Grammaticalization

Dialetto, italiano regionale, italiano neo-standard. Un confronto sullo stadio di grammaticalizzazione di perifrasi verbali consimili

by Massimo Cerruti

In press in: "Coesistenze linguistiche nell’Italia pre- e postunitaria". Atti del XLV Congresso internazionale della SLI-Società di Linguistica Italiana (Aosta, Bard, Torino, 26-27-28 settembre 2011), Bulzoni, Roma. [DRAFT VERSION]

Affixoidation

by Shadi Davari

JUST revisited: Panchronic and contrastive insights

by Clara Molina

Published in IJES 12-1 (17-36) Co-authored with Manuela Romano

Routes for development in the pragmaticalization of SORRY as a formulaic marker

by Clara Molina

Published in RAEI 24 (191-212)

General productivity: How become waxed and wax became a copula

by peter petre

This article provides an analysis — within the framework of Radical Construction Grammar — of how BECOME developed... more This article provides an analysis — within the framework of Radical Construction Grammar — of how BECOME developed into a copula ‘become’ out of an original sense ‘arrive’, and WAX, originally ‘grow’, also came to be used as a copula ‘become’. Importantly, it explains why these verbs successfully became fully productive copulas in a very short period of time. It is argued that this happened after a pre-copular stage had reached a cognitive threshold value. The occurrence of this threshold is related to the fact that the copular constructions featuring BECOME and WAX were not the end result of a single diachronic lineage of constructions (i.e. one construction developed out of another one, one at a time). Instead, the copularization of these verbs was the result of an interaction between lineages of constructions, belonging to two groups: (i) constructions involving BECOME or WAX, which gradually changed and interacted with each other; (ii) constructions involving already existing copulas, notably WEORÐAN ‘become’, which provided a generally productive analog upon which the newly emerging copulas could graft. Generally, the article calls attention to the importance of multiple source constructions and thresholds in understanding grammaticalization processes and productivity.

Barth, Danielle, & Vsevolod Kapatsinski. 2012. Modeling construction-specific contraction of is, am and are: It’s not all frequency. Ms. U of Oregon.

by Vsevolod Kapatsinski

The emergence of Noun + Noun constructions with a regressive order in contemporary French?

by Rudy Loock

Journal of French Language Studies, FirstView Article : pp 1-21

This paper investigates the emergence of atypical noun+noun structures exhibiting regressive order (head-final or NN)... more This paper investigates the emergence of atypical noun+noun structures exhibiting regressive order (head-final or NN) in contemporary French such as la grève attitude (‘the strike attitude’) or la Marcelle solidarité (‘the Marcelle solidarity’). Using attested examples drawn from contemporary media, the aim of the paper is to provide a detailed description and history of these data, as well as to study its productivity through the emergence of patterns such as la N attitude or la N Academy/Académie. Using traditional tests, the paper also investigates the morphological versus syntactic nature of the construction and concludes in favour of the former.

On the evolution of temporal n-words in Medieval French

by Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen

Language Sciences 34(1): 76-91 (2012)

The Grammaticalization of Negative Reinforcers In Old and Middle French: a Discourse-Functional Approach

by Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen

On the Diachrony of" Reinforced" Negation In French and Italian

by Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen

Grammaticalization of allocutivity markers in Japanese and Korean in a cross-linguistic perspective

by Anton Antonov

Allocutivity is a term coined to describe a phenomenon in Basque whereby, under certain circumstances, an addressee... more Allocutivity is a term coined to describe a phenomenon in Basque whereby, under certain circumstances, an addressee which is not an argument of the verb is systematically encoded in all declarative main clause conjugated verb forms. Although the term is applied exclusively to the situation in Basque, similar phenomena are found in other languages as well. Indeed, despite differences in the degree of grammaticalization and usage, allocutive forms are attested in at least Mandan (Siouan) and Beja (Cushitic), where their sources remain unknown. This contrasts with the situation observed in Japanese and Korean. This paper will focus on the origin of K -(su)pni- and J -(i)mas-, two allocutive markers whose grammaticalization path appears to have been quite similar.

Los niveles del diálogo y los apéndices conversacionales

by Johan Gille

2006. Co-authored with Cilla Häggkvist. Published in Falk, J., J. Gille & F. Bermúdez Wachtmeister (eds.), Discurso, interacción e identidad. Stockholm: Stockholm university, pp. 65-80.

Apéndices generalizadores introducidos por o

by Johan Gille

2010. Co-authored with Cilla Häggkvist. Published in Oralia. Análisis del discurso oral, vol. 13, pp. 127-144.

English fail to as a periphrastic negative: an FDG account

by Lachlan Mackenzie

Published as Web Papers in Functional Discourse Grammar 82. 1-28.

The verb fail, preceding to + infinitive, has two senses. One presupposes active attempt; the other lacks this... more The verb fail, preceding to + infinitive, has two senses. One presupposes active attempt; the other lacks this presupposition and approximates in meaning to simple negation. Examining all relevant occurrences in the British National Corpus, the paper considers the second sense of fail to in the framework of FDG. An initial analysis of the second sense as involving a subject-raising verb is abandoned in favour of seeing the relevant use of fail to as a periphrastic negative. Close corpus analysis reveals that fail to obeys various collocational restrictions pertaining to dynamicity, telicity and positive semantic prosody. This leads into a case study of fail to be, which reveals several additional facts. In the FDG-theoretical section, the first sense of fail is analysed as involving a lexical verb taking a Configurational Property as its complement and the second as corresponding to a Negative operator (Neg) on a Configurational Property. The use of fail to in litotes entails two loci for Neg, while the periphrastic use of failure arises from applying Neg to a Lexical Property. The conclusion reflects on possible motivations for the grammaticalization of fail invoking a view of negation as not purely semantic but also as having pragmatic aspects.

Expressing future time reference in Kambaata

by Yvonne Treis

Pre-publication version (20-02-2012). Article forthcoming in: Nordic Journal of African Studies.

Kambaata (Highland East Cushitic) is an aspect-marking language with a prominent opposition between perfective and... more Kambaata (Highland East Cushitic) is an aspect-marking language with a prominent opposition between perfective and imperfective aspect. The absolute location of an event in time (tense) is expressed by devices other than verbal inflection or inferred from the aspectual value of a verb. The present article discusses the devices that are applied to encode future in Kambaata. Firstly, imperfective verb forms can be interpreted as expressing future reference. Secondly, the language has grammaticalised two purpose constructions into imminent and/or intentional future constructions. Furthermore, certain converb forms can be used to express that events in subordinate clauses are later in time than events expressed in the matrix clause. A comparison with related languages shows that Kambaata is a typical Highland East Cushitic language, as far as the means used to encode future time reference are concerned.

Locative terms and spatial frames of reference in Wan

by Tatiana Nikitina

Se poate vorbi despre "memoria limbii"? // Can one talk about "the memory of language"?

by Alexandru Nicolae

published in "Texte", 2, April - June 2009, p. 4-6

This paper is published in a general audience magazine. I informally discuss the phenomenon of grammaticalisation,... more This paper is published in a general audience magazine. I informally discuss the phenomenon of grammaticalisation, arguing that it represents a form of "memory of language": on closer scrutiny, the input of the grammaticalised structure is still detectable in the output. The specific case discussed here is the grammaticalisation of the definite article.

Speech act verbs and the coding of evidentiality in Portuguese

by José Pinto de Lima

Published in: Gabriele Diewald / Elena Smirnova (Hg.), Modalität und Evidentialität - Modality and Evidentiality, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier: Trier, S. 11-33.

Periphrastic voice with 'see' in Portuguese

by José Pinto de Lima

Co-authored with Christian Lehmann and Rute Soares.
Published in Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, 42: 1, 75-100.

Grammatical encoding of referentiality in the history of Hungarian

by Barbara Egedi

to appear in: Anna Giacolone Ramat - Caterina Mauri - Piera Molinelli (eds.): Synchrony and Diachrony: a Dynamic Interface. Studies in Language Companion. Amsterdam: John Benjamins