Volume 62, Issue 3

Through intriguing paths of change, manner expressions may give rise to both quotatives and a diverse range of complementizers. These paths of change are still far from mapped or fully understood, but after years of relative ignorance, they have recently been the subject of increased interest. In this paper, we introduce a special issue the aim of which is to add to the growing knowledge and understanding of the development of manner expressions into complementizers or quotatives. Centering our discussion on Saxena’s diachronic hypothesis from 1995, we first briefly go through a number of central studies of the issue. Subsequently, we summarize the main findings of the contributions to the special issue: (i) additional evidence of the development of manner expressions into complementizers or quotatives; (ii) an emphasis on the variation found in examples of this development; (iii) a number of developmental paths that do not conform to Saxena’s hypothesis (but also a couple that might be compatible with it). In the final part of the paper, we introduce each of the individual contributions to the special issue.

This article presents a corpus-based overview of strategies of direct quotation that employ two similative demonstratives, tak ‘so’ and taki ‘such/like this’, in colloquial spoken Polish.  It will be shown that the ways in which Polish tak and taki encode, respectively, manner and quality in exophoric, endophoric, and cataphoric uses are also reflected in their quotative uses. Further, special emphasis is placed on two verbless quotative strategies: (Conj) NP tak and (Conj) NP taki , to offer two grammaticalization-related accounts: one for tak and another for taki . As will be argued, (Conj) NP tak is a reduced clause (originally NP VERB tak ), while (Conj) NP taki is a stacking of two independent quotative strategies: (Conj) NP on the one hand, and taki on the other. The study thus contributes to our understanding of how manner/quality expressions are recruited in clause-combining tasks involving the integration of direct quotes into speakers’ utterances.

In this study, we look at manner demonstratives (such as ‘so’ and similative prepositions such as ‘like’) in complex sentences of two Finnic languages: Finnish and Estonian. We expand previous accounts of these manner expressions (MEs) in quotative constructions and investigate their use with epistemic (‘know’, ‘guess’) and perceptive (‘see’, ‘hear’, ‘feel’) verbs in non-standard written communications. In addition to the results from two Finnic languages, in the discussion of this article, we pay attention to the similarities found in the use of MEs with these verbs in Finno-Ugric languages spoken in Russia. The results show that MEs contribute to the expression of epistemic processes and perception in both languages. Manner demonstratives are used as endophoric markers pointing at demonstrations and descriptions of the event perceived. Co-occurring with the epistemic verb ‘know’, manner demonstratives induce a non-factive construal and cancel the presupposition that the speaker considers the proposition to be true. With inherently subjective verbs like ‘understand’ and in some contexts with perceptive verbs like ‘see, seem’, and ‘feel’, they indicate the subjective interpretation of the event. The reportative function is observed with the auditory perceptive verbs ‘hear’ and ‘be heard’, where the manner demonstratives highlight the reporter’s uncertainty or indicate the verbatim rendering of the report. Furthermore, they can express the speaker’s wishful thinking while co-occurring with a visual perceptive verb ‘see’. In turn, similative markers are used in reportative function as already established quotatives and mark reports as approximately reproduced or typical for the event described. Co-occurring with perceptive verbs, they can express the speaker’s doubt or mark propositions as counterfactual.

Complementation strategies in both ancient and modern Semitic languages include the use of a series of cognate complementizers typically sharing a k -element: e.g., Tigrinya käm , Modern Hebrew ki , Akkadian kī ( ma ) or Ge’ez kama . The sources and the developments that led to the complementizer use of these multifunctional k -subordinators are not sufficiently clear, and diverse interpretations have been proposed. The present article analyses the oldest written record of k -complement markers in Semitic, focusing on Old Akkadian, Old Babylonian and Old Assyrian. The analysis of the type and distribution of complement constructions suggest a different explanation for their development based on the grammaticalization of similative manner expressions, a process attested in Afro-Asiatic and other languages. The article also highlights the presence and potential role of nominal complementation among the earliest recorded forms of complementation in Akkadian. The data presented here provide insights into the origin of k- complementizers in Semitic languages with less ancient written evidence, from Ancient Hebrew to Ethiosemitic.

This article analyzes the diachrony of the Basque marker bait- , which is a verbal prefix in subordinate clauses, but also has other functions: for example, it appears in independent clauses and indefinite pronouns. In subordinate clauses, it is used in two ways. First, it co-occurs with clause-initial conjunctions in reason, manner or result clauses or with pronouns in relative clauses. Secondly, it is used on its own, in relative, reason, result and complement clauses (with a limited group of verbs, such as emotive factive predicates or predicates of happening). The article combines evidence from a corpus study (6822 examples from 16th- to 20th-century texts) and internal reconstruction to (1) determine if and in what way the subordinator bait- and the affirmative bai ‘yes’ can be diachronically related, and (2) try to establish diachronic relations between the functions of bait- . It is proposed that the missing link between the subordinator and the affirmative particle might be a manner expression bai which had anaphoric functions. The marker bait- emerged as a reanalyzed form of the manner expression, which then gradually and through various pathways spread to different types of subordinate clauses and was reanalyzed as a subordinator.

In Russian, the subordinator kak ‘how’ is both a manner question word and an eventive complementizer. The Russian linguistic tradition explains the colexification of the two functions in terms of a semantic shift from manner as characteristic of a situation to event description as a whole. Alternatively, a grammaticalization scenario from manner complements to event/propositional complements has been suggested: manner complements originally have a propositional frame, which is foregrounded concurrently with the loss of the manner meaning, giving rise to both eventive and propositional interpretations. This article is aimed at testing both hypotheses. We study several large Old Russian manuscripts, starting from the first available documents of the 11th century, and show that at the earliest documented period Old Russian kako/kakъ could be used in all types of complement clauses. It could introduce eventive, propositional, manner and irrealis purposive-like complements. Accordingly, the evolution of the subordinator kak in complementation involves a narrowing of its functional domain. We classify Old Russian texts based on the period and trace the gradual loss of particular functions during the centuries. Thus, we show that the Russian data supports the second grammaticalization scenario.

Of similative origin, Polish jakoby derives from the connective jako ‘how, that’ univerbated with the irrealis enclitic by . From the earliest attested stages (late 14th century) into the 17th century, jakoby was used as a comparison marker and as a subordinator of manner or purpose clauses. The former use has persisted, and the latter was ousted. After the 16th century jakoby further evolved into a reportive marker, as a particle or complementizer. Contrary to what pathways explaining the connection between similative and evidential marking would suggest, jakoby ’s now predominant function as a reportive marker was apparently not prepared by inferential use, nor was its complementizer function mediated by a purpose function. Instead, purpose and reportive complementizers belong to different “branches”, both of which can be motivated by an indiscriminate similative-manner function. The evidence in favor of this derives from a systematic evaluation of extant research and a corpus study covering almost the entire period from 1600 to our day. A crucial moment to understanding jakoby ’s functional changes is the insight that similatives can acquire propositional scope prior to entering the evidential domain and marking a metonymic relation between speech acts and epistemic attitudes expressed by the former.

The Turkish nominalizer -(y)Iş demonstrates a broad spectrum of functions ranging from a deverbal word-formation device that forms lexicalized nouns with concrete and abstract meanings to an inflectional marker used in nominal clauses, especially in clausal complementation. In some uses, the item conveys manner semantics. While the item itself has been variously investigated and forms an established part of any Turkish grammar description, there is still a lack of consensus on its functional and semantic properties. This article investigates the morphosyntactic functions and the semantic features of the nominalizer -(y)Iş in light of the claims in the linguistic literature on the one hand, which include manner, countable events, factive imperfective, single instance of an event, direct reference to the inner process of an action, etc., and of examples from primary sources on the other, and evaluates the findings from the perspective of grammaticalization. It will be argued that the range of functions of this item and the fact that it seems to resist any straightforward analysis result from its transition from a derivational marker to an inflectional marker with tasks including complementizer functions, a process in which manner semantics will be argued to play a role.