Chapter 6 Flashcards
Grammaticalisation: precesses and mechanisms
Grammaticalisation
the process by which new grammatical morphemes (grams) come into being
grammatical morphemes vs Lexical morphemes
Lexical Morphemes are open class, grammatical morphemes are closed class
example of gramms
Affixe, auxiliaires, articles, pronouns, preposition and postpositions
how grams are restricted
grammatical morphemes are restricted by where they can occur. they occur in particular constraints.
how “will”changed to become future aux
- in phonetic form. 2. morphosyntactic properties. 3. meaning or function
(this changes happen altogether gradually in the process of grammaticalisation)
what is the verb from which “will” produced?
“WILLAN”= WILL(want) + AN (infinitive suffix)
how was will an used?
- with NP a direct object. 2. with Clause coming with that 3. with infinitive complement
the story of WILL. OE
Old English: Will used with NP, Clause with that and infinitives. the meaning was mostly want. the other meanings was: Willingness, sometimes expressing the future. Singular and Plural was distinguished and 2sg was wilt.
Will in ME
ME: the use of will with infinitives increased. the use of will with np objects decreased. with the infinitive complement the meaning was willingness and intention. with FSG the meaning was promise or resolution. the plural was lost and the final vowel deleted in variations. using will for prediction which is the hallmark of future tense was not common in ME and only happened once.
Early Modern English
the contrsction started to happen. (contraction was less common for she and he). the contraction means phonological reduction. frequency increased. mostly use for intention, promise and willingness. the use for prediction also increased.
Properties of Aux
- inversion with the subject forming question 2.negative not follows them 3. their infinitive is without to. 4. they don’t have 3sg suffix s.
the differences between normal verbs and Aux
main verbs in OE and ME had the first three properties. but they lost their feature. Auxiliaries are highly fixed because they are frequent. and undergone grammaticaization
Case of Have
when a lexical item becomes a suffix:
1. the stem was before Habere
2. H was lost in some cases
3. reduction happened and b is lost
4. it attached to the infinitive
what happens after go and have (another form of future)
subject plus going to Verb
shows intention
reduction happens: gonna
with I it reduces further: Imma get me a beer.
Path of Grammaticalisation
1:discourse: loosely connected sequences of words
2. syntax: constraints with moe fixed structures and meanings
3. Morphology: affixed morphemes appear.
from Auxilary to Suffix
Example of Auxiliary to suffixN
Romanve Future
Cantar ha : Cantara
What aspects of words are changed during grammaticalisation
Phonetic forms- grammatical Behaviour - meaning
Specialisation Example
Ne Pas in French
Development of English Perfect
Story of Ne Pas
- Ne was old Latin Negation used in OF, before verb
- in OF a constraint arose in which Ne was supplemented by a noun meaning the least quantity of something
- this constraint survived during Modern French as the main form of Negation, where pas (step) happens after the Verb
(pas was not the only noun used in French for this purpose. there were other nouns too rom which only Pas and Point exist now. Pas is neutral negation. the use of only ne is not happening now in French) - Pas lost its former meaning.
- Now Ne is usually omitted and only pas happens before verb
the story of Perfect
- OE from grammaticalised from possessive constraints , with transitive verbs, with resultative meaning
- this constraint gave rise to the use of ppl which is our perfect, with transitive verbs
- with intransitive verbs and other verbs indicating change of state, the verb be used instead of have. in other languages we still have this situation.
- in English, the use of be is gone now and have survived. be is only used with go.
Decategorialization
(Loss of Lexical Class during grammaticalization)
when a N or V becomes fixed in gramatticalizing constraint, it looses aspects of its meaning and becomes disconnected to the same N or V used in other contexts. as it becomes more fixed in a grammaticalisation constraint, it looses its morphosyntactic properties. the loss of morphosyntactic features indicating its lexical class is called DECATEGORIALIZATION.
How words change in decategorialization?
V becomes Aux
N becomes Prep
Example of Can
Decategorialization: Main V becomes Aux
it was cunnan before
What Properties Cunnan lost?
- the ability to take NP as direct object
- the loss of infinitive form (in Middle English there are instances, now in some dialects happen, it is not semantic deficiency because WILL is used with BE ABLE TO)
- loss of inflection
inflection in Cunnan
Cunnan was a V that did not have 3SG inflection. shows that even in OE, these Vs have some specific characteristics. past form of CAN is etymologically COULD
While
Decategorialization
WHILE was a N, meaning a period of time.
it is noun in some fixed expression in PDE : a long while
in PDE, when WHILE is used to introduce a clause, it is not a N. it can not take articles, a demonstrative or an adjective. it is also not in the N position (S or O, or O of P)
Differences between Can, While and Have
CAN as a main V is not being used
WHILE is rarely used in fixed expressions
garamatticalized HAVE in perfect constraint, but the lexical possessive HAVE is clearly being used in its full form.
explain grammaticalization of Have
Perfect HAVE: behaves like aux: contracts with NOT and SUB
explain decategorilization as Reanalysis
item from one category joined another category, it is a grammaticalization which reanalysis lexical item as a grammatical item(?)
what is the process of fixing position
morphosyntactic change accompanies grammaticalization.
a W which occured in different positions is being fixed.
example of fixing position
a temporal adverbia becomes a future gram. by and by which was an adverbial (baimbai) at the beginning of a sentence is moved to a position closer to V because its semantic properties are similar to the V. stabilised closer to the V.
