Emergence and grammaticalization of constructions within the se me network of Spanish
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Chantal Melis
Abstract
Historical linguistics has begun to explore the way new insights into change can be gained from a constructional approach to language. In this work we focus on a Spanish construction used for events caused accidentally by a human participant marked dative. The construction enters fairly late in the language and thus raises the question of how the new pairing of form and meaning emerged. Under our proposal, the development originates in an old voice pattern expressing spontaneously occurring events and leads to the new construction through a series of gradual extensions to distinct event types. Most significantly, as a result of these extensions the input construction becomes more schematic, which is to say, it grammaticalizes (Trousdale this volume).
Abstract
Historical linguistics has begun to explore the way new insights into change can be gained from a constructional approach to language. In this work we focus on a Spanish construction used for events caused accidentally by a human participant marked dative. The construction enters fairly late in the language and thus raises the question of how the new pairing of form and meaning emerged. Under our proposal, the development originates in an old voice pattern expressing spontaneously occurring events and leads to the new construction through a series of gradual extensions to distinct event types. Most significantly, as a result of these extensions the input construction becomes more schematic, which is to say, it grammaticalizes (Trousdale this volume).
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Introduction 1
- Bühler’s two-field theory of pointing and naming and the deictic origins of grammatical morphemes 37
- On the origins of grammaticalization and other types of language change in discourse strategies 51
- Lehmann’s parameters revisited 73
- “Paradigmatic integration” 111
- “The ghosts of old morphology” 135
- Grammaticalization, constructions and the grammaticalization of constructions 167
- Gradualness of grammaticalization in Romance. The position of French, Spanish and Italian 199
- Development of periphrastic tense and aspect constructions in Irish and Welsh 227
- Emergence and grammaticalization of constructions within the se me network of Spanish 249
- A discourse-based analysis of object clitic doubling in Spanish 271
- The many careers of negative polarity items 299
- Author Index 327
- Subject Index 331
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- Introduction 1
- Bühler’s two-field theory of pointing and naming and the deictic origins of grammatical morphemes 37
- On the origins of grammaticalization and other types of language change in discourse strategies 51
- Lehmann’s parameters revisited 73
- “Paradigmatic integration” 111
- “The ghosts of old morphology” 135
- Grammaticalization, constructions and the grammaticalization of constructions 167
- Gradualness of grammaticalization in Romance. The position of French, Spanish and Italian 199
- Development of periphrastic tense and aspect constructions in Irish and Welsh 227
- Emergence and grammaticalization of constructions within the se me network of Spanish 249
- A discourse-based analysis of object clitic doubling in Spanish 271
- The many careers of negative polarity items 299
- Author Index 327
- Subject Index 331
