Journal of Historical Linguistics - Volume 5, Issue 2, 2015

This article is a corpus-based study on the grammaticalization of the quasi-auxiliary use(d) to. It describes and seeks to explain the historical process whereby use(d) to, starting from the Middle English source construction use ‘be in the habit of’ + to + verb, grammaticalized into a habitual aspect marker with idiosyncratic morphosyntactic properties. A detailed corpus study is presented, based on four historical English corpora, which together cover a time period from 1410 to 2009. The results of the corpus analysis are interpreted within the theoretical framework of usage-based grammar, with the aim of uncovering the mechanisms that propelled the gradual grammaticalization of use(d) to on the semantic, morphological, syntactic and phonological dimensions. Among the underlying mechanisms and processes identified are semantic generalization via host-class expansion and habituation, pragmatic enrichment, analogy, chunking, loss of analyzability and internal structure, as well as phonological reduction through neuromotor automation. Supported by the quantitative empirical evidence from the corpus analysis and drawing on findings from usage-based research on language change, the present study depicts the grammaticalization of use(d) to as a self-feeding process driven by frequency effects, i.e. by the effects that the increasingly high discourse frequency of the use(d) to construction had on its cognitive representation.

As many other languages of northern sub-Saharan Africa, almost all Bobo and Samogo languages (two distantly related Mande groups) exhibit prominently clause-final negative markers (CFNMs), a cross-linguistically uncommon property. Unlike negators in other parts of the world, CFNMs in the area prove to be rather unstable diachronically and relatively easy to borrow, similar to discourse markers, focus particles and phasal adverbs, with which they also happen to share peculiarities of morphosyntax and paths of historical development. This article first provides an exhaustive overview of the data available on the use of CFNMs in these languages. Building on these data, I advance an account of the history of the default CFNMs in these languages. In particular, I argue that the default CFNMs of Jo, Seen and probably Kpeen (all Samogo) go back to the phasal adverbial *kè ‘(not) yet; still’, whereas the default CFNMs of Bobo and Dzuun, Ban and Kpaan ultimately go back to a phasal adverbial *kÚDà(C)á ‘(not) again’. However, the default CFNMs of Dzuun, Kpaan and Ban turn out to be only indirect reflexes resulting from a lateral transfer of the Bobo CFNM, which expanded an already rich system of semantically more specific CFNMs in these languages.

This article critically assesses probabilistic predictions on the theory of contact-induced grammaticalization of the comitative-instrumental polysemy in those Slavic languages which have had a history of long and intense interaction with either German or Italian. Having provided extensive dialectal data, I argue instead that there are no grounds for positing a direct correlation between the introduction of the comitative preposition to instrumental in “high-contact” Slavic languages and the history of language contact with German or Italian. I propose to distinguish between the grammaticalization of the comitative-instrumental polysemy due to analytic simplification and the grammaticalization of the instrumental-comitative polysemy due to synthetic simplification. The comitative marking for instrumentals in Slavic is likely to develop in places of prolonged multilingual contacts, not necessarily with German or Italian. Under these conditions one can predict the development of convergent analytic features in closely related or even areally contingent languages (dialects), as is the case of the Circum-Baltic area.