Faculty of Arts University of Groningen

EPISTEMIC ADVERBS AT THE INTERFACE OF LEXICALIZATION AND GRAMMATICALIZATION

Muriel Norde

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Outline Preliminaries

• the category of adverbs• grammaticalization vs. lexicalization

Epistemic adverbs• synchrony• diachrony

Theoretical discussion

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The category of adverbsOpen 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.

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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

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Sentence adverbs: semantics Connecting: however Speech act: confidentially Domain: linguistically Propositional: probably Event: yesterday Predicate: quickly

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Propositional adverbs Modal

• epistemic: probably, certainly• quotative: allegedly• evidential: evidently• optative: hopefully

Event-oriented evaluatives: unfortunately Participant-oriented evaluatives: wisely

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Epistemic modality Wide definition:“[…] a speaker’s evaluation of the

likelyhood of a state of affairs, as expressed in language”

(Nuyts 2001:xv)

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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’

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Paradigm examples Motion verb > future auxiliaryEng. to be going to; Du. gaan; Sw. komma att Demonstrative > complementizerEng. that; Du. dat Body part noun > spatial expressionEwe megbé; Da bag ‘back > behind’

→ crosslinguistically common and regular

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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

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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

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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)

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Borderline cases Derivational suffixesGmc *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 adverbsGerm. heute (OHG hiu taguDAT); Eng. today (OE

to dægeDAT)

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CASE STUDY

Epistemic adverbsderiving from ‘may/can be/happen’

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‘Maybe’ in scandinavian Swedish kanske < ‘can happen’ Swedish måhända < ‘may happen’ Norwegian kanskje < ‘can happen’ Danish måske < ‘may happen’

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‘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’)

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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)

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“X that” clauses: crosslinguistically commonMisschien dat hij komtPeut-être qu’il vientKanske att han kommer Compare non-phrasal Advs:Mogelijk dat hij komtProbablement qu’il vientMöjligen att han kommer

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“X that” clauses: word of caution “X-that” data need to be filtered1. Matrix ellipsis:

• I wonder what she has to say? maybe that she is In love with someone?

2. 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.

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Summary Question raised: Do the X-that clauses reflect a

grammaticalization process?

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V2 violations: Swedish as a V2 languageVi äter alltid lunch kl. 12We eat always lunch 12 o’clock

Alltid äter vi lunch kl. 12Always eat we lunch 12 o’clock

Kl. 12 äter vi alltid lunch12 o’clock eat we always lunch

Lunch äter vi alltid kl. 12Lunch eat we always 12 o´clock

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V2 violations: word order with kanske

Han har KANSKE inte ätit

He has maybe not eaten

KANSKE har han inte ätit

Maybe has he not eaten

KANSKE han inte har ätit

Maybe he not has eaten

Han KANSKE inte har ätit

He maybe not has eaten

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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 henneBengt 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?’

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SummaryQuestion raised: do kanske’s syntactic

peculiarities reflect a grammaticalization process?

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Etymology: Dutch Middle Dutch:misschien, machscien, machgeschien etc. traces of subject het:tmachscien sijn siel quam weder ten lichaemMer machtscieden daer zijn wel sommighe

onder u […] WNT: “X-that” rare in MiDu MiNlW: commonly main clause word

order

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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

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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’

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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)

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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

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Diachronic processes revisited Phonetic reduction: gz and lex Univerbation: gz and lex Decategorialization: gz and lex Semantic bleaching: gz Layering: gz Subjectification:gz→ grammaticalization

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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

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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

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THANK YOU

This presentation will soon be downloadable from:

http://odur.let.rug.nl/~norde/downloadables.htm