Grammaticalization of verdienen into an auxiliary marker of deontic modality
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Gabriele Diewald
Abstract
This paper investigates synchronic variation in the lexical and grammatical environments of the German lexical verb verdienen ‘earn’, ‘deserve’. In its lexical uses, verdienen co-occurs with an object noun phrase whose head is either concrete (e.g. Geld ‘money’) or, more commonly, abstract (e.g. Beachtung ‘attention’). When it is used more grammatically with deontic modal meaning, verdienen is followed by a passive or active infinitive. This paper uses collostructional analyses to contrast lexical and grammatical uses in terms of the most strongly attracted lexical items, which are grouped into semantic classes. The results reflect different degrees of host-class expansion (cf. Himmelmann 2004), whereby the collexemes of verdienen expand from concrete to abstract and their morpho-syntactic contexts from nominal to infinitival complement and subsequently from passive to active. Synchronic distribution can thus serve as a window on diachronic development (Kuteva 2001), in this case the rise of a deontic modality marker.
Abstract
This paper investigates synchronic variation in the lexical and grammatical environments of the German lexical verb verdienen ‘earn’, ‘deserve’. In its lexical uses, verdienen co-occurs with an object noun phrase whose head is either concrete (e.g. Geld ‘money’) or, more commonly, abstract (e.g. Beachtung ‘attention’). When it is used more grammatically with deontic modal meaning, verdienen is followed by a passive or active infinitive. This paper uses collostructional analyses to contrast lexical and grammatical uses in terms of the most strongly attracted lexical items, which are grouped into semantic classes. The results reflect different degrees of host-class expansion (cf. Himmelmann 2004), whereby the collexemes of verdienen expand from concrete to abstract and their morpho-syntactic contexts from nominal to infinitival complement and subsequently from passive to active. Synchronic distribution can thus serve as a window on diachronic development (Kuteva 2001), in this case the rise of a deontic modality marker.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Modality in Diachronic Construction Grammar 1
- Contractions, constructions and constructional change 13
- Exploring relative degrees of auxiliarization empirically in German modal constructions with wissen and verstehen 53
- Grammaticalization of verdienen into an auxiliary marker of deontic modality 81
- The diachrony of Galician certamente and seguramente 123
- Unfolding constructions 149
- Horizontal links within and between paradigms 185
- Constructionalization of Japanese koto imperatives 219
- Index 247
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Modality in Diachronic Construction Grammar 1
- Contractions, constructions and constructional change 13
- Exploring relative degrees of auxiliarization empirically in German modal constructions with wissen and verstehen 53
- Grammaticalization of verdienen into an auxiliary marker of deontic modality 81
- The diachrony of Galician certamente and seguramente 123
- Unfolding constructions 149
- Horizontal links within and between paradigms 185
- Constructionalization of Japanese koto imperatives 219
- Index 247
