How far does semantic bleaching go
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Werner Abraham✝
Abstract
According to influential work on grammaticalization, the route grammaticalizing changes take is from lexical to functional categories (Lehmann 1985, van Gelderen 1993). It will be demonstrated on two grammatical relations that this is a too specific assumption. First, modal particles in German and Dutch emerge from adverbials and conjunctions — obviously, semantically more complete elements -, but, on their route to non-adverbial particles, they do not arrive at any functional status in any minimal sense. Second, as regards the infinitival preposition (IPrep), IPrep in German as well as other Germanic languages, bleaches out semantically from an original adverbial without, however, ever reaching the functional syntactic domain (in terms of Minimalism). The third relevant characteristic to be mentioned in this context is the fact that, despite heavy semantic bleaching and arriving at new syntactic functions, the original lexical semantics remains ‘shining through’ in the case of modal particles (MPs) in German and Dutch. This allows us to reconstruct an LF-status of modal particles as a triple COMP mapping. The decision which of the three COMPs is instantiated by an individual MP depends on its original categorial status as diachronic pre-MP.
Abstract
According to influential work on grammaticalization, the route grammaticalizing changes take is from lexical to functional categories (Lehmann 1985, van Gelderen 1993). It will be demonstrated on two grammatical relations that this is a too specific assumption. First, modal particles in German and Dutch emerge from adverbials and conjunctions — obviously, semantically more complete elements -, but, on their route to non-adverbial particles, they do not arrive at any functional status in any minimal sense. Second, as regards the infinitival preposition (IPrep), IPrep in German as well as other Germanic languages, bleaches out semantically from an original adverbial without, however, ever reaching the functional syntactic domain (in terms of Minimalism). The third relevant characteristic to be mentioned in this context is the fact that, despite heavy semantic bleaching and arriving at new syntactic functions, the original lexical semantics remains ‘shining through’ in the case of modal particles (MPs) in German and Dutch. This allows us to reconstruct an LF-status of modal particles as a triple COMP mapping. The decision which of the three COMPs is instantiated by an individual MP depends on its original categorial status as diachronic pre-MP.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface vii
- Introduction 1
- How far does semantic bleaching go 15
- ‘Oblique subjects’, structural and lexical case marking 65
- The notion of oblique subject and its status in the history of Icelandic 99
- Towards personal subjects in English 137
- Focus and universal principles governing simplification of cleft structures 159
- Recasting Danish subjects 171
- Ergative to accusative 205
- Subject and object in Old English and Latin copular deontics 223
- The loss of lexical case in Swedish 241
- The coding of the subject–object distinction from Latin to Modern French 273
- Changes in Popolocan word order and clause structure 303
- Index 323
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface vii
- Introduction 1
- How far does semantic bleaching go 15
- ‘Oblique subjects’, structural and lexical case marking 65
- The notion of oblique subject and its status in the history of Icelandic 99
- Towards personal subjects in English 137
- Focus and universal principles governing simplification of cleft structures 159
- Recasting Danish subjects 171
- Ergative to accusative 205
- Subject and object in Old English and Latin copular deontics 223
- The loss of lexical case in Swedish 241
- The coding of the subject–object distinction from Latin to Modern French 273
- Changes in Popolocan word order and clause structure 303
- Index 323
