Chapter 2. From up-toning intensifying particle to scalar focus particle
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Irina Eberhardt
Abstract
The paper proposes a new developmental path from up-toning intensifying particle to additive scalar focus particle based on a diachronic corpus analysis of the German focus particles zumal ‘especially’, gar ‘even’, and sogar ‘even’. The meaning shift took place about 1600 and was facilitated by shared morpho-syntactic and semantic properties of the source and target meanings. Critical (ambiguous) and isolating contexts play a crucial role in the study. The data indicate the occurrence of two types of critical contexts, a syntactically motivated one and a semantically motivated one. Furthermore, the new developmental path is argued to follow a general cross-linguistic tendency of additive scalar focus particles to develop from scalar expressions in a broader sense.
Abstract
The paper proposes a new developmental path from up-toning intensifying particle to additive scalar focus particle based on a diachronic corpus analysis of the German focus particles zumal ‘especially’, gar ‘even’, and sogar ‘even’. The meaning shift took place about 1600 and was facilitated by shared morpho-syntactic and semantic properties of the source and target meanings. Critical (ambiguous) and isolating contexts play a crucial role in the study. The data indicate the occurrence of two types of critical contexts, a syntactically motivated one and a semantically motivated one. Furthermore, the new developmental path is argued to follow a general cross-linguistic tendency of additive scalar focus particles to develop from scalar expressions in a broader sense.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Chapter 1. Particles 1
- Chapter 2. From up-toning intensifying particle to scalar focus particle 25
- Chapter 3. Do intensifiers lose their expressive force over time? 69
- Chapter 4. The interpretation of the German additive particle auch (‘too, also’) in quantificational contexts 95
- Chapter 5. The German modal particle ja and selected English lexical correlates in the Europarl corpus 117
- Chapter 6. Syntactic change and pragmatic maintenance 147
- Chapter 7. Final though 177
- Chapter 8. A comparative study of German auch and Italian anche 209
- Chapter 9. Scalarity as a meaning atom in wohl -type particles 243
- Chapter 10. Modal particles in questions and wh -sensitivity 269
- Chapter 11. PP-internal particles in Dutch as evidence for PP-internal discourse structure 297
- Chapter 12. Mandarin exhaustive focus shì and the syntax of discourse congruence 323
- Chapter 13. Evidentiality and the QUD 355
- Index 381
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Chapter 1. Particles 1
- Chapter 2. From up-toning intensifying particle to scalar focus particle 25
- Chapter 3. Do intensifiers lose their expressive force over time? 69
- Chapter 4. The interpretation of the German additive particle auch (‘too, also’) in quantificational contexts 95
- Chapter 5. The German modal particle ja and selected English lexical correlates in the Europarl corpus 117
- Chapter 6. Syntactic change and pragmatic maintenance 147
- Chapter 7. Final though 177
- Chapter 8. A comparative study of German auch and Italian anche 209
- Chapter 9. Scalarity as a meaning atom in wohl -type particles 243
- Chapter 10. Modal particles in questions and wh -sensitivity 269
- Chapter 11. PP-internal particles in Dutch as evidence for PP-internal discourse structure 297
- Chapter 12. Mandarin exhaustive focus shì and the syntax of discourse congruence 323
- Chapter 13. Evidentiality and the QUD 355
- Index 381
