Functions of Language - Volume 26, Issue 2, 2019

Abstract

This paper investigates the development of the copula shì construction in Chinese from the perspective of diachronic construction grammar (Traugott & Trousdale 2013). In prior work the development has been conceptualized in a grammaticalization framework, with focus on the individual expression shì, rather than on its development in the context of both the immediate syntactic frame and also of other constructions such as the demonstrative shì construction and the copula wéi construction. We show that the copula shì construction went through various types of expansion and reduction. The change was not unidirectional in the way predicted by a grammaticalization model such as is proposed in e.g. Lehmann (1995, 2004) and Haspelmath (2004).

Abstract

Cross-linguistic diachronic studies have focused on the parallel or divergent development of cognate or functionally equivalent items. This paper traces the diachronic convergent development of two unrelated items by means of a case study, the development of the German verb scheinen ‘shine, emit light’ and English seem ‘(originally) befit, beseem’. Despite their different source meanings, the two verbs have grammaticalized into evidential markers, as is evidenced by the constructions scheinen + zu + infinitive and seem + to + infinitive. We use historical corpus data to show that the two verbs have converged both semantically and syntactically. Semantically the verbs converge when they acquire the sense ‘appear, become visible’, a well-known source of evidentials. Syntactically, scheinen and seem come to occur in the same range of constructional patterns. This development is more advanced in English, so that it is ahead of German by at least four centuries.

Abstract

Like its English counterpart such, Dutch zo’n has identifying and intensifying uses. The established pathway from the former to the latter is found to constitute a proportional rather than a discrete shift here. The strong presence of intensifying uses from the start, as compared to the older Dutch marker zulk, is argued to be due to preexisting constructions that are alike formally and convey intensification. Zo’n is also found to have a recognitional and an approximating use. The case is made that the former has evolved out of the identifying use and that the latter is a development which is independent from the other uses functionally but has modeled itself on them formally. Finally, it is argued that the semantic shift from identification to intensification is best captured by the well-known pathway from textual to expressive, although the unidirectionality of this cline is uncertain, and that the change from identification to recognition supports a recent proposal to distinguish immediate and extended intersubjectivity.

This article reviews Hybridity in Systemic Functional Linguistics: Grammar, text and discursive context13 978 1 78179 064 9978-1-78179-064-9

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