, cf. communism) • phrases • forget-me-not • has-been • no-show • acronyms • sms’es • nimby TIN-dag 03-02-07

  12. Lexicalization “vs” grammaticalization • Lehmann 2002: e.g. transition N > P is first and foremost a case of lexicalization with subsequent grammaticalization • Antilla 1989: grammaticalization involves lexicalization (e.g. by adding P’s to the lexicon) • Problem: what is in the lexicon? • Brinton & Traugott’s definition of lexicalization: restricted to items which are “semantically contentful” (bit problematic in view of their definition of the lexicon) TIN-dag 03-02-07

  13. Borderline cases • Derivational suffixes Gmc *līka ‘body’ > Du. –lijk; Eng. –ly etc.; Lat. ABL mente ‘mind’> It. –mente; Fr. –ment etc. • Phrasal discourse markers: Eng. y’know, innit (< isn’t it) etc. • Many adverbs Germ. heute (OHG hiu taguDAT); Eng. today (OE to dægeDAT) TIN-dag 03-02-07

  14. CASE STUDY • Epistemic adverbs deriving from ‘may/can be/happen’ TIN-dag 03-02-07

  15. ‘Maybe’ in scandinavian • Swedish kanske < ‘can happen’ • Swedish måhända < ‘may happen’ • Norwegian kanskje < ‘can happen’ • Danish måske < ‘may happen’ TIN-dag 03-02-07

  16. ‘Maybe’ in other languages • English maybe • Dutch misschien (< ‘may happen’) • French peut-être • Russian možet (byt’) < ‘may (be)’ • Serbian – Croatian možda < ‘may that’ • Polish może < ‘may’ • Lithuanian gal(būt) < ‘may (be’) TIN-dag 03-02-07

  17. Some typical syntactic features Adverbs of this type may: • be followed by a subordinate clause (number of lgs): Maybe that I’m wrong • violate the V2-rule (in Swedish) TIN-dag 03-02-07

  18. “X that” clauses: crosslinguistically common Misschien dat hij komt Peut-être qu’il vient Kanske att han kommer • Compare non-phrasal Advs: Mogelijk dat hij komt Probablement qu’il vient Möjligen att han kommer TIN-dag 03-02-07

  19. “X that” clauses: word of caution • “X-that” data need to be filtered • Matrix ellipsis: • I wonder what she has to say? maybe that she is In love with someone? • No matrix at all: • I'm thinking of the Speaker's position as 3rd in line after the VP to take over if the Prez is incapacitated or whatever...maybe that she's settling in for the long haul, and may someday be a candidate for Prez or VP herself. TIN-dag 03-02-07

  20. Summary • Question raised: Do the X-that clauses reflect a grammaticalization process? TIN-dag 03-02-07

  21. V2 violations: Swedish as a V2 language TIN-dag 03-02-07

  22. V2 violations: word order with kanske TIN-dag 03-02-07

  23. V2 violations: more on word order with kanske • When both kanske and the Subject precede Vf, then so does negation marker inte→ subordinate clause order: Bengt kanske inte känner henne Bengt maybe not knows her ’Maybe Bengt does not know her’ Kanske vädret inte blir vackert på lördag? Maybe weather.the not will.be nice on Saturday? ‘Maybe the weather will not be nice on Saturday?’ TIN-dag 03-02-07

  24. Summary Question raised: do kanske’s syntactic peculiarities reflect a grammaticalization process? TIN-dag 03-02-07

  25. Etymology: Dutch • Middle Dutch: misschien, machscien, machgeschien etc. • traces of subject het: tmachscien sijn siel quam weder ten lichaem Mer machtscieden daer zijn wel sommighe onder u […] • WNT: “X-that” rare in MiDu • MiNlW: commonly main clause word order TIN-dag 03-02-07

  26. Etymology: Swedish • Source: MLG mach-schên ‘may happen’ -> loan word maxan (now obsolete) -> loan translations kanske, måhända, kanhända • SAOB: Older Sw kan ske at ‘can happen that’ is the source of the adverb TIN-dag 03-02-07

  27. Kan ske as a phrase • thet kan wel skee at en liten hoop offuerwinner en storan ‘It may well happen that a small lott conquers a large (lot)’ • thz kunde honom ekke ske ‘That could not happen to him’ TIN-dag 03-02-07

  28. More diachrony: changes involved • Phonetic reduction (Dutch) • Univerbation (Dutch and Swedish) • Decategorialization: verbal inflections lost (Dutch and Swedish) • Semantic bleaching / generalization: denotes probability rather than ‘can happen’ (Dutch and Swedish) • Layering: reflections of older stages • “Xthat” (clearly in Swedish; highly probable for Dutch) • appears in Vf position (Swedish) • Subjectification (change of perspective from sentence subject to utterance subject) TIN-dag 03-02-07

  29. Sum: grammaticalization or lexicalization? • Ramat 2001: lexicalization • Andréasson 2002, Brinton & Traugott 2005: grammaticalization • Brinton & Traugott: not all exx of fusion (univerbation) are exx of grammaticalization, only when it yields a (relatively) closed-class item • perhaps: gz; goodbye (< God be with you): no gz → modal adverbs form relatively closed class → grammaticalization TIN-dag 03-02-07

  30. Diachronic processes revisited • Phonetic reduction: gz and lex • Univerbation: gz and lex • Decategorialization: gz and lex • Semantic bleaching: gz • Layering: gz • Subjectification:gz → grammaticalization TIN-dag 03-02-07

  31. Lexicalization (as well)? • Lexical items and grammatical items,as well as open-class items and closed-class items form a continuum, hence it is difficult to say whether epistemic adverbs are “lexemes”, and hence lexicalization • Again: dependent on one’s definition of the lexicon • Brinton & Traugott: no lexicalization TIN-dag 03-02-07

  32. Concluding remarks • More details about the rise of epistemic adverbs are necessary • The rise of epistemic adverbs bears all the hallmarks of grammaticalization • It is, however, less obvious that it is not lexicalization → Current definitions are inadequate to capture the changes involved in the rise of adverbs → If lexical and grammatical items form a continuum, a strict demarcation of lexicalization and grammaticalization is impossible → Either the “lexical-grammatical”-continuum is discarded, or a the strict “lexicalization-grammaticalization” is abandoned • More “grey-area” cases need to be examined TIN-dag 03-02-07

  33. THANK YOU • This presentation will soon be downloadable from: http://odur.let.rug.nl/~norde/downloadables.htm TIN-dag 03-02-07

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