The lexicalization-grammaticalization-pragmaticalization interface
The case of Mainland Scandinavian jeg tror
- Author(s): Karin Beijering 1
-
View Affiliations Hide AffiliationsAffiliations:1 University of Antwerp
- Source: New Directions in Grammaticalization Research , pp 67-92
- Publication Date April 2015
This paper reports on a corpus investigation of Mainland Scandinavian expressions meaning ‘I think’ and the lexicalization-grammaticalization-pragmaticalization interface. The discourse marker I think has been subsumed under lexicalization, grammaticalization and pragmaticalization. It can be conceived of as a formulaic token which is an argument in favor of lexicalization. It also has some prototypical properties of grammaticalization, but especially its optional character and syntactic freedom pose serious problems for a grammaticalization analysis. An account in terms of pragmaticalization is controversial because pragmaticalization is not a generally accepted type of language change in grammaticalization studies. I will argue that precisely the ‘problematic’ properties of I think provide good reasons to postulate a separate process of pragmaticalization for the rise of discourse markers.
- Affiliations: 1: University of Antwerp
-
From This Site
/content/books/9789027269041-slcs.166.04beidcterms_subject,pub_keyword-contentType:Journal105