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Semantic bleaching of nu in Old Saxon

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Published/Copyright: October 27, 2018
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Folia Linguistica
From the journal Folia Linguistica Volume 52 Issue s39-s2

Abstract

In many Present-Day Germanic languages, reflexes of Proto-Germanic *nu have developed pragmatic and grammatical uses: in such uses, the earlier, lexical meaning of the word (“now”, “presently”) has been weakened or lost while new meanings have appeared.

Pragmatic (especially connective) uses of nu have been identified in several ancient Germanic languages, but in such corpora, it can be difficult to distinguish between a genuine discourse marker and mere pragmatic inferences based on the lexical meaning of a given word. Such is certainly the case for Old Saxon, where nu seems to be used as a discourse marker in some cases, but where it is hard to determine whether such uses ever truly supplant nu’s temporal meaning. This paper systematically examines nu’s patterns of co-occurrence to determine whether nu is showing any sign of having undergone semantic bleaching.

Examination of the data shows no evidence of semantic bleaching. There is a very strong connection between nu and markers referring to the moment of utterance or the situation of utterance more generally. Conversely, there are no cases of co-occurrence with markers whose meaning is strictly incompatible with nu’s lexical meaning and few instances of co-occurrence with markers expressing distance (temporal or otherwise) from the situation of utterance. Some patterns hint at the possibility of pragmatic uses of nu having already started to conventionalize to a limited extent, but such uses seem to have co-existed with nu’s temporal meaning without ever supplanting it.

Keywords: Old Saxon; grammaticalization; pragmaticalization; semantic bleaching; nu

Acknowledgements

My thanks to the anonymous reviewers who have helped me improve this paper.

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Appendix

Table 2:

Recapitulative tablea.

Tokens in clauses with nuFrequency in clauses with nuTokens in Direct SpeechFrequency in Direct SpeechTokens overallFrequency overallMI score
forð50.0037320.0016790.00164.38
noh20.0015270.0013440.00093.3
langb60.0045230.0011510.00105.12
hêrc180.01341510.00731750.00363.99
huat & uuela20.0015290.0014290.00064.44
ik420.03132780.01352910.00604.33
thu290.02162810.01372810.00583.78
frô60.0045240.0012240.00055.06
uualdand60.0045530.00261450.00303.92
sus/thus20.001580.000480.00025.06
sulic70.0052610.0030990.00203.94
thesed260.01943700.01804740.00973.23
thô00140.00075590.0114/
than110.00822630.01285590.01142.48
thar30.00221800.00883850.00791.15
thee320.02386580.032021470.04392.7
uuord, all formsf80.00601460.00713820.00782,87
uuordun60.0045660.00321580.00323,60
queðan, all indicative forms10.0007330.00162670.00552,02
seggean, -ian30.0022230.0011520.00114,12
seggiu, eog30.002290.000490.00025,47
seggean, all indicative formsh30.0022300.0015940.00193,74
frâgon30.002260.0003110.00026,06
biddean, -ian20.001570.0003100.00025,25
biddiu10.000710107,06
faran, -ne80.0060170.0008280.00065,97
cuman30.0022230.0011540.00114,12
sehan20.0015120.0006220.00054,47
gi-, gehôrean, -ian, -ien20.0015140.0007270.00064,25
willian, all present formsi150.01121160.00561230.00254,11
willian, 1st person present formsj100.0074290.0014290.00065,52
mugan, all present formsk170.01271210.00591460.00304,23
môtan, all present formsl30.0022400.0019430.00093,32
skulan, all present formsm230.01712460.01202640.00543,64

  1. Clauses with nu: 1,343 words; direct speech: 20,546 words; overall: 48,856. Whenever the frequency of a given word is at least twice as high (or less than half as high) in clauses with nu as in Direct Speech, it appears in bold. The Mutual Information (MI) score is defined as: log2 (frequency of co-occurrence in the overall corpus) / (product of the respective frequencies of occurrence of each marker in the overall corpus).

  2. The entry combines the forms lang, lango and leng.

  3. The entry combines the forms hêr, hier, hinan and herod.

  4. The entry combines all forms of these: thesa, thesan, thesara, thesaro, thesaru, thesas, these, theses, theson, thesoro, thesum, thesumu, thesun, thit, thius.

  5. The entry combines all forms of the, except the itself, thana and that, which are ambiguous: se, tha, thas, thea, them, themo, themu, then, thena, thene, thera, thero, theru, thes, thia, thie, thiu.

  6. The entry combines instances for uuord, uuorda, uuorde, uuordo, uuordon, uuordu, uuordum and uuordun.

  7. Instances where seggeo is a noun (‘man’) rather than the first-person present form of seggian have been removed.

  8. The relevant forms are seggiu, seggeo, sagis, sagad, seggiad, seggead, seggiat for the present and sagda, sagdas, sagde and sagdun for the past.

  9. In addition to the forms listed in the next footnote, present forms include uuili, uuilis, uuilt, uuiltu, uuil, uuilleat, uuilliat, uuillead and uuilliad.

  10. First-person present forms include uuilli, uuillik, uuilliu, uuilleo and uuillio. Instances where uuilleo/uuillio is a noun have been removed.

  11. The relevant forms are mag, maht and mugun.

  12. The relevant forms are môt, muot, most and môtun.

  13. The relevant forms are scal, skal, scalt, scaltu and sculun.

Received: 2016-10-28
Revised: 2017-12-08
Accepted: 2018-12-22
Published Online: 2018-10-27
Published in Print: 2018-10-25

© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  3. The V-2 rule in Old English conjunct clauses
  4. The diachronic semantics of the Dissociative Past Completive construction in the Kikongo Language Cluster (Bantu)
  5. Some (critical) questions for diachronic construction grammar
  6. The evolution of Choctaw grammatical words hosh and ho: Evidence from the Pitchlynn manuscript
  7. Style-shifting and accommodative competence in Late Middle English written correspondence: Putting Audience Design to the test of time
  8. Evolution of the subjunctive in New Persian (10th–20th): From disappearance to reappearance
  9. Semantic bleaching of nu in Old Saxon
  10. This is not the same: the ambiguity of a Gothic adjective
  11. Book Reviews
  12. Eleanor Coghill: The rise and fall of ergativity in Aramaic. Cycles of Alignment Change
  13. Book Review
  14. Review
  15. IE4.com. Forays into Text Mining
  16. Book Review
  17. Pană Dindelegan, Gabriela: The syntax of Old Romanian
https://doi.org/10.1515/flih-2018-0016
Keywords for this article
Old Saxon; grammaticalization; pragmaticalization; semantic bleaching; nu

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  3. The V-2 rule in Old English conjunct clauses
  4. The diachronic semantics of the Dissociative Past Completive construction in the Kikongo Language Cluster (Bantu)
  5. Some (critical) questions for diachronic construction grammar
  6. The evolution of Choctaw grammatical words hosh and ho: Evidence from the Pitchlynn manuscript
  7. Style-shifting and accommodative competence in Late Middle English written correspondence: Putting Audience Design to the test of time
  8. Evolution of the subjunctive in New Persian (10th–20th): From disappearance to reappearance
  9. Semantic bleaching of nu in Old Saxon
  10. This is not the same: the ambiguity of a Gothic adjective
  11. Book Reviews
  12. Eleanor Coghill: The rise and fall of ergativity in Aramaic. Cycles of Alignment Change
  13. Book Review
  14. Review
  15. IE4.com. Forays into Text Mining
  16. Book Review
  17. Pană Dindelegan, Gabriela: The syntax of Old Romanian
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