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- Volume 7, Issue, 2017
Journal of Historical Linguistics - Volume 7, Issue 1, 2017
Volume 7, Issue 1, 2017
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Evidential adverbs in German
Author(s): Katrin Axel-Tober and Kalle Müllerpp.: 9–47 (39)More LessThis article addresses the semantic and morphosyntactic development of the German evidential adverbs offensichtlich, offenbar, anscheinend, and scheinbar ‘obviously’/‘apparently’/‘seemingly’ and their meaning contribution in present-day German. It will be argued that these expressions, most of which are historically derived from adjectives, innovated separate lexical entries as sentence adverbs in New High German resulting from a morphosyntactic reanalysis of an ambiguous surface structure. This reanalysis was accompanied by a profound semantic change, as a result of which the expressions acquired a wide-scope reading of the type ‘there is (clear) evidence that p’. The diachronic results are corroborated by experimental data from Present-Day German that show that these evidential sentence adverbs are underspecified with respect to evidence type (inference and report). The diachronic and synchronic findings are furthermore discussed in the light of grammaticalization and subjectification theory.
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The grammaticalization of epistemicity in Ibero-Romance
Author(s): Alice Corrpp.: 48–76 (29)More LessTypologically-unexpected overt expletives can be found in a restricted number of non-standard Ibero-Romance null-subject varieties. Historical data suggest that these overt expletives, which in today’s varieties show both discourse-oriented and expletive characteristics, have their origin in 15th century impersonal epistemic constructions. This article argues that it is the expletives’ epistemic origin which gives rise to, and thus explains, their present-day heterogeneous properties, in particular their function as a marker of epistemicity in a number of varieties. Despite undergoing the same mechanisms of change, the variation in modern Ibero-Romance is understood to be a consequence of the different stages and degrees of grammaticalization reached in each variety.
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From verum to epistemic modality and evidentiality
Author(s): Anna Kocherpp.: 77–110 (34)More LessIn this article, I investigate the diachronic development of a construction in Modern Spanish. It consists of an epistemic or evidential modifier followed by the complementizer (hence Adv+C) that heads root clauses (Seguro Adv que C viene ‘Surely he/she will come’). I demonstrate that the distributional, semantic, and pragmatic properties support a monoclausal analysis for Modern Spanish Adv+C as well as for its historical source construction. I propose a cartographic analysis associating Adv+C and the source construction with a low position in Rizzi’s split CP. Supported by corpus data, I identify a verum focus construction (Aff+C) as the origin of Adv+C. I claim that the loss of the verum interpretation triggers the reanalysis of the construction. This ultimately gives rise to its productive extension to other epistemic and evidential modifiers.
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From visual perception to inference in the French evidential markers il m’est avis que, apparemment, and il paraît que
Author(s): Amalia Rodríguez-Somolinospp.: 111–133 (23)More LessThis article studies the evolution, from Medieval to Modern French, of three evidential markers that are semantically related from a diachronic perspective: il m’est avis que ‘I think that’, ‘it seems to me that’, apparemment ‘apparently’, and il paraît que ‘it seems that, apparently’. This study demonstrates the rise of the modal and evidential uses of the markers in question, from the Medieval period onwards, and provides a semantic characterization of these three epistemic-evidential markers in order to precisely grasp the evolution of their meaning. Using information from a number of databases, this article provides empirical support for the study of the different types of evidentiality, their evolution, and their interaction with the epistemic commitment of the speaker and the degree of certainty. The three markers have evolved towards greater subjectivity and a lower degree of certainty. Their historical semantic description shows that a marker may shift diachronically between various types of evidence.
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The rise and development of parenthetical needless to say
Author(s): Zeltia Blanco-Suárez and Mario Serrano-Losadapp.: 134–159 (26)More LessThe article traces the diachronic development of the assumed evidential needless to say. This parenthetical expression allows the speaker to make certain assertions regarding the obviousness of what s/he is about to say, thus serving as an evidential strategy that marks the information conveyed as being based on inference and/or assumed or general knowledge. Parenthetical needless to say has its roots in the Early Modern English needless to-inf construction (meaning ‘it is unnecessary to do something’), which originally licensed a wide range of infinitives. Over the course of time, however, it became restricted to uses with utterance verbs, eventually giving rise to the grammaticalized evidential expression needless to say. In fact, it is only in Late Modern English that the evidential pragmatic inferences become conventionalized and that the first parenthetical uses of the construction are attested. In Present-day English, parenthetical needless to say occurs primarily at the left periphery with forward scope.
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On English turn out and Spanish resultar mirative constructions
Author(s): Mario Serrano-Losadapp.: 160–189 (30)More LessThis article focuses on the diachronic development of English turn out and Spanish resultar ‘turn out’ mirative constructions. Having undergone processes of semantic generalization over time, both verbs express evidential and, most prominently, mirative nuances in the present-day languages. This study explores the mechanisms that condition the evolution of turn out and resultar from their original meanings as lexical resultative and change-of-state verbs towards their eventual subjectification and grammaticalization as predicates conveying evidential and mirative senses. The present-day mirative constructions take that- and infinitival complement clauses in both languages. The analysis suggested here shows that both verbs exhibit diverging, though closely related, paths and degrees of grammaticalization. Moreover, this study delves into the further development of these predicates as parenthetical expressions. While English parenthetical turns out has already been grammaticalized, Spanish resulta may be on its way to becoming a grammaticalized parenthetical.
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The grammaticalization of Dutch klinken
Author(s): Marjolein Poortvlietpp.: 190–212 (23)More LessThis article demonstrates the diachronic development of present-day Dutch klinken as an evidential copular verb meaning ‘to seem, based on (auditory) evidence’ from the Middle Dutch intransitive verb klinken meaning ‘to give off a clear sound’. I identify four semantic stages in the history of klinken, which are divided by processes of semantic bleaching (14th–16th century, 16th–17th century) and subjectification and copularization (during the 16th century). I claim that the process of copularization is the trigger of both the evidential meaning and the subjective interpretation that copular constructions with klinken receive. Furthermore, I show that, unlike the development of eruitzien ‘look’ and voelen ‘feel’ from cognitive perception verbs, klinken has developed much like the Dutch copular verbs schijnen ‘seem’ and blijken ‘turn out’: from an intransitive verb with a sensory-related meaning.
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Miratives in Japanese
Author(s): Masaharu Shimada and Akiko Naganopp.: 213–244 (32)More LessThe notion of mirativity as a grammatical category separate from evidentiality is controversial, but a certain amount of cross-linguistic evidence speaks for its validity. The aim of this study is to investigate this notion in contemporary and earlier Japanese, which is shown to have mirative constructions: (i) no miratives, (ii) koto miratives, and (iii) lexical miratives. The particles no and koto are polyfunctional, and they have recently gained a mirative function. Lexical miratives are uttered by the younger generation. These findings raise a diachronic issue regarding the emergence of the three mirative constructions. Adopting Cruschina’s (2011) cartographic approach to discourse-related phenomena and the notion of “emotional vocative” offered by Yamada (1936) , we argue that what binds the three constructions together is the involvement of the IFocP (Information Focus Phrase) and that their emergences are all explained by grammaticalization paths starting from nominals.
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The evolution of egophoricity and evidentiality in the Himalayas
Author(s): Manuel Widmerpp.: 245–274 (30)More LessThe epistemic verbal categories “evidentiality” and “egophoricity” play an important role in the verbal systems of many Tibeto-Burman languages of the Himalayas. In the course of the past decades, our synchronic understanding of those grammatical categories has been considerably enhanced by numerous descriptive studies. However, little is still known about the diachronic processes that give rise to evidentiality and egophoricity. The article addresses this gap by discussing evidence from Bunan, a Tibeto-Burman language, for which the development of evidentiality and egophoricity in its past tense system can be reconstructed in detail. It is argued that the evolution of the two categories can be explained by reference to two processes: (i) the reanalysis of a resultative construction as an inferential past tense and (ii) the reanalysis of third person agreement markers as allophoric markers. In addition, it is maintained that the concept of Scalar Quantity Implicature is crucial to account for the evolution of the two categories.
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