EPISTEMIC ADVERBS AT THE INTERFACE OF LEXICALIZATION AND GRAMMATICALIZATION

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• 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 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.

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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 speakers evaluation of the likelyhood of
  a state of affairs, as expressed in language
• (Nuyts 2001xv)

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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. (Kurylowicz 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 gt future auxiliary
• Eng. to be going to Du. gaan Sw. komma att
• Demonstrative gt complementizer
• Eng. that Du. dat
• Body part noun gt spatial expression
• Ewe megbé Da bag back gt behind
• ? crosslinguistically common and regular

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Lexicalization

• recruitment of linguistic material to enrich the
  lexicon (Hopper Traugott 1993)
• todays grammar may become tomorrows lexicon
  (Ramat 1992)
• Dependent on ones 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
• smses
• nimby

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Lexicalization vs grammaticalization

• Lehmann 2002 e.g. transition N gt P is first and
  foremost a case of lexicalization with subsequent
  grammaticalization
• Antilla 1989 grammaticalization involves
  lexicalization (e.g. by adding Ps to the
  lexicon)
• Problem what is in the lexicon?
• Brinton Traugotts 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 suffixes
• Gmc lika body gt Du. lijk Eng. ly etc.
• Lat. ABL mente mindgt It. mente Fr. ment etc.
• Phrasal discourse markers
• Eng. yknow, innit (lt isnt it) etc.
• Many adverbs
• Germ. heute (OHG hiu taguDAT) Eng. today (OE to
  dægeDAT)

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CASE STUDY

• Epistemic adverbs
• deriving from may/can be/happen

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Maybe in scandinavian

• Swedish kanske lt can happen
• Swedish måhända lt may happen
• Norwegian kanskje lt can happen
• Danish måske lt may happen

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Maybe in other languages

• English maybe
• Dutch misschien (lt may happen)
• French peut-être
• Russian možet (byt) lt may (be)
• Serbian Croatian možda lt may that
• Polish moze lt may
• Lithuanian gal(but) lt 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 Im wrong
• violate the V2-rule (in Swedish)

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X that clauses crosslinguistically common

• Misschien dat hij komt
• Peut-être quil vient
• Kanske att han kommer
• Compare non-phrasal Advs
• Mogelijk dat hij komt
• Probablement quil vient
• Möjligen att han kommer

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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.

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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 language
Vi äter alltid lunch kl. 12
We eat always lunch 12 oclock
Alltid äter vi lunch kl. 12
Always eat we lunch 12 oclock
Kl. 12 äter vi alltid lunch
12 oclock eat we always lunch
Lunch äter vi alltid kl. 12
Lunch eat we always 12 oclock
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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 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?

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Summary

• Question raised do kanskes 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 lichaem
• Mer 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
• -gt loan word maxan (now obsolete)
• -gt 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 (lt 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
• Subjectificationgz
• ? 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 ones 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-grammat
  icalization is abandoned
• More grey-area cases need to be examined

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THANK YOU

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